The topics for week
6 of the Genealogy Do-Over were:
1. Evaluating
Evidence
2. Reviewing Online
Education Options
Collecting data, or
"evidence", is easy - I do it all the time, particularly for my
one-name study. A new database is
announced, I visit the site, search for "Parry", and then collect any
results. Sometimes this is only at the
index level as, depending on the format of the database, extraction of any
additional details can be quite time consuming.
And often, because the Parry ONS is a fairly large study, that is as far
as I get. Yes, eventually, when I am
identifying individuals, and tracking the events of their lives, the
expectation is that I will take a closer look at the details and be able to add
the information to a person in a pedigree.
But that does not always happen to start with, and even an index level
of detail can have value for a one-name study, so that's okay. It is still progress on the study.
However, it is
another step to actually evaluate
the evidence found. But this is an
essential step, if we're aiming to produce reliable pedigrees, or life
histories, or even just statistics from the original database. After all, how complete *is* that
database? Are the results really
representative of what I think they are?
Sometimes the need
for evaluation of a source is obvious.
When I first started collecting any references to the Parry surname, I
soon realised that there were certain "well known" Parry families. For example, 'The Parrys of Poston', in
Herefordshire, who are frequently noted because descendants include Blanche
Parry, Chief Gentlewoman to Queen Elizabeth I.
But, when I found the often quoted source, a pedigree for the family in
the "History of Breconshire", warning bells began to ring. It wasn't just the tracing of the tree back
into the 'myths of time', from "Catherine, widow of Thomas Lord
Laci", through "Idio Wyllt, Earl of Desmond", and back to the kings of Ireland, but basic
issues, such as the almost total absence of dates, and even occasionally names,
for some of the more recent individuals in the pedigree.
Clearly there are
questions to be asked about the accuracy and reliability of such a work.
But the necessity
for evaluation of all sources is easy to forget when dealing with some of the
more recent "evidence" we collect.
So we take documents such as census records or birth certificates at
face value. Occasionally, we might
perhaps spot an anomaly that causes us to ponder but, generally, we can be
tempted to think, "it's an official record, it must be
accurate". We can also fall into
the trap of assuming that, just because we can only find one entry for the name
we're looking for, then that *must* be the relevant one. I was amused to see a blog post recently, by
Cherie Tabor Cayemberg, which illustrated exactly this point, as she was
searching for the death date of a relative with what seemed to be a rare
combination of names, but found two possibilities in the same area. How easy it would have been to be misled, if
there had only been one obituary available (Tuesday's Tip - The Case of the Two
Viola Vanias http://haveyouseenmyroots.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/tuesdays-tip-case-of-two-viola-vanias.html
)
These days, it is so
easy to add details to a family tree without going through a process of
evaluation (especially when the tree is on the same site as the databases
themselves, such as on Ancestry, with their "Save to person in your
tree" button). Once entered into a
tree, there's even less chance of a later reader examining why a particular
connection was made, or how strong the evidence was for a stated fact. Good research, that produces results which
can be relied upon, requires a better examination of every source, or piece of
evidence, and a ranking of reliability.
That was something I was aiming at with my Colston Parry pedigree at http://freepages.family.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~parryresearch/colston.htm
, but I still have some way to go to build this process into my practice.
The principles of
evaluating genealogical evidence, usually based on the work of Elizabeth Shown
Mills (see https://www.evidenceexplained.com/content/quicklesson-17-evidence-analysis-process-map
), can be found on many sites. Thomas MacEntee added the relevant
considerations as columns in his Research Log spreadsheet but, for a working
reference sheet, I quite like the way Dawn Kogutkiewicz formatting the items as
questions ( at http://dawninggenealogy.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/genealogy-do-over-week-6.html?spref=fB
). So these are now entered into my
OneNote Research Notebooks, to be referred to whenever I am collecting
data. I have also added a note to
develop some questions for myself, that I can apply to a whole database prior
to even looking at individual entries, as evaluation at that level will be
necessary if I am drawing conclusions based on index level information.
Reviewing Online Education Options
This topic made me
laugh - as, if "doing the Do-Over" wasn't enough of an example of
online education, I don't know what is!
We all need to keep
learning, as Thomas MacEntee says, not just to improve our own research, but to
keep up with new developments and to learn about new areas of research. So, do I need a specific 'education plan, as
he suggests setting? One needs to
remember that those whose livelihood involves genealogical education will keep
on producing 'new' courses, webinars, etc., as long as people keep attending
them. The danger is that there is so
much information 'out there', that we can easily spend all our time trying to
learn everything, and we never actually 'do' anything.
So, no, I am not
going to create a new 'education plan' this week - in a sense, I already have
one, because the goals that I set out initially for this year of my Do-Over,
such as mastering the new techniques and new programs that I am using, involves
a lot of learning. So I shall continue
to focus on the items already specified and trying to ensure that what I learn
actually gets embedded into my practice.
