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Archiver > LOWER-DELMARVA-ROOTS > 2006-09 > 1157379842


From:
Subject: Re: [LDR] Information or hearsay?
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2006 10:24:02 EDT


In a message dated 9/4/2006 9:00:26 AM Eastern Standard Time,
writes:
> Amen!. Documentation of sources is what separates fact from fiction. I
> would go so far as to say that nothing, other than a question, should be
> posted on any genealogy site unless it is sourced.
>

That'll be the day ... You'll pardon me if I don't wait for this to happen.

Until then, a more modest suggestion might just be to carry out a basic smell
test on apocrypha one finds while sloshing through the uncontrolled swamp of
the Net. Just sending on whatever one finds, if completely unreasonable, just
makes the swamp deeper, when our interest is in draining it.

In the Purnell case, independent of the lack of sources, the obvious problem
is the age of the first Thomas Purnell's wife. As presented, she was almost
40 years younger than her husband and was only 3 when her first child was born.
It doesn't take much just to look at that picture and know something's
wrong. Is it as simple as a typo in her putative age or some more serious factual
defect, or even just (shudder) someone's "guess"? Lacking the sources used,
one's dead in the water, but certainly should not be passing on the descent
tree - without at least pointing the terrible basic discrepancy (and asking if
anyone knows better.) Challenging this stuff is a healthy swamp-draining
action.

Abstractly, while knowing little of the Purnells, I know they're an important
(and extensive) family. Surely better (sourced) work has been done. If
Thomas' wife (or wives) is unknown, so be it. All genealogies find their limits
somewhere.

John Lyon

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