Tag: evidence

52W Mark III – Week 41: Most

Five or six years ago I presented on the topic of “Law and Genealogy” at a continuing professional development conference. In my PowerPoint presentation, I used several examples from my own research to illustrate several of my points. For example, to illustrate one of five parts of the Genealogical Proof Standard, I used an image of the citations I used in support of the date of the birth of my great grandfather, Johannis Albertus van der Fluit (1894-1932).

What struck me at the time was how many sources I had for that one fact – 17 at the time. If memory serves, I think that was one of the reasons I chose this fact to demonstrate the point. Heck, I could have used this image to illustrate the principle of conducting reasonably exhaustive research!

That slide has stuck with me, so with “Most” being the prompt for this week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge, I got to wondering which ancestor in my family tree has the most sources. Not necessarily the best, or most reliable, or bear the most evidentiary weight – just most. Unfortunately, my software won’t provide the kind of statistics I’m looking for, so I manually went through the entries for all my direct ancestors up to and including my great grandparents.

The most heavily sourced of any fact for this set of ancestors is the April 13, 1919 marriage of my mother’s maternal grandparents, Milton Leo Burgess and Hazel Nelson, with 22 unique sources cited.

Not far behind is the list of sources demonstrating the marriage of my father’s maternal grandparents, Adrianus Komen and Elizabeth Bakker. I have cited 19 separate sources for their marriage that occurred on April 7, 1921.

Returning to Hazel Nelson, I also have 20 separate individual sources for her birth, which occurred on December 15, 1899.

However, where I can find the most sources is in the two folders of electronic documents I’ve gathered that are all vying for my attention. There is also a banker’s box of documents that also need to be written up. Unfortunately, I hate preparing source citations as much as I love genealogy!

These sources aren’t going to write themselves up…Where are the genealogy elves when you need them?

52W Mark III – Week 1: Family Lore

Wow, hard to believe I’m leaping into my third year participating in  Amy Johnson Crow’s “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks“!

For decades I’ve been reading the same stories about my great x3 grandparents, Robert Nelson and Elizabeth Joseph. I have written about them before (such as here and here). They were both born in Muff, Donegal, Ireland in 1818, two weeks apart. Robert and Elizabeth married in 1842 and within two years they were living in Scotland, near Glasgow. In 1850 they emigrated to the United States. They both died in Smithfield, Utah in 1902: Robert in February and Elizabeth in May.

The oft-repeated story is that Elizabeth was Jewish. The related story is that Robert and Elizabeth were picnicking on an island, where they were trapped by a storm and had to spend the night. The next morning they returned home in disgrace and because they had spent the night together were forced to marry. Moreover, because Robert was Christian, Elizabeth’s parents disowned her.

Needless to say, I don’t believe a word of it.

Not once in over thirty years have I ever seen a shred of evidence supporting this story or the proposition that Elizabeth was Jewish. The conclusion that she was could not be further from the Genealogical Proof Standard if one tried.

When Elizabeth was born, the Jewish population of the entirety of Ireland was extremely small, and mainly centred in Dublin and Belfast. It had not really been established by the time Elizabeth and Robert left Ireland for Scotland. By the mid-1800s, there were only a couple hundred Jews in the entire country. According to the 1881 census, there were fewer than 400 Jews in all of Ireland. Muff, Donegal is on the northern outskirts of Londonderry, where there was no Jewish community prior to 1893. In 1894, there were only 43 Jews in Londonderry.

It is not entirely impossible that Elizabeth was Jewish, but it is extremely unlikely. Absent any evidence to support the claim, I don’t accept it.

UPDATE: Since going live with this, a reader suggested that a DNA test might help put this story to rest. Great idea, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. This might be an unpopular thing for a genealogist to admit, but I’ve never taken one for a lot of reasons I really don’t feel like explaining right now. However, one of my brothers took a DNA test and he sent me the results. They were everything I expected and, frankly, boring! I took a look at it again, and there is no indication of even a trace amount of Jewish ancestry. To me, this reinforces my disbelief that Elizabeth was Jewish.