Documenting Family Findings Never Accept 3rd Party Stories As Fact - article by Good English Article Sites

Documenting Family Findings: Never Accept 3rd Party Stories As Fact

What do you know about your family? That is not a frivolous question because the genealogist must work from the known to the unknown. Is what you know accurate? Most people would accept your testimony about your parents and brothers and sisters because you were an eyewitness to much of what has happened in their lives. But it is not so clear that your recollections would be enough to document the vital events in your grandparents' lives.

This brings us to an obvious but important rule in genealogy: although all statements must be documented, the greater the separation in time and place between a researcher and an ancestor, the more necessary it is to corroborate personal testimony with information from other sources.

To illustrate this rule, let's assume that your mother claims her maternal great-grandfather and great-grandmother were Josiah Dearborn and Sarah Ann Wells, who were married in Wood County, Texas. You have heard many times the colorful tale behind this marriage. Your great-great-grandfather, the son of a Yankee farmer living in Effingham, New Hampshire, ran off as a young man to the California gold fields in 1849. Later, he moved to Texas, where he practiced law. There he met a beautiful southern belle, Sarah Ann Wells, a young widow. The tale continues that he and Sarah Ann were married in Wood County, Texas. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he was forced to join the Confederate cavalry, but later he deserted to the Union forces. After the war, he returned to Texas to find that his wife had died, leaving their little daughter behind. Met with an inhospitable reception in Texas, he moved with his daughter to Shawnee County, Kansas, where he lived thereafter.

As a family historian, you could have at least two reactions to this story, which has been repeated by four generations. A naive response would be to accept the tale as fact without further checking. The problems with this approach are obvious. Too much time has passed, and too many people have repeated the tale. The chance for error is enormous. The task of the family genealogist is to try to corroborate or disprove the story by research in primary records. You could check a number of statements presented in the story: first, Josiah's involvement in the California gold rush; second, the marriage of Josiah to Sarah Ann in Wood County, Texas; third, Josiah's purported service in both the Confederate and Union armies; and finally, Josiah's later residence in Shawnee County, Kansas.

Published passenger lists, which are available at most genealogical libraries and include the names of ship passengers, do not reveal Josiah's participation in the California gold rush (although many forty-niners do appear on such lists). However, a search of the 1850 United States Census for California does reveal the presence of a J.H. Dearborn of the correct age and birthplace. A search of the 1860 federal census for Wood County, Texas, definitely shows Josiah living there as a lawyer. Correspondence with the Wood County courthouse brings a reply that the marriage to Sarah Ann took place there on January 16,1861.

Similar correspondence with the National Archives in Washington, D.C., not only confirms the story of Josiah's serving on both sides in the war, but also brings to light the existence of a very informative Civil War pension application. The military records consulted at the National Archives confirm Josiah's service as a private in the Tenth Texas Cavalry and also his later service as a lieutenant in the United States Seventh Regiment of Colored Troops.

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