My apologies for a belated reply. Peter, I was attempting to respond to your statement that you were struggling to understand 'why post 1837 people would look for baptisms rather than civil birth registrations'. You then gave your method of working. My response to that was not meant as a lecture - far from it - it was meant as an argument. It was an argument for rigour in research (and that goes for any branch of research). This is why, personally, I wouldn't suggest that people, and I have in mind those new to genealogy or family history, go to secondary or tertiary records FIRST when primary sources are easily available on websites. Of the two sources you recommended, the first is a tertiary source and the second is secondary. Both are limited and do not give complete transcriptions. All transcriptions are liable to error because they are carried out by human beings! We're flawed. The further away one is from the original document the more likely any errors are confounded. We've all been down those routes at times and can vouch for that as Denise does in her posting. Why do I look for both birth and baptismal certificates? I want to know as much as I can about my paper-thin ancestors in order to round them out, to begin to see them as 3-dimensional people. I also want confirmation of previously found evidence. Occasionally, doing this adds only confusion. But that I have to regard as par for the course. More often, I gain from seeing both. Thank you, Eric, for your question too. At risk of accusations of delivering another 'lecture' in genealogy, a primary source is defined as the earliest official or first-hand recording of an event. But, and it's a big sad 'but', a primary source may not necessarily be an accurate fact. You give a number of examples of why this happens and you show what can happen. However, it's the best we have and it's that we have to work with. But don't take my word for it. See here: http://genealogyqualitycode.org/primary-and-secondary-sources/ Ancestry gives very useful pages here: http://ancestry.org/primary-secondary-genealogy-sources/ http://www.progenealogists.com/sourcetypes.htm I agree completely with you, Peter, when you talk about using the LDS and FreeBMD websites during a general overview because they both can be excellent finding aids but as the first of the links above points out, 'It is important, therefore, when publishing your Tree or Family History to make quite clear which facts can be supported by PRIMARY sources; which facts are based on good SECONDARY sources; and which are based purely on SUPPOSITION or HEARSAY. It is no crime to include such conjectural material in your tree, but it is misleading and unhelpful not to distinguish between the relative reliability of the data you offer.' So checking post 1837 BMD certificates and pre 1837 church records, which is what your question was about, is very necessary. With luck they can be found on the web in the original so they don't have to be bought. But many people will want to buy because they are creating their own family archives - and I am one of those people. I hope this clarifies why I responded as I did. I was merely presenting another side to your argument - that's all. Ruth

<<snipped>> Of the two sources you recommended, the first is a tertiary source and the second is secondary. <<snipped>> There's actually no such thing as a tertiary source. I know what you're getting at - a copy of a copy of an original, but if we allow tertiary then we should have quaternary, etc., etc. (No, I don't know what the other words would be). The definitions just go for simplicity - there's primary evidence and there's the rest - alias secondary. <<snipped>> a primary source is defined as the earliest official or first-hand recording of an event <<snipped>> Again, if I may tweak that for simplicity - don't worry about whether it's the earliest. If we did, we'd be panicking about which marriage certificate got signed first in the church. Just saying "contemporary" suffices. <<snipped>> a primary source may not necessarily be an accurate fact <<snipped>> Absolutely! If you look at American practice, they've tried to simplify and add rigour (or "rigor") by separating out concepts like the degree of copying from the type of information in the source. See http://www.bcgcertification.org/skillbuilders/skbld085.html taken from Linda Woodward Geiger, "Guidelines for Evaluating Genealogical Resources," OnBoard 14 (May 2008): 14-15. To quote from there: "The process includes identifying three basic elements. "Source type-is it an original or a derivative? "Information type(s)-is each piece primary or secondary? "Evidence type(s)-is each piece direct or indirect?" So copying it, turns it from an original into a derivative. Your "tertiary" source is simply a derivative that gone through 2 copying stages. Note in this classification, it's the INFORMATION that's primary or secondary and there's no such thing as a primary SOURCE or a secondary SOURCE. This gets round the clumsy way in which we say that a burial record in a parish register is primary for burial date but secondary for birth date. Adrian B

I want to thank the recent members for posting sources of research. I myself have gone to great lengths to get the churchbook records. Many of my records come from film from L.D.S. & I copied them....are they considered Original or Secondary? The Marriage record I have of my husbands Grt.Grandfather, came from the Public Record Office, so it would be considered Tertiary as it was copied twice (I also have the churchbook record of this marriage,and they match). Now, I do have my parents 'original' Marriage Certificate from, 1931 Ontario, Canada. This is all signed by witnesses & the Minister, numbered, etc. I consider it the absolute original. Ellen, Ontario.