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Abner Morse [14 April 2012]
I wish I could find the quote (from either the Register or TAG), but it should be remembered that Rev. Morse is considered (along with Frederick Clifton Pierce) one of the least competent of the nineteenth century genealogists. Everything he wrote should be treated with skepticism.--jaques1724 23:09, 13 April 2012 (EDT)
- Truth does not depend on who asserts a fact, but on the evidence that supports it. Neither is lack of proof the same as disproof. While I concur with the conclusion, I suspect removing Thomas from parents will just invite somebody to add a new page for son Thomas and it could potentially be better leaving him there with the note documenting the doubt, until his origins are discovered.
- At the risk of stating the obvious, there are plenty of other bad genealogists to give those two a run for their money. My personal nominee is George Augustus Wheeler of Wheeler Family in America, and I have heard rather strong statements about Wilbour of Little Compton Families. --Jrich 00:53, 14 April 2012 (EDT)
- Concur on Wheeler, don't know Wilbour. Disagree about leaving this Thomas connected to Richards of Weymouth based solely on the conclusions of Rev. Morse when two highly competent genealogists like Anderson and Stott do not include a son Thomas in that family.--jaques1724 09:03, 14 April 2012 (EDT)
- Sorry, I had the wrong person. It was Otis Wilbur, who was town clerk of Little Compton about 1850 who personally annotated the Little Compton records based on his own research, making his assumptions appear as documented fact. This prompted Wakefield to call him "a strong contender for the title of world's worst genealogist" (MD 42:9). The hyperbole, which undoubtedly resulted from the frustration of trying to correct an error attributable to one of the annotations that had gained wide acceptance "like a snowball rolling down hill", made the passage memorable to me. B. F. Wilbour wrote Little Compton Families and though Wakefield suggests Wilbour (and Arnold and Austin, TAG 61:133) had diminished reliability from using the annotated Little Compton records, he/they were not Wakefield's nominee. I also note that the town clerk of Plympton from 1812 to 1850, Lewis Bradford, did the same thing in that town, but the compilers of the VRs were careful to indicate which part were his annotations versus which were the original records.
- I see in the Richards case merely a lack of evidence. We have a couple whose date of marriage is not found, but are old enough to have married as early as 1617 or 1618 without any unusualness. Thomas Richards who happens to have the same name as the putative father is expected to be born about that timeframe, and it would not be unusual for their eldest son to be named after the father (in fact no son Thomas might be considered odd, given that it was the grandfather's name as well). The younger Thomas has no record of existence after 1648 and so a lack of mention in the father's will of 1650 has a good chance of being a reflection that he had died without heirs. There seems to be no alternate theory of who Thomas is, merely a lack of positive evidence proving these parents, so it seems to me no more than conjecture to say that he does not belong. While it is likewise only conjecture that he does belong, I think insisting on his removal is in risking of making one particular conjecture appear as fact, and that the spirit of collaboration would acquiesce in Thomas remaining in the family, if accompanied by a note documenting the doubts. (Besides the tendency, as already stated, that since it is in print, subsequent people will want to recreate it when they come to the family page and see no son Thomas.) --Jrich 10:30, 14 April 2012 (EDT)
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