There's a saying that has genealogical implications: If your mother says she loves you, check it out. Whenever possible, it's wise to corroborate each major life milestone with three kinds of sources. That's because errors abound.
Sources can be primary or secondary. Primary is a record that originates at the time the event occurs, such as a birth certificate or a draft registration card. Secondary is one created after the event, such as the family Bible or a tombstone.
A death certificate is a primary source for the death date and a secondary source for the names of the decedent's parents. An application for a Social Security card is a primary source about the applicant and a secondary source for the mother's maiden name.
Primary documents are supposed to be more accurate, but both kinds of sources should be viewed cynically. Just because a document is considered an official record doesn't mean that the information is correct.
Death certificates are notoriously unreliable. The informant relies on memory for such things as the names of the decedent's parents. When Jim Murray died, for example, his widow said that her mother-in-law's name was Mary. In reality, her name was Addie. Compounding the mistake, she gave her father-in-law's name as well, not knowing that her husband was the product of a previous union.
It doesn't stop there. The informant for the death certificate is often the person who provides salient details to the funeral home and for the obituary. Anyone who depended only on Jim's death certificate, funeral home records and obituary to prove his parentage would truly be barking up the wrong tree.
A marriage license application is a primary source. It can be among the most useful documents in genealogy because it furnishes the bride's unmarried name and usually the names of her parents. It may also be dead wrong. Applicants may have given erroneous information, say to hide a previous marriage. Or an error could be a matter of semantics.
When Elijah Murray married my grandmother, he gave an incorrect death date for his first wife. Had she died when he said she did, someone else would have borne their six children. He confused the year of her death with the year her father died.
According to the New Jersey Archives' marriage index, John Shelley married Ellen Brogan and Ellen Geoghagan. Which he did. Sort of. Born Ellen Brogan, she was the widow of Patrick Geoghagan. This distinction would be extremely important to the five children Ellen had with Shelley if they tried to trace their roots.
An application for a Social Security card is also considered a primary source, at least for the person who is applying. Unfortunately, not everyone who has applied for a card did so under his birth name. Individuals may have changed their surnames, legally or socially, often to Americanize them. They may also have used the name they went by socially instead of their birth name.
If John Walter Smith Jr. was called Walter to distinguish him from his father, he may have applied under the name Walter Smith. My great-aunt applied as Mae Regina Hampshire. She was born Marian Jane Shelley. The Hampshire handle came with her marriage. She said that she chose to be called Mae when she was a teenager because it sounded sexier than Marian Jane. She spent two years straightening out the mess when it came time to collect her benefits. Until then, not even her children knew that Mae wasn't her legal name.
- Donna Murray Allen welcomes your questions. Write to her c/o Floridian, St. Petersburg Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731, or e-mail her at rootscolumn@yahoo.com. Or visit her Web site: www.rootsdetective.com
