This document is from Jean Church’s research.

Research Sources

Wilma Jean Reynolds

In researching your genealogy you will gather many different types of data. You must learn to evaluate the quality of the data you have found. This will determine the direction of further research, as well as the accurate proof in order to establish your ancestry. Evaluating the information is based on two different kinds of data, primary and secondary sources.

Primary sources are records that were created during the time period the events they document. Primary sources include public records, Bible entries, newspapers, letters, diaries, church records, buildings, tools, photographs, and authoritative transcriptions of original records.

Secondary sources include records that were created after the time period of the event. Secondary sources include compiled genealogies, biographies, histories, and abstracts and non-authoritative transcriptions of primary records. Sources that are secondary to the research itself include bibliographies, indexes, list, atlases, gazetteers, dictionaries, research guides, catalogs of collections and calendars of private papers.

Genealogist and historians must be able to distinguish between the two types of sources, and use each according to the strengths and limitations of each. Both are needed to compile a good and complete record of the past. Common sense is a good approach when making an analysis your sources.

The determination of a record being primary or secondary is the relationship to the event being investigated by the researcher. What is primary for one event may be secondary for another, and meaningless for a third. For a qualification of a primary source its must be about a specific event:

• The record must contain information about the event.
• Record must have been made in the time period of the event.

Consideration of source of information given in the record. Example- birth information on the birth of a child given by mother may be more accurate than a record of bith made by the child. The child even though a co-participant in the event was too young at the time of the event to give accurate testimony concerning it.

Secondary sources are materials that do not document and event at the time it occurred. From a person who interprets, or rearranges the primary information, or provides data about the research process. Secondary sources must be judged by the researcher on the basis of:

• Accuracy.
• Completeness.
• Documentation.
• Presentation.
• Level of experience of person presenting information, and relationship to the event.