Evidence! sources

My Mills based sources



The standard genealogical citation manual today is Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian by Elizabeth Shown Mills (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1997). It's a book that should be in the library of every genealogist or family historian. It should also be used for that purpose. Even if you decide to use the book by Professor Lackey, or another stylebook, Evidence! includes an excellent section on genealogical analysis.

If you want to be published in a genealogical journal, you will probably be required to use Evidence! The decision is up to each journal, but I know of none that requires the use of Lackey, which was the previous standard. And if you want to be published in the esteemed NGS Quarterly, the editor of that journal is one Elizabeth Shown Mills. You have one guess as to what is required there in citations.(:

Since the advent of version 4 in 1999, users of The Master Genealogist have had the option of using source templates based on this book to create citations. The only problem with this is a minor one. Ms. Mills does not neccesary agree with Wholly Genes' interpretation of the source templates in her book. I think I might understand at least part of the reason why she holds that opinion. There are cases where the TMG templates do not agree with the examples Ms. Mills provides in her book. Thankfully, this can be easily corrected. TMG gives a person the option of using Custom sources, in which you can create and modify your source templates.

What follows is my interpretation of Evidence!, or at least, how I have changed some of the templates provided in TMG dealing with Mills-based sources. If you agree with my interpretation, go ahead and copy them. That's why I'm putting them here. Several of these changes are minor stylistic changes made to confirm with the examples as set forth in Evidence! You need to have your source category set to Custom-Evidence.



This is the sum total of my Mills-based custom sources. Of all the other 100 or so source categories provided for Evidence! , I either agree with the Wholly Genes interpretation of the source or I have never used it. There's also the possibility that I never wanted to attempt to "interpret" that source. There's also one or two which I haven't included here because I'm not sure I can justify their existence. In other words, I'm doubting my "interpretation" of the sources. I've included a few custom source templates in my database which are based on Lackey. At times I find his sources a lot easier to understand.

Home My Lackey based Sources back to The Master Genealogist

About this Site