User talk:BMurphy154

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Proof is needed [27 October 2011]

You recently changed the page Person:William Clark (215) adding parents and changing the birth date. I welcome any additional information that can be contributed, but you added no proof. To the reader, the implication is that your research is simply better than the information of the previous contributor and needs no justification. As you can imagine, that doesn't seem very collaborative. Proof is needed. You should cite a source, and hopefully, in the interest of truth, it should reference some primary piece of information, not merely parrot some web posting that parrots some other web posting that parrots some other web posting, ad infinitum. (Not that the data on the page was great to start with but "ABT" doesn't imply knowledge the way a precise date does, so it perhaps has looser standards.)

My information on William Clark says in part: "We find an Edward Clark, son of Edward, who married Ann Allison in Middlesex County, Virginia, daughter of David and Joan, on 13 April 1681; this Edward's second wife was Ruth Downing of Middlesex. The will of William Downing of Middlesex, dated 21 September 1694, left to daughter Ruth, wife of Edward Clark, a large estate. This same Edward married a third time to Ann Fearn (not Ann Christopher). The original records of Christ Church Parish, Middlesex, in the Virginia State Library, show that Ann Fearn and Edward Clark were married 26 March 1706." [emphasis added]

"Many books have repeatedly shown this Edward's third wife as Ann Christopher instead of Ann Fearn - thus, confusing the Edwards. This Edward and Ann (Fearn) Clark had a son named William, born 26 April 1716 and died in 1746, age 30, in St. Ann's Parish, Essex (Tyler, Vol. 23, p. 62) who married Sarah Hipkins".

This excerpt gives its sources (parish records of the Church, a will, and the magazine Tyler's Quarterly), but I have not verified them yet (partly because it is a negative source-proving the dates you entered apply to a different person.)

On persons about which there is such a mixture of beliefs (in this case: two different Edward Clarks just in Middlesex County or was William from Louisa County; William Clark b. 1695 or b. 1716 or somewhere inbetween; Edward is s/o Edward or s/o Benjamin or related to William Clark/George Rogers Clark; etc.) it is important to provide sources justifying data you assert. There are lots of easy answers to find, and plenty of websites giving each of them. The trick on WeRelate to is find the right answer, and most importantly since this is a collaborative website, it needs to be justified by sources. Saying something is known is useless unless you can say how it is known. --Jrich 09:46, 27 October 2011 (EDT)