The books I bought at FGS

For moderately regular attendees, a national genealogy conference is an oasis of extreme sociability in a normally quiet, if not quite solitary, life. I love conferences, but they do make it difficult for me to work, blog, think, research, compose presentations, or otherwise do the things that give us food for conversation when we're there.

I did not buy a single book at full price during last week's FGS conference in Fort Wayne, but if I hadn't already bought it at NGS, I would have purchased Tom Jones's Mastering Genealogical Proof. I did have occasion to recommend it to many ambitious people. Here's what I did buy at Maia's Books, the Ohio Genealogical Society booth, the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania booth, and the perpetual used-book sale just inside the east end of the Allen County Public Library:

Scott E. Casper, Constructing American Lives: Biography and Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).

Leslie Brenner, American Appetite: The Coming of Age of A National Cuisine (New York: HarperCollins, 1999).

James M. Duffin, comp., Guide to the Mortgages of the General Loan Office of the Province of Pennsylvania, 1724-1756 (Philadelphia?: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 1995).

Dale Roylance, Graphic Americana: The Art and Technique of Printed Ephemera from Abecedaires to Zoetropes (Princeton: Princeton University Library, 1992).

Charles E. Rosenberg and William H. Helfand, "Every Man his own Doctor": Popular Medicine in Early America (Philadelphia: The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1998).

Roberta P. Wakefield, ed., Special Aids to Genealogical Research in Northeastern and Central States (Washington DC: National Genealogical Society, 1962).

Milton Rubincam, ed., Genealogical Research: Methods and Sources (Washington DC: American Society of Genealogists, 1960).

Encyclopedia of World History (New York: Facts on File, 2000).

Were they worth it? You tell me, I've got a deadline!



Harold Henderson, "The books I bought at FGS," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 26 August 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

NGS Day 3 Friday May 10

For logistical reasons only, Friday was my last real day at the conference. Please refer to other bloggers for Saturday!

My day began about 6 am in the nearly deserted free internet area (no problem with too many connections) and segued into the invitational FamilySearch breakfast (assigned tables and assigned places at each), where we learned that they add about 1.7 million new records per day, are desperately in search of Italian-speaking volunteer indexers, and are exploring ways to adapt facial-recognition software to word recognition as a way of indexing handwritten documents.

Dawne Slater-Putt's 8 am talk, "Fail! When the Record Is Wrong," was a boon to note-takers in that she spoke clearly and not too fast. Her bouquet of original records giving direct but erroneous evidence was striking. Takeaway: "Know your ancestor as a person so as not to be blinded by incorrect evidence."

I spent the rest of the morning in a New York intensive. NYGBR co-editor Karen Mauer Green emphasized the difficulties researchers from record-rich areas like New England and the Midwest will find in New York, where some record types are missing, and each of the 62 counties was to some extent a law unto itself. "Clerks essentially did what they want . . . plan to start over with each new county." A substantial aid in this process, the New York Family History Research Guide and Gazetteer, is forthcoming later this year.

NYGBR co-editor Laura DeGrazia gave a more upbeat perspective on the same situation, showing some of the records finds there to be made, such as town clerks' Civil War registers that can include time and place of birth and parents' names. I concluded that New York is the mother of innovative research techniques. And I have to say that if you must leave home for days to hang out in a desert filled with casinos in order to learn about genealogy, there is just no better place to be than in the front row of the hall, hearing DeGrazia and trading thoughts and wisecracks with Kimberly Powell and Michael Hait.

Melinda Henningfield and I chatted with visitors to the APG table in the exhibit area during the lunch hour, and then I retreated to become ready for my 4 pm talk on a Chicago-to-Ohio case study. The evening saw a meeting of mentors in preparation for the early June debut of small discussion groups on Tom Jones's popular new book Mastering Genealogical Proof, being organized by Angela McGhie.

And I know just from syllabus browsing that I had to miss great talks by Debbie Parker Wayne on DNA and Elizabeth Shown Mills on discoveries in the details.

