1867 Alabama Voter Registration citation

By smmatteson on Mon, 07/21/2025 - 13:00

Forums

I'm not clear how to cite this Ancestry database.

I think Template 10 is appropriate, and this is what I got:

1867 Alabama Voter Registration, Jackson County, Volume 1, Election District 37, Precinct 23, line 23, R.P. Finley; imaged, “Alabama, U.S., Voter Registration, 1867,” Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/60968/ : accessed 21 Jul 2025) > Jackson > Volume 1 > image 55.; citing Alabama Department of Archives and History.

Feedback appreciated.

Submitted bysmmattesonon Mon, 07/21/2025 - 13:17

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Submitted byEEon Mon, 07/21/2025 - 17:59

smmatteson, you did not indicate what EE chapter and section you are following, but it appears to EE4 §7.44, example 3. You've adapted well, with one exception.  

In identifying the original document, you start with the largest element and go down to the smallest. That's what we typically do for censuses. But, in that process, you tell us "Jackson County, Volume 1, Election District 37 ..."

Are there really multiple volumes for Jackson—a rural, sparsely populated county? Yes, Ancestry's path and waypoints uses that term: Jackson > Volume 1 > image 55.  But where on the filmed record does it say that book is "Volume 1"?  The cover of the book (image 1) is tagged "Jackson County 37th Dist."

The often significant differences in how a provider identifies a record (or record set) within its architecture and the way the original identifies itself is one of the reason why we put the two different descriptions in separate layers and do not borrow info from one layer to identify the other.