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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2003-09 > 1062429553


From: "Larry Slavens" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Discussion of surname DNA projects not universally welcomed by list...
Date: Mon, 01 Sep 2003 10:24:42 -0500
In-Reply-To: <005301c37045$0f890c40$1a466144@ok.cox.net>


> This is most unfortunate, yes. The ironic thing is that, while many people
> don't trust data found online, because they have heard that data found
> online is riddled with errors, it is a fact that every scrap of genealogy
> data found online has been dervived from offline sources, so how are offline
> sources any more trustworthy?

Exactly. In my case, the "authority" on my family line is a booklet written in
the 1960's and updated about 1970, which in turn is an expansion on a genealogy
written in the 1940's. It's totally unsourced, and has my gggrandfather born in
1818, married in 1829, and a father in 1830. Obviously his birth year is wrong,
and I've found a couple documents that put it at a much more reasonable 1807-8.
Yet there are a few long-time researchers that dismiss all my work because I
make extensive use of the internet and I contradict "the book."

It also makes me wonder if it hasn't affected our Slaven DNA project. Out of a
"clan" that has several hundred living direct male descedants from six sons of
our patriarch (and maybe from a seventh son who disappeared 200 years ago),
only myself and a third cousin have participated in the project-- and the
cousin was tested because our gggrandfather died about the time the youngest
son was born and we wanted to confirm the paternity.

Larry Slavens
Slaven DNA Project

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