Visit "The Adams of Troy Whitley County Indiana" at
http://home.att.net/~thomas.c.newman/index2.html
Obits, death certificates, biographies, birth certificates even the numbers
on the gravestones should be taken with a grain of salt. I like marriage
records that name the bride and groom's ages and their parents. The young
man may exaggerate a bit but everyone is young and the parents known and
likely to still be alive. After people are dead who can remember their
parents -or how old they were.
I have a grave stone naming a Catherine (sic) Adams (her name was actually
Caroline) "d/o..." and her date of death on her stone was a little off -
she left probate (L.A.) about a month before the date on her stone. Is
nothing sacred?
As to county bios, I know of some folks named Genung. There were three bios
from the same family in the same county and none agreed with the others
including how many children in the family, their names or their two mother's
names. It is driving the researchers nuts. Also one bio is a little more
grandiose that the other two. The biographee had to pay for the bio and may
well have blown his accomplishments up a tad.
On the obits and bios, the information was given verbally and the phonetics
produced some interesting results. There was a Browneller in Richland Co. OH
whose bio claimed b. VA whereas it was obvious from the census and probate
that he was b.PA. I can guess how that error happened.
In my g.grandmother's obit, Sarah (Browneller) Terman, my grandfather Olie
Terman was listed as Olive and his brother Elza was named as Elzie. Their
mother's name was give as "ProwMeller" .
Add gravestone transcriptions to the error creators. My g.grandmother
Adams -according to her gravestone published by the DAR years back, gave her
dying at age 84. She died in childbirth giving birth to twin girls. That
should have caused quite a stir!
Bible records which everyone believes have turned out to be the worst
sources in my research. After having been copied 5 times, it is unlikely
that any accuracy remains -like the children's game of telephone.
But the worst problem that is that people are putting up stones today for
ancestors who died 100 years ago. There is a case where the dates don't
check out against the official NY death certificates instituted about 1883
by law. The stones are new looking. That should be a clue. The person trying
to find when and where the person actually died is spending a fortune and is
trying to locate the stone yard where the stone was cut to find who paid for
it. Hopefully not many of us have to deal with a situation like this.
Though the same sort of thing was recently done two years ago for a related
Levi Adams (1835-1926) who died in NY.
I have finally given up on trying to reconcile records. Henry Snyder died in
Pierceton on 18 June 1866 age 72!
The Bible record says Henry was b.6 Jun 1792 but his gravestone in Summit
calculates to b.1794!
I have become reconciled to the dates on the gravestone being perpetuated
into the 3rd millennium. So to resolve controversy over dates, I have found
that a picture of the stone helps prevent fights among descendants. So the
final arbiter is the stone cutter!
Janet (Terman) Newman
----- Original Message -----
From: Thomas Anderson <tiaki(a)prodigy.net>
To: <INKOSCIU-L(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Friday, December 29, 2000 12:35 PM
Subject: [INKOSCIU] RE: incorrect info. in obits.
I'm sure we have all found errors in obituaries. It is not the newspaper's
fault. Remember they are written by family members and some of the data
refers to something that happened decades prior--such as when they moved
where.
My grandmother's obit. said she was born in Summitville, OH when in fact it
was Summit County. Big difference.
Karen
-----Original Message-----
From: Janet T. Newman [SMTP:janet.t.newman@worldnet.att.net]
Sent: December 29, 2000 6:56 AM
To: INKOSCIU-L(a)rootsweb.com
Subject: Re: [INKOSCIU] David Snyder lived 2 miles nw of LARWILL -not
Warsaw! Daughters of David Snyder and Leah Browneller
<< File: ATT00001.txt; charset = Windows-1252 >>
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