Sources and Why They Matter

                                                             Yesterday's Sources

    In my ten years as a professional genealogist, working with hundreds of clients and thousands of records, I have learned a lot about judging the quality of a source.Genealogists know that the closer a record is to the event in question, the more likely it is to be accurate. Original documents with primary information are best; sources with secondary information need to be explored further.
    Sometimes you will have several sources that record the same information - but on digging deeper, you might find that the information is in fact, incorrect.

    I have some examples:

1. People lie. All. The. Time. My paternal grandmother, Ruby Chase Reed died in 1962 when I was 8 years old, so I don't remember her very well. My paternal grandfather Maurice L. Reed died in 1970, and I inherited a treasure trove of family history papers, which included Ruby's death certificate. On that certificate, her date of birth was noted as 2/25/1892.

​Check.
   

Florida State Board of Health, death certificate 686-53306 for Ruby Marie Reed (1962), Manatee County, FL.

When I found the marriage record for Maurice Reed and Ruby Chase (1918 in Columbus, Ohio, where Maurice was serving in the army), Ruby's stated that she was 26 years old on February 25, 1918, making her date of birth February 25, 1892. This can be considered as primary information, as Ruby signed the marriage license application.

Check. 

"Ohio County Marriage Records, 1774-1993," Ancestry > Franklin > 1917-1920 > image 393 of 602, Franklin Co. OH marriage license no. 163, Reed-Chase (1918).

Going back further, to the first census that enumerated my grandmother, I found her living with her parents Henry and Ruth Chase in Bear Lake, Manistee County, Michigan. Ruby's birth was noted as Feb. 1892. This is also primary information, because presumably Ruby's parents (who would know) gave that information.

​Check.

1900 U.S. census, Manistee Co. MI, population schedule, Bear Lake, enumeration district (ED) 27, p.2, dwelling/family 83, Henry H. Chase household; citing NARA microfilm T623, roll 698.

HOWEVER, when I looked at Ruby's birth registration on FamilySearch, I discovered that she was actually born on February 25, 1891. As it turns out, her parents had lied about her date of birth, and Ruby spent her entire life thinking she was a year younger than she actually was.

FamilySearch (familysearch.org/search/collection/1923472) > Michigan County Births, 1867-1917 > Calhoun > Births 1887-1895, v.C > image 148 of 259, Calhoun Co. MI, Birth Register 4:202, record 481, Rubie Chase (1891).

You might ask how I'm so sure her parents lied; perhaps it was just a transcription error on the 1900 census. The fact is, Ruby's parents Henry Chase and Ruth Strunk were married in December 1890 - just 3 months before her birth.

FamilySearch (familysearch/search/collection/1810350) > Michigan County Marriages, 1820-1940 > Calhoun > Marriages, 1887-1899, v.4 > image 92 of 359, record 1266, Chase-Strunck (1890).

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2. Just Because Somebody Says So Doesn't Make It True
In the original papers I got from my grandfather was a fascinating account of the lives of his maternal great-grandparents, John Beem and Betsy Webb. What I had was a typewritten transcript of an article that was published in the Reading (MI) Hustler in the 1940s, written by John and Betsy's granddaughter, Ada Beem Fitzsimmons.

Over the years I've looked at a number of documents concerning this couple, including land transactions in New York and Michigan, and probate records for both John and Betsy. I have the privilege of owning Betsy's bible, handed down through generations. In it she wrote her name: Betsy Webb.

The Holy Bible, Containing The Old Testament and The New (Philadelphia, PA: H. Adams, 1828), originally owned by Betsy (Webb) Beem, now owned by Claudia Breland.

I've stood at their gravesites in Hillsdale, Michigan

Betsey and John Beem gravestones, Berg Cemetery, Camden Township, Hillsdale County, Michigan; personal visit, September 2015.

In 40-plus years of research, I have never seen their names recorded as "John Reed Beem" or "Elizabeth Webb". However, there are over 160 family trees on Ancestry that has them by these names.

No matter how many times this is repeated on the internet, it's simply not true.

