Person talk:Samuel Cass (1)

familysearch (and ancestry) indexes [25 November 2019]

Removed:

Birth[1] 13 May 1659 Massachusetts Bay Colony

Christening? 13 July 1659 Massachusetts Bay Colony

Some family trees have this as birth date, but I believe it is his Christening date.

"New Hampshire, Birth Records, Early to 1900," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/FLLD-854 : accessed 23 Feb 2013), Samuel Cass, 13 May 1659.

The searches of familysearch and ancestry are searching indexes. My information is that ancestry indexes were largely outsourced to India, and familysearch indexes were largely compiled by volunteers.

Side effect #1: they tend to be a copy of the record, and one layer further away from the original. In fact possibly they are possibly based on copies of the original, like the published vital records rather than the handwritten town records, and seldom indicate their underlying source. One record found in the Edmund West collection was based on an unsourced assertion in a book, i.e., not even a vital record at all. This make less reliable sources appear more important than they are.

Side effect #2: when reporting on the record requires a little knowledge, as in Old-Style dates or colonial spelling or placenames, they are often misinterpreted.

Although both side effects came into play here, the second one is the major problem here, and the reason why this source has been removed. Before 1752, the fifth month of the year was July. [Note: In old-styles dates, the fifth month is July. More info may be found here.] Somebody that does not know this would think it was May. The best solution is of course to maintain the original form (i.e., 5th month), but indexing tends to have restricted formatting rules that may not allow this.

Not all sources are equal, and it is important to know where the information came from. Chasing the information back to more original sources, in this case, shows the birth/baptism confusion to be based on treating the May date as equally authentic as the July date, when it was actually an error introduced in the indexing process by an under-trained volunteer. --Jrich 23:34, 25 November 2019 (UTC)