I am not an active person on this group but do read what is written with interest. Concerning primary and secondary evidence, I must disagree with Margaret. Primary basically means something recorded at the time it happened. It does not mean something that you can touch but often you can touch those records. Now lets look at what have been suggested. Birth certificate. That is most likely a strong primary document. It was recorded at the time of birth unless the doctor failed to do it until later which did happen! However death certificates can only be called primary for the date of death as signed by the attending physician. As far as birthdates, name of parents, etc. it is only as good as the person who gave the information. I have found huge errors when looking at death certificates. They are basically a clue as to anything other than the actual death date and reason. Bible records. These can definitely be primary if written by the person at the time of an event. But look carefully at the handwritings. You will often see that information is filled in about two or three generations back and we know that the writer was not present at the birth of their grandfather! They just got the past ancestors in their new bible before adding their own information. Although they can be correct, they also can be VERY WRONG. Some were filled in at the time they received the bible and it is possible they copied from their older sibling's bible or parents' bible. But we have no way to know. Again these are clues if all written by the same hand writing. And on the other side of the coin, you will find someone who went back and filled in things in a family Bible much later. Someone of our parent's generation wanting to *catch up in the Bible*. I have seen Bible records that list the death of a person before a will was written! Or one child's birth before another when other proofs show otherwise. Tombstones. We know that many tombstones have been placed long after the death of the person. The kind relative who placed it used dates that were given to them. My father's first cousin placed a stone for her grandmother who died long before she was born. Guess what, she used the wrong name!! Why she did this is beyond me! But it is wrong! She just decided that Anne Sue was named Anne Susan for her mother. No where from the birth, death, marriage records, court and land records do we ever see her as Susan. So what happens when a person sees this and does not have the information I have? Marriage records recorded from the courthouse will have pretty accurate information but wrong spellings of names. My great grandmother was Elizabeth Muller and the "u" has the umlaut over it. The person who recorded it wrote Miller. So you have to look for EVERYTHING. However if you have the actual marriage license, that is a primary document. So in trying to identify if a record is primary or secondary, you must consider the record itself, when it was written and by whom and hope for the best. Gale

Gail is exactly correct. Do follow her advice and Pauls... I should keep my own council...love you all..oh, yes......I can, however, touch original documents. margaret