Abstracting Documents: An Essential Skill for All Genealogists

Julie Miller, CG, CGL
Sep 21, 2022
1.9K views
CC
Want to watch the full webinar?
Join now to access all 2,154 webinars and unlock all features.

Content

Play. Playing.
Welcome
1m 00s
Play. Playing.
About BCG
4m 29s
Play. Playing.
Speaker's Introduction
51s
Play. Playing.
Introduction
6m 00s
Play. Playing.
Transcription
15m 13s
Play. Playing.
Extract
1m 36s
Play. Playing.
Abstract
4m 36s
Play. Playing.
Abstracting Deeds
8m 01s
Play. Playing.
Abstracting Wills
17m 19s
Play. Playing.
Announcements
2m 11s
Play. Playing.
Questions / answers
25m 12s

About this webinar

Every document that is used during genealogical research must be thoroughly and accurately analyzed. Abstracting is a fundamental part of this research and analyzing process. Yet many genealogists are not confident in their ability to perform this task effectively and efficiently. This causes researchers to avoid the abstracting process resulting in research errors. An abstract is a summary of all the important details in a document. This presentation will examine the abstracting process by using examples that show how to abstract a variety of documents, general guidelines for abstracting, what to include and what to eliminate when creating an abstract, and lastly will explore some problems that might be encountered while abstracting.

About the speaker

About the speaker

Julie Miller holds Certified Genealogist (CG) and Certified Genealogical Speaker (CGL) credentials and is a fellow of the National Genealogical Society. She is a full-time professional researcher, speaker, and writer who lives in Colorado. Julie s
Learn more...

Comments (115)

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

1000 characters remaining

Sort by Newest
Sort by Close.
  • Newest
  • Oldest
  • Likes
  1. CR
    Campbell River Genealogy
    3 months ago

    fantastic. I am overjoyed to have a clear and concise idea of what to do. Thank you.

    Reply
  2. VH
    Vincent Hill
    10 months ago

    I wish I had found this video a few months ago so I could have looked through the law dictionary on Rootsweb but as of May 1st 2023 nothing is accessible any longer as they have been merged into Ancestry, what a loss.

    Reply
    1 Reply
    • SP
      Suzanne Parker
      2 months ago
  3. CK
    Cindy Knight-Palazzo
    1 year ago

    THANK YOU! Very clear and specific presentation.

    Reply
  4. JD
    Joyce Disharoon
    2 years ago

    Excellent presenter and presentation. I have transcribed over 100 documents in the last several years, and have not yet distributed them. I used an early version of GenScribe and didn’t like it, so I read and then transcribe each document “as is”. It is a tedious process and hard on the eyes. I have not created an abstract to send with the actual document and transcription, but that is a good suggestion. I prepared a list of legal terms and had to use different sources since there was not a single source that had all the colonial definitions I needed. It’s good to know I did a few things right. There are so many good tips in the presentation and it was succinct with excellent slides. I have seen a few presentations, but this is the best one yet. Thank you!

    Reply
  5. AD
    Arlene Dukanauskas
    2 years ago

    Great job of explaining the steps to abstracting. And thanks so much for the information about the free transcript and Gen Scriber software.

    Reply
  6. ES
    Evelyn Sanford
    2 years ago

    This was such a welcomed webinar! I can’t tell you how many times I would be trying to transcribe but didn’t really know all the important steps to take. I am so thankful for learning about Abstracting. This is now my most important and valuable tool for transcription and will help when reading those deeds and wills in the future! Thank you, Julie.

    Reply
  7. AA
    Avi Applestein
    2 years ago

    Thanks, at 03:30 in Central Europe. it was worth staying up. Excellent presentation and lecture!

    Reply
  8. KG
    Kathie Grover-Miller
    2 years ago

    This was such a great webinar filled with useful information. I’ll be watching it many times over until I have the skill of abstracting down pat. Thank you!!

    Reply

Related Webinars