Sureties in Tricky Conditions

[LynnMcL 0]

I would like suggestions on good ways to use surety codes in certain conditions, that are really pretty common:

1) I know for sure that a wife's first name is Mary, and I have less conclusive evidence that her last name is Whatever. I'd like to be able to give the first name a 3 and the last name a 1 or 2.

2) I know that John is my ancestor and I think maybe David is his father. I know for sure that David had a son named John, but I don't know if it is the same John.

[Terry Reigel 0]

First off, I'd suggest not getting too hung up on sureties. They are strictly for your own use, since there is no practical way of conveying them to your readers. Further, they are very subjective, so there can be no clear standards.

 

Next, I'd note that sureties are to describe how reliable you think a given source you are citing is in supporting what you have entered in that tag. They have nothing to do directly with the accuracy of the information itself.

 

So, in the first case, in which you are adding a citation to the Name tag, and your source says her name was Mary Smith, how reliable do you think that source is? Note that the question is not "Is the source actually correct?" but rather is how trustworthy should we think it is. Was the record made contemporaneously, or later? Are you looking at the original record, or a transcription, or even a transcription of a transcription, or worse? Was the original clear or subject to misreading? Did the original recorder have reason to have accurate knowledge? Did the original recorder have reason to record it accurately? If transcribed, was the transcriber generally accurate, and did he or she have reason to make an accurate copy? Does the source provide clear evidence for your conclusion or only indirect evidence (probably applies more to other tags than name tags)?

 

Notice that the question of agreement with other sources, or with what you already know, is not one of the criteria. You can have two apparently equally reliable sources that give conflicting information, so one is clearly wrong. But if they are equally reliable in your judgment they get the same surety.

 

On the second question, there are really two issues - the surety on citations to the name tag, and the surety on citations to the relationship tag. I think you are focusing on the latter in your question. Did your source provide any evidence that this John was the son of David? If not, you can't even cite it in the relationship tag, let alone assign a surety.

[elevator 0]

I disagree with Terry here. I think sureties is an important part of citing sources for your data. I know of several professional genealogist who consider sureties absolutely essential. The most important part, of course, is first to cite at least one source for every piece of information in your data set. Secondly, it is important to convey how confident you were in those sources or the type of source you cited. I have seen the following five-level surety scheme used:

- : data disproven

0 : guesswork

1 : low quality secondary source (for example a casual conversation with a family member)

2 : high quality secondary source (for example work of a professional genealogist or genealogy books written by professionals)

3 : low quality primary source (for example a digital transcription directly from a primary source)

4 : high quality primary source (the actual primary record in hand, preferably photographed and available for future consultation)

 

TMG only allow for 4 surety levels, so I combine both low- and high quality primary sources into one category; "primary sources" that I give a surety of 3.

 

It is true that sureties can to be somewhat subjective and arbitrary, but they can still portray vital information about how comfortable you are about the data in your data set. For example, it is especially important to note when a particular source has been disproven or when a particular set of data is the result of guesswork on your part. I know a lot of people remove sources that have been disproven from their project, but I think it is important to cite every source relevant to your project (disproven or not - especially when disproven sources are primary) and then indicate, using sureties, to what extent the data can be trusted. If we follow this scheme thit means that in a TMG project it is only sureties 1 and 2 that are subjective, sureties -, 0 and 3 all have well-defined rules for their use.

 

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Now back to your question regarding the name. I solve your problem in one of two ways. If the spelling of any part of the name is different from the name I have listed as primary, I make a new Name-Var tag and cite the source there (with sureties). If the name matches the spelling of a name already associated with the person, I cite the source with that name but make a note in the notes box of the particular source citation indicating that the source does not list a last name, or that the last name is known with lesser confidence than the first name.

 

In regards to the second question; I would give that parent-child link a surety of 0, because it is just guesswork from your side. Unless you have an actual source to cite (except yourself), then it seems wrong to me to use any other surety level.

 

Ken.

 

I would like suggestions on good ways to use surety codes in certain conditions, that are really pretty common:

1) I know for sure that a wife's first name is Mary, and I have less conclusive evidence that her last name is Whatever. I'd like to be able to give the first name a 3 and the last name a 1 or 2.

2) I know that John is my ancestor and I think maybe David is his father. I know for sure that David had a son named John, but I don't know if it is the same John.