Quote to remember

Words to live by, from Elizabeth Shown Mills's Monday evening talk at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy 12 January 2015:

"Instead of asking each other 'What's the answer?' we should be asking ourselves 'What's the evidence?' "

Is there a finite amount of genealogical evidence?

Tony Proctor has a thoughtful post over at Parallax View, discussing the concept of "proof" and how it differs in science and in genealogy. I encourage you to read the whole thing as he has a lot to say. Since thoughtful theoretical discussions are scarce in genealogy, I thought I'd add three thoughts.

(1) I'm surprised that neither the post nor the comments allude to the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS) or the recent book that explains it most thoroughly, Thomas W. Jones's Mastering Genealogical Proof.

FYI if you're new: the GPS is the only widely accepted standard of proof in genealogy, and it states that no conclusion is proved without five things: thorough research, good citations, analysis and correlation of evidence, resolving any contradictions, and a written account. The best genealogists then working put this GPS together at the end of the 20th century under the auspices of the Board for the Certification of Genealogists (BCG_, as an improvement for our purposes on the "preponderance of the evidence" standard borrowed from the law.

(2) Tony writes,

"Science is about the here-and-now whereas genealogy is about the been-and-gone. What this means is that genealogy only has a finite set of evidence available, and although more of that set may be discovered over time, no evidence outside of that set will ever be found. It also means that evidence cannot be created on demand in order to solve a particular problem, or to support/refute a given proposition. On the other hand, in science — technology permitting — an experiment can be conceived purposely to test a given theory, or to separate two competing theories. . . . Whereas science can usually conduct a specific experiment to disprove some of the candidate theories, and so support the remainder, genealogy can only search for more items of evidence that already exist. If they don’t exist somewhere now then they never will in the future either."

Some sciences, such as paleontology, are about the been-and-gone. I suppose that in the abstract both genealogy and paleontology only have "a finite set of evidence available," but in practice nobody knows all of it or even where it is. Both paleontologists and genealogists find new evidence all the time.

It's true that paleontologists and genealogists cannot conduct laboratory experiments on the past. But they do have the ability to make predictions based on what they know, and then see whether further research supports those predictions. These predictions and tests are quite similar to an experiment. If I find that a man's wife is named in a deed where he sells property, I can predict that there is likely to be some additional evidence of the marriage that I have not yet seen (whether a formal record of the event or an appearance in an obituary), and go look for it.

But I have a quarrel with the whole idea of a "finite" amount of evidence anyway. Evidence is information that can be used to answer a specific question. (That is the agreed genealogical definition.) Sometimes ingenious genealogists find evidence where others might not have perceived any at all.

In a recent NGSQ article by Judy G. Russell, she used records of people working on roads to ascertain when someone died (who had never worked on the roads). Many genealogists would not have thought of using that information as evidence to answer the question "When did Mrs. X die?"

I'm inclined to think that even if the amount of genealogical information is finite, the amount of evidence is not, because it depends on human ingenuity in the use of the information -- much as scientists use ingenuity to design experiments. (Improved indexes can also make information much more available to be used as evidence, as in this example from a few days ago.)

(3) IMO, it's useful to figure out just what constitutes "proof" or "evidence" in different disciplines. I don't think it's useful to fuss about whether one discipline can use the word in a different sense than another discipline, because that's just not going to change. It's not that hard to understand that new evidence can supersede a past proof in genealogy as in science, and that that kind of thing does not happen in mathematics.


(Happy New Year! By Blogger's count, this is MWM blog post #1300.)



Judy G. Russell, “'Don't Stop There!,” National Genealogical Society Quarterly 99(1):37, March 2011.

Harold Henderson, "Is there a finite amount of genealogical evidence?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 1 January 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Evidence is not easy

Historians have issues with evidence evaluation, too. Here's the nautical metaphor that China scholar Jonathan D. Spence used to introduce his collection of Western "sightings" of China over the past 800 years:

We must imagine our pilots and navigators . . . holding rather simple instruments in their hands as they make their sightings. Furthermore, the hands that hold the instruments are often chapped with cold or sleek with sweat. Our guides are standing on sloping decks that shift angle without warning, and are often blinded by a burst of spray or dazzled by an unexpected dart from the previously beclouded sun. (xviii)

His subsequent discussion of the endlessly receding mystery of Marco Polo's account of China forced me to reconsider the idea that historians deal only in generalities and so don't have to worry about particular facts the way genealogists do.



Jonathan D, Spence, The Chan's Great Continent: China in Western Minds (New York: W. W. Knopf, 1999).


Harold Henderson, "Evidence is not easy," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 25 September 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

False Memories

The highly readable neurologist Oliver (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat) Sacks takes his own memories for a subject in a recent New York Review of Books article. He published a vivid personal memory of the London Blitz, and had to take it back when his older brother told him he wasn't there, and showed that his knowledge of it came from a vivid letter written by another brother who was. Yet Sacks's memory of the bomb he never saw felt just as vivid and personal and saturated with detail as his memory of an earlier one that he had witnessed.

