I'm writing a family history and would like to use Chicago style for my endnote citations. My problem is that I don't have a guide for how to properly cite common genealogy records such as censuses, church baptism logs, and death certificates. The Chicago Manual doesn't have any examples.
I've looked at a book called Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Shown Mills but didn't care for her somewhat confusingly ordered citation style. I'd like to stick close to Chicago style as possible since I'm already using that for newspaper articles and books. Any suggestions for how my citations for censuses and death certificates, etc should look?
My 14th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style has the following example for census records:
- Bureau of the Census, Median Gross Rent by Counties of the United States, 1970, prepared by the Geography Division in cooperation with the Housing Division, Bureau of the Census (Washington, D. C., 1975).
This version of the CMoS does not have any guidelines for genealogical records, so you're best bet is to treat it like an archival or unpublished document without a publication date. This is my idea of how it would look for a genealogical document:
- Entity that produced document, "title of the document," File number if available, Entity which holds the document.
As with many things in citation, consistency is key.