Citations are critical in genealogy research. A citation is merely a way to indicate the source of your information. It can be an obituary, what newspaper and date? It can be a census, what are the specifics of the census.

By making citations of where we find different information and adding it to our genealogy notes or program, we can determine if we have looked at the source for everyone in our tree or not. It also helps us keep track of what we have already looked at and can save us from looking at the same source multiple times. (Making copies of sources is also a good idea.)

Citations also allow fellow researchers to verify our work, or for you to verify the information you get from another researcher.

If you are interested in joining DAR or SAR or similar organizations, your citations will be critical. If no one can verify your work, it is just like a research paper in school, it is no good without footnotes and a bibliography.

A citation is not the same as a conclusion. A citation is only where the information comes from. A conclusion is based upon the evidence you have found. Obviously, you are a witness to your existence and those of the family members for whom you have personal knowledge, but how do you prove it? You prove your conclusions based on the evidence your citations point to.

If you find that great-grandma lied about her age in different directions on different censuses, how do you know how old she really was, or when she was really born? Often birth certificates had a different date than death certificates. One may have to use both dates until one finds something else to confirm one over another.