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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1996-05 > 0830986956


From: Stewart Baldwin <>
Subject: Re: Bogus Ancestors
Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 21:42:36 GMT


"Rudolph A. Krutar" <> wrote:

<much snipping>

>Should we trust the scholarly Burke or the ignorant savage who carved
>ancient stones?

I have heard Burke called a lot of things, but "scholarly"? I think
that if you made a list of those "genealogists" most responsible for
manufacturing and spreading the phony royal lineages which have
plagued our time, Burke would be at or near the top of the list

>#9. A pedigree of early bogus pedigrees would be in order. Treat
>any source like a person. It resulted from an amalgramation and
>embellishment of other sources. Analysis and discovery of such
>borrowings can improve our understanding of what did happen,
>perhaps enlightening us on where the bogus data originated.

In fact, this kind of study is relatively common among medieval
historians, who must often rely on manuscript sources which exist in
many different versions. In this case, a comparison of the various
manuscripts for common misspellings and other errors leads to a
"genealogical tree" of the various manuscript traditions, which in
turn gives important information about the lost manuscripts on which
the various copies were based.

>>..., there would still be some "genealogists" who would say
>>"Oboy, I'm royalty", and include such information as "fact" in their
>>"research".
>>
>Why does the work of idiots concern you? If it makes them happy,
>that is okay with me. It will stand as the work of idiots.

Not necessarily true. There is much bad research which does not get
recognized as such by the inexperienced, who often base their
judgement of the reliability of sources on style rather than
substance. There are some really bad genealogy books which look good
at first glance because the author was a good writer but a bad
genealogist. There are also books written by genealogists who had a
poor writing style, but have good conclusions based on sound evidence.
Beginners often have difficulty in correctly judging the value of such
works.

>>There is probably always going to be at least some shoddy work of the
>>type described above. Our main goal should be to minimize its
>>percentage of the whole, and that can best be accomplished by making
>>sure that inexperienced genealogists (who almost never have any formal
>>training in the subject) are pointed in the right direction.
>>
>This is not a good goal. It can only be accomplished by censorship.
>Pointing beginners in the "right" direction is laudable, but only
>to increase the volume of quality work. Percentages do not matter.
>More quality work will always inspire more shoddy work.

I have to disagree with this in the strongest possible terms. Even
the sloppiest of researchers are going to produce slightly better
(i.e., less bad) research if they have good models to work from. It
is unlikely that educating people has any significant effect on the
total volume of work produced, but it certainly has an effect on the
quality.

Stewart Baldwin

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