Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Genealogy:

Weigh the credibility and quality of possible sources

Stefani Evans

Stefani Evans

All sources are not equal.

Some are more reliable than others. How do we determine a source's credibility? An excellent guide is Elizabeth Shown Mills' "Evidence Analysis: A Research Process Map," (Washington: Board for Certification of Genealogists, 2006). It is available online through the Board for Certification of Genealogists at www.bcgcertification.org/catalog/processmap.html. Quotations below are from this work.

A source might be original (the words of a witness) or derivative (next day's newspaper quote of the witness, or the witness's best friend's neighbor, who wrote it in his journal a week later). Original sources and derivative sources vary widely in quality. Unless we personally interview a witness, watch (or hear) the original recording of an event, or hold the original artifact in our hands, genealogists most commonly use derivative sources. These include databases, "image copies" (microforms, digital images, photographs), transcriptions, compilations and "official record copies" or certified copies of original documents.

My grandmother's death certificate is an excellent illustration. My grandmother died at 1620 [4:20 p.m.], Oct. 6 1987, in Laguna Hills, Orange County, Calif. The county certificate, created at the time of her death to record her death, is an original source. Photocopies or digital images of her original certificate are derivative sources, but they carry equal weight as the original. A transcription of the original death certificate is also a derivative source, but the transcriptionist might make an error or have a bias causing him to inadvertently suppress or alter information. Therefore, a transcription is less credible than a photocopy or digital image.

Every original or derivative source provides information; the information might be correct or not. The information may be primary ("provided by someone with firsthand knowledge") or it might be secondary ("provided by someone with secondhand or more-distant knowledge").

My photocopy of my grandmother's death certificate is a reliable derivative source. It supplies primary (firsthand) information for my grandmother's date, place and cause of death as certified by the responsible physician. Her death certificate also offers secondary (secondhand) information regarding my grandmother's parents and her date and place of birth, as entered by the informant (her daughter, my mother).

Let's weigh the information contained in this source. We weigh "each piece of information within a source" separately and apart. We look for "evidence of bias, fraud, memory or time lapses." We determine who created the document, when it was created and why it was created. If an individual created the document or offered information within, we ask what that person stood to gain.

The physician, the recognized official with authority to pronounce my grandmother's death, to determine her cause of death, and to record the time and place of her death, last saw my grandmother alive Oct. 6, 1987, and signed her certificate Oct. 7. His statement is primary information for my grandmother's death. Barring malpractice by the doctor, which might motivate him to alter her circumstances of death, we assume the information he provided, either from direct knowledge or from the medical record under his supervision, is correct. The doctor was unrelated to any family member and had no discernible motivation to provide inaccurate data.

My mother supplied secondary information about her mother's 1902 birth 85 years after the fact. Her information is an excellent clue for further research that might uncover better sources for the birth. My mother was not present at her mother's birth, so she could not state from her own knowledge the "facts" of the birth; she knew the information only from hearing it from her mother. Of course, my grandmother could not possibly remember details of her birth from her own knowledge. Further, because my grandmother was legally adopted as a 4-year-old after her mother died, information she eventually provided regarding her birth may have been incorrect. Information provided long after an event must be viewed with skepticism, and should be corroborated by other, independently created sources.

My mother's secondary information, however, ultimately led to a county-issued certified copy of my grandmother's original 1902 birth certificate and a photocopy of her 1906 adoption decree (reliable derivative sources). The documents, created contemporaneously and independently by the county to record the birth and the adoption, provide corroborating, primary information regarding my grandmother's birth. The 1902 and 1906 county-issued documents are more credible sources for a 1902 birth than the secondary information supplied in 1987 by a grieving daughter.

All sources provide information. Only when we weigh "each piece of information within a source" separately and apart can we determine whether we have the best available source.

Stefani Evans is a board-certified genealogist and a volunteer at the Regional Family History Center. She can be reached c/o the Home News, 2360 Corporate Circle, Third Floor, Henderson, NV 89074, or [email protected].

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