My Heritage Pie

I know I'm a little late to this but here is my Heritage Pie. Randy Seaver first blogged about this on
16 July 2011on his Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Your "Heritage Pie" Chart. The following 'pie' shows the distribution of the birthplaces of my 16 great-great-grandparents.

Birthplaces: 8 in Germany, 2 in Canada, 2 in England, and 4 in United States (Rhode Island)

Paternal great-great Grandparents -

Joseph Goff Grant - born 1 Aug 1819, No. Providence, Rhode Island

Lydia Boomer Leach - born 13 May 1827, Warwick, Rhode Island

Ernest Lord Mellor - born 2 Mar 1832, Chadderton, Lancashire, England

Hannah Worthington  - born 7 May 1833, Royton, Lancashire, England

Zophar Skinner  - born 12 Sept 1843, Valley Falls, Rhode Island

Eliza Jane Carpenter  - born 12 April 1847, Coventry, Rhode Island

John William Betts  - born June 1844, Wallace, Nova Scotia, Canada

Susan Fulton - born 13 Feb 1839, Wallace, Nova Scotia, Canada

Maternal great-great-Grandparents -

Johann Martin Veith - born 9 April 1825, Altdorf, Wurttemberg, Germany

Anna Maria Heller - born 4 Oct 1828, Hudlach, Wuttemberg,Germany

Joseph Zeiler - born 21 Dec 1826, Wuttemberg, Germany

Anna Margaretha Mack - born June 1827, Wuttemberg, Germany

Christoph Badendick - born Germany

Friederike Spierling - born Germany

Gottfried Zerull - born 4 March 1812, Garnseedorf, West Prussia

Wilhelamine Kroening - born about 1835 in West Prussia

What Writing Reveals - Part 2

Last week, I posted that the act of writing up some of my research revealed many of the gaps I had in my documented 'facts'. For instance, once I started writing, I quickly realized that I had no real evidence that all the sources that I had for my g-grandfather, Gottlieb Veith, were documenting the right or even the same man. For some of the facts, I had no source information. Since my great-grandparents were added to my family tree in the very early stages of researching my family, I added some of the facts from family knowledge (but didn't document who had told me what - and none of those people are still alive) and some from published sources but my source citations were so scanty that I can't figure out what the sources are.

Somewhere along the line in my genealogy research, I learned to always document any fact that I add to my family tree. Luckily I did learn the importance of source documentation fairly early in my research although I didn't necessarily always apply that knowledge. One of my mistakes  was that if I had a fact in my tree already, I didn't document where I had found that same fact again in a different source. Because of this sloppiness, I don't really know if I have found several independent sources for each 'fact' or not. And having independent sources for any fact is necessary to solve any discreprancies that creep up.

One example of the problems this has led to involves the marriage of my g-grandparents Gottlieb Veith and Hannah Zeiler.

In my family tree database, I noted that the 'marriage certificate gives Gottlieb's mother's name as Anna Maria Heller'. However, there is no note in my records who the father was on the marriage certificate. Even worse, I have no idea where that certificate is. Does this even mean I had it at some point? Or saw it somewhere? I have Gottlieb's father as Johann Martin Veith but no source was noted for that name. Did I not document it was on the marriage certificate because the name was already in my database? Or was the name not on the certificate?

I really don't know the answer and since I can't find the marriage certificate in any of my files, I need to send away for it (again??).

Sigh... If only I knew then what I know now about documenting sources...