More blogging in the act of finding ancestors

David Suddarth of Minnesota has a newish blog, Ancestral Journeys, where he tackles some tough questions having to do with conflicting evidence about his Suddarth, Stroud, and Douthit ancestors in Crawford and Perry counties, Indiana; Wayne County, Illinois; and Stoddard County, Missouri, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Most perplexing is the question of when in the early 1860s Benjamin Suddarth was born, since the census and his father's pension records don't agree with each other, and of course at that date Indiana didn't keep official birth records.

I always find it useful when other folks are generous (and courageous!) enough to share their step-by-step reasoning process in these hard cases. After all, if you can find someone who's never dealt with conflicting evidence, you've found someone who hasn't seen much evidence yet!