Correcting a known error

[Michael Dietz 0]

I have just come across a family tree with a very obvious error in it. One individual is listed as being born in 1613 which seems correct based upon the birth years of his siblings. He has one son born in 1650. No problem there. But his marriage year is given as 1830. Whoooops!!! Obviously an error, probably a typographical one.

 

My question is a philosophical one. I have two alternatives. I enter him into my database with the marriage year as 1630 thereby correcting the error or I enter him into my database with the marriage year as 1630 and a note or memo stating that the original source had 1830.

 

My question: is it being too nitty gritty to choose the explanation option?

 

Thank you

Mike

[Jim Byram 0]

It's not clear to me that you aren't talking about data for two different individuals who have the same (or a similar) name. You need to be very skeptical of a source with an error of that magnitude.

[Michael Dietz 0]

Jim,

I agree this error really caught my eye. The document I am looking at has the individual listed under his parents, his birth year, his wife's name, his son's name (with birth year), and the marriage year. So I don't think it is a mixture of two individuals, especially because of the span of over 200 years.

 

I can see several explanations for the error. The typographical error of having the 8 instead of a 6 is the most likely. Another would be the marriage year should be 1650, the same as the son's birth year, but that would involve a typo on two digits. And another would be the given wife is not this marriage which would seem reasonable given the span from 1630 to 1650 for the birth of the son. There are no other siblings of the son listed. In that case the marriage year could be for an unknown couple.

 

The name of this individual is John Stapp, not a very common name. His descendants do include Johns but by then (the 1700's) the surname had changed to Stepp.

 

I can enlarge upon your comment about being skeptical by entering the "corrected" marriage year with an associated comment or memo stating the original source had this date. That covers the possible date of the marriage and also indicates there might be some unknown conflict in the data.

 

Thank you for your comment.

Mike

[Michael Hannah 0]

Mike,

 

For these kinds of things I have modified my Source templates to include the Citation Memo [CM] in the Full and Short footnotes. I put the data from the source in the [CD], and put my skeptical comments, usually enclosed in square brackets, in the [CM]. If there are lots of questionable data like this in a source, then I put a skeptical notation in the Source [Comments] field on the Supplemental tab and I include that element in my Bibliography template. In a case like yours, I might also include some comment in the Marriage tag memo.

 

Hope this gives you ideas,