Grand slam genealogy blogging

James Tanner hits the ball out of the park with his blog post on how commercial enterprises sanitize genealogy for mass consumption. ("In a society that values wealth and beauty above any other values, genealogists are definitely counter-cultural.") In fairness I would have to add that large noncommercial genealogy enterprises have been known to do the same thing.

Diane Boumenot does the same thing in a different way. She took her home-state genealogy quarterly on the airplane, read it more thoroughly than ever, and found plenty of reasons to keep doing so.We can all do this even though few of us have a state publication the equal of Rhode Island Roots.

Apropos of nothing, this 1936 model of a Tyrannosaurus Rex -- courtesy of the American Historical Association -- strikes me as scarier than more detailed reproductions. [22 August: This link should now work properly.]



Harold Henderson, "Grand slam genealogy blogging," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 21 August 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

But Grandma always said . . .

James Tanner recently posted a fascinating list of six signs that a genealogist has moved up from beginner status. He made me wonder why we talk a lot about "beginning genealogists," but not "beginning historians" or "beginning physicists."

One reason genealogy has such an enormous range is that it is inevitably two very different things: a personal quest based on personal memories and attitudes formed at a young age on one hand, and a demanding technique and profession on the other. The two blend and confront in many different ways, but each of us has a moment when our personal memories run head-on into original eyewitness documents that say otherwise. Beginners may reject documents that conflict with their personal impressions, often going into great intellectual contortions to do so; higher-level genealogists give the documents serious consideration, while recognizing that they too could be wrong.

This confrontation is the downfall of the popular notion of laissez-faire genealogy -- the idea that there are lots of ways to do genealogy and nothing is really wrong. There are lots of ways that work, but the denial of conflicting evidence is not one of them.

No one who dismisses documentary evidence out of hand in favor of "Grandma said..." can be taken seriously as a genealogist. Of course they may be wonderful people, and in any case we should always be polite, always be kind. But a genealogist has to be willing to weigh conflicting evidence -- to analyze and correlate and resolve contradictions. Sometimes Grandma wins, sometimes she doesn't. (Yes, even my own.)

Those who simply cling to family stories may know valuable facts that no one else does, but they aren't genealogists, any more than those who deny evolution are biologists.



Harold Henderson, "But Grandma always said...," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 6 November 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

"Good enough" citations? We can do better.

Have you heard all the talk? Some people are afraid to write anything because they might make a mistake. So -- instead of helping them learn, the idea is that people should just . . . rite enny way she, yknow, feelzlike, cuz y'all'll B all lk aright I git it man so

No, I just made all that up. But it is essentially the argument prolific geneablogger James Tanner (Genealogy's Star) and his commenters have made about citations: don't worry about doing them right, just do them. As long as we can manage to figure out how to find your source, it's OK.

I think Mr. Tanner is about 50% right. We all hesitate to try things when we're not sure we can succeed. Encouragement is in order. As I said in my February 2013 Illinois State Genealogical Society webinar on citations, "Something is better than nothing." But better somethings are better. Education is also in order. (Hobbyists who don't want to be educated, please consult this post from last November.)

Contrary to Mr. Tanner, citations have more than one purpose. As Elizabeth Mills has said repeatedly in Evidence Explained and elsewhere, they are not just about finding the source again, they are also about evaluating the source's quality and quirks. And as Thomas W. Jones adds in his new and excellent book Mastering Genealogical Proof, they also communicate to our readers how well we have made our case, how well we understand the sources, and how solid they are.

(And before anyone starts up with horror stories about the so-called "citation police" who abuse people who misplace a semicolon: Prove it. I have never met any such person. Elizabeth and Tom are the kindest people I know, even when correcting gross errors.)

Citations are a language. We need to learn the language for all the reasons above. We can get by with a few phrases laboriously memorized and mispronounced from a tourist book, or we can immerse ourselves in the language and learn it well. Our choice will depend on our purpose: a weekend in France, or convincing colleagues and relatives who our French ancestors were.

If we speak broken French we may be able to find a bathroom, but we are not likely to persuade any French speaker that we know what we are talking about. It's the same with citations and genealogy: We may be able to understand someone who cites incompletely and carelessly, but we may not value their opinion highly. That's just the way of the world. Knowing the language makes it easier for us to talk together, and it shows that you care.

