Source citation for African genealogy: writing down where facts come from
· 5 min read
The most common way an African family tree goes wrong is not error but false confidence. A remembered date gets entered as a fact, an elder's approximation gets written as precise, and three years later nobody can tell which was which.
The four facts to record
- The informant: who told you. Name and relationship.
- The date of the conversation: when you heard it.
- The source: whether it was a document, a photograph, a memory, or a story.
- The claim itself: the birth date, relationship, or lineage.
Record all four for every claim, even small ones. The informant and date matter because memory decay is visible over time, and a claim from 1980 is more valuable as a claim from 1980 than as an undated guess.
Types of sources
Sources come in two strengths. Written ones — church registers, funeral brochures, land documents — are usually better than oral ones, but both exist. An oral claim is real evidence; it just deteriorates. Know which you have.
Preserve originals. Photograph documents rather than transcribing single entries, so the neighbours and sponsors — often kin — are captured too. Transcribe whole pages when possible, and keep both the original and the transcription.
Conflicts are data
Where two relatives disagree, record both. A contradiction is information; a silently chosen winner is a lie. Note the conflict explicitly, rather than resolving it by guesswork.