I offer for your convenience a link to Elizabeth Shown Mills' QuickLesson 17: The Evidence Analysis Process Map: https://www.evidenceexplained.com/content/quicklesson-17-evidence-analysis-process-map ESM says: *Primary information*: that is, information based on *firsthand *knowledge. > Primary informants tell us about events or circumstances they were > personally involved in or witnessed. They might provide that information at > or about the time the event occurred or at a later date. A time lapse might > affect the quality of the recollection, but it does not alter the primary > nature of the information. > How does this come into play with Dennis' death certificate? When I get a look at any death certificate or register I always ask who the informant was, and I always try to identify that person. As Adrian said, and as ESM says in the quote above, we need to take into account the time which has passed between the event that was described and the recording date of the document. But - take into account the following scenarios. A) A mother giving the information on the birth of one of her children. B) A child giving the information on the birth of her mother. In Case A, the mother is a first-hand witness to the event and so her information is first-hand knowledge. In case B, the daughter cannot be an eyewitness -- the only information she can give is second-hand knowledge. The most likely scenario for having primary knowledge of someone's birth reported on a death certificate is when the informant is older than the deceased -- the mother, the attending physician (a family doctor might have attended both the birth of a person and their death), or (perhaps) the father. Most of the time the birth information on a death certificate will be secondary -- the informant will be reporting what had been told to them by other family members. Be careful with the 1911 and 1940 Census, where we know the informant. It is tempting to assume that those records are more accurate than the censuses where we don't know who gave the information -- but that doesn't give us a free pass to skip evaluating the information just because we know who gave it. Jan Murphy packrat74@gmail.com On Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 4:05 PM, Adrian Bruce via < family-historian-users@rootsweb.com> wrote: > On 21 December 2015 at 23:44, Mervyn Ashby via < > family-historian-users@rootsweb.com> wrote: > > > I would disagree with the statement that Census documents are primary > > evidence as, with the exception of the U.K. 1901 Census, all you can > > generally see is the is the Enumerators' compilation and interpretation > of > > the individual household schedules, which were the primary sources, but > > which have all been destroyed. > > > > It's a good point, but if we take it to its logical conclusion, we'd > probably need to declare all documents to provide secondary evidence only - > GRO certificates are copies; we never see the certificates at > superintendent registrars - but a photocopy might count; parish registers > are probably written up after the event from the priest's notes; WW1 > Soldiers' Records are compiled by clerks from letters long since lost.... > > And if we do all that, what's the point of a classification that makes 99% > of stuff secondary? As I say, this is just a step along the way to deciding > if it's evidence that we can trust - so we do need to worry about > enumerators' errors, absolutely we do - but we might as well put the > primary / secondary boundary somewhere that obviously distinguishes between > (say) microfilm of the 1881 enumerators' forms and the LDS transcription of > the 1881. > > Adrian > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > FAMILY-HISTORIAN-USERS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' > without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >