Mastering Genealogical Proof Study Group 2 Chapter 5 Homework

Reference:
Thomas W. Jones, Mastering Genealogical Proof (Arlington, Virginia: National Genealogical Society, 2013), 6. [Book available from the publisher at 

http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/mastering_genealogical_proof ]

Chapter 5: Genealogical Proof Standard Element 3: Analysis and Correlation

1. The source is a derivative.
2. The informant is believed to be Ida May (née Tucker) (McLain) Leach.
3. The information regarding the birth date is primary information.
4. The source provides direct evidence that he was born on February 4th 1876.
5. This source provides indirect evidence for a divorce prior to March 29th 1878.
6. This source was created as a family record.
7. This source was likely created after 29th September 1893 the date of the last entry more than 23 years after the birth.  It appeared to have been created at a single point in time which must have been after the last event recorded.
8. There are blotches on the page and the pages were loose indicating the record keeper could have shown more care when creating the record but the document is generally legible.
9. There is no way of verifying who wrote the entry and any challenge to what is recorded would have to be verified with other records in order to challenge or correct any erroneous information. This can only be done if reliable official records exist where the informant is unlikely to have lied.
10. The Family Record has nothing which could protect it from bias or fraud and from the copy it is difficult to confirm that the source has not been tampered with although the citation would indicate that there had been no tampering .
11. The informant was a witness but the record was made at a time distant from many of the events so the memory of these distant events may been impaired.
12. Although the informant was a credible witness to all the recorded events we do not know enough of the background with this one document to consider whether she had reasons not to record them accurately. Her memory of the earlier events could be such as to invalidate the record, additional records for birth and marriage dates, independently recorded, would help verify what this document states, and even if not all the events can be verified, confirming any that can could strengthen the case for the others being correct.

2. 

This question requires tabulation of information from 2 census records. The images in the book do not show all the information discussed in the answer as they have been cropped from the original. Therefore I shall leave this question and discuss the correlation of census results in a later post on this blog.

3. 

For both this question on the next we are looking at ways in which we can correlate information items so that we can build our conclusion and identify any conflicts. I wish to look at these in relation to research I would be doing in the UK and think that yet again this would be better dealt with in a separate post.

I hope to get the other blog post completed before we discuss the written conclusion after Easter as I want to highlight some differences in the UK which readers in the US or elsewhere may not have encountered.