Editorial standards

This site puts a short life of each man buried in the Prescott Post lot at his stone, and under it the records that life rests on. These are the rules the pages are written by. They bind the editor and every contributor, and a reader who finds a page breaking them is asked to say so (see Corrections, below).

1. Nothing on a page that a record does not show

Every sentence in a man's Life section is traceable to a numbered entry in his Sources, cited in the text by a bracketed number. If no record supports a statement, it is not made. A field in the record with nothing to fill it is left blank, and the gap is named under What we don't know.

The same holds for the plainest-seeming facts. A man's race, his regiment, the war he served in: none is stated as fact without a record that says it. The lot holds Black and white veterans in the same rows, and a dozen regiments on a single row. Buried among is not served with. A stone that reads "14th R.I. Art." is evidence of the regiment; a neighbour's stone is not.

2. The record is published as it is

We publish what the records show, including desertion, courts-martial, pauper burial, illness, and names and dates the stone gets wrong. We publish it plainly and in its context, and we stop there: no diagnosis, no moral, no guess at motive. A man who deserted in 1864 and came back has both facts on his page, and the reader draws the conclusion.

3. Conflicts are shown, not settled quietly

When two records disagree — a stone and a muster roll, an index card and a pension file — the page shows both and says which the editor weights and why. When the record is silent, the page says so. A reader should never have to wonder whether a date was found or chosen.

4. Names

The page title is the name as carved, letters and abbreviations as cut, so that a visitor standing at the stone can match it. The text uses the best-documented full name. Every spelling met in any record is kept in the register with the record it came from, because the index that holds his pension file may spell him a way the stone does not.

5. Transcriptions

A stone is transcribed line by line, with / between lines, as cut. Square brackets mark letters the editor cannot read or that are below ground; a question mark marks a letter read with doubt. A letter inside brackets is a reading, not a fact, and the page says what it rests on. Nothing is transcribed from memory or from a list: only from the stone or a photograph of it.

6. What each page says about its own state

Every page carries one of four words, and the word means the highest step that is finished, not the one in progress:

• stone-only — the stone has been photographed and transcribed. Nothing else is confirmed.
• identified — the City's record and the man's service identity are confirmed.
• draft — his service record or pension file has been located and read, and a life has been drafted from them.
• complete — his civil life has been researched and a second reader has signed the page off.

A page generated from the survey sheet alone says so in its first lines. A page that rests on one photograph says so.

7. Citations

Sources are given in the Chicago notes-bibliography form. A National Archives citation names the record group, the series or microfilm publication, the roll and the file; a pension file is cited by its certificate or application number; a census page by enumeration district, sheet and line. Links go to the record's own home — the NARA catalog, FamilySearch, Find a Grave, the National Park Service soldiers and sailors index — and an index entry is cited as an index entry, never as the record it points to.

8. What we host, and what we only link to

The images on this site are of three kinds, and no others: records of the National Archives, which are in the public domain; records of the City of Providence and North Burial Ground, published with the City's permission; and photographs made for this project by named contributors. Each hosted image carries a caption and a citation. Images on commercial genealogy sites are cited and linked, never copied.

9. Dates, names, and credit

Every page shows when it was last revised. Every page names the people who researched it, in order of contribution, and credits the City of Providence, Department of Parks, North Burial Ground, for the records. A contributor who sends a record is credited on the page it informs.

10. Positions in the lot

Each stone has a grid position: a row letter from A, the uphill row, to N, the last row down the slope, and a column number from the western end. Positions come from the plot survey and are checked against photographs of the stones in sequence. When a photograph shows a stone the survey missed, the row is renumbered, the page says so, and the old address is kept as a redirect, because a code on a stone may carry it.

Corrections

Errors are expected and corrections are welcome. The Upload a record button on each man's page takes a correction as readily as a record; say what is wrong, what the record shows instead, and where the record is. A correction that changes a page is noted on the page with the date and, if the contributor wishes, their name.

Readers will also find the whole register as a CSV file, with the editor's working notes for every stone, so that any claim here can be checked against what the project actually holds.