The Family Tree
By Terence L. Day
Terence L. Day, genealogist and journalist, is on the Washington State University faculty. He welcomes e-mail at genealogy@moscow.com, or regular mail in care of the Tri-City Herald City newsroom, P.O. Box 2608, Tri-Cities, WA 99302-2608.
Recording complete data will help future genealogists
This story was published Sept. 26, 1999
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," and I earnestly agree with the poet-philosopher.
But there is nothing foolish about a little fastidiousness in the way genealogists record vital data.
There's been an evolution in computer software for genealogy in the 10 years since the first program was introduced, but all the changes haven't been for the better.
You probably can't imagine anything duller than reading about data entry, but a far greater numbness will descend if you're ever forced to correct a bazillion incomplete and inconsistent entries.
Better to be a little bored now than bored to death later.
Earlier versions of Personal Ancestral File, one of the earliest genealogy database programs, provided spaces, set off by commas, for town, county, state and country.
If you left a space blank, it remained as a blank space in the database, set off by commas. This was a subtle hint that you should fill in all the spaces.
Lazy genealogists might fill in my birth place as:
Pasco,_____,Washington,_____. If they did, the blank spaces for county and nation stuck out like a sore thumb, begging to be filled in.
I've yet to see a Windows-based genealogy database that provides for this.
And that includes Personal Ancestral File 4.0, which is an authentic Windows program.
Instead, the Windows programs I've seen simply have a window (or box) for genealogists to enter place information. No clue as to what should be entered.
Failure to enter complete geographic information is one of the most common problems in genealogy. And I admit it takes discipline to look up complete information.
After all, how many people know where Bagley is in Wisconsin.? If the information you receive just says great-grandpa was born in Bagley, Wis., you have to do some homework to enter the information.
All right, I did your homework for you. Bagley is in Grant County. So your birthplace entry should look like this: Bagley,Grant,Wisconsin,USA.
You'll note I didn't put any spaces after the commas. My poor English teacher is turning in her grave! But that's another little genealogical convention.
If you were printing this on paper, of course you would put the spaces in, so you wouldn't look the fool and your English teacher would be happy.
But many genealogical software programs will insert a space after the comma and then you'll have too many spaces and feel dumb.
You should experiment with the software program you use and make the appropriate adjustment.
A good U.S. road atlas will suffice to help you locate most cities, even tiny ones. But many 19th century hamlets have vanished, in which case you'll have a harder search.
Your local library has resources , or you can try the Internet. Plug the word "gazetteer" into your favorite search engine and you'll find an ample choice of resources.
While we're at it, I hope you noticed in my example above that I spelled out Washington. Please do that. Geographical abbreviations change with time. With any luck, your genealogical records are going to survive for a few centuries. Heaven only knows how they'll abbreviate Washington in 2199.
It's also nice to be kind to foreign genealogists. If you put your genealogical records in a repository on the Web or in the archives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, they will be accessed by people who live in other countries and speak other languages.
How conversant do you suppose Germans or Russians are with WA, OR, ID and KY?
You also may have noted that I violated my own rule about abbreviations by abbreviating USA. OK, I figure that one is safe.
People in the African bush or the remotest Mongolian village can identify the USA on a map. Just don't abbreviate United Kingdom.