Record Usage and Interpretation

A number of years ago I found the following indenture in a deed book in Hardin County, Kentucky. I thought I understood what was going on that is until this past week when some else used this deed as a reference.

My understanding of the following indenture is that John Uptegrove used a horse as collateral for a loan from Joseph Adams.

The other person interpreted the indenture as John Uptegrove sold a horse to Joseph Adams.

Note: I did correct a couple of spelling errors in this transcription. The original pages are attached in a pdf.

I'm still having trouble grasping the concepts behind original and derivative sources and primary and secondary information. Reading the explanations and the usual examples, they make sense to me, but when I'm actually looking at what I have in front of me, I doubt I'm doing anything right. There's also different usage of these terms, even within the context of genealogy teaching resources, that muddies the waters for me.

Dear Editor;

I am researching the parentage of Almond McHenry (b. 1821), Allegany, New York. In the 1831 will of Sara Mulhullon, Almond McHenry her grandson, is listed first in a list of Henry McHenry's children. Also listed were the two other grandchildren, listed as children of Danial McHenry. All of these grandchildren inherited a portion of Sara's estate. Danial and Henry McHenry inherited nothing. In 1833 Danial McHenry was appointed guardian of his two children. The guardianship included information about real property and a bond was required for both children's guardianship.

Both Ancestry and FamilySearch provide the same database (with FamilySearch’s data coming from Ancestry’s data).

From FamilySearch (virtually identical at Ancestry):

My grandfather was admitted to the State Bar Assn. in 1919 following two years of home sstudy with a mentor. I want to enter this as a sourced event in Legacy, but would appreciate advice on how best to document this occasion.

Thank you

I am trying to decipher a probated will from a Richmond County, GA from 1824. In transcribing the information, I have happened on the use of a character with which I am not familiar. The character has been added to several words in the document, usually as a separate character after the word and occasionally as an additional character continuing a word. The usage does not seem to follow in particular pattern that I can discern. It follows the word “and” several times, but also follows “support”, “at”, “managed”, “kind” and many others.

Is there a recommended notation for transcription? I have seen various styles of punctuation to indicate such things as uncertain characters, clarifications or suggested interpretations, inserted text, marginalia, underlined text, italics, struck-out text, and even the use of different colours by the original author. Some of these are incomplete -- in my opinion -- and some rely on special symbols that are hard to generate reliably (e.g. the Unicode symbols U+202A and U+202B for L-to-R and R-to-L embedding).

When writing about two or more people with the same name, what is the best way to distinguish their identies for the reader?  In the case I am currently developing, I've got a father and son, a possible grandfather, a nephew and a great nephew all with the same name.  They did not, however, generally distinguish themselves in records being used as evidence.  I've seen situations where people just invent a name, such as "Sam Jones, Sr," "Sam Jones, Jr." and "Sam Jones III," yet no records call them by that name with the generational suffix appended.