Citing Personal Bank Records and Bank Checks

By donnakfitz on Mon, 01/18/2021 - 10:33

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Many of us have inherited bank documents, personal checks, and check registers of our ancestors. I am crafting an article and presentation about what we can learn about families by reviewing their old canceled checks. I would appreciate guidance on creating a citation for personal checks and check registers in footnotes, both as the initial and subsequent citations. I assume the same format you recommend for personal checks/registers would apply to business checks and registers.

Submitted byEEon Mon, 01/18/2021 - 10:47

donnakfitz, what you describe would be a family artifact. (EE 3.25) It's not a publication, but manuscript material that's in a "collection" you inherited. 

The basic format for citing manuscripts appears in the QuickStart Guide tipped into the front of EE on grey pages. To quote:

Most archived manuscripts also follow a basic pattern:

1. Author-Creator, “Document Title,” specific page and/or date; file, collection, series; repository, city, state.

Following this pattern,

  • The Author-Creator would be your parents.
  • The "Document Title" would indicate whichever individual bank document you are citing. (But see 2.22 for "Untitled, unpublished manuscript, register, etc.") 
  • The "file" would be whatever file name you give to that part of the collection, presuming that you subdivide it—for example, by year.
  • The "collection" would be whatever name you want to give for this collection you inherited.
  • The "series" would likely not apply. That level of organization usually exists in major archives.
  • The "repository" and its location is your ID.

EE 3.25–3.27, the passages that focus on family artifacts, give several examples.