Family talk:Isaac Newton and Grace Garfield (2)

Process [17 June 2011]

Jrich,

What you requested at the Watercooler is that I show enough sources so that other readers could reconstruct my trail. I have attempted to do so - doubtless not to your satisfaction. However it seems that one result of my including sources is that it gives you an opportunity to attack them. Personally I believe greater progress might result if you expended more energy on contributing from your own sources.

I submit that here again you have added a note that misrepresents the source [S1] by applying a modern reductionist standard of interpretation to the author's courtly Victorian rhetoric. I think it is safe to assume that if she saw no merit in something she would not have bothered to include it in her rather monumental book (no word processors a century ago). The fact that she carefully qualifies the statement "I saw the statement as though written by John Ward Dean" with "as though" probably means she did not see the original but a copy or that if it was the original it was not notarized. I do not know who was John Ward Dean, but she obviously thought his statement had merit or she would have ignored it. Do you have access to better sources now than she had a century or more ago?

In this specific instance I thought it was more plausible to link these two Persons than to add a duplicate wife (and redundantly name her parents). If you would prefer that I add duplicate pages whenever there might be conflicting reconstructions I could do that. However in this case I am aware of no conflicting reconstruction. Or perhaps I should only duplicate pages to avoid your particular turf? Or would duplicate pages provide you with other grounds for challenging my contributions?

For my part I find this author's carefully qualified conclusions far more persuasive than your multiple attempts to discredit and distort what she wrote. You could be more persuasive by fairly and accurately capturing the various viewpoints and uncertainties rather than single-mindedly attacking every statement that does not meet your personal standard of "proof". Having studied formal logic I can tell you that nothing I have yet seen on this wiki could be claimed to "prove" anything, since any formal "proof" must begin by unambiguously stating its assumptions. Outside formal logic there is no such thing as "proof". I reiterate my statement elsewhere that ultimately substance will always take precedence over form.

If you demand to be the final arbiter of the accuracy and sufficiency of every purported fact or proposed conclusion then this will remain a modest wiki, limited to those willing to go along with your particular assumptions and rules of inference. I know that your litigious approach has already driven others from this wiki and I am beginning to understand why.

Since I seem to be having a more productive collaboration with other contributors on some other areas of this wiki I intend to persevere for now.--Jhamstra 15:37, 17 June 2011 (EDT)

You can complain about the difficulty of proving things all you want, but it is the nature of genealogy, and perhaps you don't really want to be participating in an environment where others can, and are expected to review and supplement your work. In a community genealogy, I am no more the final arbiter than you, but I do reserve my right to contribute and comment on any page. If you can't provide answers to discrepancies pointed out, removing them isn't either courteous or productive. Removing problems from the page in no way removes the problem's challenge to the the data on this page, it's just a form of burying your head in the sand.

Most of what I added, that you apparently objected to was the author's own words, to make it plain to the reader how tentative she thought her presentation was. The author herself admits, "all is my conjecture, not proof". I added comments, not attacking her, but pointing out other ways the situation she was describing could possibly be explained. The author herself explicitly used the words "I suppose" on two different facts. If you know formal proof, as you say, what happens when you suppose one thing based on another fact you already supposed? In terms of probability of being right, you get 10% * 10% = 1%, 20% * 20% = 4%, etc. You pretty much get garbage, in other words.

The author clearly stated there is no evidence to show that Isaac of Stafford is the same person as the Isaac of Marlborough, that Isaac of Stafford's pedigree has yet to be found, and on top of that she found no sign of a wife Grace in Connecticut, either by name or indirect evidence such as a granddaughter named after her. KISS principle: the simplest solution is that her first assumption about this being Isaac of Marlborough is wrong. You want to let the author's assumptions stand as fact. That just gives you another problem: is Isaac her son or the son of the second wife? To figure that out you'll still need to find out when she died. If you do this, that would go a long way towards proving the author's assumptions. If it is the second wife, who was she? You haven't solved your problems by erasing my source citation!

It would be interesting to go through a reliable website, somewhat contemporaneous (perhaps Great Migration Begins data?), and count how many first marriages the woman is older than the man and by how much. My sense, admittedly no more than a hunch, is that "older" is probably less than 5%, "older by more than 5 years" is probably significantly less than 1%. Of course, your example was 1918, therefore not really relevant to colonial times. If you want, I can find you a colonial example, but it doesn't really prove or disprove this case. --Jrich 17:20, 17 June 2011 (EDT)

Understanding fully that nothing I say will prove or disprove this case --

It happens that most of my work is on reconstructing the lives of my relatives who migrated to the Midwest from New York, the Netherlands, and Eastern Europe. While the Dutch kept excellent public records, the same cannot be said for any of the other sources and destinations during the time period of interest (mid 19th to early 20th centuries), except for the Ellis Island archives which cover only the last part of that period for arrivals into New York.

I can tell you that in addition to the typical early marriages, I find many surprisingly late first marriages, as well as the full gamut of second and third marriages - not to mention people who moved around three and four times on the frontier and left no birth, marriage or death records. By GPS standards many of these people did not exist unless their name happened to appear on a deed. Most of them died intestate. I have plenty of anecdotal examples of older men marrying younger women and vice versa.

