I'm sure I have an important match to open up my family tree, but first name is slightly different a
So I have an Evelyn in my family tree that was married in May 1906 at age 24, according to a county record. I found an Elvie, who was born August 1880 according to multiple census years. So the first name is different (but maybe a shortform) and Elive would have been 25, not 24. But maybe the 24 written is just a mistake on a one-line marriage log?
But here's where there are too many matches to ignore...
- Elvie was born in the same subsection of a county in Canada as where Evelyn was born.
- Both have the same parent's first names (no last names on the marriage log to help be sure).
- The father is listed as a farmer in both the census and marriage (though everyone there probably was).
- It was a Baptist marriage, and the census lists the family religion as Baptist.
Should I treat this as a match? Or is it not conclusive enough with that one year discrepancy and not having parent's last names on both records? It feels like too much coincidence, but I don't want to believe in an incorrect ancestry!
Answers
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@ThomasADrake ThomasADrake
Sounds like it could be the same person. Have you been able to find a death record? If you would be okay sharing Evelyn's ID in Family Tree, I could look at her account. Also, sometimes newspapers can help fill in the blanks. What area/areas did she live her life in?
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Have you looked at the actual image for the county marriage record? I've frequently seen 1905 records incorrectly indexed as 1906 because of the similarities between the "5" and "6" in handwriting.
There are a lot of reasons why things don't match up, so you take all the source information that you have, create a Note on how you've interpreted it, and the conclusion (i.e., the birth date) that you come to.
So in this case you would attach the sources that you referred to above, Create a note (maybe titled "BIRTH YEAR") and enter the logic that you've described above. Then just change the conclusion (i.e., the date in the FS record) to what you think it is. In the Reason Box for the change, Enter something like "This birth date seems more reasonable based on the sources and logic identified in the note titled BIRTH YEAR on the person record for XXXXXXX"
You need to explicitly reference the note in the Reason this change is correct box since FS has yet to give us the ability to tag NOTEs to conclusions in the same way that we tag SOURCEs to conclusions.
So now you have change the value to something that YOU think is more correct. But the really important thing is that you have documented WHY you think it is correct. Whether it is "right or wrong" is not so much the issue here as the REASONS that you think your value is correct being documented.
So others will come along and see the conclusion (e.g., the date value) and will think, huh!, I wonder where that came from. They can look at the change history and see you reason for changing it which will lead them to the NOTE that you created that contains that logic of how you have interpreted the sources.
Or someone might come along with a new source that you didn't see and would come to a different and more correct conclusion. After documenting that information they would then change the conclusion that you had put in to what THEY think is correct.
This is all exactly as it SHOULD be! The data gets BETTER over time as more people see it. But the worst thing to do is to NOT provide the reasons (i.e., sources, notes, etc.) that show where your conclusion (e.g., birth date) actually came from. When people start changing conclusions without providing the logic that those conclusions came from, you wind up in "change wars" where everyone wants to set the value to something different but they refuse to show any evidence of why they think it should be that way. This is just plain silly, but happens here all too often.
Even something that your grandmother remembered her sister saying so many years ago is a legitimate SOURCE and suitable for setting a given value in a vital. But if someone finds an actual certificate for the same event that shows different information, it would make sense to change the vital to align with the newly found source.
So don't ever worry about changing a value in the record if you can show a legitimate documented reasons for it (even if it seems to be a very weak reason). That is how you move forward. I have many times used a "before" or "about" date and documented the reason I did that. Then later with that extra information, more exact records might be found! But if it is no more than a wild guess, then DON'T record it.
Just make sure that you first check to see if there has already been other sources, notes, discussions, and change history associated with that conclusion. You may discover from that information that the conclusion you came to was not quite as good as the existing one.
But if the original people who recorded those conclusions provided no reasonable documentation supporting it--then it is fair game to change it with your documented conclusion and step the quality of the value up a notch!
Remember, conclusions without documented evidence is only mythology. Those values may be right, but if nobody can provide any evidence for that, then the values that they've recorded can be LESS than useful.
Hope this gives you some ideas 😉
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Hi Patricia, I sent both urls to you in a message. Thanks for having a look at them!
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Thanks for the info Jeff! And yes, the marriage is definetly 1906, it's written on enough lines to be positive.
I will do the steps you mentioned, but tracking down one more source first. I have a 4th cousin according to 23andMe, that normally I wouldn't find too exciting, but I see she's in that same province as Evelyn/Elvie and her list of family surnames includes both surnames of Elvie's great grandparents, so I might be able to confirm the connection to that line through DNA after I hear back from her!
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Just an update on this... My 4th cousin that I found in 23andMe is in that family tree, so that small % of shared DNA makes this Evelyn/Elvie connection all the more legitimate!
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