I have a question on citing documentary sources that you know to be incorrect, especially when you have a primary source to back up the event. It seems as though census records are particularly prone to error. For example, I have seen varying information on successive census records for an individual concerning such things as date of immigration to the US and citizenship status. Since I may have steamship records to show the actual date of arrival and naturalization records to validate Declaration of Intent and final oath of citizenship dates, I really don't see the reason to cite conflicting information that shows up in the census. If my only source of evidence is census data, I can see citing it, but I don't know if it is "standard practice" to ignore less reliable information if authoritative information on the event exists.
And while we are on the subject, I have seen non-relatives documented in the census as a "sister" or "cousin" when I am positive that no relationship exists. In one case, the "sister" appears to be a random border, and the "cousin" was a close family friend from the same town, but not a blood relative. Conversely, I have seen "boarders" who are in fact, cousins (although technically just because someone is listed as a boarder doesn't mean that they aren't related). I can't see adding the "sister" to Legacy, since I know that the only other sister had not yet immigrated, and she had a different name! So my question is, how do other people handle unreliable evidence when reliable evidence exists - do you ignore the unreliable evidence or do you create an alternate conflicting event which is less reliable than a known event? I guess this applies to ages as well - how do you handle ages when there is no birth record, yet a person ages less than 10 years between censuses? Do you treat an earlier census as more reliable (in some cases they seem to be, but this is just a gut feeling) or just document everything? Maybe Geoff could address some of these issues in his upcoming webinar as well. Thanks in advance, Marion Werle Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
