PLEASE TAKE A GOOD LOOK SEE IF YOU HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN SOME OF THE NICK NAMES. that were used in OUR Child hood????? HOW true, & that could be a big reason some of them HERITAGE BOOK STORIES do not JIVE . THE below poster is A Stinnett Family Cousin, & a VERY through Researcher. Many of the posters in the HERITAGE BOOKS, Have lived with those OLD Familly Stories for years. CUZ AT CUZ AT, You are SO RIGHT, when it comes to cousins having different information about each other's families. 2nd, 3rd, 4th cousins, etc. all could have different information about the families because birth and death information was usually only written down ONCE (either mama's or grandma's bible) so word of mouth information back during those times usually changed in variation, as often as it was told. As you said, there were so many children with such similar names; brothers and sisters almost always had children named after either mom, dad, grandma, grandpa or some variation thereof. As far as Census Records, it is extremely hard to even TRUST those records. I have found throughout the last 25 years that because people themselves, tend to use variations on their own names through the years; Census records list these variations and then these other family members (so called genealogists) want to take these names as 'Gospel' truth. How many times has Lizzie been shown on a Census record but was truly born Elizabeth, or somewhere during her life she went by Beth, Bettie, Betty or Bessie and one or more of these names show up on 2 or 3 different Census Records. So then people start showing multiple wives for the same husband. The same with Jon, John, Jonathon, and Johnathon; as well as so many other names that have common variations with multiple different spellings. Over the course of 3, 4, or 5 Census counting's people see all these 'different' names and think this family has 15 or 20 different children, or maybe 2, 3 or 4 different spouses and then when someone like me comes along and tries to explain about all these 'variations' because I am one of these researcher's that always looks for these variations in families over the course of 30, 40 or 50 years before I set try to set them in 'stone'; then the other person want's to call ME the lunatic and tell me I'm wrong with my information and that THEY have the right information in their family tree. They couldn't possibly believe that a "Polly Mason" (as an example) could really be Sarah Mason in true life when a Census record has her listed as "Polly Mason". But they didn't bother to take into account part of another family story that talks about her being "Sallie" and another record having her listed as "Sara". They also don't want to realize that Polly and Molly were used as common nicknames for several different common women's names; not just Sarah. You can't just look at 1 or 2 Census records for a family and get a true reflection of he family. Children use different names throughout their lives. Census records contain more nicknames than true given names, than any other genealogical record out there. Whoever is filling out the form at the time, will usually write in whatever the child is currently being called at that particular time in their life. So, don't go 'swearing' by your records unless you know for a fact that they CAN and ARE written in STONE. I have found so many State Records these days, that even list incorrect information; and worse yet, is a lot of the information indexed on Ancestry.com. Tony Myers Lakeland, Florida 813.244.2710 tonymyers.ancestry@gmail.com -----Original Message----- From: stinnett-request@rootsweb.com Sent: Friday, April 05, 2013 3:00 AM To: stinnett@rootsweb.com Subject: STINNETT Digest, Vol 8, Issue 30 Today's Topics: 1. JUST BECAUS IT DOES NOT MATCH YOURS IS NO SIGHN TAT IT IS WRONG. CUZ AT (Atpowelljr@aol.com)