One other point: even if citations were only for finding our way back to the source, we don't always know what the future holds. What is obvious to us sitting in the library or archive may not be obvious to our grandchild 60 years from now. Today it seems hilarious overkill to identify the URL of a census on Ancestry.com or the NARA microfilm publication it derives from. But when Ancestry gets bought or merged out of existence by some as yet unborn Chinese corporation, our descendants may appreciate any clue they can get as to where that information was found. Of course this goes double for less stable web sites.

As genealogists we have to take a wide view. I cannot assume that La Porte is only in Indiana, or only in the United States. One goal of standard citations is that they will be understandable to anyone coming from a different time or place. That's why we put in a lot of context that we personally may know by heart. All those dedicated old folks who carefully pasted newspaper clippings into scrapbooks without labeling or dating them -- they were provincial. We may be grateful to them, but we can't afford to be like them if we want our family histories to last.

And, yes, this does have a personal dimension. I recently encountered the following informal citation:

"Bible record published 1939 by Noel C. Stevenson, Alhambra, California, vol. 1, bible #91."

I can't find it. I am asking an expert genealogy librarian for help, and I'm now asking the readers of this blog: Please embarrass me by locating it easily! If the person who wrote this "good enough" citation had taken only a little more care, there would be no problem.




Harold Henderson, "'Good enough' citations? We can do better," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 21 June 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Sources? What's That?

There's nothing like being at the forefront of genealogy education. James Tanner reports from his front-line duty aiding a patron at a Family History Center:

"We focused on one family where the ancestors of both the husband and the wife were missing. I asked her where she had looked for information about her family and she gave me a blank look as if to say, what did I mean where did she look."

Read the whole thing over at Genealogy's Star. I don't always agree with Tanner's theoretical ideas, but his point here is spot-on: when we talk about the importance of "sources" we may think we're starting at the beginning, but we are already assuming a whole lot of stuff that many newcomers to genealogy do not know.

That would explain why so many emails to proprietors of unsourced trees go unanswered. And it shows once again that teaching is something that it is easy to do -- or appear to do -- but it is hard to do well.






Harold Henderson, "Sources? What's That?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 31 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Sowing Primary and Secondary Confusion

Attorney, genealogist, and prolific blogger James Tanner continues to use obsolete terminology, which understandably creates confusion.

In a recent blog post, he lists a number of common genealogical sources:

U.S. Federal Census Record
Official State Birth Certificate
Official State Delayed Birth Certificate
International Genealogical Index
Ancestral File
Ancestry.com Family Tree
Church Parish Register
County Assessors Recordings
City Tax Roll

and then asks which of them are primary sources.

He concludes, I think correctly, that the question makes no sense. (It's like having to say whether every car on the road is either black or white, when they're almost all gray!) And then he draws the very odd conclusion that the problem lies in any attempt classifying sources, information, and evidence. But the real problem is that the distinction between primary and secondary sources is much too coarse for clear genealogical thinking.  A more useful distinction among sources is between original sources (first reduction of information to writing, such as a parish register) and derivative sources (a copy of an original or an earlier copy, such as a published index to the parish register).

Sources contain multiple pieces of information, each with somewhat different origins and quality and credibility. "Primary" and "secondary" are more usefully applied to those pieces. In a birth certificate, for instance, the information about the time of the birth is primary, coming from an eyewitness, whereas the information about the parents' birthplaces may well be secondary. No wonder we can't decide whether the certificate is primary or secondary; it contains both primary and secondary information!

Information is not evidence until we ask a question. Direct evidence answers the question directly, indirect evidence offers a clue but does not directly state the answer.

No reputable genealogist claims that these classifications are the be-all and end-all of evaluating and analyzing evidence. They are just the beginning. But it is an important beginning. Just as we can't carve wood well with a blunt chisel, we can't think clearly about these topics while using imprecise terms like "primary source."

In fact, direct evidence can be mistaken. Primary information can be mistaken. Original sources can contain false information. No serious genealogist thinks otherwise. These are not magic keys, just better tools. Even a sharp chisel won't work if you don't know how to hold it. The National Genealogical Society Quarterly is filled, issue after issue, with well-thought-out arguments that often show that what seems to be high-quality information is in fact false. Their reasoning is based on the Genealogical Proof Standard, which for some reason Mr. Tanner does not mention although it is the only proof standard in genealogy.

