If X plus Z equals Y, then X plus Z cannot equal A
Nothing ruins a mystery for me more than a hole in the plot, or multiple holes. You know, when you’re left scratching your head, wondering how the author reached a conclusion without first resolving [fill in the blank].
I liken this issue to a simple equation – if X plus Z equals Y, then X plus Z cannot equal A.
The fourth element of the Genealogical Proof Standard is to resolve conflicting evidence. “If conflicting evidence is not resolved, a credible conclusion is not possible,” – Genealogy Standards, Second Edition (Nashville, Tennessee: Ancestry.com, 2019), 2.
Below are examples of conflicting evidence I recently encountered while researching my family, ranging from simple to more complex –
My grandmother’s first name was Martha. I recently discovered early census records identify her as Mattie, which I had never heard. With my grandmother’s passing some years back, questioning her about the conflict between names was not possible. In an attempt to reconcile this conflict of names, I did find that Mattie is a nickname for Martha. But as this research was for a lineage application, I couldn’t write it off as a nickname without corroborating evidence. As fate would have it, a few years earlier, a distant cousin sent me a trove of information and documents for this side of my family. Another scan of the bundle of documents, photos, etc., to see if I could find any reference to “Mattie” was successful – a letter that my grandmother sent to this cousin in response to a genealogy inquiry. My grandmother wrote, “as I was named for my grandmother Minshew [Martha] and my grandfather called her Mattie but her sister Aunt Georgia told me her name was Martha and not to let anyone call me Mattie but Martha . . . I had that changed from Mattie to Martha when I was about grown.” Primary information provided by my grandmother resolved this conflict of evidence.
My great grandfather’s name was Ola Lee Hatfield. In census records and some documents he is often identified as Oley. Most official documents identify him as Ola Lee. He named one of his sons Ola Lee, and a couple of his children named their sons Ola Lee. Because of this evidence, we can reasonably conclude Ola Lee is the correct name. So why do some records identify him a Oley? This side of my family was from, and had deep roots in Appalachia. Most people of this region have a very distinctive dialect – a fast twang. Ola Lee could have easily been interpreted as Oley. Taking a region’s dialect into account resolved this conflict of evidence.
A discrepancy in an ancestor’s age is a conflict that often arises. A common practice is to resolve this type of conflict with records/sources that were created closest to a person’s birth. As they got older, it wasn’t uncommon for our ancestors to lie about their age. Maybe an ancestor upped their age to obtain a marriage license or to enlist with the military. Or, maybe an ancestor said they were younger for the same reason, to enlist. Early records indicate my ancestor would have been a man of forty when he enlisted to serve in the Civil War. A memoir written years later by his cousin, who was also a commander, states my ancestor was younger by ten years at the time of his enlistment. I attribute the discrepancy in my ancestor’s age to either of the above scenarios, or to the almost forty years between when he served and when his cousin wrote the memoir.
My great grandmother’s maiden name was Bowman. I was unable to locate a marriage record for Lillie Bowman and Ola Lee Hatfield, my great grandfather. I did locate a marriage license for a Lilly Eppling, who I had never heard of, who married my great grandfather around the same time my great grandmother would have married him. Although it’s a possibility, it is doubtful that my great grandfather married two women around the same time. Continued research revealed that my great grandmother had a previous marriage to a man named Eppling before marrying my great grandfather. Without concrete evidence to prove that such a marriage took place, I used indirect evidence to reconcile two pieces of conflicting evidence. The full report can be read here.
My last example is a bit more complex – roughly fifteen to twenty pages of research. One widely used and respected source identifies my ancestor’s father as Eli Lusk. Another widely used and respected source, a published genealogy, identifies his father as David Lusk. With the use of indirect and negative evidence, I resolved the conflict between the two sources.
We often run into conflicting evidence while researching. Sometimes reconciliation of conflicting evidence items can be simple. Often the puzzle can be a lot more complex. No matter how simple or complex a resolution may be, Genealogy Standards states that in order to reach a sound conclusion, we as researchers must resolve any and all conflicts between evidence items.