* Multiple Source Citations

[ColinMc]

I'd be interested in how others deal with this situation.

I have an individual whose gravestone gives a year of birth, and so I cite it on the Birth Fact. Some months later I obtain his/her birth certificate, which confirms the year and obviously adds the actual date and is also added to the Birth fact.

In this case the Birth certificate is good primary evidence for the fact, while the gravestone is secondary. Would you retain the (Birth Fact) Citation for the Gravestone, or is it just adding un-necessary extra detail to all reports etc.

I've always kept both in these circumstances, but I'm wondering if it should be simplified.

I appreciate that where the quality of the source is not as high, then any/all citations should be retained.

[ColeValleyGirl]

I retain all the citations, with quality assessments -- I might reorder to put the 'best' one first.

You never know when another piece of (conflicting) evidence will turn up and you need to review ALL the reasons you've reached your current conclusion, in case the new evidence overturns it.

[Mark1834]

I do the same as Helen. One weakness of FH queries is that the order of citations matters when designing a query, so I try to maintain a consistent order of citations in terms of perceived reliability. For a birth date, this would typically be

• Birth Certificate - created soon after the event by people with first hand knowledge (usually!).
• Baptism Register - as for Birth Certificate.
• 1939 Register - what the individual themselves thought their date of birth was (but is subject to deliberate massaging or transcription error).
• Death Certificate or Index - what somebody else thought the date of birth was.
• Gravestone - as for Death Certificate.

As a general rule of thumb, day and month are generally more reliable than year, as people massaging their age are more likely to keep their actual birthday but add or subtract years according to what they want to demonstrate. When assessing the accuracy of ages in general census entries or in Marriage Registers, look at the overall family context. Are ages consistent over multiple censuses? Are there are reasons to deliberately add or subtract years, such as an unusually large age gap, or wish to appear older or younger than some key cut-off? What was their overall level of education and numeracy?

[ColinMc]

You never know when another piece of (conflicting) evidence will turn up and you need to review ALL the reasons you've reached your current conclusion, in case the new evidence overturns it.

That is a good point, thanks.

One weakness of FH queries is that the order of citations matters when designing a query

I had not understood that. I like the idea of an order of citations, I'll have a look at doing that

[AdrianBruce]

Just to agree with the above - I also keep all citations and, like Mark, I attempt to order them chronologically to attempt to help with any resolution of issues. Quite where that leaves things like FreeBMD, I'm not sure. Am I ordering by the date of the original information? Or the (rough, vague) date of the transcription? The answer is probably "yes" - i.e. I've used both.

[LornaCraig]

Bear in mind also that although a birth certificate establishes someone's age for legal purposes it may actually be wrong! Births had to be registered within six weeks of the event, so in order to avoid a fine for late registration people sometimes gave an innaccurate date. Evidence of this sometimes emerges, if it is discovered that a child was baptised before their 'legal' birth date, or appeared at the age of one week in a census just before their 'legal' birth date!

[Gowermick]

Lorna, very good point. I was shocked when I saw my own father’s birth certificate, which shows him born 12 days later than he actually was. Nan registered him late, so massaged his birth date so she wouldn’t be fined

I also came across a 1939 entry for someone else, where their birth date was incorrect. It showed he was born after the date shown on his baptism entry, which I assume was pretty accurate. So it is not just wrong years you have to be careful of, but days and months as well!

[ColinMc]

Thanks
for the extra thoughts.

[fhtess65]

I'll just add my .02, FWIW, as I also cite every piece of evidence for a fact. No ONE document can provide us with absolute proof of any fact. As genealogists, we collect as much evidence as we can, analyze, and then, if possible, draw a conclusion. Even that conclusion can always be re-evaluated if new evidence with other information comes to the fore.

Teresa

[tatewise]

"add my .02, FWIW" fooled me for a while as I could not work out what source you were adding, but then it dawned on me that it means "add my tuppence worth, For What Its Worth".

[Gowermick]

Bit slow on the uptake there mike

[fhtess65]

"add my .02, FWIW" fooled me for a while as I could not work out what source you were adding, but then it dawned on me that it means "add my tuppence worth, For What Its Worth".

Sorry - talking Canadian, not British... I did debate using tuppence, as I use a lot of Brit expressions as well, but went with the Canadian ... I'm bilingual