Just because a date is inscribed in stone does not mean it is necessarily more accurate than any other source containing a different date. Errors can still be made. Stonecutters may be working from handwritten notes that are difficult to read. The informant may have been misinformed. The stone may have been cut and erected decades after the person died. The inscription may be difficult to read. The purchaser of the tombstone is usually responsible for the information it contains. A tombstone is a source like any other.
The genealogist may be frustrated when an obituary indicates someone is survived by “many grandchildren.” But there are reasons why a family may choose to use this phrase instead of listing all the grandchildren (and great-grandchildren) or using a specific number. A family may wish to not name all the grandchildren for reasons of privacy, because publishing the entire list is cost-prohibitive, or because deciding who to count as a grandchildren can (in some families given some personalities) create family discord (should a former step-child of a child be counted or not?). It’s important for genealogists to remember that documents are not created for us. They are created for others, often for non-genealogy purposes, and genealogist use them because they are what we have.
Many genealogists have seen old photographs where one person’s head has been removed. The joke often is that in the “old days” this was how people were unfriended. It’s not quite that simple. There no doubt were times where a person’s image was removed from every picture another person had of them. The removal was symbolic and may have been cathartic as well. But it’s also possible the removal of the person’s face was due to continued affection and not the end of it. The removed photograph may have ended up in a locket instead of a burn pile. Assuming the removed person had a falling out with someone is incorrect. The opposite could have been true. Now if every image of that person has been cut out […]
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