Jan I have read Skillbuilding: Perils of Source Snobbery. As far as I can tell Mr Jones has renamed classifications such as Vital, primary and secondary into Preferred and Disclaimed. I also find the term Disdained rather condescending. What he seems to be saying is that every known source should be investigated, evaluated and compared to get to “beyond reasonable” doubt. Every source has errors and omissions so cross checking is mandatory so leave no stone unturned. Unfortunately too many records have been lost and too many believe everything is on Ancestry. This could come from any book/article on family history. The context of his newsletter seems to be Research Planning and what would be classified as hearsay by the judicial system. My experience is that most researchers start, as per the text book, with questions to all known living relatives and find there is some grain of truth in a family legend. My preferred guide to sources is Mark D Herber’s Ancestral Trails, published with the Society of Genealogists. At the end of the day and with the possible exception of DNA testing, standard of proof is a personal thing and you are only fooling yourself. There are family trees “proving” descent from Adam and Eve without the benefit of either registers of BTs. Cheers Paul From: Jan Murphy [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 27 April 2016 04:56 To: Paul Hockie; [email protected] Subject: Re: [DEV] BTs on FamilySearch - a question and a correction Here's the link to the article I mentioned earlier: http://www.bcgcertification.org/skillbuilders/skbld135b.html Skillbuilding: Perils of Source Snobbery >From OnBoard - Newsletter of the BCG Thomas W. Jones, PhD, CG, CGL, “Perils of Source Snobbery,” OnBoard 18 (May 2012). Dr Jones is the author of Mastering Genealogical Proof: http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/mastering_genealogical_proof Cheers, Jan Jan Murphy [email protected] ----Original message---- >From : [email protected] Date : 26/04/2016 - 19:47 (GMTST) To : [email protected] Subject : Re: [DEV] BTs on FamilySearch - a question and a correction Jan, I have not heard of Dr Tom Jones or "source snobbery". There is an accepted hierarchy of quality of genealogical data. Prime or Vital information is data recorded when the event took place. Civil registration and Parish Registers are in this category. The next tier are those transcribed or based on vital information, BTs, Census, Poor law, Military and similar records. Following this we have reported information which can include newspapers, books and even family legends. With regards to BTs, they were a lists of BDMs sent to the bishop once a year just after Easter until 1813 when they changed to the calendar year. There were exemptions, omissions and late submissions and completion may be rushed. There are examples of the transcript correcting an entry but the presumption is that the register is correct and that the BT is a "back-up" copy. I don't think I said "reject BTs out of hand" . What I intended to say was that if only the BT exists, then that is the source we have to use. If the registers exist, then we should obtain a copy and, if they exist, compare with the BTs. If they exists, the Registers are, like civil registration, the "legal" entry. Cheers Paul

Obviously having proof from primary sources with corroborating evidence is the best way, but sometimes in the absence of these you just have to use common sense. I have an example of this, I have a putative ancestor in Littleham, Exmouth in the 1680s and 90s, Richard Long, who had several children baptised there. Thereafter there is a gap in the registers between about 1704 and 1744. When the registers resume there are three burials with names which match those of three sons of Richard Long, so it may be assumed that the family was still there. Then there are families of a John and a William Long baptised, plus William's marriage starting in the 1740s and '50s. So the probability is that John and William were the grandchildren of Richard, though whether brothers or cousins is not provable. Although Long is a common name, I find it difficult to believe that four sons died childless and another family with the same name moved to a village which then had a population of, I beli! eve, about 600. Of course they may have been more distant kin, but the balance of probabilities is that Richard is a common ancestor. Angela in Exmouth ----Original message---- >From : [email protected] Date : 27/04/2016 - 22:42 (GMTDT) To : [email protected] Subject : Re: [DEV] BTs on FamilySearch - a question and a correction Jan I have read Skillbuilding: Perils of Source Snobbery. As far as I can tell Mr Jones has renamed classifications such as Vital, primary and secondary into Preferred and Disclaimed. I also find the term Disdained rather condescending. What he seems to be saying is that every known source should be investigated, evaluated and compared to get to “beyond reasonable” doubt. Every source has errors and omissions so cross checking is mandatory so leave no stone unturned. Unfortunately too many records have been lost and too many believe everything is on Ancestry. This could come from any book/article on family history. The context of his newsletter seems to be Research Planning and what would be classified as hearsay by the judicial system. My experience is that most researchers start, as per the text book, with questions to all known living relatives and find there is some grain of truth in a family legend. My preferred guide to sources is Mark D Herber’s Ancestral Trails, published with the Society of Genealogists. At the end of the day and with the possible exception of DNA testing, standard of proof is a personal thing and you are only fooling yourself. There are family trees “proving” descent from Adam and Eve without the benefit of either registers of BTs. Cheers Paul From: Jan Murphy [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 27 April 2016 04:56 To: Paul Hockie; [email protected] Subject: Re: [DEV] BTs on FamilySearch - a question and a correction Here's the link to the article I mentioned earlier: http://www.bcgcertification.org/skillbuilders/skbld135b.html Skillbuilding: Perils of Source Snobbery >From OnBoard - Newsletter of the BCG Thomas W. Jones, PhD, CG, CGL, “Perils of Source Snobbery,” OnBoard 18 (May 2012). Dr Jones is the author of Mastering Genealogical Proof: http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/mastering_genealogical_proof Cheers, Jan Jan Murphy [email protected] ----Original message---- >From : [email protected] Date : 26/04/2016 - 19:47 (GMTST) To : [email protected] Subject : Re: [DEV] BTs on FamilySearch - a question and a correction Jan, I have not heard of Dr Tom Jones or "source snobbery". There is an accepted hierarchy of quality of genealogical data. Prime or Vital information is data recorded when the event took place. Civil registration and Parish Registers are in this category. The next tier are those transcribed or based on vital information, BTs, Census, Poor law, Military and similar records. Following this we have reported