A parish register sitting in an archive doesn’t change. A database entry on a genealogy website can change overnight — corrected, merged, deleted, or simply taken offline when a company retires an old product. A DNA match list looks different depending on who else has tested that week, and the specific match a researcher relied on to build a case can vanish from view if the other person deletes their account. None of this is a reason to avoid these sources. They’re often the only way into a research problem. It is a reason to cite them carefully, and differently, than the archival records this series has mostly discussed so far.

Cite What You Actually Used

Elizabeth Shown Mills’ guidance on this point is blunt: cite what you use.^[1] If a researcher consulted an index entry on a genealogy website and never saw the underlying original record, the citation should say so — not dress up the index entry as though the original had been examined directly. This matters more with online sources than almost anywhere else, because it’s so easy to forget the difference. A search result that displays a clean, typed transcription of a handwritten 1880 census page can feel exactly as authoritative as the actual page, even though a transcriber’s misreading sits invisibly between the researcher and the original.

A Template for Database Entries

A citation for an online database entry generally needs to identify four things: who created or hosts the database, what the specific entry is called or contains, the name of the database itself, and the website with an access date — since, unlike a book, a website can change or disappear.^[2] Where the underlying original source is known, it belongs in the citation too, following the word “citing”:

Ancestry.com, “Ohio, County Marriage Records, 1774–1993,” database, Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed July 2026), entry for Michael Dillman and [spouse], 1832; citing Marriage Records, Vol. 4, p. 118, [county] Probate Court.

That structure does real work: it tells a future researcher exactly what was viewed (a database entry), exactly where to find it again (the specific database and access date), and exactly what original record it claims to represent (so the original can be checked directly, which remains the gold standard whenever it’s accessible).

DNA Evidence Follows the Same Rules — With New Complications

It’s tempting to treat DNA evidence as a special case requiring its own citation logic. It doesn’t. The same rules that govern any other evidence — identify what was actually used, where it was found, and when — apply just as directly to a DNA match list or a chromosome browser result.^[3] What’s genuinely new is the underlying instability of the source itself. A match reported today can disappear next month if the other tester deletes their results, closes their account, or the testing company changes its matching algorithm and the match no longer meets the new threshold. A citation to DNA evidence should therefore include the date it was viewed with the same discipline as a citation to a website, since “accessed July 2026” may be the only record that the match existed at all by the time anyone checks it again.

DNA evidence is also frequently spread across more than one place at once — a match list, a separate shared-segment spreadsheet, a chromosome browser view, sometimes a linked family tree the match has posted. Citing only one of these pieces, when the actual conclusion depended on several, understates what the researcher relied on.^[4]

A Match Is Not a Conclusion

A shared DNA segment establishes that two people are related. It does not, by itself, establish how. That second step — identifying the specific common ancestor and the specific line of descent connecting two matches — requires the same correlation with documentary evidence that any other indirect-evidence problem requires, built into a proper proof argument rather than asserted from the match percentage alone.^[5] A kit number posted online claiming descent from a specific person is not, by itself, reliable evidence of that descent until every generational link in the claimed line has been independently and soundly documented.

The Privacy Dimension

DNA evidence carries an ethical obligation that most historical records don’t: living people are still alive to be affected by how their genetic information is shared. The Genetic Genealogy Standards call for redacting or privatizing the names of living genetic matches in any published work unless the tester has given explicit permission or has already made their results public.^[6] This is worth building into research habits early, well before a specific finding is ready to publish, since a private match discussed casually in draft notes can be easy to forget about later.

For Dillman Researchers

• Record the access date every time you cite an online source, database entry or DNA match alike. It may be the only evidence, later, that the source ever said what you remember it saying.
• Note whether you’ve seen the original record behind a database entry. If you haven’t, say so in the citation rather than letting the index stand in silently for the original.
• Treat a DNA match as a lead, not an answer. The DFA’s own Family Group Sheets track DNA Study participation separately from documentary descent for exactly this reason — a genetic connection and a documented lineage are two different kinds of evidence, and both matter.
• Redact living matches’ identifying details in anything shared publicly, including casual posts to research forums, unless you have their permission.
• Save a copy or screenshot of anything DNA-related you plan to rely on. Match lists change, and the version you cite today may not be the version anyone else ever sees again.

An index, a database entry, and a DNA match are all real evidence, and all worth using. None of them are exempt from the discipline this series has argued for all along: say exactly what you looked at, exactly where you found it, and exactly when — especially when the thing you’re citing might not be there tomorrow.

Sources

1. “Online Databases,” Evidence Explained (accessed July 2026).
2. “Source Citation Templates for Genealogists,” Manitoba Genealogical Society (accessed July 2026).
3. Elizabeth Shown Mills, “QuickLesson 21: Citing DNA Evidence: Five Ground Rules,” Evidence Explained (accessed July 2026).
4. “DNA Evidence in Genealogy: How to Cite It and Why It Matters,” Family History Fanatics (accessed July 2026).
5. “Citing DNA Evidence,” Evidence Explained (accessed July 2026).
6. Board for Certification of Genealogists, “Genetic Genealogy Standards,” summarized in Elizabeth Shown Mills, “QuickLesson 21: Citing DNA Evidence: Five Ground Rules,” Evidence Explained (accessed July 2026).

AI Disclosure: This article was researched and written with the assistance of Claude, an AI assistant developed by Anthropic. General claims about citation practice are drawn from the sources cited above; DFA-specific claims are drawn from the association’s own Family Group Sheet Database and prior published articles.

Notes

1. References to the DFA’s Family Group Sheets database, including its Dillman DNA Study field, are drawn from the Dillman Family Association, Family Group Sheet Database, compiled 2026.