Excuse me for jumping in late here but I just want to add a cent or two to
the discussion. As a matter of background information, Genealogy as a true
discipline has been evolving over the years. For many years genealogy in Virginia
was "done" by oral recitation and there are still those who hang on to the what
has been handed down on their family and is part of its tradition.
The use of "proof" is a reasonably new concept and that too has been
evolving. If your family was from New England you might find a great deal more in the
way of vital records than you find in Virginia.
In the past ten plus years the surge of newbies to the field circulating
information at the breakneck speed has posed some real problems for those who are
considered leaders in the field. In Virginia we had people like George
Harrison Sanford King, Virginia Pope Livingston, and "The Virginia Genealogists" Fred
Dorman who have devoted a lifetime of work elevating the standards in the
field.
It takes a long time for a person to come to the place in the learning curve
where they begin to recognize the value of different documentary evidence and
assign a weight or value to it. It also takes time to understand that some
records can answer one question but not another. And in some instances the lack
of a document where one should be carries a great deal of weight.
What I want to address is the fact that in 2000 as part of the push to stay a
jump ahead of the technology and in an effort to maintain the elevated and
still evolving standards, the Board for Certification published a Genealogical
Standards Manuel that defines these terms in detail and gives examples. This
was the result of  discussion held among a long list of "Genealogical Scholars"
recognized in the field as its leaders.  Books such as Elizabeth Shown Mills'
Evidence Citation and Analysis the Family Historian have been published and
case studies have been presented in The National Genealogical Society Quarterly,
The Virginia Genealogist and other publicationsdesigned to aid the
understanding of these standards. The Quarterly did a special "Evidence" Issue back in
1999.  About two years ago this same "Journal" devoted a whole issue to the
Jefferson-Hemmings debate applying the logic of the "Genealogical Standards" to
the discussion.
[FYI It was Dr. Thomas Jones, who pulled the "Standard" together.]
These publications are not the Holy Writ but in order to "communicate" it is
necessary for a discipline to have its language.
There has to be a way of teaching a student how to evaluate what is before
them. In the current defination a document can be primary for one fact and
derivative for another. Someone mentioned a bible done in five different hands.
That would carry more weight than one with a publication date of say 1940 and
dates recorded in one hand, of events taking place over the span of 150 years. A
Bible record  copied in one hand at a later date is derivative in nature but
copied in different hands at the time of the event by the mother or father or
other witnesses to the event makes it primary as to the date of the child
birth, however it does not answer the question was "Bobs" father, John.
The more generations you get from the original record the more derivative it
becomes. A will signed by the tester is original while the recorded copy
located in the will book is a first generation derivative and a published
transcription is second generation and &c.
Some of the terms in this discussion have different meanings if used in
another field. For example the Preponderance of Evidence was a term that has been
abandoned because of the confusion between its meaning to Genealogists as
opposed to the legal field.
I would encourage those who are interested in this debate to get a copy of
The Genealogical Standards Manuel and "mull it over" as it is based in sound
logic and many years of accumulated experience, and was not the work of anyone
person but of many who lecture and teach on the national level. [You can
order copies from Willow Bend Books or from Ancestry and they are no more than
$25.00] I also recommend the Mills book on Evidence as it has formats specific to
the field of genealogy for citing ones sources. It too is reasonably priced.
And I hope we all agree that preserving our research for others to pick up
where we leave off and carry the pedigree forward or back in time is what it is
all about. Margaret

Margaret R. Amundson, CGsm is a service mark of the Board for Certification
of Genealogists, used under license by Board-certified associates after
periodic proficiency evaluations.




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