Posts in December 19, 2017

It can be tempting to go with that first source or reference to an ancestor. It can be even more tempting to go with that conclusion if a second source agrees. An online tree (or recent book) agrees with what you find printed in an 1895 genealogy that has been digitized. That’s two sources that agree. Oh boy. While they are “sources” since they contain information, they are derivative sources since they have been derived from something else. Derived sources are only as accurate as the information from which they were derived and the thoroughness of the person reaching the conclusion. There’s room for error there. They may not even be two sources–the online tree (or that recent book) could have been derived from the 1895 genealogy. It […]