Record Usage and Interpretation

I get really confused by some of the wording used to describe a template.  For example:  Template 12 says:

"Birth or Death Certificate (Not a Family Artifact)"

Caution: When you obtain a certificate via a third party, not from the record office, then you are citing an artifact in personal possession (template 7).

Define "third party"! If the record comes from a company that was hired to take on the volume of work needed to action a request for a record are they a "third party".

In many places both the Reference Note and the Source List Entry have a date of access.  What date is used when we visit the site multiple times years apart!

For example: 

1) I visit a database on October 2, 2023 and create a Reference Note with that access date and a Source List Entry with the year 2023.  

2) I visit the same database on May 5, 2025 and I would create a new Reference Note with the access date in May.

I guess one learns something important every day...

I thought I'd post this here, because it drastically affects one's ability to correctly cite a Quebec Church record.

I hope it helps someone else.

A subtle but important point in Quebec genealogical history:

I need some help on understanding how to cite divorce records. I'm not sure what source template it falls under. Would it be vital records, court records or something else?

In the course of reviewing some records, I'm having to wrap my head around some of the terms used to describe various types of newspaper content. Is there a somewhat "generally accepted" definition of the following 9 terms?

Hello,

    I am struggling mightily with source list names. On one hand everything I read says source names should be generic. Generic, to me, means......book, census, birth certificate, grave marker, etc. When I look at the souce names in FTM facebook groups and EEv4 I'm getting conflicting input. Many examples in EEv4 use the name of the book, name of the database from a webiste, etc. as source names. My problem with using descriptive souce names is that they then appear in my source/citation twice.

I'm still mulling over how to document marriages that refer to "The Parish Church", as in the following:

First Reference
England, “Certified copy of an entry of Marriage”, Co. of Middlesex, Par. of Tottenham, entry no. 135, Thomas Wells & Hannah Martin, married 30 Apr 1857, in the Parish Church, after Banns; certificate MXB 990699, issued 10 Mar 2005, General Registry Office, Southport. Based upon the date, the “Parish Church” appears to refer to All Hallows Church, Church Lane, Tottenham, London N17 7AA.

The Glossary of Evidence Explained, 3rd ed. (revised) does not provide a definition of "artifact". Various passages in the book seem to hint at a definition, but there doesn't seem to be anything explicit that covers the situations that I commonly encounter.

Hi EE!

I'm several types of confused. I've had both EE editions 3 and 4 in front of me for the last 2 hours, and I'm still stuck, so I give up.

One of my branches leads back to Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred." I used the experimental AI tool at FamilySearch and found an unindexed partition deed for the seven heirs of Martin Allen, one being Archibald T McCorcle on behalf of Martin Allen's daughter, Elizabeth E.M.C. McCorcle.

Hi again! I need to cite something (well, two subsequent somethings) from a Wise County, Texas deed book that I haven't encountered before, but I don't know what to call them or how to describe them. Here's what I have: