pre-1700 certificate and findagrave

Question

one of the questions in the self-certificate asks about the reliability of Find-a-Grave as a source.  In the answer there is the assertion, "...gravestone information may have been added long after the person's death."  I think it would be helpful to expand that statement a bit.  Are you implying that information on a gravestone is less reliable than birth, marriage or death certificates, just for a few examples?  If that is your point I'm not sure I agree.  Like I say perhaps expanding on that statement would help me understand your approach to records; specifically in this case why you might have less confidence in the information recorded on a gravestone than other records.

Comments

... btw, I think a focus on issues related to older records is a great idea.  There is a somewhat of what one might call an inverse ratio between the confidence one has in records and the number of descendants a given record affects.  certainly worthy of special attention.

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Perhaps its the extra Biographical information found on Find A Grave that is in question. Not ihe inscriptions themselves, although I found one stone for "Mother" to have been erected by grandchildren. "Mother" was the second wife, step-mother to all the children.

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I can't disagree with what's been said.  But, I do use Find A Grave in my sourcing - - I just work hard that it's not my only source.  I try to verify that all sources are in sync.  And, when I find an error on Find A Grave I reference it within the source material.  For instance, tonight I found an error in the year of birth on a dear great-aunt.  I used the picture on Find A Grave and by enlarging it could easily see my year was correct but I also saw the glare that went across the problem number.  An error that any of us could have made was easily explained.    

Most people do work hard to have what they believe to be correct data on their genealogy pages.  But, as we all know it's the problems that get our attention.  One bad source can convince us everything else on the profile is not to be trusted  And that's not true and not fair.

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Using Find a Grave is fine, but It should not be used as an Exact date or location unless there is another source to verify that information, and even then ues eith caution. It is a source and should be used but if better sources are out there they should be used also. You could lso put a caution statement in the biography section explaining why you used that source to help others understand.

Answer 1

Occassionally a headstone can be off a bit since the dates are given by survivors and if the person had lived to like 90, it's rare that anyone alive knows exact dates relating to that person.

But my understanding is that information can be added to FindAGrave with absolutely zero references and that is where it is unreliable.

Take my ancestor Pieter Quackenbush (he never used that last name) http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=73117082 There is no headstone, no certificate of death, no record of burial, no proof of when he died what so ever, and the dates given are the popular assumed dates. It's not even proven that he's in this cemetery; it is only known that some of the early graves in Albany were moved to this cemetery. None of the other dates are sourced either, just assumed. So using this memorial page as a source perpetuates that the data presented is corroborated somewhere else.

Comments

I personaly know of one person who was listed in the 1930 census with a 1926 birth date and since she had two younger siblings listed there also (one of them was only one year old at that time) and in the 1940 census she had a 1929 birth date listed. The gravestone has the 1929 birth date on it because most of the surviving family was always told that date. You have to be careful and check a few documents to determine what is true. I could relate other stories about different spellings of names and birth locations from my family alone but the point is we should try to prove our statements of "facts" to the best of our abilities. We did the work and it is our name and reputation on the line.

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One hundred years from now someone who does not know the family in my example above will have nothing to go by and may say since the gravestone and the 1940 census match that must be the right date when in fact it is not.

Answer 2

Joseph,

The main point of the quiz question is to help people understand that findagrave entries are user contributed and therefore not as strong as an original source. 

your initial question included: 

Are you implying that information on a gravestone is less reliable than birth, marriage or death certificates, just for a few examples?  If that is your point I'm not sure I agree. 

Gravestone data is also not as strong as data provided at the time of the event recorded. 

Unless it was a copy made much later, a birth certificate is a better source than a gravestone for someone's birth date. Ditto with death certificates (for death date, not birth date). When the stone has a different date, the certificate is a better choice. 

Comments

This issue came up very recently related to the profile of Philip de Lannoy. His descendants created a monument for him that included information that was not supported by records contemporary to his life. While the claim that he was Huguenot was "written in stone," it was not accurate. 

