Family talk:John Thayer and Joan Lawrence (2)

I note that this merged article includes no indication of what the information provided was based on (ie, no sources are given). The following summarizes entries in Ancestry.com's Family Tree's database (extracted 10 January 2008). This list was based on a search for "John Thayer" and spouse "Joan Lawrence", and initially yielded about 550 entries. This was further culled to include only those entries that provided "notes", and the presumption that the original authors were at least providing lip-service to the need for documentation. I have not culled the resulting 130 or so entries to exlude items that do not in fact provide any "notes", even though they show up in a "notes only" listing (a not uncommon occurrence.)

This particular search of the ancestry data base produces results with surprizing consistency, based on similar searches I've done over the years. The results are not, however, uniform, particularly with regard to John Thayer's DOB. the most commonly encountered DOB here is 28 Feb 1663/64, but other DOB's also occur---(e.g, 1654, 6 May 1560 , 28 FEB 1562/1563, 21 Aug 1558). This suggests that there is no concensus for his DOB.

The DOB currently accepted in the accompanying article is 28 Feb 1563-1564. Since no sources are provided in the article, its not possible to evaluate whether this is a better DOB than say 21 Aug. 1558. Q 11:37, 11 January 2009 (EST)

Impressive, Q. You inspired me to go looking at the same search results, with the filter of "includes sources" (instead of "includes notes"). I found what we needed and I'm updating the page as appropriate. Gawd, doncha just love doing others' work? ;-) jillaine 17:27, 11 January 2009 (EST)

And do you plan to do this for every page you merge, providing a justification for accepting or rejecting information contained in articles lost in the merge? Q 19:17, 11 January 2009 (EST)

No, I don't plan to do this level of research for every page I merge. Early THAYERs are of interest to me, although I have yet to link this particular THAYER family to my husband's line. In general, I leave conflicting/alternative information so that it may be reviewed and corrected by those most familiar with/connected to the data. I'm not aware that article information is getting lost; if something doesn't end up in the merged results (outside of gedcom names, obscure reference numbers -- both of which I was told to remove), it wasn't there to begin with. I do, however, focus my volunteer merging efforts on early colonial New England surnames, feeling more comfortable merging duplicates that are at least in the realm of my personal work. jillaine 20:45, 11 January 2009 (EST)

Summary based on Ancestry.com search of family trees for "John Thayer" spouse "Joan Lawrence", including only entries with notes.