It's now five years since my first NGS conference and I haven't even come close to regretting attending one yet. Don't miss it when it comes within your travel area.



Harold Henderson, "NGS Day 3 Friday May 10," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 11 May 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

NGS Day 1 Wednesday May 8

Las Vegas is an improbable (and noisy) part of the universe. The day started with one of those serendipitous encounters that make conferences such fun -- a friend and I got on the elevator simultaneously around 6 am and we made a run for affordable edibles to help us last out the week.

Marian Smith told a great story of her quest for the origins of the 1931 Morton Allan steamship arrival directory. "Some projects take years," she said, "Be prepared to be surprised." We were. "When you see a piece that might fit but are not sure, you've got to pick it up."

Tom Jones was stellar in the 11 am slot on "Debunking Misleading Records." He described alphabetizing records (that were originally chronological) as a form of error, because it strips out contextual information that might be used to correct an error. And he advised us that using genealogy programs can cause us to miss a "huge piece of genealogical reasoning," the piece that takes place when you're writing out your proof. He even finished two minutes before time.

I'll let others comment on my APG luncheon talk on advocacy and how to think about it. (Shortest possile version: Don't overlook the regulation-writing process that inevitably follows legislation.) A version of it will be available for the new APG Quarterly editor, Christy Fillerup, to use as needed.

Melinde Lutz Byrne spoke on advocacy for record access. By accumulation of well-known facts, she showed that birth, marriage, and death records are not in fact private -- directly undercutting some lawmakers' arguments to try to make them otherwise. Meanwhile I hear that Kimberly Powell encouraged a lot of folks to use and learn Scrivener.

Lots of interesting conversation at the exhibit hall BCG table late in the day about how many certificants "overachieve," as in producing kinship determination projects 70 or more pages long. Don't be intimidated. Length is not a genealogical standard.



Harold Henderson, "NGS Day 1 Wednesday May 8," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 9 May 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Speaking in Cincinnati and Bloomington

FYI -- hope to see you there!

Next Friday (the 26th) I'll be speaking at the Ohio Genealogical Society conference in Cincinnati on "First Steps in Indiana Research." (Tom Jones keynotes the day before.)

On Saturday the 27th I'll be speaking at the Indiana Genealogical Society conference in Bloomington on "Land and Property: The Records No Genealogist Can Do Without" and "Probate Will Not Be the Death of You." (Josh Taylor is the featured speaker.)





Harold Henderson, "Speaking in Cincinnati and Bloomington," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 19 April 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Genealogy education news flash...

Anyone who reads or even just tolerates this blog should check out Angela McGhie's latest posts, "Unexpected Lessons from Tom Jones" over at Adventures in Genealogy Education. based on some exchanges at the APG's Professional Management Conference on Tuesday. That is all.

There Is No Such Thing as a Primary Source

Many people are still under the impression that there are such things as "primary sources" and "secondary sources." Like the idea that it's wrong to split an infinitive or end a sentence with a preposition, this is one more rule that many of us learned young and now need to unlearn -- including, in my opinion, professional historians. (If you have read and reread and absorbed the first two chapters of Evidence Explained, this post will be a review or else you've already gone over to the web site to see the detailed discussions there.)

The distinction is not completely bogus but when applied to original documents -- sources -- it is so imprecise as to be useless. It's like claiming that a two-toned car is either red or white.

An original source is a document created at or near the time of the event, in which the event is first reduced to writing. (If five people witness an event and go off and each write their own account of it, those would be five original sources.)

A derivative source is derived from another written source, not from the described events themselves. When confronted with a document, ask yourself, "Where does it come from?" and then look for that document, continuing until you get to the original. When a court record describes a petition submitted by heirs, that description is derived from the original petition. The original petition may contain more information, so you want to find it. As Tom Jones says, every derivative source is an invitation to find out what it was derived from!

Primary information is eyewitness information.

Secondary information is secondhand.

