Are you blessed with a family Bible in your genealogy collection? Are you lucky enough to have several family Bibles? I’ve had the good fortune to have had access to several family Bibles including Crawford, Currey, Mentzer and Wells.
As I’ve been going thru the facts and sources I have for my grandmother’s Mentzer siblings, I’ve become confused about the Bibles. You see, there are four of them. I have one in my possession, a photocopy of one and transcriptions of the other two.
- Family Bible of Emeline Minnick Mentzer (photocopy obtained from descendant)
- Charles Mentzer Bible – Bible in my possession but in very poor condition
- Charles Mentzer Bible – in possession of my 1st cousin – transcription indicates this Bible was given to Charles Mentzer by his daughter Pauline
- Pauline Mentzer Briles Bible – transcription matches transcription of Charles Mentzer Bible – not sure this is a separate Bible
Thus, when I’m documenting the birth information for my grandmother’s siblings, I have three different Bible records containing that information: the Emeline Mentzer Bible and the two Charles Mentzer Bibles. However, when it comes to the death dates, I only find some of them in the Bible records kept by Pauline Mentzer Briles.
Not only does it get confusing working with the sourcing of these Bibles, but it appears that I have at times attached the images or PDF files to the wrong Bible. Not only that, but it looks like I have multiple sources for two of the Bibles and no source for the Pauline Briles Bible.
I can easily merge these ‘duplicate’ sources in RootsMagic 7. However, I cannot tell where these sources are used. Nor, can I tell what media is attached to the source.
I do have a ‘tool’ that will help me figure out where these sources are used: the preview version of RootsMagic 8. By opening a copy of my file in RM8, and looking at the list of sources, I can see how many times that source has been used. (Since I haven’t merged sources yet, I still have the same duplication as seen in RM7 .)
If I click on the > sign to the right of the number of citations, the list of citations opens. Because this sourcing and accompanying citation was created in The Master Genealogist, this list of citations for the Emeline Mentzer Bible is not at all helpful since it simply tells me the document number for the photocopy
If I click on the > to the right of the CITATION USED line, a window opens telling me which person and which fact the citation is attached.
Most of these citations have no media attached, when they all should have 1 PDF file attached. Several of the citations have 4 or 5 media files attached — and these are images from a different Bible. Thus, my mess (and my confusion).
To ‘clean up’ this mess, I need to work in RootsMagic 7 and not in RootsMagic 8. I think the quickest way to get these sources corrected will be to start over.
- Make a copy of the Bible source (or create a new one)
- Delete the original source
- Attach the media to the new source
- Enter the transcription as Master Text
- Attach new source to the appropriate facts
- Enter their name and the event in the citation details for the source
Once completed for the Emeline Mentzer Bible, the RM7 file was closed and then imported into RM8 to see if this process improved the source in terms of the media, transcription and citations.
Studying the source in RM8 shows that 4 images are attached to the source (the PDF file and 3 jpeg images of the pages from the PDF file) and that a transcription is part of the source.
Going to the citation screen for this source shows improved citations.
That’s one set of Bible records completed and three more to go. However, when I’m finished I will have better sourcing in RM 7 and much less confusion about the Bibles – especially when my data moves to RootsMagic 8.