When is a source not a source?

Question

Recently 2 sources were added to a profile I manage. That should be good.

In this case I knew that there were no surviving birth, or marriage records for the family of the person, because the church burned down in the late 1770s just prior to the family leaving the area. The area was not resettled until the late 1700s. There are no records between the date the family left the town and moved several hundred miles away until 1799, 21 years after the family moved away.  

The source links added are for a record set that started in 1799, not for a particular record. Does adding a source that shows that the profiled person or their family are not included in the record have any value?

Where would that end?

Comments

Re: "Does adding a source that shows that the profiled person or their family are not included in the record have any value?"

Yes - doing so can have value. For example, there have been many individuals for which I am unable to find a death date/source for an individual. For some of these individuals, I've found their spouse listed in a census record listed as widowed. Even though the profiled individual is not included in the record, since the census record provides evidence that the profiled individual may be deceased by a specific enumeration date, I will generally include that census source in the individual's profile and discuss the information in the Bio/Research Notes. Adding that information to the profile may also eventually help the researcher or a future researcher to find more specific death information later.

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Yes, I have used a person's absence on a census record as evidence that they probably died between the last census on which they were enumerated and the next one when they were not listed.

Often when the family lived in the same place for several censuses, not necessarily the exact same house but the same area and other family members are still living together. In the UK 1841 census and Canada 1841 and 1851 censuses people's marital status or position in the family were not recorded, so a wife or husband would not have been described as widowed. The absence of a child on a following census or more than one can also suggest that they may have died, but not always, they could be somewhere else. For example living with another branch of the family, or in some cases I have found apprenticed to someone and living with that family.

However in this case, this family's history is well documented from the time they left where they had lived, to their settlement in a new location and for many years afterward. And the person who added the non sources was aware of that.

Answer 1

A source is where the information is found. If it cannot be found in the source provided then it isn't a source.

Comments

Thanks Leandra, I had already decided to remove the non-source sources.

I had a nightmare vision of someone listing all the record sets that had been searched with no results.

It just made me wonder why a person would have thought of entering the non-source sources at all.

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This is interesting to me because I come from the world of intelligence analysis were evidence of absence (not to be confused with absence of evidence) is routinely accepted and used in formulating conclusions. I have no idea if it's considered accepted practice in genealogy, but given that genealogy is merely a specific form of historical analysis I don't know why it wouldn't be. What the person did here was use what's called a Modus Tollens. Modus Tollens says that if X happened then I would see Y as a result. If I did not see Y, then it is reasonable to infer that X did not happen. To frame it in the way I assume they were using it:

If the family had moved back to the area prior to 1799 (X) then I would find records of them once records resume in 1799 (Y). They are not found in the records from 1799 (Not Y) therefore it is reasonable to conclude that they did not move back to the area before 1799 (Therefore, Not X).

In my line of work, if you're using an evidence of absence to formulate a conclusion, then yes, you better absolutely have a source for why you've determined a key absence exists upon which you're basing a conclusion. Otherwise you're just making stuff up.

I've used Modus Tollens in my own genealogy work several times and I find it valuable. In one case of mine "everyone knows" that Man X was the father of Son Y. Fine, so given that the parish records for that place and time are fully intact, and they show the births of Man X's other children, if Man X is the father of Son Y then his birth should also be found in the records. Yet the records do not show any Son Y being born to Man X for years in either direction. Therefore, it is reasonable to infer that this absence of evidence is in fact evidence they were not father-son. This is all deductive reasoning and deductive reasoning relies on weight of evidence, to include evidence of absence.

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It might be 'reasonable to infer' in intelligence analysis.  But where genealogy is being used, that means people, and people sometimes lie (!). So, just because the father-son relationship was not recorded, doesn't mean it didn't exist.  Maybe there was an affair.  Maybe it was being concealed for another reason.  It could be that the mother did not want it recorded that she had been unfaithful. In genealogy, you can't always say that A + B=C.  There are people involved.

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Or the person could have pasted an old citation that was on their clipboard, not realising that they hadn't copied the correct one for this situation.

