On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 12:24 PM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
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
Not a presumption but a direct reference to the opening thread post. No
secondary
source and no other primary confirms his assertion, according to
the opening post. That's subnotable.
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".
I may be the only person alive who knows the original spelling of my
father's
middle name (hint: if you started kindergarten in 1945 it was
slightly uncool to have a name that was recognizably German).
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.
But does any census record, ever, give the 1904 birthdate? Has any
secondary
source determined it was worth repeating? That would change the
discussion substantially. What we're discussing is near unanimity. A
single primary source from the close of her life and a putative distant
relative are all that contest it. A fourteen year gap would be substantial;
[[WP:UNDUE]] that isn't enough to merit coverage. Plenty of reliable small
presses would run the story if the nephew's brother-in-law cares enough and
has a good case to make for it.
--
http://durova.blogspot.com/