Durova wrote:
Suppose for discussion's sake we can fully trust
that the brother-in-law of
Jeane Dixon's nephew has indeed commented upon the matter. Relatives have
been known to get their facts wrong. The more distant, the more likely a
mistake.
Your presumption here is that the information came from "the
brother-in-law of Jeane Dixon's nephew". That may very well have some
weight in evaluating the information on a death certificate. The birth
information in the SSDI could reasonably be from a different source: her
own application for a social security number. Other official sources exist
My own cousins and I debate the spelling of a
grandmother's name. And
certain records are unverifiable because of warehouse fires. In a few
instances I know the later records are wrong because I was present when the
later data was recorded and the person who answered the questions, who was
choked with grief, simply misspoke. Others who were present were jet lagged
from sudden arrangements to attend the funeral and too slow to react.
There's a family member who ought to have a military honor on his burial
marker but doesn't, because of that. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to
correct the omission when the opportunity came.
Spelling gives rise to a broad range of different errors. My own father
misspelled my middle name on my birth record as "Micheal" even though
his own first name was "Michael".
On census records spelling errors abound. When census takers went out
to gather information in a less literate era they were left to their own
devices when they had to record the name of an illiterate, particularly
in the case of an immigrant whose name was in a strange tongue. Priests
who performed marriages often "fixed" names to make them more consistent
with community norms.
Let's go with the secondary sources here. No
disrespect intended.
Leaving data from a secondary source untouched when it is in reasonable
doubt is more obtuse than disrespectful. If we continue in this way we
perpetuate errors, and only add fuel for those who consider Wikipedia
unreliable
One secondary source that uses 1904 for Jeane Dixon's birth is IMDB, but
they err in their link to her husband James Dixon. He was an
acquaintance of Hal Roach, and the Dixons were married in 1939, but the
linked James Dixon was *born* in 1939.
Ec