Anne asks: Just out of curiosity, how many written sources are required to triangulate a given whisp of history? --------- Maybe none. Archaeology provides quite a lot of good evidence for some claims; tax tallies, recordings (for the last century or so), photographs (for the last 150+ years), seals, personal possessions, and possibly other concrete items may corroborate oral statements. If I had found 18th-century gold buttons in the ruins of my ancestor's Quebec farm, I would have been more inclined to believe the family story. Written records made for purposes other than the narrator's claim are good backups to oral histories. Examples are court documents, wills, parish records, military records, medical records, censuses, diaries, letters, and newspapers. Historians do not accept any of these as gospel either--they are EVIDENCE, not PROOF. If documents contradict each other, as they often do, discrepancies may be resolved by recourse to other records, analogy, and just plain logic. Some records are forgeries. Some written accounts are malicious or self-serving. We must evaluate the sources of our evidence. Multiple independent oral statements may tend to confirm certain claims--but note that they must be *independent*, not statements from people who have a vested interest in chiming in on a particular claim or people who all heard it from the same person. The fact that three branches of my family had passed down the "Revolutionary escapee" tale did not corroborate it, as they all had the same (mistaken) source. DNA is a very recent addition to historical evidence. Obviously it is still quite limited, and it can be misused, as some of the people on this list have demonstrated. Historians are obliged to draw conclusions from the evidence they have. Honest ones are obliged to reveal their biases as they do so. Readers are entitled to weigh the opinions against the evidence presented and to draw their own conclusions. Kathleen Much The Book Doctor ______________________________________ To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html