Tag: Genealogical Proof Standard

52W Mark V – Week 11: Martha Burns

Martha Burns (1787-1865)

Continuing in my adventures in brick walls, this week I look at my Great x4 Grandmother, Martha Burns.

Several decades ago, while visiting my Aunt Diana, she told me that she understood that through our Nelson line we had Scottish ancestry and that Robbie Burns was one of our ancestors. I was thrilled, because Burns was one of my favourite poets. So when I learned that I had an ancestor surnamed Burns I was excited, because it meant what my aunt had told me was plausible.

Unfortunately, like many family legends, the story does not hold up to scrutiny.

First of all, none of the Bard of Ayrshire’s children – legitimate and illegitimate – were named Martha. Furthermore, the Nelsons weren’t Scottish. They’re Irish. Martha was born in 1787 in Muff, Donegal, Ireland. As far as I know, Martha never left Ireland, where she may have died in 1865. Martha’s son Robert and his wife Elizabeth left Ireland for Scotland in their mid twenties and remained there for five or six years before emigrating to America. It’s possible that Robert brought his mother to Scotland, but I don’t know why he’d leave her there when he left for the States.

Like my other seventh generation Irish ancestors, I have precious little information about Martha Burns. So like the others, anything I can say about her does not have a great foundation. It is hardly definitive.

For decades, I have seen trees naming a Mary Slaak or Slaught as Martha’s mother. While this person has been persistently named and connected with Martha in many trees I’ve seen over the decades, I’ve never seen any evidence to support it. I’ve seen various fathers attached to Martha, but I don’t recall seeing one that has been consistently named or been attached for very long.

Martha married Samuel Nelson sometime around 1810. The only child that I know of was their son Robert (my Great x3 Grandfather). I have seen the names of other children come and go, but there’s never been much if any evidence to support the connection. Heck, I don’t think I’ve seen much compelling evidence to indicate that Martha was Robert’s mother. Most of the information I have is as far from the Genealogical Proof Standard as you can get.

Martha died on September 25, 1865. Again, I have little reason to believe that’s correct, but it’s the date I’ve seen most consistently set out over the years. Of course, consistency could only mean that the same mistake has been repeated ad nauseum. Is Martha my ancestor? Did she even exist?

All in all, I’d like one less brick in the wall. 🎶

52W Mark III – Week 47: Random Number

This week’s prompt for the 52 Ancestors Challenge is “Random Number”. At present, I now have 5,442 individuals in my primary RootsMagic database, which assigns each person a unique Record Number. That’s 148 more people than there were as of July 8, 2024, when the theme was “Random“. So, using the same method as last time, I generated a random number between 1 and 5,442. The result was 5,419.

There was a 0.018% chance of this coming up.

Shirley Elizabeth Baxter is #5419 in my database. Shirley is my first cousin twice removed. As with the result I obtained last time I did this, Shirley did not have a very long life. She was born October 31, 1933 in Goshen, Utah and died April 25, 1934 – not quite six months old. Thus, it bears repeating what I said in last year’s post:

One might think that this is an unfortunate result, in that there is not much to say about someone who lived such a short life. However, I was quite happy with the result. To me, it’s important to remember those who never really got to live their lives. Not only were their lives dismally short, they’re often forgotten as a result. They might not have been long in this world, but their time on Earth should be noted.

Shirley was born to John Grant Baxter and Sarah Florilla (“Rilla”) Burgess, who married on October 12, 1911 in Nephi, Utah. Rilla was my grandpa Leo Burgess‘s aunt. Shirley was the ninth of ten children and the only one not to survive infancy. Her eldest brother Evan was 22 years old when Shirley was born.

One of the main sources of information I have for Shirley comes from an item in the Salt Lake City Telegram published on April 26, 1934. In fact, the evening edition contained two separate items.

Horace Burgess, who is mentioned in both these items, is the most recent common ancestor that I share with Shirley. He was her grandfather and my great great grandfather.

The other place where I found information about Shirley was Find A Grave. Her entry includes a photo of her headstone.

Since starting this post, I thought I’d see what else I could find about Shirley. After all, one of the elements of the Genealogical Proof Standard is requires reasonably exhaustive research to have been conducted.

At FamilySearch, I found Shirley’s death certificate. Because there are contract restrictions, one cannot print or download the image. However, it corroborates what I already knew about Shirley, including her cause of death. I couldn’t read the physician’s handwriting (how stereotypical!), but I showed it to my sister who is a medical doctor. She confirmed that it says “gastroenteritis”.

Other than discovering her grave is also included at BillionGraves, I have not found anything else about her.

Everyone dies twice. Once when you take your final breath, and then again the last time someone says your name.

Attributed to everyone from the ancient Egyptians to Banksy

I say the name “Shirley Elizabeth Baxter” and she lives on.

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 37: Tombstone

After last week’s inadvertent repeat, I took great care to check before starting this week’s post for the 52 Ancestors Challenge. Why, look at this! The prompt for Week 46 in 2022 was “Tombstones”!

Just because it’s written in stone doesn’t mean it’s correct.

A prime example in my tree is the headstone for my mother’s maternal grandfather, Heronimus Michael Lerner (1895 – 1954), who went by Jerome. However, the headstone on his grave is in memory of “Ronimus Lerner”. It’s clear that there had not been a preceding “Je” that wore away or that had been otherwise removed.

Headstone for Heronimus “Jerome” Lerner, Fox Valley Cemetery, Fox Valley, Saskatchewan

Another example is in the nearby Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Cemetery in Rastadt, Saskatchewan, where a number of my mother’s ancestors and relatives are interred. The marker for my mother’s great aunt, Marianne Roeder, says she died “6/21/29” (June 21, 1929). However, church records show that she died on June 2, 1921 and was buried July on 1, 1921.

Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Cemetery at Rastadt, Saskatchewan, April 1, 1997. 

While there are several other examples in my tree, my wife’s maternal line has a significant number of tombstone typos.

The headstone for my wife’s Gx2 grandmother, Ellen Sophie Butcher Dwyer (1867 – 1952), puts her year of birth as 1866 or 1867, but the record of her marriage puts her year of birth as 1865. The 1921 census puts her birth in 1867. The headstone for Ellen’s grandmother, Agnes Pellow (1794 – 1869) erroneously states that she died in 1879.

Other apparent errors might not actually be so. For example, my wife’s Gx11 grandfather, Thomas Newman. Thomas most likely lived from about 1560 to 1649, dying at age 89. His headstone says that he was was “over eighty years old” at the time of his death. If he died at 80, Thomas would have been 15 years old when his third child, Richard, was born. However, it was more likely that Thomas was age 20 when his first child was born. While it might seem that Thomas’s headstone may have been incorrect, if Thomas died at age 89 then it was correct to say he was over 80 years old at the time of his death.

These examples underscore the importance of at least two of the elements of the Genealogical Proof Standard: the need for reasonably exhaustive research and to resolve any contradictory evidence.