Determining Certainty

[Guy Etchells]

A bit of a general query... I know nothing is strictly certain in Genealogy, however there are branches where certainty (in terms of paperwork) can be almost be guaranteed, however on other branches there may be a good indication but still that nagging doubt remains. This also gets more complicated the further back you go because the evidence becomes more uncertain.

Sorry but this is where you are making your first assumption, no paperwork can be guaranteed to be accurate. I have proof of this from my own tree when I had to apply for my mothers marriage certificate in 2004, her maiden name was shown as IMY instead of GUY even though her parents were shown as GUY (Scottish certificate).
This shows that even certificates can be wrong.

I often find myself checking information again and again every time I get back a bit further just to make sure I am not going off track and it can be very time consuming, however I just cant help myself. I often wonder if anyone has devised an algorithm or method of determining a certainty rating that could be added against an individual in a tree?

For example we all have those ancestors who were spot on with the paperwork and seem to be recorded on every census with little change of address and consistent family members, and also have birth, marriage and death certs that all reinforce this information....then we have the ancestors who seem to have gone off radar once in a while, changed the spelling of their names or their age or you may struggle to find a certificate to accompany the person and that inevitable doubt creeps in.

I am just curious how people deal with these scenarios, I have tried searching for algorithms and certainty ratings but cant seem to find what I am looking for.....I suppose another way of looking at it would be is there a genealogy rule book

Family history is built on the balance of probabilities not certainties one has to build up a collection of data to support your assumptions. Do not rule anything out, Electoral Registers may support address between census, look and copy as many as you can get your hands on, newspapers, school registers, employment records, service records, court records even title deeds and driving licences, if you can get access to them all add to the information that may help to support your assumptions.
Then we have birth, baptism, banns, marriage, divorce, separation, death, burial, tombstone, burial plot records can all add more evidence.
Do your ancestors or family appear in any books or magazines?

There are thousands of individual documents created about all of us including documents hundreds of years old mentioning our ancestors, it is our task as family historians to seek them out and record them in our effort to build a picture of our family history.
This is not a quick or easy task, my grandfather started recording our family history at the end of the 19th century, I took over the task over 60 years ago and I have still only scratched the surface for many of the individuals on my family tree. Getting the BMDs and Baptisms, Marriages and Burials in most cases is relatively easy getting the detailed information to colour the picture is taking a little longer.
I am confident in possibly another two generations my family history will be more or less complete unless the politicians carry on trying to hide their indiscretions behind privacy laws.

Cheers
Guy

[barbara lee]

Another thing you have to consider is how many people of that name existed in that time or place.
I have an ancestor in Lancashire with the common-ish surname Ashton, but the given name Elias. When I found that name on his daughter's marriage certificate, I thought I would have no problem identifying Elias's baptism. I thought he would be unique. But there were five of them! They were all cousins, named after a common grandfather, so they were all of around the same age (give or take five years or so) and all living in the same locality. They were all RC, too. So you have to collect data on all of them, their marriages and children, their occupations, addresses and censuses, and use your skill and judgement to sort them out, based on what is most likely and reasonable.
And write down somewhere why you came to the conclusions that you did!
Barbara

[saddlers]

Sorry but this is where you are making your first assumption, no paperwork can be guaranteed to be accurate. I have proof of this from my own tree when I had to apply for my mothers marriage certificate in 2004, her maiden name was shown as IMY instead of GUY even though her parents were shown as GUY (Scottish certificate).
This shows that even certificates can be wrong.

I agree with that fact, but these inaccuracies are more present on certain types of documents than others, and there will always be exceptions. I think I am realising this is not a possibility, I just thought (maybe naively) that a system could be established as a quick visual indicator to identify the robustness of documentation to support an individual's existence and connections with ancestors/descendants.

[saddlers]

Another thing you have to consider is how many people of that name existed in that time or place.
I have an ancestor in Lancashire with the common-ish surname Ashton, but the given name Elias. When I found that name on his daughter's marriage certificate, I thought I would have no problem identifying Elias's baptism. I thought he would be unique. But there were five of them! They were all cousins, named after a common grandfather, so they were all of around the same age (give or take five years or so) and all living in the same locality. They were all RC, too. So you have to collect data on all of them, their marriages and children, their occupations, addresses and censuses, and use your skill and judgement to sort them out, based on what is most likely and reasonable.
And write down somewhere why you came to the conclusions that you did!
Barbara

I think this also highlights that are too many variables and therefore establishing such a system may be too complex and that populating the data to determine such a calculation may take more time than would be practical.... which could be better spent researching.

[Ed McKie]

I have never been a big fan of genealogy and the so called proofs. The majority of records are second hand in the sense that it is a record what the recorder thought he was being told? Even Peter Goodey's marriage has the possibility of flaws. A man married a woman, certainly but was he who he said he was? Were they actually bachelor and spinster. Were the names and occupation of the parent accurately stated and so on. We can't be sure that any of the Registrar's or Vicars knew the parties giving the evidence well enough to question any discrepancies. That is not to say give up, I haven't after thirty odd years. But I regard what we do as art rather than science. A bit like a ten thousand piece Jigsaw with no picture to work with.

Cheers Ed

[NicolaYoung]

I have never been a big fan of genealogy and the so called proofs. The majority of records are second hand in the sense that it is a record what the recorder thought he was being told? Even Peter Goodey's marriage has the possibility of flaws. A man married a woman, certainly but was he who he said he was? Were they actually bachelor and spinster. Were the names and occupation of the parent accurately stated and so on. We can't be sure that any of the Registrar's or Vicars knew the parties giving the evidence well enough to question any discrepancies. That is not to say give up, I haven't after thirty odd years. But I regard what we do as art rather than science. A bit like a ten thousand piece Jigsaw with no picture to work with.