Obviously these overlap; many original documents contain primary information. But the reason for the distinction is that many original documents contain BOTH primary and secondary information. Like the two-toned car, it's only a problem if you don't think it through and use the terms you were taught in high school.

Also obviously, primary information can be right or wrong, and so can secondary. Original documents may contain right information or be a complete tissue of lies. One reason we genealogists prefer original documents is not that they are always right, but that the derivative sources are subject to error in the process of indexing, abstracting, or quoting -- over and above whatever errors might exist in the original.

Finally there is direct evidence (that directly answers your question) and indirect evidence (that provides only a clue toward your answer). So altogether there are eight possible combinations. I word better from examples, hence this table with an example for each.

1. Original source, primary information: Death certificate, cause of death

2. Original source, secondary information: Death certificate, birthplace of father

3. Derivative source, primary information: Published abstract of death certificate, cause of death

4. Derivative source, secondary information: Published abstract of death certificate, birthplace of father

Any of these could be either direct or indirect evidence, because that depends on the question you're asking. If you're wondering what Joe died of, #1 and #3 are direct evidence because they answer your question (rightly or wrongly is a separate issue). If you're wondering whether heart disease ran in Joe's family, #1 and #3 are indirect evidence because they offer a clue without directly answering your question.

If you're wondering where Joe's father was born, #2 and #4 offer direct evidence (again, they may be wildly wrong but they're giving you a direct answer). If you're wondering where Joe's father spent most of his life, #2 and #4 offer indirect evidence -- a hint but not the whole answer.



Harold Henderson, "There Is No Such Thing as a Primary Source," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 18 October 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Midweek Writing Tips

We can recover from having been taught bogus writing rules, but it helps to know which they are. Here's a start from Geoffrey Pullum.

We can also say more with less. PR man and blogger Mickie Kennedy names 20 verbose phrases that can go away. (Hat tip to Laura DeGrazia on Facebook.) But I would argue he doesn't go far enough.

Here's his first paragraph:

I’ve always been a firm advocate for getting your point across in as few words as possible. Today’s readers are more pressed for time than ever before, and as it relates to PR, reporters are bombarded by pitches all day long, so the faster you can get to the point, the better.

A shorter version:

I've always believed in making your point in the fewest possible words. Today's readers have less time than ever, and reporters are bombarded by PR, so the quicker the pitch, the better.

If this doesn't come naturally to you with a little practice and self-surgery -- or even if it does! -- enroll in Tom Jones's writing class at Samford IGHR. You'll be amazed at what he can do with your supposedly well-trimmed passage.


Harold Henderson, "Midweek Writing Tips," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 12 September 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

The Many Lives of GW Edison Jr. -- NGSQ Genealogy Olympics

We expect records to be occasionally mistaken, but few of us expect our ancestors to lie repeatedly. When they do, we have to step our research methodology up a notch. That's what Tom Jones did in the fourth of four articles in the amazing June 2012 issue of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly. (I've already posted on the Pratt, Hackenberger, and Northamer articles.)

Those of us who enrolled in the first Advanced Evidence Practicum at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy in January got to wrestle with this problem for a day, in confidence, prior to publication. I think I'm safe in saying that it pinned most of us to the mat.

The individual in question -- George Wellington Edison Jr. (1861-1940) -- came from a good family and often held a skilled job. He also, in Jones's words, "used four names, married five times, was divorced twice, committed bigamy once, and had twelve children." Raised in Quincy, Adams County, Illinois, he bounced around Illinois, Missouri, and Indiana, helped build the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and died in Decatur, Macon County, Illinois.

Genealogists tracking an accomplished con man like this need to be wary, maintain a broad focus, and constantly test and correlate information from a variety of sources. For the specifics and the many intriguing sub-problems, I encourage you to read and reread!



Thomas W. Jones, "Misleading Records Debunked: The Surprising Case of George Wellington Edison Jr.," National Genealogical Society Quarterly vol. 100, no. 2 (June 2012):133-56.


