Kathie -- Happy New Year! The short answers to your 2 questions are No and No ;-) Long answers: We think of *information* as either primary (it came from someone with firsthand knowledge, not just "reason to know") or secondary (it came from someone else who probably knew it only by hearsay), or undetermined (we don't know who provided the information, for instance, most US census returns prior to 1940.) "Evidence," in genealogical lingo, does not exist until we ask a particular question about the information. Evidence is all information that can help answer our question (so it's a mental thing) -- whatever is relevant. It can be direct (providing an answer to the question all by itself, whether that answer is right or wrong), or indirect (hinting at an answer in various ways -- I'll have a few of them at the APG PMC poster session next week in Salt Lake City), or negative (an absence of relevant information). I have not used Evidentia, but the most readily available information on this topic is also the most up-to-date, the most visual, and the most authoritative, over at Elizabeth Shown Mills's Evidence Explained website: https://www.evidenceexplained.com/content/quicklesson-17-evidence-analysis-process-map Hope this helps . . . it can take a while to get comfortable with this terminology, but I find it very useful as long as I don't think my job is done when I find some primary information that provides direct evidence about my question. Those labels give us a place to start, but only that. They do not guarantee that the evidence gives a true answer to our question. Harold Harold Henderson, CG midwestroots.net *Finding Ancestors in Fort Wayne: The Genealogist's Unofficial One-Stop Guide to the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center * http://www.midwestroots.net/ <http://www.midwestroots.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/ACPLGC-April-2013.pdf> Certified Genealogist (SM) No. 1029 Certified Genealogist and CG are proprietary service marks of the Board for Certification of Genealogists® used by the Board to identify its program of genealogical competency evaluation and used under license by the Board’s associates. On Thu, Jan 1, 2015 at 6:40 AM, Kathie Fortner via < [email protected]> wrote: > I bought myself Evidentia Software for Christmas and am learning what I > don't know about documenting evidence. > > Am I right that evidence is primary if the person providing the information > has reason to know and secondary if someone other than the person involved > gave the information. > > So are census records primary if the person you are researching was an > adult and alive at the time or is it secondary because you don't know for > sure who gave the information to the census taker? > > -- > > * > Kathie Fortner* > * <[email protected]>* > > *www.fortner.50megs.com <http://www.fortner.50megs.com>* > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word > 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >