Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Conflicting evidence

What to do? When you receive information about events,people, or places from various sources and they don't agree?This comes up in genealogy all the time.Sometimes you can gather a variety of evidence and then go with the majority.Some sources carry more weight than others.Some times though you have more than one "expert" or primary source and even they don't agree!With events in a individuals life I just try to record the variations until something,hopefully!,comes along to prove which event is more likely the correct one. With information on places and from different "experts" on events from the past it gets more difficult. I think because you enter more into the realm of opinion and conclusions made from a variety of evidence.Sometimes you have to go with what your best educated guess is and keep a open mind that it may change in the future and that we may never know the answer to some questions!

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