Overview

This page organizes language use, editorial methods, and additional standards. These help keep DASFAM's scope focused and address gaps of information.


Person Records

Project Use Name: The name that is used to distinguish and identify a person. This is what appears at the top of a Person Record and when hovering over a Person Tag. Includes their first name, maiden name, surname, birth year, and death year when known. I.e. Exmund (b.1809) and Edith Hern Fossett (1787-1854).


Relationship Certainty: In some cases, it is assumed through research and contextual evidence that two people have an established relationship, but there is no defining evidence to prove it beyond all doubts. In these cases, this distinction will be noted as:

[Likely Person] Higher certainty. These relationships are generally understood as plausible by researchers and/or the descendant community but cannot be directly linked to an oral history or document.
[Possibly Person?] Lower certainy. These relationships may be discovered through contextual evidence but cannot be directly linked to an oral history or document and have room for doubt.

Surname Extensions: While established surnames are used for some families at Monticello, many of these people do not have a defined source to indicate they used this surname during their lifetime. Yet their connection and membership within the family is honored by genealogists. To help connect family names across generations, surnames can be extended to relatives. If a parent has a surname attached to a source, their children may also use this surname. If the assumed surname extends more than a generation, it will be displayed within brackets. This may also be applied in reverse to supply a surname to a parent.


Undiscovered Names: There are some individuals whose names have not yet been identified. They may have died during infancy, were sold from Monticello or Poplar Forest before their name was recorded, or the records were destroyed or lost. People with a currently undiscovered name are referred to as "Unknown" and follow all other naming conventions when possible, including family surnames and life dates.


Transcriptions

The following textual devices are employed throughout transcriptions to clarify the presentation of the text:

[...] Text missing and not conjecturable.
[  ] Number or part of number missing or illegible.
[roman] Conjectural reading for missing or illegible matter. A question mark follows when the reading is doubtful.
[italic] Editorial comment inserted into the text.
<italic> Matter deleted in the manuscript but restored in our text.
Red strikethrough Text was removed or struck through by author.
Green text Text was added after the author's initial draft