Personal knowledge is not necessarily knowledge. Evolution just hasn't equipped us to be cameras who capture an image and retain it intact. That's why family historians are advised to write things down soon after they happen -- put that potentially mutable memory into a fixed form. Your great-grandmother's memory of a 1920 wedding is more valuable in the form of a letter written the day after than in the form of  a beautiful memory recalled 80 years later. Of course the beautiful memory is better than nothing, but it's not necessarily accurate even if she's sure it is. Sacks had absolutely no doubt of his. (I wrote about my own example of a collective family false memory here.)



Oliver Sacks, "Speak, Memory," New York Review of Books, vol. 60, no. 3 (21 February 2013):19-21.


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

We Can All Teach Something . . . Within Reason

When I was a more serious chess player, I often ran into guys (almost always guys) who had learned the game well enough to routinely beat everyone in their extended family, school, or neighborhood. Then they showed up at a regular chess club or rated tournament, and lost every game. At the other end, although I was never in any position to judge, I had it on good authority that there were both "weak grandmasters" and "strong grandmasters." There were just more rungs on the chess ladder than I could have imagined.

Genealogy is similar (although we don't really have a ladder, it's more like a maze). No matter how little we think we know, each of us probably knows plenty to answer some newbie questions. And no matter how much we think we know, there are questions we find it wise to leave to others.

Two things to watch out for, though:

(1) The temptation to give advice that takes the form of "I don't know much about X, but . . . " Make sure that what follows the "but" is actual knowledge.

(2) The temptation to reinvent the wheel, as when we find ourselves about to

* pontificate about citation without mentioning Evidence Explained;

* talk about sources, information, and evidence without knowing that sources are original or derivative, information primary or secondary, and evidence direct or indirect; or

* discuss proof without understanding the five-part Genealogical Proof Standard.

None of these are sacred cows -- they can all be critiqued and improved, or just milked. (And amateurs are free to disregard them altogether, as long as they don't complain when they get no respect.)

But 9999 times out of 10,000, it makes no sense to disregard these tools. We grow as genealogists when we use them to build.

Besides, nobody really enjoys being the neighborhood champion who goes 0 for 4 in the tournament.




Picture cropped from Ed Yourdon's photostream per Creative Commons: 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/3405809406


Harold Henderson, "We Can All Teach Something . . . Within Reason," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 12 November 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Scary Evidence Evaluations I Have Known, Plus an Update

Wording tweaked, thoughts preserved, names omitted to protect the guilty...


More people have posted this than anything else.

Several people entered this, but some of the dates are different.

Go by the earliest census record.


Do you have a favorite?


In less scary news, I have updated my list of the numbers of all the Family History Library microfilms that were on indefinite loan at the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center as of 13 October.



Harold Henderson, "Scary Evidence Evaluations I Have Known," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 31 October 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

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.]

Cite Your Low-Rent Sources!

Sometimes as genealogists we have trouble distinguishing between our grubbies and our Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.

Source citations tell our readers what our evidence is. When the work is finished and meant to prove our conclusion, the sources will usually be original records. But when the research is in progress, our best evidence may not be very good. (And some books and articles may simply be created in order to systematize the pile of records and notes found in grandma's attic, and make them accessible, not to prove anything.) They're really more leads to follow up on.

Failing to distinguish these two uses of citations may be a cause of "source snobbery," a disorder in which genealogists (your blogger included) sometimes refrain from perusing Ancestry trees for fear of polluting our minds or our databases. (Of course taking those trees as gospel is an even more widespread disorder among newbies, but we're not worrying about that here.)

Sometimes we need to be polluted in order to become successful -- much as a cop might need a drunken snitch's whisper to get started on a trail, even though it wouldn't count for anything when the case came to court.

My wife's ultra-mysterious great-great grandmother Jennie (Cochran) Boren was born in North Carolina and died in Pittsburgh, but her maiden name was so common we never had any luck finding her in her parents' household. The break we received was not due to our diligence. Somebody who didn't answer emails posted an unsourced tree of Jennie's family from the North Carolina Cochran side, and from that lead we were able to amass plenty of evidence proving the long-lost connection.

Leads document our chase, and later on higher-quality sources document our case, helping us convince our skeptical peers. Don't confuse the two.


Harold Henderson, "Cite Your Low-Rent Sources!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 11 October 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Evidence in NGS Magazine

My short article on evidence, "Will You Answer When Genealogical Opportunity Knocks?" is in the new (April/May/June 2011) issue of the NGS Magazine. You can read it on line if you're a member. (What? You haven't joined yet?) In brief:

Few of the records we use were created with genealogy in mind. They exist to protect health, record ownership, secure a debt, punish an offender, save a soul, or send young people to war. We are already using the records for other purposes. So why allow them to put their questions, and only their questions, into our minds?

I plugged this magazine before I was in it, and I will continue to do so. It's readable and relevant and facts not common knowledge are specifically cited. More on the rest of this issue in a later post.

Two dozen more reasons to join NGS

The National Genealogical Society's online newsletter on March 25 announced that six more years of the society's flagship publication, the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, have been made available in PDF format to members, now reaching back to 1996. This new set includes the much-sought-after (and I believe out of print in hard copy) September 1999 special issue on evidence.