This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list.
Classification: Query
Message Board URL:
http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/XZH.2ACIB/170.209.1.1.1.1
Message Board Post:
I was hoping that someone might read my message who had personally sighted those relevant
wills, parish records, or whatever, and was feeling helpful enough to share more
details.
I still am hoping. I always hope, and sometimes hopes are fulfilled. Sometimes not.
As to 'relying on....', no, I do not see it at all like that. Genealogy never
gets beyond degrees of probability. Even the best data, like parish records or wills can
be falsified or, in good faith, misinterpreted, or be less mutually independent than they
appear. I have come across plenty of wills where you cannot say beyond any peradventure
whether or not the testator is the indivudual you think him (or more rarely her) to be.
Parish records, especially from times and places before both parents (for baptism) were
named, can be even more ambiguous. I do agree with you that there is nothing like a
famous namesake to increase the risk of error. You only need one piece of wishful
thinking on the part of someone flattered by a 'professional' genealogist and
subsequent generations of honorable people who have never themselves had time for
genealogical research will believe in a connection that is incorrect.
However, where data, especially if they come from different documentary sources(which in
the future, may be supported by dna records) point to a certain circumstance, the
probabilities sometimes become sufficiently compelling to enable them to be treated as
though facts. And 99% - maybe 99.5% of the times - they are facts, but you do not know
where are the residual 0.5%. Of course mathmatical probability is notoriously difficult
to quantify precisely because of the nature of the data from which is must be derived.
But even if your confidence comes out at, say, 99.5%, by my reckoning 1 in 200 of your
'facts' will be plain wrong. So I never fully 'rely' in this context and
I never shut off the possibility of being wrong about anything.
Doesn't detract from the compelling nature of the genealogical quest, however!
Best
Charles