Harold Henderson, "The Many Lives of GW Edison Jr. -- NGSQ Genealogy Olympics," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 11 September 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

FGS Day Three (Friday August 31)

When I attended my first national conference (NGS in Kansas City 2008) I knew only one or two of the many hundreds of people present. I had no meetings or other events to attend beyond the scheduled presentations. Basically everything I knew about the entire event was public. I could have blogged in some detail about every day (don't think I did).

Now at FGS Birmingham 2012, I know a lot more people, I have a lot more fun with friends from across the country. I also attend a more meetings and fewer lectures, and much of what I learn is not public, or if public not terribly interesting. I missed out on Mark Lowe's talk on Baptist missionaries due to an arduous meeting; while on what you might call courier duty, I heard the last ten minutes of Tom Jones's new talk on citations. (If you're kind of stuck on the subject, check it out and see if his approach helps.)

I love talking to the folks who come by the Association of Professional Genealogists and the Board for the Certification of Genealogists booths about their interests or research issues, but it's hard to explain them all. An Indiana friend and I compared notes on a favorite central-Indiana courthouse where the old records are on the skylit fourth floor instead of the usual dank basement and which is ground zero for a pesky ancestral problem. I could tell all about how APG is continuing a dynamic but difficult phase of growth, but that would only be interesting to those members who are benefiting from our new webinars and other features. I heard Mary Penner's hilarious APG luncheon talk on ten reasons not to write your family history, but -- well, you had to be there.

As a result, it's hard for me to say a lot about FGS this time around. And it has become easier for me to understand how some folks attend the event, stay in the hotel, hang in the restaurants and exhibit hall, spend all day talking to people on business, and never actually enroll in the conference itself. They are just as concerned with genealogy as ever, but their conference lives have been turned inside out, and what was once the core has almost disappeared.


Harold Henderson, "FGS Day Three (Friday August 31)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 1 September 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.]

IGHR Samford Day 2

Today's high points included being (re)introduced to legal research in general and to the law library of the Cumberland Law School here at Samford. It's a beautiful building with a circuitous entrance and generous long hours. It's full of reporters, digests, session laws, statutes at large, legal encyclopedias, legal journals, microtext, and even some regular books -- headed by a kindly reference librarian with degrees in both law and librarianship. We will see more tomorrow, spurred on by several research problems posed by our Course 6 instructors.

In the evening, Tom Jones and Elissa Powell headed up a seminar/discussion on the BCG certification process for those who are interested or who might be. Several of us spoke on why we applied, how we applied, and why some of us didn't succeed on our first try. I think some fun and information were had by all. (Don't submit the first one you do of anything!)

Many of my cohort stayed up too late talking last night and are now just a bit brain-dead, but that's part of the experience too. The weather has been more clement than average, so far. We hear good reports of Thursday night's banquet speaker. If you prefer your news from here in visual form, do check out Maddy McCoy's photo blog at Historic Wanderings.


Harold Henderson, "IGHR Samford Day 2," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 12 June 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

IGHR Samford Day 0, resting briefly in the shade

If you've been to IGHR (the week-long Institute for Genealogical and Historical Research) at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, you don't need my description. And if you haven't been there, you may not understand it when I call it a cross between a conference and a homecoming, in which the party comes the evening before the work begins.

For me, the advent is a two-day car trip, this year solo. Saturday I stopped off at the Indiana State Library and wound up hitting almost every research target I aimed at. (More on that later.) Sunday I drove and listened to recordings of talks given by Tom Jones and Elizabeth Shown Mills at the National Genealogical Society conference last month. Tom managed to condense documentation into five questions and then into two basic principles; Elizabeth laid out a plan for organizing research so that you won't have to go back and do it over. I need to recheck the syllabus material in order to get the most out of them.

And there was no time for that once I arrived on the hillside campus, what with getting registered, getting settled, greeting friends old and new, telling newcomers where to go next (it's my fourth year here so I can pass for an old-timer), checking out the used books for sale in the library, and even selling a few of my wife's heavy-duty coffee mugs emblazoned with trees.