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The record sets are correct for the place, and there are 2 sources, so not likely to be a copy paste error.

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A research log includes unsuccessful searches. I document them in research notes. When I return months later, I cannot remember where I looked. It's also helpful for collaboration.

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If there are questions as to what happened and where and no other sources that document the family history, including information about records that have been searched and no results found makes perfect sense and is very useful. And is recommended especially during sourcing events.

In this case there are many records for the family, where they went and when, so including information saying records were searched for a place 300 miles away when it is known that the family no longer lived there doesn't make much sense.

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Hi M,  I try to never remove the work of others on a profile, particularly an open profile.  Someone thought it was important enough to add, so I might add a == Research note ==  or a comment question, but I appreciate all interest in the profiles I manage, and encourage all improvements and additions.

Answer 2

It would be a source. A source to a record set. But if it is being used as a source of fact about the person in which the person doesn't exist in the record set, it would be an invalid or bogus source.

Answer 3

You would start a little ==Research Notes== section in which you would put your notes of the church being burned down etc.  You might like to say that the family does not appear in the 1799 records, because they had moved away.  But you would not put those 'non-source' sources into the notes.

Comments

I might just add the “non-source” in the research note, actually, if I didn’t know where they had gone.

I would also add sources if I stated that a couple had no children.

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The fact that the church and all it's records were burnt were already in Research Notes.

And also sourced from an existing source on the profile.

Answer 4

I will use a source that doesn’t include someone to support an estimated death date, e.g.  “John is believed to have died in 1855.  He appears in the 1850 census (citation) but wife Mary is listed without him in 1860 (citation).” Other than that situation. unless the source is part of a complicated research statement where I want to note all the places searched, I wouldn’t list a source unless it includes the person being profiled.

Comments

Similarly, a will that does not mention a child is an indication that (absent other evidence) the child had probably died before the making of the will.

Answer 5

Did you reach out and ask why they thought it was relevant? What did they say? Possibly it is the narrative that needs to be improved.

Answer 6

Good question. In General I agree with using "negative" sources as strong evidence, until my research either provides a burden of proof that has ruled out all other possibilities, or a record is found. I would use Research Notes as a way to track this.

I have encountered situations where people have been missing on the census and spouse is marked as Widowed. Only to discover later that the "spouse" was actually the other partner, gender incorrectly recorded by the enumerator of the census. Back then women used their husbands first name....Mrs John Doe and the enumerator doesn't record the Mrs. etc.

I have also found "missing" people that were totally passed over in the transcription of the original document. They won't come up in the search engine of the census, you might think they are dead, but if you search page by page you might find them. 

They also seem to "disappear" when their name is recorded/transcribed with such a huge difference in spelling it appears to be a totally different surname, this is the worst one and takes tedious inch by inch searching to rule it out.

They might be visiting a relatives home or even friends, possibly in another country. I have found my relatives visiting in the US, or I find a border crossing/immigration/ships list record to explain things. 

One time I even found a missing relative (for another genealogist) with a death recorded in another Country. I looked there because I discovered they had extended family in that Country. Totally surprised the PM!

That said, the addition of a source that just goes to a record set should have been added into Research Notes with an explanation about what search was done and the results of that search. You are really looking at a source that by the absence of an explanation is relatively useless and should be put in research notes as a follow up or removed possibly. Unless you undertake to verify the result. IMO

 

Comments

The only reason I can think of for adding the sources was to confirm that the church did burn to the ground and that any records that were in the building were destroyed.

That information was already documented by another source.  

The record set is 206 transcribed pages of the post 1799 church records, none of which includes this family as they weren't there. I had already searched that record set hoping to find reference for someone who might have been an in-law and stayed in the area and that person is not in the records either.

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If you have already documented the lost documents another way and there is no way the family would be there... then I would say the 1799 set are not needed to prove anything and could be removed. The only courtesy, if you felt it was something that needed doing, would be to message the person who added the source, thank them and explain why your not keeping it.  You could also put a short note on having searched that set of records and your results in Research Notes so that they don't get added again.