I received a scanned image of an obituary of a cousin today. The information filled in a few gaps, such as the surnames of the deceased’s sons-in-law, but not their first names.

In spite of this good information, there is no note to indicate what newspaper, or the date it appeared.

If I lose this image, or an original on a scrap of paper, without any information about what newspaper it appeared in, future researchers are prevented from verifying it. If I had a typo on a name, it could create a brick wall or a rabbit trail for others.

The Hamilton-L maillist on Rootsweb had a posting a couple of years ago with a long list of obituaries. They were either hand-typed from a newspaper or copy and pasted from an online source. One of them happened to be my mother’s. I know for a fact that her obituary in at least three forms appeared in three different newspapers. The reasons for this are that one was the old hometown newspaper out of state where she and my dad grew up and graduated high school and got married. Another was the local big city newspaper that charged a fee, so it was carefully constructed to have as much information as possible for the base fee. The third was the nearby smaller city newspaper.

A future researcher could easily be confused by finding one obituary from one of these newspapers, and when they see it does not match what is online, or in my database would be tempted to think that I fudged my data.

Such a simple thing as the name of a newspaper, city and state and date of publication, become critical when the ones in the know have joined those who have gone before.

If you expect your family to throw all your research in the trash when you’re gone, then such things do not matter. But if you have a plan for a book or a donation to a society or library, these little details matter.

My goal is to have the best sources I can, and cite them accurately. I will never be finished, and may not break through the brick walls I face, but what I do will be as right as I can make it for others.