To learn the proper terminology takes some time and practice (as Bart Brenner demonstrates in a recent meticulous blog post). And once it's learned, the irony is that we don't need to verbalize it in every analysis, any more than we think about balancing on a bicycle most of the time. But knowing and using the terminology allows us to see, for instance, that when we have a derivative source in hand (say, an abstract of a probate case) we need to go beyond it, if possible, and read the original probate file from which it was derived. This is not because we are sure the probate speaks only truth. It's simply because the act of copying from the original has the potential to create errors and to omit important details. Again, no reputable genealogist says that all original sources are correct and all derivative ones are mistaken. 

Tanner arrives at a reasonable conclusion: "We also need to remember that within the same document or record part of the entries may be trustworthy and others may not. Every piece of evidence needs to evaluated on the basis of its consistency, historical context, timeliness and believability." Corroboration and resolving contradictions are key as well. And understanding original vs. derivative sources, primary vs. secondary information, and direct vs. indirect evidence is the first step in this ongoing process.

Tanner quotes a judge's instructions to the jury as a model for genealogists. It's a good step. A more complete list of considerations in evaluating evidence, specifically designed for genealogy, is readily available in Chapter 1 of Elizabeth Shown Mills's book Evidence Explained. I have no idea why Tanner would discuss this subject without referring even in passing to the acknowledged authority in the discipline.



James Tanner, "Primary and Secondary Sources: Who do you trust?," Genealogy's Star (http://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2012/11/primary-and-secondary-sources-who-do.html : accessed 12 November 2012).


Harold Henderson, "Sowing Primary and Secondary Confusion," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 14 November 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Can genealogy be sold as "fun"?

Prolific geneablogger James Tanner at Genealogy's Star:

Attempts to involve the masses in genealogy because it is fun and easy will fail simply because it is neither. "Fun" is an elusive word. I like satisfying, fulfilling, challenging, inspirational, intriguing and other terms a lot more than fun. Hard work is not "fun" by definition and genealogy is hard work.

Read the whole thing -- there's a lot more. It's an in-depth post.

Still, my first thought was, tell that to Ancestry.com. Maybe "fail" is an elusive word too!

What little I have heard of Ancestry's official position is that genealogy has to be accessible first of all (hence those awful "You don't need to know what you're looking for" commercials). That is a reasonable point. For sure I wouldn't start a beginners' class by trying to explain the layer upon layer of indirect evidence in Tom Jones's "Inferential Genealogy" (talk F-95 at Philadelphia FGS).

Perhaps the sophisticated marketing view is that if enough people are attracted to genealogy by superficial promises, then some will stay long enough to get hooked on the hard work, and to keep ACOM stock on the move. What do the marketing pros think?



James Tanner, "Some basic principles of genealogy," Genealogy's Star, posted 8 July 2012 (http://genealogysstar.blogspot.com : accessed 9 July 2012).


Harold Henderson, "Can genealogy be sold as 'fun'?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 10 July 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Moderately Recent Blog Posts I Have Enjoyed #2

Diana Dretske at Illuminating Lake County History posted a detailed appreciation of John Easton's 1844-1846 store ledger from the hamlet of Half Day. I became acquainted with the ledger's transcription when I had a research interest in the immediate area; I was unaware of its near-obliteration when the purchasers of Easton's property later used it as a scrapbook in which to post newspaper clippings! Good reading and images both for people interested in Lake County, Illinois, or in the enormous potential of this under-used resource.

The indefatigable Judy Russell at The Legal Genealogist asks the key question of relevant Ancestry.com officials. She doesn't put it this way, but I will: Since Ancestry's advertising often does not encourage genealogical education, and since it hosts many erroneous trees, how can the company hope to make clear the limitations of its new autosomal DNA test when test results are being connected to those same erroneous trees? Is this anything more than the 21st-century version of pasting scrapbook items onto a potentially valuable genealogy resource and just making everyone more confused than before? If you think I'm over the top on this, Judy is more judicious than I and has done her homework. Read her post and draw your own conclusions.

In an earlier post I uncritically repeated Ancestry.com's statement at Wednesday night's NGS conference reception that the company has 10 billion records. James Tanner at Genealogy's Star does some badly needed investigation and finds this kind of claim to be more promotional than informational.

Please note: I am a long-time and continuing subscriber to Ancestry and have benefited enormously from its work. But it should be possible to earn a profit and educate the public at the same time, and I believe that genealogists in general (and professionals and bloggers in particular) have a role to play in encouraging its executives to keep both objectives clearly in view.


Harold Henderson, "Moderately Recent Blog Posts I Have Enjoyed #2" Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 15 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]