Debra Hoffman filled in ably for the absent ProGen Study Group leader Angela McGhie at the study group reunion and recognition. Afterwards the conversation devolved into small groups. Mine got into stories and advice about writing genealogical articles, and we were far from the last to leave.

Director Lori Northrup borrowed the best line of the evening when she quoted Samford's president: "We rest in the shade of trees we did not plant." At the end of a long day that's a good thought to mull over in the calm before the storm of genealogical activity set to begin at 8 am sharp Monday morning.


Harold Henderson, "IGHR Samford Day 0," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 10 June 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

IGHR Samford Day Four: states' opportunity

One highlight of Thursday:

Tom Jones observed that in his view, state-level genealogy journals have an opportunity to fill a big gap in the genealogy literature, by publishing well-documented portions of family histories that are not difficult enough to be of interest to national publications.

This strikes me as a good idea for several reasons:

(1) For the author, it's a lower-cost method of publication than in book format. Publication is a method of preservation.

(2) For the author, it doesn't take as long to see results if you write up two or three generations than if you have to wait until you have done them all.

(3) If the article's title mentions the most relevant surnames, the article will be picked up in the periodical search index PERSI (which does not index every name within a journal) and thus will be much more accessible to future genealogists, perhaps more accessible even than a book.

(4) For the readers, well-researched and documented accounts of other families are likely to be of more interest than abstracts of local records -- which are better placed on line anyway, where they will be more accessible.

I know that the supply of such writings can be a problem. But the genealogical public is growing and genealogical education opportunities are expanding. (See, for instance, Angela McGhie's blog, Adventures in Genealogical Education, and many of Kimberly Powell's posts at About.com). So there ought to be more people out there who can do this.

The potential writers need to make writing a priority. And the state editors have to ask, and be willing to select wisely.

IGHR Samford Day Two

Highlights (both of my readers have probably surmised that I'm taking Tom Jones's writing class this year):

As a rule, articles submitted to the National Genealogical Society Quarterly can be made one-quarter shorter just by trimming fat (without substantive revision).

The following book dedication constitutes the strongest case for the serial comma: "I dedicate this book to my parents, Mother Teresa and the Pope."

IGHR Samford Day One

I can't begin to list all the friends and discussions and plans -- not if I want to get my homework done. So my posts about this week at the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research will be verrry selective.

Fact of the Day, from Tom Jones: The Family History Library has two copies of the 1820 census, one microfilmed by the Census Bureau back in the day, the other filmed by the National Archives. So far as he knows, nobody has compared the two.

Quote of the Day, from Strunk and White's Elements of Style, p. 17, per Tom's syllabus (I can't find my copy!): "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences . . . . This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell."

Live at NGS Charleston: Day 3

Today's report is truncated because I spent most of the day involved with the Association of Professional Genealogists -- meeting, luncheon, and booth duty. Strategic planning is the order of the day there, and the process is NOT intended or expected to last forever, or to languish unimplemented.

I was able to attend Richard Sayre's lecture on the various systems of veterans' homes, mainly established once it became apparent that Civil War amputations and other injuries were overwhelming both private resources and the pension system. Aside from the many underlying individual tragedies of the war, he also noted the destruction of many case files in 1930, although samples do remain, as do indexes to register books that Ancestry.com has digitized. The records of these homes remain a remarkable resource.

I did finally break down and purchased the second edition of Gordon Remington's book on New York state probates, and the Jamb Inc. CD of Tom Jones's afternoon talk on the Genealogical Proof Standard. The talk reportedly succeeded in addressing both those who have barely heard of this kind of GPS and those who know it by heart. The late line at the Jamb table included folks on their way home who were ordering CDs for Saturday talks not yet delivered, as the exodus from Conference World begins.

In informal conversation I learned where and how to look for information on the Holland Land Company -- a must-know for those with interest in early western New York.

Puzzles and proof

Most researchers have trouble with the idea that you can prove an identity or relationship even if you never find a piece of paper that says it. Even those of us who know that it's true have trouble applying it to our real-life genealogy problems.

