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From: "Sutliff" <>
Subject: Comments on Internet Genealogy Was Re: VAUX
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 22:29:35 GMT
References: <200302110149.h1B1nwmx003058@lists2.rootsweb.com> <002401c2d1d3$4b451b40$66f93644@TARHEEL>


Donna,

Please forgive my using your post for commenting about a number of issues in
play here with this and your other post and those from some others. My
comments are not meant to be disrespectful of you in any measure (as I
understand you were quoting others' work and not your own), but to point to
a few clues as to what to look for when you come across this kind of data on
the internet:

1) Whenever you find an ancestry such as the two below that have given
birthdates to everyone, approximate or otherwise, it is almost certainly
compiled by an amateur who has arbitrarily assigned guesstimated birthdates
which are not based on any form of scholarship. Documentation is everything
in genealogy and without it anything must be considered immediately suspect.

2) Exact death dates have a similar problem. These may be based reliably on
a death in battle or from an Inquisition Post Mortem. However, one wonders
if some of these things are simply pulled out of the air. For example,
Oliver de Vaux shown in both alleged pedigrees below died between April
1238 and March 1241 (Sanders:41).

3) Whenever someone calls a woman "Miss" so and so in a pedigree as someone
did in your other post, this is also usually indicative of an amateur
effort. Scholars generally use N. N. when a name is unknown. This is for
the Latin, Nomen Nescio.

4) Any medieval pedigree which contains individuals with middle names (as
below) is immediately suspect. Middle names are a fairly recent invention.
They were virtually unknown before the Stuarts came to the throne in the
17th century and not used by the masses until a much later date. Medieval
pedigrees containing individuals with middle names are often indicative of
two possibly distinct individuals who have been merged in order to obtain a
desired result. Middle names are in such common use these days, that people
still try to force them on those of us who do not have them and some
incorrectly assume that they have always been used.

5) Applying birth locations to all individuals is also problematic.
Generally it is best to identify someone "of" a location as in the
properties owned by the individual as say "of Pentney, Norfolk as for
Oliver.

6) The same holds true for death locations. It is generally only wise to
list what you have found in documentation, not what is suspected or assumed.

7) Although genealogy can be done on the internet as a hobby, anyone with
any aspirations for creating reliable and scholarly work simply must use
libraries. There is just too much garbage on the internet; most of them are
vanity projects trying to link to famous people in order to validate
themselves or their agenda. Too many contain ancestries of forced answers of
equating two individuals of the same name without foundation. Persons
interested in wanting to know who their families really were rather than who
they want them to be or by simply downloading someone else's rubbish, must
use libraries. There are no shortcuts to the integrity of genealogical
research. The web page FAQ for Gen-Medieval discusses sources and how to use
them.

In no way am I trying to discourage you or anyone else in genealogical
research. My point is trying to educate the lurkers here as to how to
improve the quality of their work and what to realistically expect by posts
to this forum. The experts here can be very demanding and rightfully so. We
are asking them to use their time to look up solutions for our problems and
they have the right to expect some effort from us.

Again my apologies for using your post to make my comments, but just have
seen too many similar posts of late not to speak up and hopefully others
will step forward to help educate us with their thoughts.

Best regards,

Henry Sutliff

P. S. As your other post refers to Alice Freeman Thompson Parke, perchance
if you descend from the Parke family, I would caution you to be careful of
some of the British ancestries published in The Parke Society newsletters as
there are many errors contained therein. I believe there is an effort to
correct some of the past mistakes, but wanted you to know that whole lines
have been dropped in this ancestry if this is yours.



"Donna" <> wrote in message
news:002401c2d1d3$4b451b40$...
> I need help with the Vaux line
> according to http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/9004/Vaux.html
> a.. Harold Vaux (1065- )
> a.. Robert Vaux (1099- )
> a.. William Vaux (1117- )
> a.. Robert Vaux (1140- )
> a.. Oliver Vaux (1170-1244)
> a.. Roger Vaux (1200-1244)
> a.. Nicholas Vaux (1226-1275)
> a.. Robert Vaux (1254-1305)
> a.. Elias Vaux (1284-1330)
> a.. William Vaux (1324-1373)
> a.. William Vaux (1345-1401)
> a.. William Thomas Vaux (1370-1405)
> a.. Eleanor Vaux md Thomas Gifford
>
>
> but according to
>
http://216.239.53.100/search?q=cache:6ltXzhkgbckC:www.stanford.edu/~jerfox/F
> oxTree.pdf+eleanor+vaux+thomas+gifford&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
>
> there are some differences.
> a.. Harold Vaux (1010- )
> a.. Robert Vaux (1030- )
> a.. Robert Vaux (1055- )
> a.. William Vaux (1120- )
> a.. Robert Vaux (1140-)
> a.. Oliver Vaux (1170-)
> a.. Roger Vaux (1230-)
> a.. Elias Vaux (1270-)
> a.. William Vaux (1300-1373)
> a.. William Vaux (1330-)
> a.. William Thomas Vaux (1365-1405)
> a.. Eleanor Vaux (1408-1469) md Thomas Gifford
>
http://www.genealogy.com/users/h/a/l/Scott-P-Hall/FILE/0002text.txt?Welcome=
> 1044970535
> has this same line also except he stops at Robert (de Vallibus/Vaux) he
> doesn't take it up to Harold
>
>


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