A fact without a source looks like a fact without a source
Most genealogy software will let you record that somebody was born in 1850 and never ask how you know. Leaves asks once, on the fact itself, and then shows the answer everywhere that fact appears.
The citation is the unit, not the source
A parish register is one source. The eleven things you took out of it are eleven citations, each with its own page reference and its own confidence. The same register can support a baptism at high confidence and the father's occupation at low, and Leaves keeps both readings rather than averaging them into one number about the book.
Confidence is three steps, because a researcher can defend three steps and nobody can defend a seven out of ten. It sits on the citation, which is the pairing of one source with one assertion, so changing your mind about an occupation does not quietly downgrade the baptism beside it.
Source · reverse index
Dordrecht parish register, baptisms 1846–1861
Regionaal Archief Dordrecht · inv. 11-4028
- Jan Verschoorbaptism · fol. 42vConfidence: 3 of 3
- Maria Bakkerbaptism · fol. 61rConfidence: 2 of 3
- Jan Verschoorfather's occupation · fol. 42vConfidence: 1 of 3
One source · three citations · three confidences
Four things you can check
- High, medium, low — in those words
- The interface says high, medium and low, never a quality digit out of three and never a percentage. Three steps is what a researcher can actually defend when somebody asks why.
- One page, cited twice, at two confidences
- The same folio can appear twice on one person: the marriage at high confidence, the groom's trade at low. That is not a duplicate row to be tidied away — a marriage register is authoritative about the marriage and repeating hearsay about the trade.
- A citation carries more than a link
- The page or folio reference, the role the person played in the event, and the text you transcribed out of the source all live on the citation, so the evidence for a fact does not end up as prose in a note nobody reads.
- You can see what a source is holding up
- Sources, places, people and families all lead with what points at them. Before you delete or merge one, the screen shows you the facts that will lose their evidence.
What this does not do
Leaves does not search the archives for you
There is no record search, no hint engine and no subscription to anybody's index. If you want a tool that finds new records, you will still be on Ancestry, WieWasWie or the archive's own site for that. Leaves is where what you find goes, with the evidence attached, in a form you can still read in twenty years.
See it on your own tree
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