GEN-MEDIEVAL-L Archives

From: Kay Allen AG <>
Subject: Re: "Historical Facts and Historians....."
Date: Sun, 19 Aug 1990 11:17:33 -0700

Comment interspersed.

The Thill Group, Inc. wrote:
>
> Love the advice you were given - "Always search for the
> #@%$&* original sources!" ...
>
> Can someone elaborate on the "Secondary Source" etc terms.... I assume
> [don't go there, I know the line that is running in your head] that:
>
> Original documentation would be the actual document in hand of someone, as
> in the real piece of paper that was legally filed for some reason.

Even some of these aren't truly original. The US census was done in
three different copies and these copies are not all identical :-)
The one on the microfilm probably is not the original.
>
> Secondary would that be a book written by someone about those documents?
> Being we are hundreds of years later aren't all things we view other than
> the original documents called secondary? or what are the guidelines?

Sometimes there are what I call, to myself, the one and a halfs. These
are publications like the various Rolls Series publications from Her
Majesty's Stationery Office. These are transcriptions and abstractions,
but fairly reliable for the information given. They obviously are not
the primary, original source, but they are better than the ordinary
secondary source, which tecnically they are. Yes, it is always better to
go to the original, if you can.

Weis and Sheppard and the Faris books and Burke are really tertiary
sources. That is because they seldom cite original sources. They almost
always cite other secondary sources (or the "one and a halfs"). That is
why you should cite the sources they cite in order to get a really good
evaluation of the problem. And to compound the tertiary problem, the
sources they cite may be either tertiary or secondary, and some sources
are like the animals on _The Animal Farm_, that is "more equal than
others."

Kay Allen AG
>
> I am not quiet getting the levels here... HELP!!!
> Becky T.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Gryphon801 <>
> To: <>
> Sent: Friday, August 18, 2000 12:56 PM
> Subject: Re: "Historical Facts and Historians....."
>
> > I think we need to get back to Kevan Barton's original point, which was
> dismay
> > that sometimes we are not able to write an essay on why a particular
> source is
> > not trustworthy. By the way, I would never say that any Visitation
> pedigree
> > was worthless before 1500 - Col. Charles Hansen showed in his article in
> THE
> > GENEALOGIST 7-8:4-127 that the Woodhull pedigree was surprisingly solid
> back to
> > the Conquest, probably because it was based on family documents and not on
> oral
> > tradition or myth. But the advice, slightly censored, given me in my
> youth by
> > one of the "greats" of genealogy, still holds good: "Always search for the
> > #@%$&* original sources!" Burke's publications, because they do not cite
> > sources, are of only small value.
> >

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• Re: "Historical Facts and Historians....." by Kay Allen AG <>