Dear Bettijane and all, Thank you, Connie and Norma and Wilma and Verna and others for coming to my defense, but I feel it is appropriate that I should respond in person. I apologize to you, Bettijane, if your impression was that I was putting you down and attacking your genealogical character. For a misunderstanding like this to fester so long before you erupt is sad, and I am sorry that the entire list has now become involved in a no-win situation. I would hate to see anyone unsubscribe to the list because of this. Others have pointed out procedures to follow when attempting to correct public records. I stand by my statement that no reputable genealogist would take it upon himself/herself to change an official document. It may be difficult, but records may be changed. My own brother's birth was recorded in the county where the doctor lived, and not in the county of the birth. My brother didn't know this until he asked for a birth certificate needed to obtain a passport. He succeeded in deleting the birth in one county and adding it to the correct county, but it did take time and effort. We all know there are many mistakes in official records. We should all marvel at how accurate they are and not be critical and dwell on the mistakes. Our goal as gnealogists is complete accuracy, in spite of what official records say, or what your parents may have told you. In many families, over the years, the first-born child, by official records, had less than a nine-month gestation period after the marriage. It was not at all unusual for parents to give their children a different marriage date than the official one. Who was going to go to the court house and check this out? Genealogists use "preponderance of evidence" when dealing with conflicting information. I could almost guarantee, for example, that most of you have at least one female ancestor listed in a Federal Census who did not give her true age to the census taker, when he was there gathering the family information. It has already been pointed out that spelling variations occur within a single official document. We also know that people lied about their ages on marriage applications and on military enlistment papers. Some of the names and dates chiseled in granite grave markers are incorrect. We take note of the fact but we do not try to make changes in the original records. We should try to make public the correct information, but also realize that future researchers may come to different conclusions than we have. For example, the Mendenhall family in America has thousands of descendants, including some in Louisa County. For almost 200 years it was accepted that the progenitor, Thomas Mendenhall, had a wife named Joan Strode and her ancestry was carried back several generations. Within the past year official documents have been found discrediting this and naming Joan Stroud as the wife of this Thomas, with a completely different set of parents. How many of you have sent the results of your family research in to the Louisa County Heritage Center Library? I have usually asked people who come to research in Louisa County to share their information with us in this way, so that everyone does not have to start from square one and repeat the basic research on a particular family. We have been very appreciative of those who have sent such family information, but the majority of you have not done so. A small minority does not believe in sharing--their view is that if anyone wants the information they should do the research themselves. Fortunately that is not the majority view, and we have numerous family histories donated to our library, by those who believe in sharing. Yes, some contain mistakes. All children of a given family may not be listed; dates and places may not match with the dates and places other researchers have for the same family. You check out such discrepancies, as they often open the doors to your brick walls! Let's now end discussions on this subject and concentrate on sharing and cooperating for our mutual benefit. Sorry for this near-duplicate letter that was sent you; the computer lost it and then it surfaced again. From Keith Street Keith/Connie Street ckcasey@netins.net 325 Franklin Ave, Wapello, IA 52653-1515 319-523-8164 -----Original Message----- From: Bettijane Larson <bjlarson@uswest.net> To: IALOUISA-L@rootsweb.com <IALOUISA-L@rootsweb.com> Date: Friday, March 17, 2000 9:07 PM Subject: Re: Shellabarger >Hi: I appreciated your feelings in your letter below. I know you were kind >enough to thank them for their assistance to many on the list, and I >appreciate that, too. I got the same type of disgusting response when I >asked to have a note added to a marriage record of MY Grandparents, using >the correct surname for her. Some records can be as wrong as the people >writing them are only human too. That, Keith told me twicee was wrong to >do, "Because no Genealogist would do that!" Made me feel like I was the >smallest dot at the bottom of the list, after 12 years of research, and I >certainly was disappointed with my treatment. I guess we are to continue to >use false information, even though we know the correct information, and >would like to share it corrected with anyone else in the same lines. An Iowa >Descendant, Bj.