Unleashing the Power of Evidence-Based Genealogy with The Memory Keeper

Researching family history, like any other history, can be interesting, exciting, boring, fun, a waste of time, and the best thing you'll ever do.

Sometimes you do very little research and information is handed to you, other times you work hard with little return except for more experience in how not to do things. Regardless of how you obtain your information, document it and add whatever supporting documentation you can to back it up.

And, be careful what conclusions you draw. Keep researching for more supporting information.

In school, I hated history class and I loved history class.  I hated memorizing names and dates. I loved the stories and the people behind those names and dates.

My first look into family history was the content kept in a cardboard box my grandmother had kept in her spare room. For years she would load the box with documentation and photographs. On rare occasions, she would get this box out and she would take us down memory lane.

My grandfather was a major contributor to the box. Over the years he took numerous pictures and videos.

Written on the box flaps is...

During Covid lockdowns, I began experimenting with TiddlyWiki as a tool to house my genealogical research content. I quickly learned it could. Initially, I had no intent of sharing this experiment. However, as it grew and matured with the help of the TiddlyWiki community, I thought it only fitting I share it so others could use it or harvest ideas for other projects. I elected to name the project "The Memory Keeper."

Initially, the Memory Keeper could house two primary areas of content:

• Research
• Conclusions

Research content includes sources, evidence, and assertions. The sources are categorized by type. A source can be but is not limited to, a birth record, a burial record, a census record, a marriage record, a death record, a memorial (headstone), a newspaper article, or a religious record. Beyond the canned source types, users can define their own types. As you review each source users are encouraged to collect and capture evidence, associating all collected evidence with the source. Evidence content should only be facts, not providing assumptions or any conclusions. The evidence can collaborate or contradict with other sources. As sources and evidence are captured the researcher can write assertions, proof summaries, or statements. Here the researcher draws their conclusions based on evidence. Sources and assertions have a user state. In this way, the researcher can review outstanding or incomplete assertions.

From here conclusions can be generated. Conclusions are people, events, places, and organizations. Conclusions should be associated with each source that was used to determine the conclusion. In this way, when I review a person, a place, or an event, I can immediately review each source, evidence entry, and assertion.

The following is an assertion I have started. The rate field has a value of "Proven true". i.e. I am satisfied the assertion proof is complete.

On the tabs, the researcher can review all associated evidence and source records by clicking on the links to those records. Plus links are provided to all associated people, events, places, projects, tasks, and other entities.

As you can see the Memory Keeper expands beyond research and conclusion content. It supports multimedia, project management, note-taking, DNA match data, and whatever content you want to include.

The Memory Keeper is open-source and available for download.