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Sources > Secondary Any document written by
a third party or shortly after the decease of the person in question, should
be considered Secondary Evidence. Secondary Evidence is often reliable, but
shouldn't always be assumed correct. This includes such records as
Obituaries, Death Certificates (often reporting the wrong parents of the
deceased, or the wrong birth date or place), Newspaper articles or
biographies (whether written within the lifetime, or after the death of the
person in question).
Census records can often be secondary evidence, since
there is usually no way to know if the data given to the census taker was
given by a family member or a neighbor, or if the data was reported
accurately. (For example, a teenage son may not have known his parents
correct age, or birth place, but guessed them to give to the census taker).
Secondary evidence is often quite accurate, but has a higher error rate than
primary evidence.
Articles / Biographies - Some folks will have
an article or biography written about them during their lifetime for various
reasons. While you can generally expect them to be accurate (assuming the
subject was interviewed), there could be all kinds of inaccuracies included.
If the author did not interview the subject but wrote from his own
knowledge, or from interviews with others (but not the subject) there is all
kinds of room for errors both great and small. We can see in the newspapers
and books of today that mistakes are often made. The same was true "way back
when."
Census Records -
Census records can also be considered primary evidence, however it should be
noted that it is never clear who gave the census taker his
information. Did he interview mom or dad? Then the data ought to be fairly
accurate. What if he interviewed a younger family member who wasn't so
knowledgeable? What if he talked to senile Aunt Betty? What if no one was
home but the hired hand? Those are just a few of the reasons this primary
evidence may in fact only as good as secondary evidence.
Obituaries - Obituaries are normally written by
a close family member of the deceased, and are often written in a hurry, so
therefore any number of mistakes may be present. A child's name or
grandchild's name may be inadvertently (or purposely) omitted. The person's
birth date and parents names may be off (if provided at all). There is also
the fact that although a family member writes it, a newspaper person
re-writes it for publication, thus often allowing more errors to creep
in.
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