This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: waroper Surnames: Roper Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.roper/1937.6.1.1/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Frank: Your point about the mentioned record is well taken! However, this latter record also rather significantly also seemingly demonstrates the presence in Charles City County, at least in 1744, of at least two different John ROPERs, as well as two different David ROPERs. Although a grave of my ancestor David ROPER (b 13 Nov 1744, d 16 Apr 1808 - Charles City, VA) has not yet been found, this David ROPER's dates of birth and death seems to have come down to us through three different family Bibles. The given date of death is further supported by the probate records and the date of birth is consistent with both ordinary life expectancies as well as the ages and birth years of the children. Thus, the Mar 1744 deed of gift you describe from John and Jean/Jane ROPER to their son David cannot be reconciled with David ROPER's known date of birth. This further exposes the fundamental fallacy of Dave ROPER's "unified field theory" of New Kent and Charles City County ROPERs. Dave has taken some very sparse data for both New Kent and Charles City and begun with the ex ante ASSUMPTION that each mentioned John ROPER is the SAME John ROPER, when the evidence actually tells us OTHERWISE. He has then created several composite ancestors and then further appended WHOLLY INVENTED DATA for which there is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER. Worse, Dave has MIXED the real data with the invented data in a way that makes these impossible to distinguish. It was separately pointed out to me that there IS (supposedly) evidence that Charles ROPER was John ROPER's son. The "evidence" is then shown to be this statement appearing at Dave ROPER's page titled "Earliest Ropers in Burke County Area (Before 1815)": "A David Roper is listed as a son in a 1759 Charles City County, VA will for John Roper (arrived there from overseas in 1690). Also, a David was in this county in 1780, 1782, 1787, 1800 and 1806. A Charles City Co., VA 1763 deed exists between two Davids in Orange County, NC. So it appears that a David Roper, possibly with a son David, moved from Charles City Co., VA to Orange County, and perhaps the younger David moved back to occupy the land in Charles City County. There were several David Ropers in both Charles City Co., VA and Orange Co., NC. It will be difficult to delineate among them." See: http://www.roperld.com/rncbc1g.htm The serious misrepresentations in the quoted paragraph are too few to overlook. First, Dave conflates appearance as an executor with a relationship as a son. I have seen the actual abstract of this record as well as the underlying image of this record and Dave continues to MISREPRESENT what this record actually says to support his specious ascriptions. Second, Dave conflates the appearance of a John ROPER amongst those transported into the Colony with an appearance from overseas. That is simply NOT what it meant to be transported into the Colony. One could qualify for a head right of 50 acres for transporting someone into the Colony of Virginia (or into the Colony of Maryland) from ANY OTHER PLACE, including a competing Colony. This is repeatedly shown in respect of other ROPER and non-ROPER ancestors. For example, Thomas ROPER, of Anne Arundel, Maryland, was used to qualify for headrights in both Virginia and Maryland. The same was true for Edward ROPER. It is CLEAR from the records that the SAME person is being transported. Thomas ROPER was first transported into Virginia and then next transported into Virginia qualifying for 50 acres each time. There is NO EVIDENCE that the John ROPER transported in 1690 was transported to Virginia from ENGLAND, though he very well may have been. Use of this John ROPER to qualify for land is equally consistent with his having been transported to Virginia from Maryland. Third, there is NO EVIDENCE that the John ROPER transported to Virginia in 1690 was the SAME John ROPER shown in the 1744 or 1759 records. In fact, as has been previously discussed in a prior thread, there is more than a little evidence that the John EVANS patent was in an area NOT within modern Charles City County. Fourth, even the statement "A Charles City Co., VA 1763 deed exists between two Davids in Orange County, NC. So it appears that a David Roper, possibly with a son David, moved from Charles City Co., VA to Orange County, and perhaps the younger David moved back to occupy the land in Charles City County," suffers from similar shallow analysis. The indicated deed is NOT shown to involve land in Charles City County. I have discussed this in previous posts. What the evidence shows is an order book in which a deed was ordered to be recorded. This reflects ONLY that the deed was PROVEN in Charles City County. While it is certainly true that land is most often recorded in the county in which the land is located, in the Colonial period going to Court to prove a record was the ONLY means by which the authenticity of a record could be conclusively established without bringing the witnesses some great distance. Thus, if David ROPER was making a conveyance to another David ROPER of land in Orange County, NC, or even Maryland or Pennsylvania, the conveyance could be proven by the appearance of the grantor at County Court in Charles City County OR the appearance of witnesses to the deed before the same court. Moreover, land was NOT the only type of property subject to recording, though it was by far the most common. It was quite common to record deeds of slaves in the Colonial record books. Slaves were quite valuable in those times and quarrels about ownership frequently