For those with US ancestors it is important to ask yourself if you have used records at varying jurisdictional levels in your family history research. Records may have been created at the town/village level, county level, state level, and federal level. Not all records created by all jurisdictions are still extant, but if you’re only using things from one jurisdiction, you may be missing out. And if you don’t know what jurisdiction created the records you are using, that’s something to find out as well.
Genealogical documents present transcription challenges, especially the older they are. One wants to make it clear in any typed up rendering of a document what comes from that document and what comes from the researcher’s mind (or other sources). I have a simple approach that I use when transcribing any document. The transcription is clearly indicated as such and put between two markers in brackets indicating where the transcription begins and ends. The analysis or commentary is after the transcription. [begin transcription] transcribe document [end transcription] [analysis] analyze [end analysis] That helps me to know what the document said and what I thought it said.
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