Family talk:Nathan Stump and Elizabeth Miller (1)

Who is Elizabeth Miller? [1 October 2008]

I am an Administrator for WeRelate and noticed that you created a Family page without creating a Person page for the wife.

If you know that Nathan Stump's wife is Elizabeth Miller, why not create a Person page for her with what you know about her?

Is she the Elizabeth Miller who was born in Berks, PA on 12 July 1826 (christened on 29 Oct 1826) and died there on 29 Aug 1856. Are they the parents of Sarah, born 21 Feb 1847 and Mary E., born 28 July 1848?

I do my data entry by hand. It can take up to an hour to enter one person because I am usually arguing with myself to see if I have presented a good case for what I am claiming, or verifying my sources. Often times I get interrupted in the middle of a family. That is one reason why I have left incomplete family pages. (I have done it a lot.)

Creating a family page without creating the wife's (or husband's) page is an invitation to somebody that may know more about the wife or her family to complete the picture. I may have collected information about the existence of the marriage, but may feel I am on shaky ground about the wife or the wife's family. I may feel like I know all the Smiths in Podunkville and can feel comfortable in my conclusions about this family, but do not have the same level of expertise on the Jones family of Podunkville. That is another reason.

Because I have 6000 people in my personal database, which is pretty limited to what would be called immediate family of direct ancestors (i.e., wives, siblings), it will probably take me years to input the whole thing. I have done about 400 in 6 months. My immediate input is focusing on those people that cause me problems, with enough context that related researchers can find them and hopefully add information I do not have. In this case, Elizabeth is not likely to provide useful information on the person I am most curious about, Nathan's second wife Mary. But creating a family page creates a hook for another researcher to link to, provided they do a reasonable check for duplicates.

All three reasons apply to Elizabeth, though I was planning on fleshing out Nathan's family tomorrow as time permitted.

In regards to your question, where is that birth date you quote coming from? I don't see an existing entry matching that. And while I think that is her birth date, my only source is a unannotated website, so I hesitate to say so, hence my reluctance to create the Person page. Regarding the two children, I did list them as children in one of my citations on Nathan's page.

--Jrich 23:03, 29 September 2008 (EDT)

I'm not trying to prod and I do understand the inability to avoid interruptions (I've been interrupted twice in trying to get back to you). My possibility also comes from an unannotated website, but I'm suggesting that your lack of sure information could be clearly indicated with an explicit warning for your interested "cousin." Granted that seeing it in black and white increases the likelihood that an error will be replicated, but leaving out what you know (or even think) seems less cooperative.--Dquass 19:59, 30 September 2008 (EDT)

If you have an interest in someone, leave a message on my user page, and I'll be happy to share even my quasi-clues. There is too much genealogy by assertion, and I am trying to publish as little of that as I can, whether my assertion or somebody else's. Can't avoid it altogether, especially when dealing with Millers, Snyders, etc. But I figure somebody else can google as well as I can, so I'm not really adding anything by passing along an assertion off a website. --Jrich 20:42, 30 September 2008 (EDT)