information which can include newspapers, books and even family legends. With regards to BTs, they were a lists of BDMs sent to the bishop once a year just after Easter until 1813 when they changed to the calendar year. There were exemptions, omissions and late submissions and completion may be rushed. There are examples of the transcript correcting an entry but the presumption is that the register is correct and that the BT is a "back-up" copy. I don't think I said "reject BTs out of hand" . What I intended to say was that if only the BT exists, then that is the source we have to use. If the registers exist, then we should obtain a copy and, if they exist, compare with the BTs. If they exists, the Registers are, like civil registration, the "legal" entry. Cheers Paul ------------------------------------------ The DEVON-L mailing list is co-sponsored by GENUKI/Devon http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/DEV/ and the Devon FHS (http://www.devonfhs.org.uk/ ) List archive for Devon can be found at http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/index?list=devon ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Angela, At this time the Devon surname name pool was relatively small and forenames were passed from generation to generation. It is not unusual to find villages with several families with the same surname and with children with the same forenames and roughly the same age. Families also moved around the local villages. This ensured that there was a balance in each village of the able bodied to work and males and females to ensure future generations. My own ancestors moved around the Culm valley and have examples where there are 2 or three branches of the same family with the same names and approximate ages. I also noticed that the LDS catalogue only shows the parish registers as missing but the BTs complete although not yet available as digitised images. Cheers Paul -----Original Message----- From: ANGELA MARKS [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 28 April 2016 10:43 To: Paul Hockie; [email protected] Subject: Re: [DEV] BTs on FamilySearch - a question and a correction Obviously having proof from primary sources with corroborating evidence is the best way, but sometimes in the absence of these you just have to use common sense. I have an example of this, I have a putative ancestor in Littleham, Exmouth in the 1680s and 90s, Richard Long, who had several children baptised there. Thereafter there is a gap in the registers between about 1704 and 1744. When the registers resume there are three burials with names which match those of three sons of Richard Long, so it may be assumed that the family was still there. Then there are families of a John and a William Long baptised, plus William's marriage starting in the 1740s and '50s. So the probability is that John and William were the grandchildren of Richard, though whether brothers or cousins is not provable. Although Long is a common name, I find it difficult to believe that four sons died childless and another family with the same name moved to a village which then had a population of, I beli! eve, about 600. Of course they may have been more distant kin, but the balance of probabilities is that Richard is a common ancestor. Angela in Exmouth ----Original message---- >From : [email protected] Date : 27/04/2016 - 22:42 (GMTDT) To : [email protected] Subject : Re: [DEV] BTs on FamilySearch - a question and a correction Jan I have read Skillbuilding: Perils of Source Snobbery. As far as I can tell Mr Jones has renamed classifications such as Vital, primary and secondary into Preferred and Disclaimed. I also find the term Disdained rather condescending. What he seems to be saying is that every known source should be investigated, evaluated and compared to get to “beyond reasonable” doubt. Every source has errors and omissions so cross checking is mandatory so leave no stone unturned. Unfortunately too many records have been lost and too many believe everything is on Ancestry. This could come from any book/article on family history. The context of his newsletter seems to be Research Planning and what would be classified as hearsay by the judicial system. My experience is that most researchers start, as per the text book, with questions to all known living relatives and find there is some grain of truth in a family legend. My preferred guide to sources is Mark D Herber’s Ancestral Trails, published with the Society of Genealogists. At the end of the day and with the possible exception of DNA testing, standard of proof is a personal thing and you are only fooling yourself. There are family trees “proving” descent from Adam and Eve without the benefit of either registers of BTs. Cheers Paul From: Jan Murphy [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 27 April 2016 04:56 To: Paul Hockie; [email protected] Subject: Re: [DEV] BTs on FamilySearch - a question and a correction Here's the link to the article I mentioned earlier: http://www.bcgcertification.org/skillbuilders/skbld135b.html Skillbuilding: Perils of Source Snobbery >From OnBoard - Newsletter of the BCG Thomas W. Jones, PhD, CG, CGL, “Perils of Source Snobbery,” OnBoard 18 (May 2012). Dr Jones is the author of Mastering Genealogical Proof: http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/mastering_genealogical_proof Cheers, Jan Jan Murphy [email protected] ----Original message---- >From : [email protected] Date : 26/04/2016 - 19:47 (GMTST) To : [email protected] Subject : Re: [DEV] BTs on FamilySearch - a question and a correction Jan, I have not heard of Dr Tom Jones or "source snobbery". There is an accepted hierarchy of quality of genealogical data. Prime or Vital information is data recorded when the event took place. Civil registration and Parish Registers are in this category. The next tier are those transcribed or based on vital information, BTs, Census, Poor law, Military and similar records. Following this we have reported information which can include newspapers, books and even family legends. With regards to BTs, they were a lists of BDMs sent to the bishop once a year just after Easter until 1813 when they changed to the calendar year. There were exemptions, omissions and late submissions and completion may be rushed. There are examples of the transcript correcting an entry but the presumption is that the register is correct and that the BT is a "back-up" copy. I don't think I said "reject BTs out of hand" . What I intended to say was that if only the BT exists, then that is the source we have to use. If the registers exist, then we should obtain a copy and, if they exist, compare with the BTs. If they exists, the Registers are, like civil registration, the "legal" entry. Cheers Paul ------------------------------------------ The DEVON-L mailing list is co-sponsored by GENUKI/Devon http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/DEV/ and the Devon FHS (http://www.devonfhs.org.uk/ ) List archive for Devon can be found at http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/index?list=devon ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message