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thank you all for taking the time to expand on the subject.  I certainly agree with the sense of the answers and comments.  And I do know that there is no '100%' source.  I think what i was driving at is that focal effort of the findagrave project is to photograph grave markers.  I was intending to focus on the information gained from that photograph separately from the electronic memorial created.  I certainly agree that the information used to create the electronic memorial even if transcribed directly from the grave marker is subject to the same errors we all make in re-writing given information.  But that grave stone not only documents the inscribed information but the location of the deceased as well.  And given the situation where the inscription on a gravestone conflicts with either birth or death certificate I really would be more comfortable with a third source.  Obviously we often don't have the luxury.  Again, thank you for the opportunity to expand on the reference in the pre-1700 quiz; I have found it insightful to wikitree approach.

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But birth, death, marriage certificates are also not without error - - two examples:  

The doctor who delivered my uncle (at home as it was done in 1910) didn't like the name he was given by Granny Nannie for her new son and so, when he did his part for the birth certificate, he put the name he wanted!  Uncle Tom and his family didn't find this out for several years and, even then, it was hard to get corrected.  The second example is from my husband's grandparents marriage records.  When they married his grandfather was 21 and his grandmother was 13 (yes, my eyebrows are sky-high, too) but the Court Clerk signed the paperwork that he personally knew both and that they were over eighteen!  

Point being - - it should be left up to the person working the profile to determine what is the best set of sources for their work on each specific profile.  We can't sit at the end of some internet connection and say which source is the best or that some sources are never good.  There are NO perfect varieties of sources but part of doing our due deligence is determining what we believe to be the best in each instance.  And, in some of those instances, a Find A Grave can be better than a birth or marriage certificate.  No-one (and I mean no-one) should sit back and automatically say a source is unworthy unless they do the same work the original profiler did.  It's too easy to sit in judgement that some sources are not "good enough".  

I cannot imagine how it would feel if I was one of the DELIGENT people who spend hours traipsing over cemeteries getting data and taking photos and how they would feel after seeing how ALL work by Find A Tree volunteers is denegratedd over and over and over on this site.  

Come one guys, we are better than this continual automatic disparagement of some sites and the work there.

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Elizabeth,

I don't see anyone disparaging or denegrating Find-a-grave, either here in this thread or through the pre-1700 quiz. In fact, I've seen very little of such a thing on wikitree.

(I do see here a lot of disparagement of family trees on Ancestry.com-- and as Gene recently and elsewhere reminded us-- not all user-contributed trees are created equally. I think people are discouraged about Ancestry.com trees because so many of them are unsourced.)

The point of the quiz is to help people distinguish the different types and reliability of sources out there.

Unfortunately, it's been our collective experience here that many people give the same weight to user-contributed information as they do to original source records made at the time of the event. The quiz seeks to help people understand the difference. 

Joseph, you wrote:

"But that grave stone not only documents the inscribed information but the location of the deceased as well." 

That's another thing to be cautious about. The presence of a gravestone or cemetery marker does not ensure that the physical remains of the deceased are at that cemetery. Or even if they are, that the person died in the city/town where the cemetery -- that's another assumption people can make about gravestones.

 

 

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I'm going back to see what I attached this to as my diatribe wasn't re: the 1700 quiz so I think I may have opened up my response box in the wrong question.  Let me investigate but just in case, MEA CULPA, please.  On the 1700 quiz, I enjoyed it but I was surprised it wasn't harder.  But it did do weird things as I was trying to close it as I've noticed described elsewhere.  Off to find my error!  Back in a bit. - - "Betsy"

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Back from my check and I did put my first reply where I'd thought and I'm comfortable with what I wrote in the first reply.

I don't know, Jillaine, but aparently our perceptions are different, then.  Maybe I'm struck by the tone of the many references to these types of sources because I've only been here just over a month.  But, I'm comfortable in saying I'm not imagining it, not with 35 years in process management and policies and procedures.

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Betsy,

It's not the first and won't be the last time my perception has differed from others. ;-)

-- Jillaine

Answer 3

I think there are three kinds of information here

(1) what it says on the stone

(2) anything got from the cemetery records relating to the burial - valuable but rare

(3) anything else added by the contributor.

As regards (1), it's as dubious as all family info.  I've seen mistakes, but I've seen more that are deliberately lying or misleading.

As regards (3), the details might be dubious, but also, the contributor might be talking about a different person.  When you look at the number of trees on Rootsweb and the LDS site where people have claimed the wrong ancestors, you have to be wary.