arose. Recording the conveyance was the most assured way of protecting the ownership interest. I have even seen recorded conveyances of horses recorded in Colonial record books. Dave ERRONEOUSLY assumes that the deed is of LAND and that the land is LOCATED IN CHARLES CITY COUNTY, an assumption not supported by either the evidence or ancient practice. It is admittedly true that the record is also consistent with the conveyance of Charles City County land and this possibility cannot be excluded and might even be the most likely possibility. But it simply doesn't follow from the superficial and cursory description of this transaction by Dave. What Dave has posted in the past and continues to post is superficial and filled with misstatements, misrepresentations and outright invented evidence. There was never any real quality control in respect of Dave's genealogical work, particularly in respect of the so-called ROPER Family History database (GEDCOM) and almost ALL of the asserted ROEPR relationships in South in the Colonial period and even in the early Federal period are and continue to be an unsupported embarrassment. This rubbish has NOT ADVANCED the ROPER family history and instead has been an enormous distraction to honest and serious researchers. Within the paragraph cited by someone as evidence that Charles ROPER is John ROPER's son, only the second to last sentence would seem to be reasonably conclusive "There were several David Ropers in both Charles City Co., VA and Orange Co., NC." However, even the last statement -- "It will be difficult to delineate among them." -- is unhelpful since it seems to discourage real research and analysis. By dismissing serious genealogy as "difficult" Dave continues to encourage others to subscribe to a variety of completely discredited constructions. Difficult problems CAN be solved. But this requires persistence and hard work. Modern quality management teaches us that it is far easier to establish practices and protocols to GUARD AGAINST ERRORS than to CORRECT ERRORS once these have been introduced. Introduction of erroneous or otherwise corrupted data into an otherwise authentic database is the surest way to destroy the value of the database. Dave had NO SAFEGUARDS in place whatsoever to protect the data integrity of his GEDCOM files, but even so many if not most of the most eggregious invented or false data was introduced by Dave himself by his belief that it was OK to simply GUESS AT the missing data and his penchant for simply doing that. While later versions of his file, in some instances, contain the disclaimer that a realtionship was a "guess" the automated data synchronization of a new contributed data file with his existing database sometimes overwrote the comments when the contributor has altered a record more recently than Dave. Generally, the data Dave posts on his various online pages is much better, but even this is of exeptionally uneven quality as you have previously noted yourself and as is shown above in respect of the quoted paragraph. The greater danger of the posted summaries is the frequent omission of the ultimate source of the data as well as second and third generation summarization. For example, in some cases Dave has summarized the summary made by June Roper WALTON in her book, which was itself the summary of an abstracted record. This was done WITHOUT CITING June as the source of the summary. Only rarely was the original underlying source actually consulted. We get Dave's summary of June's summary of a record abstracted by someone else, all with minimal sourcing. This certainly fails to pass even the most basic rudiments of academic integrity. In most cases, the relationships in Dave's database are reasonably accurate in the more modern periods after more detailed Census data became available in 1850. For ANY relationship prior to 1850 reliance on Dave's database or his self-published printed compilations is worse than useless. I will admit to having repeatedly referred to Dave's posted compilations of raw data as a shorthand for identification of particular records. However, in most instances when I have done so, I HAVE already looked at the underlying records, usually more than once. I mostly KNOW which of the records Dave has posted are authentic and when he has republished something that is erroneous or misleading. In years past, I sought to communicate with Dave every time I found a serious error, but I discovered that this was a complete waste of time because Dave had no safeguards in place to prevent the reintroduction of the SAME error into the data. Only a fool or an insane person would continue to work closely with Dave under these circumstances. For this reason, I post data directly to the RootsWeb and occasionally to the Genealogy.com ROPER message boards and ultimately rely upon the public to recognize, appreciate and be readily able to distinguish between conclusions which are supportable and those which are not. Getting the public to recognize and appreciate when someone publishes FALSE DATA about INVENTED ancestors can be somewhat more problematic. For example, the above cited post in which Dave falsely asserts that the records SAY that Charles ROPER is a son of John ROPER is particularly pernicious, since someone has to go and examine the underlying record to know for sure. We all sometimes make mistakes and I have made more than a few. But the single most systemic mistake I have made in respect of ROPER genealogy was in EVER trusting Dave's data files and republishing erronoeus data I received from him. I continue to try to make amends for the damage I may have done in celebrating Dave's data when it should have never been celebrated or republished! Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board. <br>