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Sunday, July 23, 2017

Amateurs

The Gorse Fox has spent another day working on the Family Tree and verifying some of the older, dustier information. This has revealed that he had an error and one of the Silver Vixen's nth great grandmothers - Mary Ewings - was in fact the wrong Mary Ewings. Both were in the tree, but he had made the connection wrongly. That is now sorted out.

The other thing he noticed was more clear evidence of the slapdash ways in which people have recorded their data. One example was Richard Ewings. One contributor shows his birth date as 1750... but then supports further information with data from the 1851 census. By then he would be 101. The census record clearly shows the Richard to which they refer as being 79. Dreadful research.

We then look at the twins John and George Hurved. George had a well documented life but the documents researchers propose for John are inconsistent. On examination of the registers, John only survived for two weeks. However, if you believe the researchers he then went on to live a long life after his death.

Another classic is Mary Levermore. She was probably born about 1670. Again one researcher shows her death in 1694... then goes on to record the births of 10 further children subsequent to her death. Don't you just want to hand out some good slaps?

Incidentally the Gorse Fox has not recorded any dates for either of these people. Until he has incontrovertible corroboration it does not get recorded. When it does, then the data sources are provided.

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