I'm so disappointed to read the information recently posted by Traci about the invalidity of the 1881 Edgecombe Co. book, because I had hoped to locate it in a library somewhere, someday... My disappointment stems from information that I found in the Ancestry database that references this book. I found an entry indicating that my ancestors, Elsie Everett and Geraldus/Joseph Buntyn married prior to 1800 and had several children [Elsie Averett m. "Mr." Buntyn, in the database, and a listing of the names of several of their children]. I have found no record of this marriage in the North Carolina marriage bonds index, but family tradition (and all the Buntyn descendants of this couple) indicates that the marriage/relationship did occur/exist. I was very excited to find this information in the database. I understood from the publication information that the book was likely to be a "vanity" book. However, I thought that perhaps further inquiries could garner me the name of the person who wrote the section about the "Averett/Buntyn" family, and possibly a copy of the page from the book. Several months ago, I wrote to Ms. Herrin to ask for more information about this database entry. My email was returned due to an invalid address. I contacted Ancestry, asking the administration to update the email address given for Ms. Herrin to a working one. Several days later, I received a stock reply thanking me for my interest in the Ancestry databases, with no response to my specific request. The contact information for the the database has never been changed. One would think that Ancestry would post additional information in the source section of the database to indicate the position that the Edgecombe local genealogical society takes on the validity of this work, the lack of copies available in any known library, and the fact that Ms. Herrin threw away her copy, which may have been the only copy in existence! Sara L. Buntyn Houston, TX sbuntyn@ev1.net Researching Buntyns everywhere - visit the Buntyn Family Page at http://users.ev1.net/~sbuntyn/gen/buntyn/buntyn.html

Sara, The information that I have seen regarding the individuals that I am researching seems to be correct. However, I think that what Traci has basically said (and I hope that I am not putting words into her mouth that she didn't mean) was that the book does not have scholarly integrity, or in other words, it can't be used as a primary or even secondary source. To me, it is like much of the LDS information. Unless I can confirm it elsewhere, I only use it as a place to look. One of the things that struck me about the Edgecombe County book was this: much of the information involving my individuals were done in Nash County and not Edgecombe County. Harvey Researching the following families: Bottoms/Bottom/Longbottom, Keas, Stribling/Stripling, Chambers, Hodges, Golden, Sweeney, Lovelace, Welch, Pettit, Cagle and others.