Thanks so much, Michael. The conversations you pointed to spoke to my exact question about citing county changes :) Michele -----Original Message----- From: Michael Hait [mailto:michael.hait@hotmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2013 10:19 AM To: Michele Lewis; TGF Mailing List Subject: Re: [TGF] Citation question I have seen different levels of this. I have seen articles citing, for example, *Ancestry Red Book* for the county formation dates, and I have seen articles that did not document the county formation date at all. I believe that, if county boundaries and formation dates are vital to your argument, you should try to track down the original session law forming the counties in question. These laws would give the precise boundaries at the time of formation, as opposed to current boundaries. You would also want to check later session laws if any boundary adjustments were made later on. When we discussed the BCG Standards Manual extensively in 2010, there was a good debate about this very subject. Read through the following threads: http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/TRANSITIONAL-GENEALOGISTS-FORU M/2010-05/1272805959 http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/TRANSITIONAL-GENEALOGISTS-FORU M/2010-05/1272984571 Michael Hait, CG(sm) michael.hait@hotmail.com http://www.haitfamilyresearch.com "Planting the Seeds" Blog: http://michaelhait.wordpress.com CG and Certified Genealogist are service marks of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, used under license by board certificants after periodic competency evaluation, and the board name is registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office. -----Original Message----- From: Michele Lewis Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2013 9:49 AM To: TGF Mailing List Subject: [TGF] Citation question I need to make reference to when a particular county was formed (the succession of counties is important in this case). Would the dates of the county formations be considered "common knowledge" since they are easily looked up? In EE, the example given is the Battle of the Bulge (page 44). This information is easily verified. The Battle of the Bulge is probably considered a more prominent event in history than when a county was formed but I am thinking that this would fall into the same category. In previous reports I have cited my source for the date but I am wondering if this is overkill. Michele The Transitional Genealogists List was created to provide a supportive environment for genealogists to learn best practices as they transition to professional level work. Please respect the kind intentions of this list. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to TRANSITIONAL-GENEALOGISTS-FORUM-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message