Any source can have information from a variety of informants whose knowledge of that information can vary. A death certificate for an eighty-year old woman may have a son-in-law for the informant. His knowledge of the mother-in-law’s date and place of death may be very accurate (that information would be primary information). His knowledge of his mother-in-law’s parents and date and place of birth would be secondary (he wasn’t there when she was born and may never have met either of her parents).
Always think about each piece of information on a document as having a potential different level of accuracy.
All information is not created equally–not even from the same informant on the same document.
2 Responses
I know some people on findagrave that need to read this! I argued with a lady about the spelling of one of my ancestors’ names and because she had taken the info from the death certificate, she took it as the gospel. She finally gave in when I linked her to her parents with the name spelled correctly.
I was puzzled at the some of the info on my ggrandfather’s death certificate. Until I saw that his grandson gave the info. Not only did he not have any official records on hand, for exact names and dates, he was probably pretty shook up.