Record Usage and Interpretation

Dear Editor;

I try to ensure that I have unbroken census coverage for a family. That is; I try to obtain records for each possible census year, showing each parent from marriage to death and each child from birth to marriage. One of my reasons is to ensure that I identify all the children. Another is that the names, ages and locations help me ensure I have the correct family and identify approx. BMD dates (I also try look at wills and testaments to corroborate my findings.) 

While researching a noble line, I am finding references to several medieval manuscripts, such as chronicles of noble houses. Many of these chronicles have been published by reputable publishing houses or archives (annotated transcriptions, usually). 

Dear Editor;

As you are no doubt aware, more and more "original" documents (especially email) have never been anything but digital. While it is often recommended or required that such "born digital" documents be stored as received, they can become unreadable over time due to software changes or need to be converted into another format for archiving. Personally; I would like to extract my emails from the email program's database and store them in a way that can be consulted in the longer term.

Dear Editor;

A bit of an odd and possibly trivial question...

I've come across some new records that I need to cite properly and want to be sure I have this correct. The images of the original registers are available online on IrishGenealogy.ie. The challenge I am facing is that there are two sets of stamped number on the pages (image attached), and I cannot figure out what these numbers represent. The website is not very user friendly (no way to easily view pages before and after the desired image).

I included the direct URL as these records are pretty tricky to find. This is what I have come up with:

A number of years ago I found the following indenture in a deed book in Hardin County, Kentucky. I thought I understood what was going on that is until this past week when some else used this deed as a reference.

My understanding of the following indenture is that John Uptegrove used a horse as collateral for a loan from Joseph Adams.

The other person interpreted the indenture as John Uptegrove sold a horse to Joseph Adams.

Note: I did correct a couple of spelling errors in this transcription. The original pages are attached in a pdf.

I'm still having trouble grasping the concepts behind original and derivative sources and primary and secondary information. Reading the explanations and the usual examples, they make sense to me, but when I'm actually looking at what I have in front of me, I doubt I'm doing anything right. There's also different usage of these terms, even within the context of genealogy teaching resources, that muddies the waters for me.

Dear Editor;

I am researching the parentage of Almond McHenry (b. 1821), Allegany, New York. In the 1831 will of Sara Mulhullon, Almond McHenry her grandson, is listed first in a list of Henry McHenry's children. Also listed were the two other grandchildren, listed as children of Danial McHenry. All of these grandchildren inherited a portion of Sara's estate. Danial and Henry McHenry inherited nothing. In 1833 Danial McHenry was appointed guardian of his two children. The guardianship included information about real property and a bond was required for both children's guardianship.

Both Ancestry and FamilySearch provide the same database (with FamilySearch’s data coming from Ancestry’s data).

From FamilySearch (virtually identical at Ancestry):