Primary Source vs Secondary Sources
This is in reply to a recent essay on this topic on ancestry.com that I disagree with but not for the reason the author would expect. Yes the difference between the Primary and Secondary is important but not the most important.
Primary sources occurred at the time, at the place, and reported by witnesses involved in the event. Secondary sources are recorded after the fact, after the time at a different place and reported by those who did not personally witness the event. (gossip, hearsay) Primary sources are considered more reliable than secondary.
But there is another problem with ALL sources: reliability of the witness. An unreliable witness doesn't make a primary resource suddenly become a secondary source but may make the primary source questionable. My own mother, who was present at my birth, could not remember the day or time although she remembered the place. And boy did she remember the event. She used to point out the exact third floor window to me every time we walked past Butterworth Hospital. She just had the day wrong.
The Census is a primary source but is dependent on the reliability of the census taker and who he asked. Sometimes when someone is not home, the census taker asked the neighbor. The 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880 US Census taken by four different census takers ten years apart all agreed that my great-great Grandmother Deborah Sullivan had been born in Pennsylvania. But the Family Bible said that she was born in Delaware. Which source is right? The first thing I checked was the publication date of the Bible assuming the information had been recorded after the fact but no, it was published early enough. I even checked the history of the border changes between Pennsylvania and Delaware but that didn't account for the discrepancy. I talked to the owner of the Bible, then 80 years old. She was the daughter of Emma Freeman, Deborah's youngest daughter. Dorothy Farrinton said her mother Emma Freeman said that she had witnessed her mother Deborah Sullivan write in the Bible and it was Deborah's personal family Bible.
Many experts recommend that you determine the reliability of the source and select the best. Many experts would pick the primary over the secondary. But both the census and the Family Bible were primary. Some experts would select the many - four census entries - vs the one - the Family Bible. Some experts would select the Holy Bible as the most reliable. But that doesn't go far enough. Too much time would be spent on what I say is a worthless argument. I simply recorded both pieces of information and documented each source.
I continued my research and eventually, without specifically looking for it, I found a third source, Deborah's baptism record which stated that she was born in Chester town, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Both primary sources had been right. She was born in Delaware county and she was born in Pennsylvania state.
But what about Emma, Deborah's daughter? Emma's daughter Dorothy said that her mother thought it was her duty to care for her father after his wife's death. She sent her fiancée away and settled down to be a spinster. She got very mad when her father remarried and she went right out and married a man five years younger and lied about her age for the rest of her life even to the point of obliterating her birthdate in the Family Bible.
Genealogy is really just the history of a family. And historical research has the same problem with primary and secondary sources, I wrote a history of my high school that was started in 1859 in the grammar school building constructed in 1848. Many sources said that this 1848-building had three stories. One source said it was two stories. I checked the many and discovered they had all relied on the same source, Baxter's History of Grand Rapids, published 1891. So it was really one source vs. one source. Which one was right? I continued to search and eventually found a remembrance written by a Civil War Veteran that mentioned that one day as a child while he was playing near the school, built into the side of a hill, workmen were digging dirt away from the basement so as to have another floor for school rooms. So both sources were right. It had been a two-story schoolhouse with a basement until it became a three-story schoolhouse with no basement.
I like to call this the Perry Mason method of researching. Perry Mason always won his cases because he assumed that the prosecutor was right. But the client told a different version and everyone thought he was lying. So Perry asked himself, what information is missing that would make the client's story truthful yet fit the prosecution's evidence? And Perry just kept looking until Paul Drake found it.
And that is my recommendation. Be Perry Mason. Be Paul Drake. Always keep looking. Write down everything you find exactly as you find it. Put down conflicting information. Don't waste time trying to determine which one is right. Just document. Document. Document.
Mea Culpa Although my web site is new, much of my initial research was 30 years ago and I just assumed that the librarians would never retire or me either. LOL. I just relied on their knowledge of the collection and they could find anything, anywhere, anytime. Now that I'm putting this old information on my web site, I discovered I did not document as well as I should have and the librarians DID retire.
So DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DID.
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