Top Five MWM Posts for September 2012

Once again it's time for the monthly popularity contest, listing the most-viewed blog posts made during September. Time permitting, I'll report on October in early December when the dust of that month will have settled.

September was unusual in one way, and typical in another. Usually the most-read posts have to do with genealogy standards and related questions. In September my five-part non-authoritative and non-official series on how to choose which projects to submit in a BCG portfolio swept the top five spots: part 1 introducing the discussion, part 2 on the document work, part 3 on the client report, part 4 on the complex-evidence case study, and part 5 on the kinship determination project (complete with a correction).  The next-ranking posts were not close.



Harold Henderson, "Top Five MWM Posts for September 2012," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 4 November 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

BCG portfolio Q & A

Some folks have asked questions about my recent BCG portfolio posts. They may be of interest to others who don't go back and look for comments!

Please observe my usual caveat: read the rubrics and the 2011 edition of the Application Guide, ask the authoritative folks on BCG ACTION list once you are on the clock, and don't take my unsupported word for anything. When necessary consult the key underlying document, the 2000 (current) BCG Standards Manual as well. In other words, use your research skills to get the best information available on certification just as you already do in genealogy itself.

Q1: In the Kinship Determination Project (requirement #7), is the applicant required to name every child -- for instance, if a record states that a woman had eleven children, two living, but information cannot be found for most of them?

The rubrics and the Application Guide appear to disagree on this point, but my non-authoritative opinion is that if you explain the situation and show that you consulted a wide variety of sources and correlated and analyzed them, and convincingly concluded (for instance) that the woman did have nine children but names of only five can be ascertained, then you would be meeting standards. In such a quest one would not limit oneself to direct evidence either.

Such a sub-problem in the KDP would certainly allow the applicant to display ability to locate, correlate, and analyze a wide variety of relevant sources, perhaps including business accounts, military records, and siblings' vital records among many more (some Cook County, Illinois, birth records gave the number of the birth to that mother). If an authoritative answer to this question were not forthcoming, however, I might choose a different family or a different set of generations in the same family. The point is to show what you can do (reread the rubrics!), not to tread on gray areas that might prove to be quicksand.

Q2: Does the Case Study (requirement #6) have to be a solved problem, or could it be "a no-stone-unturned study that did not answer the main question as to the end of a person's life-path"?

My answer: You have to solve the problem. The Application Guide asks applicants to "supply a case study (proof argument) drawn from your own research that (a) demonstrates application of the Genealogical Proof Standard and (b) resolves, in your opinion, a problem of relationship or identity that cannot be resolved from uncontested direct evidence."

Note that determining a date or place of death or burial, in itself, would not constitute a problem of relationship or identity IMO.

Note also that you can define the problem's scope. For my case study I defined the scope so that I was able to solve it. I sought the mother of a child born out of wedlock, not both parents. (It was still plenty hard.)

Finally, be wary of thinking that "no stone unturned" refers to a search only for direct evidence (that tells you the answer). Most hard problems require indirect evidence (clues) in order to resolve them: either there is no direct evidence at all,  as in many NGSQ articles blogged about here earlier, or you have to use indirect evidence to get to the unindexed, unmicrofilmed, undigitized direct evidence. Often consultation with a more experienced researcher (or reading an article on a similar problem) will open up additional possibilities for building such a case. For portfolio purposes, I personally prefer to select cases where there is conflicting direct evidence to start with.

Harold Henderson, "BCG Portfolio Q and A," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 26 September 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Portfolio Choices for BCG Certification, Part 5 of 5: Kinship Determination Project

The kinship determination project is often the longest single piece in a BCG portfolio. Strictly speaking, it doesn't have to be. The specific requirements are to prove the two connections between three generations of the same family, and to place them in historical context. My second KDP was 71 pages long; a friend's was 13. We both passed.

The KDP can be deceptive, because we tend to identify it with the Complete Family History many of us aspire to write. In fact, a KDP doesn't have to encompass all of a family's children [NOT QUITE ACCURATE, FOR CORRECTION SEE JUDY RUSSELL'S FULL STATEMENT IN THE COMMENTS] and it doesn't have to contain all imaginable information about the family. (It is supposed to be a narrative -- in other words a story, and not a great pile of facts.) When you choose a family in your own direct line, however, the temptation to throw everything in is very great!

Another temptation is to put far more effort into it than into any other part of the portfolio, on the implicit assumption that it must be the most important item. But it's only just as important as any other.

Choosing a family for a KDP should not be as hard as some other choices. While we are required to connect generations, those proofs do not have to involve conflicting evidence (as does the case study). They do need to involve good-quality evidence of various kinds. This is the main thing the KDP has in common with the complex-evidence case study and even the client report: ideally they will all show off our skill at finding the relevant information, and analyzing and correlating different kinds of information from different kinds of records. That's what it's all about. Check out the work samples on the BCG site; just don't think that you have to do everything exactly the way those authors did it.


Harold Henderson, "Portfolio Choices for BCG Certification, Part 5 of 5: Kinship Determination Project," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 18 September 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]