Dear List- I have followed with interest the ongoing debate about Geri Brennan's postings and the lack of sources. Once, a few years ago, I questioned whether this list was the best place for posting such material and quickly received the first and till now, only, flame I've ever received, including an illiterate message that contained both anti-woman AND racist slurs! And a lot of patronizing messages explaining why I was wrong. I'd like to try again. First, I thoroughly admire and respect the energy and sheer volume Geri produces, bringing together all these disparate threads from a multitude of sources. I can just imagine her sitting at her terminal, surrounded by stacks of histories and genealogies with post-its sticking out of the pages or a mountain of CDs. By now she's made hundreds of postings to the list. And, I know that if one is researching from afar, her contributions are extremely important until you can one day in the future get the time and money to make a research trip. But this is where I become concerned. For those of you Geri helps, you may be putting unattributed material into a database that will take your descendants or other researchers years to unravel down the road. Some preliminary research on my own family was done by a sloppy genealogist (if you could call her that) about 40 years ago. Living in California, she believed that our ancestor from Warren County (then Sussex Co) NJ, had fought in the Revolution and found someone of the right name and age living in Schuylkill County, PA, whom she proposed as our ancestor to the DAR. Lucky for their stringent standards, because they found that veteran's pension application stated he had no children (!) and they rejected her research. Later, she did find our guy but the New Jersey records weren't as easy to research and it took a lot more energy than just checking published sources. With a different ancestor, she claimed he'd fought with a Tennessee regiment in the Civil War. I questioned this and took a lot of time tracing his activities and found that she'd misinterpreted "Penn" for "Tenn" in a photo caption! There were several other claims she made that I'm still trying to either prove or disprove. If you don't really care about the accuracy of those claims, you can just pass them down, unproven, to the next generation. But I happen to believe that the truth is much more interesting. My own interest in this topic is that I've been a research librarian and researcher, now called "information specialist," throughout my career and believe that information without a source is worthless. It is by the source that one identifies and evaluates information. Particularly now with the Internet, one always must ask if something is from a respected source or does it come from a slapdash operation? I certainly don't believe Geri is using bad sources but I do believe that, through no fault of her own, she could miss a peculiar spelling or an offbeat record that the expert for that surname (you) would catch. I still wonder if there isn't a better way of producing this information where sources can be attached. By the way, if you live at a distance from Pennsylvania, please note there is a wonderful web site devoted to Northwestern NJ genealogy that includes many PA records at Jan Reuther's http://raub-and-more.com/ She just posted Warren County marriages, Vol 1, and I noted a number of records for Easton, Mt. Bethel, etc. There is a search engine at the bottom of the home page, but use all your variant spellings when you search. Sincerely, Marilyn ----- Original Message ----- From: "geri brennan" <gerifelker@webtv.net> To: <PANORTHA-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, August 02, 2003 6:53 AM Subject: Re: [PANORTHA-L] Sources > I should not have to explain to anyone but here goes. 1. Did I ever ask > anyone of you for your source? 2. I have been told by more than several > people that Ancestory Com., puts my work on their board and has the > nerve to sell it, now should I put sources up for them too, I think not. > 3. Take Ritter for example, that came from 67 yes I said 67 sources, it > would be more than a chore to list them all. 4. If you make a hit, ask > for the source, but sometimes you have to wait, it may take a day, a > week or longer, when I get back to the source material. I may not use > some stuff for 6 months. 5. I have put many, many, many years gathering > my sources. > > Best Wishes, Geri >