XPost: soc.genealogy.computing, soc.genealogy.misc, alt.genealogy
XPost: soc.history
From: goddai01@hotmail.co.uk
On 22/03/17 01:25, Steve Hayes wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Mar 2017 11:38:05 +0000, Ian Goddard
> wrote:
>
>> On 21/03/17 11:25, J. Hugh Sullivan wrote:
>>> On Tue, 21 Mar 2017 08:57:34 +0200, Steve Hayes
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Mon, 20 Mar 2017 21:57:10 +0000, Ian Goddard
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> As a final comment I'd suggest that we should be treating this as
>>>>> *evidence*-based genealogy, not event-based. For instance a single
>>>>> record which describes the baptism of John, the posthumous son of
>>>>> William Brown is evidence of 3 events, the birth and baptism of John and
>>>>> the death of William.
>>>>
>>>> It depends on your point of view.
>>>>
>>>> I am more interested in the events in the life of a person, than in
>>>> the documents that provide evidence of it.
>>>
>>> To me genealogy is name, date and place of birth, date and place of
>>> death and where buried. Everything else is family history. And most
>>> people, including me, include it. But I don't see family history as
>>> the prime reason for a genealogy program. There needs to be an option
>>> for those who do.
>>
>> If you don't care for the evidence genealogy becomes absurdly easy. You
>> can simply write your own to get back to Adam, Wodin or whoever takes
>> your fancy.
>
> No one is disputing the need for evidence.
>
> The point here is making sense of the events of the life of a person,
> family or community, whatever the evidence.
>
> You keep going on about a "paper trail" as if the paper is more
> important than thebn information contained in it.
>
> When someone who was a work colleage of my wife's third cousin once
> removed, and tells about something that happened to him at work, what
> is more important -- the date of the event in the person's life, or
> the date on which I committed the information received in the phone
> call to paper?
>
> What if I made a note on my computer, and only printed it on paper a
> couple of years later? You seem to be saying that the date of the
> printout is more important than the date of the event in the person's
> life.
>
Actually I never mentioned a paper trail except in reply to Denis who
introduced the term. I mentioned evidence. If someone tells you
something that's evidence. If someone tells you something that someone
else told them it becomes hearsay. Transmit verbally a few more steps
and it becomes legend and hey-ho, keep the legend going and we're all
descended from Wodin or Edward III or whoever. If it was said record it
so someone in the future has access to what was said at the time.
Several of my local history group specialise in recording older people's
recollection.
The best evidence is what was recorded as close to the event as
possible. The further it's removed in time the more likely it is that
recollection is clouded* or that what's recorded is an interpretation
influenced by stuff that happened subsequently. That's why in court
police witnesses get quizzed about how promptly they wrote stuff down in
their notebooks. It's also why, over in s.g.medieval, they place great
reliance on finding contemporary evidence of events.
If you don't have good evidence of the event you don't have good
knowledge of exactly what the event was. Take, for instance, what you
see on IGI. It's been posted via GEDCOM which has no facility at all
for passing on what was in the original register; what you get is
someone's interpretation of what they thought they read which, if you
consult an image of the original, is at best deficient in detail and at
worst WRONG**.
So why not make provision for an image of the original record or a
direct transcription if they're available? That way you can refer back
an make sure that your reconstruction of an event is actually consistent
with the evidence.
* Heraldic visitations are classic examples of clouded recollection and
defective oral transmission. They can give pedigrees going back many
generations so record things a long time after the actual event. There
are a couple of visitations listing the children of a John Kay of the
late C14th. They both list 6 legitimate sons, one includes an
illegitimate son John. Both agree on the names of the first 5
legitimate sons, including a legitimate John. One gives the name of the
last son as James, the other as Jenkin. Jenkin isn't a convincing
variant of James, it's a variant of John. Does it refer to the
illegitimate son of the other visitation? Was there a second legitimate
John (duplication of names wasn't unknown, even when both survived)?
How many legitimate sons were there, 6 or 7?
**An example: GEDCOM - or any other representation which formalises the
source material - does not represent the order in which names were
given. An illegitimate child is often recorded in the register with the
mother's name first and the father's second, the child's surname may not
be included but in later life is often the mother's. I've seen
registers which recorded legitimate children with the father's name
first followed by the mother's /maiden/ name. Anyone simply seeing this
after it's been filtered through GEDCOM or the like will likely treat
the child as illegitimate.
Another example I've given before:
What the register said: Wife of John Goddard Ch
What IGI said: Baptism - Christiana wife of John Goddard
What it actually meant [Mary] wife of John Goddard Ch[urched] (some of
the pages are actually headed "Baptisms and churchings").
--
Hotmail is my spam bin. Real address is ianng
at austonley org uk
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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