Genealogical Proof Standard

Comment

Comment by Catherine Davis on March 9, 2010 at 7:26pm

Replying to Sue's message of Nov 8:
I'm not a pro, but my analysis would be that your booklet will be a very valuable document to a future genealogist, both as a personal memento that you left for your family, and as a tool that may lead the genealogist to the proof of your marriage, but I would not consider the booklet as sufficient proof. The genealogical proof standard would require me to do a reasonably exhaustive search for proof, which basically means looking for multiple sources, then analyze and reconcile any differences in the sources. So, I would want to track down the official record, via the license number that is included in your truly wonderful souvenir, and then I would want to verify the information in the license to see that it matches with other data I have found, to insure I actually have the right couple. Or, I may discover I have the right couple but discover that some of my other data is inaccurate.

Comment by Sue McCormick on November 8, 2009 at 4:28pm

It is very hard for a beginner to decide the strength of the evidence.

For example, when my husband and I were married, we were given a marriage ceremony booklet which has a marriage record inscription in the front of the book. This inscription contains the number of the official marriage license. We have kept the booklet, filed with our genealogy materials. We have also scanned the record page into our computer; our source reference for the marriage can call up this scanned page for viewing, and in addition we have stored a printout of this scan in our sources files.

Is this sufficient proof of our marriage for future genealogist to use?

Sue

Comment by Mark Tucker on July 14, 2009 at 1:53pm

Learn more about the GPS and download a map of the process from http://www.thinkgenealogy.com/map/