Yesterday, I stumbled on an Ancestry feature regarding sources. I was already aware that Ancestry places sources found on Ancestry at the top of the list of sources.
Sources that I have in RootsMagic and transfer via TreeShare to Ancestry are listed as Other Sources, below the Ancestry sources.
If I have added a lot of Ancestry sources to an individual, then I must scroll down to find these ‘Other Sources’.
What I didn’t know, was that by scrolling over the source and clicking on the ‘VIEW’ icon, it would open up the source showing the complete citation — and any details added to the citation. Since I have started transcribing documents into the ‘Detail text’ screen for a source, those transcriptions are being uploaded to Ancestry and viewable by clicking on that ‘VIEW’ icon.
So, when looking at someone else’s tree, SCROLL DOWN and see if they have any ‘OTHER SOURCES’ attached. If so, view the source to see if there is a transcription attached!
Often those “Other Sources” are the best ones…family bibles, letters, pension files, etc. It’s a shame that Ancestry removes paragraph breaks in the Transcript that goes with each one. It greatly improves the “readability,” especially if it’s something like a will transcript.
I’ve done this for years, and in fact, I think that most of my tree have more of my own “Other Sources” than they do Ancestry. Like you, I too transcribe the document into the Details, there is actually a field which says “Transcribe” when you provide your own sources. Thanks for calling this to everyone’s attention, hopefully people will start looking at those Sources, too.
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