3. Dig Deep to Find the Original Source

     I've written in this blog many times about my frustrating search to find my Grandma Ruby's Civil War grandfather, Mr. Prosser. What I had to start with was admittedly not much - a scribbled family tree, and the obituary for Ruby's mother, Ruth Chase, that stated she was born as Ruth Prosser in Hillsdale, Michigan in 1860.
    At least 10 years ago I was looking at the page for Hillsdale County, Michigan on US GenWeb, and saw that they had a transcribed list of all the Civil War soldiers who enlisted from Hillsdale County. I looked through it, and the only Prosser listed was Lewis Prosser, age 17, who was in the 2nd Michigan Cavalry, Co. G. Well, that couldn't be my great-great grandfather, because he would have been in his mid-forties. I kept searching.(And I've been kicking myself for the last 3 years....)
    DNA came along, and I found a 2nd cousin with the surname Prosser, and asked him to take a DNA test. His Ancestry DNA results led me to a certain Lewis Prosser, who had a wife and children in La Porte County, Indiana. When I realized that he might be the answer to my brick wall, At that point, it didn't matter what the transcribed (possibly incorrect?) info was about the Lewis Prosser in the 2nd MI Cavalry, I knew I had to get his military records, held at the National Archives in Washington, DC. When I received them, I had my answer - Lewis Prosser was 44 years old, born in Oneida County, New York.
    After I discovered this, the next time I was visiting the Archives of Michigan in Lansing, I took a look at the original book that the online listing on US GenWeb came from:

Michigan, Adjutant General's Office, Record of Service of Michigan Volunteers in the Civil War, 1861-1865 (Kalamazoo, MI: Ithling & Everard, 1905?), 2nd MI Cavalry, p.125.

When I pointed this out to Kris Rzepczynski, the state archivist, he said, "Well, let's look at the original; it's on microfilm. And thus I got to look at the original, hand-written register, recorded at the time of the event, of the roster of Company G, 2nd Michigan Cavalry.

According to the original hand-written register, Lewis Prosser, age 44, from Hillsdale County enlisted at Detroit on Sept. 14, 1862.

Imagine. If I had tracked down the original record when I first saw that listing on US GenWeb, I would have saved myself ten years of frustration.

​

                                                             Today's Sources

    When the internet became popular it became apparent that anyone could publish just about anything online. You can find out how to make a carrot cake, how to learn watercolor painting, and how to pick plants for your yard based on your location. You can also find websites (and groups) that assert the Holocaust didn't happen, the earth is flat, and that the astronauts of Apollo 11 never landed on the moon.
    In today's political climate, it's more important than ever before that we depend on news sources that are trustworthy. I did not realize that I was depending on sources that were less than truthful - because they were telling me what I wanted to hear - until I saw this media bias chart:

www.adfontesmedia.com"Media Bias Chart, 6.0," AdFontes Media (http://www.adfontesmedia.com: accessed 20 October 2020). Used with permission.

This chart is fascinating - it rates news sources and places them in a continuum, from far right to far left, fact-based to extremely biased. Once I saw this chart, I started concentrating my news sources at the top center, within the blue dotted line, as being the most reliable, fact-based and the least biased: Washington Post, the New York Times, Associated Press, NPR, PBS, and the Wall Street Journal. With most of these, I can "like" their pages on Facebook, and at least see the headlines. I have subscribed to the Washington Post (having overheard a well-known and well-respected genealogist rave about it), and will probably subscribe to the Atlantic.

The news sources at the bottom of the chart are "selective or incomplete story, unfair persuasion," and "propaganda: contains misleading information". This includes titles such as Occupy Democrats, Palmer Report, Daily Kos (from the far left), and Daily Wire, NewsPunch and Fox News (on the far right).

    Another good source to check your sources is a website called Media Bias Fact Check. This website rates over 3000 news websites for accuracy and bias. Recently, a story made the rounds online about thousands of ballots being found in a dumpster in Petaluma, California. One of the news sources is USAReally, with the headline "Landfill workers in California hide tens of thousands of discarded ballots":

However, a quick check on Media Bias Fact Check shows that this is a questionable source, and ORIGINATED IN RUSSIA.

A check of USA Today (a much more reliable news source) will reveal that these were actually envelopes from the 2018 elections.

My point (in one of my longest blog posts in the last 9 years) is that whether you're interested in the past or the present, it's vitally important to use the best sources you can.

​Facts matter. Sources matter. Truth matters.