Person talk:Sarah Mayo (1)

I don't disagree with the changes made in removing improbable attributions for this person. Considering however, that bad data is as prevalent as good, we have to assume that others will come along with the same bad data in the future. I really like to see an explicit refutation of a connection - associated with all the parties to the refuted connection - so that follow-on work is less apt to re-introduce the mistake. Only when an attribution or connection is ludicrous on its face - say people from different centuries - do I just drop the bad connection without an explicit comment. Jrm03063

This is probably not the place to have this discussion, as its scope is probably much larger than Sarah Mayo?

The Culpepper family, by following a few links, was located in North Carolina and this was an extremely improbable pairing. I have seen serious discussions about people going from New England to the South and starting a branch of a family there, but these are usually backed up by quoting wills or deeds that express the relationship, thereby refuting the improbability of the great distance. In a family as well-studied as the Mayos of Eastham, it is hard to see how such a genealogically interesting fact couldn't be mentioned in every article or discussion of the family. In this case, the original page presented absolutely no sources, and even very little detail like birth and death dates to identify who this Mr. Culpepper was.

Further, when I added the will abstract, it said that Sarah was the relict widow of Lt. Edmund Freeman. It is hard to understand how this could be in any way consistent with a migration to North Carolina with a Mr. Culpepper. I could add more sources confirming this will does go with this particular Sarah, but why should I bother when I don't have a source to refute? Somebody can provide a source for the alternative case and we can have a serious discussion.

To me, the marriage to Mr. Culpepper appeared to be created by matching only the name without regard to other facts, or it could have been the result of over-agressive merging. But without a source listed, it did not appear to be real genealogy, and it is hard to respect such data.

I agree that discussing Disputed Lineages is important in cases where there are real reasons to consider the alternate case. Stylistically I would suggest such discussions belong on the Talk page, but that is another discussion. If we bother refuting every possible data entry error as a disputed lineage, the Family History will be long, boring and more about other people than the person it is supposed to be about. But, provide a reasonable source supporting a disproven fact, and I agree it bears a discussion refuting it, so the mistake is not repeated in the future.

This case did not qualify for such treatment.

The more I work on the Internet, the less patience I have for genealogy by unsupported assertion. So I plan on continuing to change sourceless data that appears wrong without apology. No sources means basically the data gets no respect. If there are sources (something a researcher can verify such as a published book, or will, or deed, or vital records, but more than so and so's GEDCOM -because I say so- or OneWorldTree -because somebody else says so-) I will approach the page with much more courtesy and use the talk page and not step all over somebody's research.

--Jrich 09:51, 16 October 2008 (EDT)

Sure, it's a wider discussion, but let's have it here first.

I feel your pain, and your frustration. I could certainly be persuaded that there are other/better ways to represent incorrect linkages (and there have been such discussions, but they never reached a conclusion). I just don't want information lost. I would also say that there was more travel up and down the coast than I realized before I started taking a wider look at genealogy, so maybe the difference isn't quite as obvious. But no matter, I'm just as loath to lose negative information as positive information. It can also be handy when vetting related unsubstantiated facts - say, did we get a birth date or other information from a former contaminating Sarah Mayo? I know it's there in the wiki history if we want to look for it, but that's not apt to be noticed.

I can also appreciate your frustrations with differing levels of skill and care, and I certainly don't seek any apologies on my behalf or anyone else's. What I would suggest is that the huge benefit of numerous researchers outweighs the disadvantage of some of those researchers being less careful than others. Those folks need to be brought along, not turned off. Seek to educate gently. We all lose if werelate becomes a cloister.

--Jrm03063

A lot of undocumented genealogy is clearly done by skilled genealogists, or at least ones who are using good sources. But if they don't tell me what those sources are, I can only say it is good if I already know the answer. Say for example, I was pursuing the possibility that Sarah Mayo really did marry somebody from North Carolina. Finding that some GEDCOM upload said she did, helps me win that argument not at all unless it provides some kind of supporting evidence. Likewise, if I disagree, I can't refute the facts because they aren't given, this being one of the steps in the standard for genealogical proof.

It has nothing to do with skill level, it has to do with removing useless chaff. It is my interpretation of the mission of WeRelate, being a wiki, that it is designed for collaboration. There are, and have been for many years, places to publish your family trees for all the world to marvel at. If you want to find every person who was ever thought to be married to Sarah Mayo, check out [1]. Dallan doesn't need to be working so hard just to duplicate those kind of websites. Submitted data to WeRelate should be about collaborating to find the truth (as much as we can discern it) and that goal requires sharing sources.

If there were sources supporting the marriage of Sarah Mayo to John Culpepper of North Carolina, documenting it as a possible or disputed lineage would be justified. Given that there weren't sources, it is a waste of electrons documenting it as a disputed lineage, like it deserves serious consideration. Especially since it does have all the appearances of being based on a coincidence of similar names and will probably not occur in the future as more and more details and sources get added to the various pages.

--Jrich 13:02, 16 October 2008 (EDT)