Cheers Ed

That's why we love it so much. We can never be sure. My grandmother got married soon after her baby. It was rushed as the father was a friend/casual partner. When we spoke to her sister she said the wedding was so so quiet, she didn't even get invited to the wedding and was very hurt. Yet she was a witness on the wedding certificate. So either she was there and forgot, which seems unlikely as she was on the ball and knew everything until a couple of months before her death. Or someone pretended to be her at the wedding, which seems unlikely. We'll probably never know.

[NicolaYoung]

I think this also highlights that are too many variables and therefore establishing such a system may be too complex and that populating the data to determine such a calculation may take more time than would be practical.... which could be better spent researching.

It would be complex. However with computers it would be easy for even a novices to type in the information and get the percentage. Most people with a science background will be used to working out similar calculations. I studied genetics and there is a lot of this. Similarly physics is full of trying to come up with the best values and calculations to predict things.

[NicolaYoung]

Hi Saddlers,

I was thinking maybe we could collaborate on this? and anyone else that is interested? It sounds like no methods exists yet, which is quite exciting. I have created a google doc with an outline of values. I would love it to be a percentage because that is widely understood. A 'genealogy rating of certainty value' would be much harder to understand. However working out the weighting of each piece of evidence is hard enough. I imagine it will need a lot of discussion.

The google docs is here, https://bit.ly/DCertainty I've made it so anyone can edit it. It is possible to retrieve older versions, but i'd rather people write comments rather than delete bits.

[Guy Etchells]

Hi Saddlers,

I was thinking maybe we could collaborate on this? and anyone else that is interested? It sounds like no methods exists yet, which is quite exciting. I have created a google doc with an outline of values. I would love it to be a percentage because that is widely understood. A 'genealogy rating of certainty value' would be much harder to understand. However working out the weighting of each piece of evidence is hard enough. I imagine it will need a lot of discussion.

The google docs is here, https://bit.ly/DCertainty I've made it so anyone can edit it. It is possible to retrieve older versions, but i'd rather people write comments rather than delete bits.

My thoughts on the subject of certainty of various records in regard to the table

England and Wales only Scotland and Northern Ireland have different regulations.

1 Birth certificates you would have to differentiate between Superintendents certificates & GRO certificates as GRO certificates are based on transcripts.

2 Marriage certificates you would have to differentiate between Superintendents certificates & GRO certificates as GRO certificates are based on transcripts. In addition scans of church registers would provide access to the original registers signed by the couple clergyman and witnesses.

3 Death certificates you would have to differentiate between Superintendents certificates & GRO certificates as GRO certificates are based on transcripts. In addition death certificates may have been filled out by someone who knows nothing about the deceased and even if registered by a family member this is done at a distressing time and may contain many errors or guesses.

4 Gravestones are transcripts (I have a photo of one with the date 31st February) of a person’s or even a number of people’s requirements. They do not necessarily mark the grave of the individual or individuals mentioned (even if it once did) many gravestones have been moved from their original location. The person purchasing the gravestone may be doing so many years after the burial and may never have known the person in life.

5 Baptism & Christening are transcripts of the day book and are possibly no more accurate than many census

6 The 1841 census is no less accurate for the details given even though relationships are not entered.

7 The number of facts given in the various census can be checked using other sources and may qualify for points per fact rather than per census.

8 I doubt if the fact that the 1911 is an original document does not necessarily mean it is more accurate than other census and certainly not twice as accurate or trustworthy.

9 The 1939 National Register is a document compiled and amended by many people over a number of years for that reason alone its certainty is in doubt.

Cheers
Guy

[arthurk]

Having looked at your Google doc, I'm becoming rather sceptical about whether this can actually be done. As Ed said, a lot of what we do is an art rather than a science, and many things cannot simply be reduced to a numerical value. What you've written so far actually demonstrates this:

I agree with that fact, but these inaccuracies are more present on certain types of documents than others, and there will always be exceptions.

There's a big assumption behind this: you haven't said which types of document are more inaccurate, or what evidence you have for this being the case. Without that, there's a great danger of bias creeping in, or circular reasoning. How would you decide what is an exception, and when you've identified it, how would you handle it?

Then, to take a couple of items from the Google doc:

Family stories - 5 per fact that matches

Then you could subtract points for an inaccuracy depending on the discrepancy

Fact that matches what? And who or what determines an inaccuracy/discrepancy? What if you have two sources of equal value which say different things? Do you then look at other sources and go with the majority?

I note that you give the greatest score to a birth certificate - but it has been suggested that dates of birth were sometimes tweaked to avoid the penalty for late registration. And are the names recorded always correct? Sometimes there is other evidence which suggests a birth certificate is wrong.

Finally:

Need to multiply by a value determined by how common their name is in areas and year of birth.

I'm not even sure what this means, but it seems to require a massive database of all names in all places at all periods - and even then there would probably be a number of assumptions about which surnames were variants of others.

Sorry to be pouring cold water on it; I can see the attraction of something like this, but it just doesn't seem to fit with the way a family historian operates. A lot of what we do is interpretation, and our interpretations may well vary as we gain more experience and knowledge. The knowledge comes not just from these documentary sources, but from an understanding of the wider issues in society (which may itself derive from comparing differing analyses of what is thought to have happened in the past) - and that's far more an art than a science.