Quality of research

In a court of law "hear say " is not really evidence because it is not a primary source.

In research or genealogy I rank sources as:-

primary

such as original documents made at the time of the event by the people involved.

secondary

like census, or old newspapers
ie - what a reporter saw and an editor edited
and
church books - which may contain spelling mistakes
and assumptions by the minister

tertiary

most transcriptions
familysearch.org
transcribed form copies
birth, marriage and death certificates
which are copies of entries in books

quaternary

birth marriage and death certificates issued by the General Register Office from copies sent to them every quarter by the local registrars starting 1 July 1837
see

fifth grade

freebmd.org.uk
or on http://www.ancestry.com/
ancestry.co.uk/freebmd/main.htm
which is being compiled by 5000 volunteers

from the images of indexes (5)
made by copying from the quarterly returns (4)
made by local registrars from the copies(3)
of the church books (2)
made by the ministers
at the weddings who asked "what was your father's occupation?"
(1) a mumbled reply in an unfamiliar acent by the bride or groom,
who anyway might lie about their age or invent a father if illegitimate of birth.


"On 1 July 1837 a civil registration system for births, marriages and deaths was introduced in England and Wales. Registration was undertaken by civil registrars who reported to the Registrar General at the General Register Office (GRO) in London, now part of the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Copies of anyone's birth, marriage or death certificates can be obtained by the public."

see http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mikefost
for the inside story
"Researchers have all too often completely failed to find references to persons they have been searching for. The system has long been suspected of errors. At last this research has supplied proof of missing records, wrongly copied records, wrongly indexed records, unindexed records, mistyped indexes, errors in page references, volume references and district names"

All of which is true of every archive in the world.

Stuff gets burned - by bombs eg UK soldiers records, Dublin National Archive lost everything, or accident eg US militaryrecords, and fires caused by earthquakes - San Francisco,
or just thrown away - Irish and Australian census

Which called "weeding the archives",
which is necessary to make space for the new stuff created by offical bodies needing to be held accountable, or is deemed necessary for privacy.

http://www.ancestry.co.uk/
very much copies of copies

fifth or worse

genealogies made by other people
even my own work contains errors and omissions and assumptions

all of the above are useful but should be regarded as indexes
to original documents - the primary sources

I regard an entry in my family tree only as gold plated if I have three different items of evidence

All sources are data but check out the quality

OR beware !!!

Some researchers spend years on the wrong family because of one assumption, or create brick walls by not sharing or listening to criticism by other researchers

enjoy the hunt !

originally posted here on this Rootsweb Board