I nowhere claim nor suggest that Grace Garfield was Isaac Newton's first wife. A lot of these people died after only a few years of marriage - with or without surviving posterity.--Jhamstra 19:06, 17 June 2011 (EDT)

Correction - I did not intentionally erase any citations but I did intentionally move them back to their appropriate sources. It appears I inadvertently copied two of them back to the wrong source which has now been corrected.--Jhamstra 19:09, 17 June 2011 (EDT)

My wife's brother, a college-educated man who lives on a farm, uses approximately one "I suppose" per paragraph.

Careful study of the Newton book shows that the author used "I suppose" to refer to her own process of drawing inferences from evidence which may seem archaic to you but would not have implied speculation or lack of supporting evidence to her contemporaries.

A fundamental rule for interpreting historical documents is that one must first attempt to understand them in the context (including modes of thinking, speaking and writing) of the author, rather than attempting to impose one's own context on the author.--Jhamstra 19:17, 17 June 2011 (EDT)

Inferences without evidence is speculation. If she had evidence and didn't communicate it, that is the same end result as having none, and it should be considered speculation. There is much quality in this book. Any book that finds and quotes so many wills can't be all bad. And one naturally tries to find evidence first, before questioning. But the price of not providing evidence is that when the reader gets tired of looking for evidence that may not even be there, they are free to question the credibility. Especially when inferences just raise more problems as in this case, or strain the credulity such as the one this same author made in regard to Joseph Newton (see Family talk:Daniel Stone and Ruth Roper (1)). When things are odd is exactly when proof is needed the most. Speculation is fine, as long as people faithfully transmit the "I suppose" qualifier, but they never do, instead they just turn it into a fact. Then it becomes disinformation. --Jrich 20:04, 17 June 2011 (EDT)

Jrich,

Despite her limitations I have huge respect for her work as described elsewhere on this wiki [1]. In the specific case where I can validate her work through my own independent sources she got her facts correct even though she offers no "proof" (no shall I beyond what I have already said.

I am left wondering whether you or anyone else you know would introduce fewer errors should you attempt as massive an undertaking? Those who are unwilling to ever risk mistakes seldom accomplish much.

As I have also said elsewhere I doubt that I shall ever "prove" anything to you but that is of no consequence to me since I have no aspirations of joining your WeProve wiki should you take up my suggestion.

I have concluded one more important thing from this exercise and that is that I shall henceforth not cite any living source on this wiki. It would not be fair without their prior consent to subject them to your particularly withering mode of enquiry. This is perhaps unfortunate for seekers of truth (as opposed to proof) who may read this wiki, since I have yet to include any references to my best active source with whom I have had fruitful collaboration and who documents his own work very carefully. It is certainly not worth jeopardizing my relationship with him to satisfy your relentless drive to discredit any but your own preferred sources.

Like many other endeavors this wiki is for me a controlled experiment. You may have taught some things to avoid like attribution to living persons. Fortunately other contributors to this wiki have taught me more useful things.--Jhamstra 20:53, 17 June 2011 (EDT)

Every time I mention the need for evidence, you seem to think I ask too much. Do you expect other people should just accept what you post because it's you, or because it comes from some source that you deem believable? That works on your home system, not here. If that's what you want, you can go to ancestry or one of the other websites, post your data, hide your email address, and no one will bother you. You mentioned a math and physics background. What I am talking about is nothing more than the scientific method applied to genealogy, a methodology designed to allow scientists with competing ideas to work towards a common understanding. A key step to having a hypotheses accepted is experiment (i.e., the proposed fact produces expected results in a primary document), followed by independent verification. This idea should be second nature to you with your background.

There is a quote of Donald Jacobus (Source:TAG, p. 10:33) that a good genealogist should not rely on a single source, should not be a blind copyist, and should never lose his own critical faculties (i.e., the Newton Genealogy may not be right about everything). He also said you should study the whole family (i.e., Sarah Davis, d/o Robert Davis and Bridget Loker should be of at least passing interest to you because she provides evidence upon may lead to deductions about her mother Bridget, and possibly Bridget's parents, etc.) The number of genealogists better than Jacobus are probably countable on one hand. Ignore him if you wish, it will be reflected in the reliability of your genealogy.

Nothing more to say. I will stop wasting your time and mine. I will not, however, ever stop questioning unproven assumptions. --Jrich 00:26, 18 June 2011 (EDT)

Why would she? [17 June 2011]

I moved this to the talk page since that it seems to be a discussion item.

"If the author did not believe Grace was Isaac's first wife why then would she proceed to say that he may have later taken a second wife?"

Because she assumed a child would name one of his own children after their mother, and since Moses (the only child she presents in depth) did not name a child Grace, she had to propose a second wife to fit her assumption. That, and she found no evidence of a wife named Grace in Connecticut, which would be explained if she had died. Though, as near as I can tell, she presented no evidence of a wife by a different name ("name not yet known", "all is my conjecture, not proof"), and so, possibly proposed a fictitious wife just to satisfy her assumption. --Jrich 17:42, 17 June 2011 (EDT)