Good day, A contact of mine has been using Gary Boyd ROBERTS' The Descents of 600 Immigrants to the American Colonies or the United States as a reference. Does anyone on this list have knowledge of this work and a view as to its accuracy? regards Chris
In message of 24 Apr, "Chris" <chris@masquerade.demon.co.uk> wrote: > Good day, > > A contact of mine has been using Gary Boyd ROBERTS' The > Descents of 600 Immigrants to the American Colonies or the > United States as a reference. Does anyone on this list > have knowledge of this work and a view as to its accuracy? The simple way of doing this is to see how he provides his references. If he provides no references, then forget it. Though he may, like Burke, be a useful resource to give you names to look up elsewhere to see what can actually be found about them. If he provides a jumble of assorted references at the end of each person of pedigree of persons, then he is just trying to blind you with science. If he provides you with a footnoted reference for each fact about a person, then he is trying hard and you know exactly where to go to check up on what it said and to see if it agrees with his presented facts. If the footnotes are to other books, then not so good as you may have to go to those books to find out how to check on or extend his reported facts. If his footnotes are to books of abstracts or transcripts of original documents, then it is pretty good but you may have to ask yourself how well the author of those books made the abstracts or the transcripts. If his footnotes refer to publicly available documents of the time of the people concerned, then bingo! He is really trying to ensure that his material is factual. But it may still be worth while having a look at one or two of these that you can access to see if he has read them carefully enough. Obviously these criteria may need a little re-working - they are just off the top of my head! -- Tim Powys-Lybbe tim@powys.org For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org