Deductions

I seem to be thinking a lot about process lately.  I've written about trying to keep my research focused; about dealing with the sheer volume of information and paper; and about researching and data entry.   So to continue my recent posts along those lines, I thought I'd write a bit about making deductions.

Deducing possibilities from the facts I've found is just another part of the research process, of course, and I do it constantly without giving it much thought.

Sometimes I am forced to estimate dates because I have not found evidence to provide the correct date.  So, for example, if I  have found no marriage record, I might add to my database an estimated date of about a year before the birth of the first child.   Or I might estimate that the couple was about 20 years old at the time of their marriage.  Birth and death dates also sometimes have to be estimated from other events in the person or family's timeline.  Whenever I do this, I use 'ca' (or 'circa') to indicate that the date is an estimate.  I also have created a source in my database that is "Estimate Only" that I can use so it is clear to me that I have deduced the date, not proven it.

Another time I often use 'circa' is when taking birth years from census records.  I have found that while the census is a wonderful resource, it is also often inaccurate, especially about birth years.  People often shaved a few years off their ages or didn't remember the birth dates of their children.

Another thing I've noticed repeatedly about the census, people who had separated from their spouse often give their married status as "W" or "Widowed" when actually they are just separated or are divorced.  Many times I've found one spouse of a separated couple saying they are widowed when the other spouse was alive and well and living elsewhere.

Some other examples of deductions and estimates:

If I know birth order of children, but not birth dates, I will give them circa birth dates two years apart.

If I know family members are buried in a particular cemetery, I look for other relatives in the same cemetery.

If a family is found on the census in a particular place over multiple censuses, then probably the family stayed in the same area over all that time and probably their children were all born there.  Probably is the important word here; it isn't always true!

Families seemed to migrate in clusters.  In my experience, if a family moved to another part of the country (or world?), there were usually other members of the extended family who went along.  Sometimes neighbors moved together.  So if I'm searching for a missing family, I look at the areas where other family members and associates were found.

These and similar deductions happen all the time while doing research.  The important thing is to note that they are not proven facts so that I don't make false assumptions or lead other researchers astray.

Another type of deduction comes when you find contradictory evidence.  Birth dates seem to be one of the main pieces of data that can be contradictory.  I have some ancestors where I have 5 or 6 different birth dates (usually the year).  I haven't yet settled on the best way to handle these in my database.  I used to list each of the various dates separately, noting the source, and then deduce which was the most likely one to be correct and use that as the primary birth date.  That got to be too cumbersome.  Now I use the one I think is correct as the birth date and add comments in a memo explaining my reasoning and noting the other various possible dates.  I also note in each source what date it gave me.

So, for example, a draft card might give the birth date as Feb. 3, 1901.  The census might indicate 1900.  A marriage license might say Feb. 3, 1899.  A death certificate might give it as Feb. 3, 1902.  In this example, I'd probably go with the date from the draft card because the individual would have self-reported the date for that document and probably wouldn't have lied to the draft board.  The death certificate information is only as good as the knowledge of the informant on the certificate and there are often errors.  And people lied all the time when applying for marriage licenses.  I might be wrong in my conclusions, but based on the data, I have to make a deduction and go from there.

I've written mostly about dates here, but really, a researcher has to weigh all sorts of evidence and make deductions from it.  Sometimes the puzzles and problems are much more complex than I've sketched out here.  I want to write about a particular puzzle I'm mulling over right now, but rather than add it to this, I will go over it in a separate post:  Lester B. Rheuble and Bernie L. Rheuble.