Industrious Ohio researcher and blogger Chris Staats comes out of the recent Ohio Genealogical Society conference and in his blog takes up Tom Jones's favorite puzzle analogy for genealogical "proof," which was discussed there.

This point needs to be made more often at the grass-roots level where we all start. For the full dose, pick up a CD of Jones's lecture "Inferential Genealogy" from JAMB Productions, (it's F-95 in the Philadelphia 2008 FGS listing, and no, I don't get a commission!) or read the underlying National Genealogical Society Quarterly article, “Uncovering Ancestors by Deduction: The Husbands and Parents of Eleanor (nee Medley) (Tureman) (Crow) Overton,” NGSQ 94 (December 2006): 287-304 -- (available in good genealogical libraries or free to NGS members on the web site). And of course, you can find the Genealogical Proof Standard in all its non-metaphorical glory at the BCG web site.

Association of Professional Genealogists

A big thank-you to those readers who are members of the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) and who, in a pre-Thanksgiving surprise, elected me to a two-year term on the organization's board. (And I hope that any reader who is not a member will consider becoming one.) I expect to learn a lot, but here is where I started (from my pre-election statement):

Over the past three years I have benefited from listening and participating on APG's email list, from reading the quarterly, from attending the Professional Management Conference, from involvement in the Great Lakes Chapter -- and from working the table at conferences! I'd like to put my experience to work, and build on past volunteers' accomplishments, by helping APG become both more inclusive and more professional.

Inclusive: by making transparency a priority, including prompt publication of board and EC minutes.

Professional: by encouraging, recognizing, and eventually requiring continuing education among members -- or in some other appropriate way acting on Tom Jones's critique published in the December 2007 APG Quarterly. His point was that for genealogy to mature, its professional organization needs to ask more of its members than just to pay dues and subscribe to a code of ethics.

The state of play in genealogy

"Most genealogical research and compilation is done badly. Objective reviewers regularly criticize the accuracy of genealogical books, and the Internet makes voluminous genealogical errors available to all. Many family historians, including some with professional standing, base their conclusions on inadequate indexes, haphazard and incomplete research, and poorly documented compilations and databases. They do not recognize that their results sometimes are erroneous and often partial or unnecessarily tentative. Many thorough researchers using reliable sources lack the expertise to recognize clues that could reveal generations beyond those that records specify directly. Many have no glimmer of what they do not know."

Ouch! That's Tom Jones, writing in the Jewish genealogy journal Avotaynu 23 (Fall 2007): 17-23. His whole article, titled "Post-secondary Study of Genealogy: Curriculum and Its Contexts," is available on line (PDF with formatting quirks), and proposes what a professional genealogy curriculum could look like, and needs to look like in order to remedy the condition of the field.

For free genealogy education, it's hard to beat the Transitional Genealogists Forum, where I first learned of this article.

Methodology Monday with a Tom Jones puzzle

What can you make of these five pieces of evidence from Tom Jones's "Uncovering Ancestors by Deduction," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 94 (December 2006):287-304 (free PDF download for NGS members)?

1781: Ignatius Tureman's will names daughter Lucy and wife Eleanor.

1788: Obadiah Overton marries Eleanor Crow.

1796: Obadiah Overton puts up $150 bond for Lucy Tureman's marriage to John Kinzer.

February 1804: Elizabeth Crow, a minor and orphan of James Crow, requests that Obadiah Overton be her guardian. John Kinzer provides the bond for this guardianship.

August 1804: Guardian Obadiah Overton consents to Elizabeth Crow's marriage.

How are all these people related? Combining this evidence with knowledge of Virginia law at the time, Jones proposes a series of hypotheses and tests them using a deed that by itself makes little sense.

This puzzle is only the overture to the bulk of the article (and Jones's lecture "Inferential Genealogy"), in which the names of Eleanor Crow's parents are deduced.

If you can see how these puzzle pieces might fit together, without having read the article or heard the lecture, you may have the makings of a top-notch genealogist.