Sigh.....which non-primary source would you choose?

[Merry Monty Montgomery]

PCC will transcript (ie the TNA copy) states the date of death to be 26th Nov 1802 (sworn by the widow in August 1803).

Transcript of the PR's gives the burial date as 20th March 1803!!!

Which is more likely to be right?

Yes, I know, I could at least check the PR date with the original.....This thread isn't really to get an answer to the Q, but to get us thinking about how often secondary sources are incorrect!

[Olde Crone Holden]

Yes yes yes Merry, that's what I keep saying!

Primary sources, not secondary sources every time unless it is absolutely impossible.

(Impossible = primary source material no longer exists, NOT "I can't afford it/be bothered to get it/don't know where it is"!)

OC

[Merry Monty Montgomery]

Fair enough, but I'm not about to spend an arm and a leg to access the PR's when I can't access the original court records for the PCC will :(

The PCC will copy also insists on refering to the relict of the dec'd as Thomas Smith, in two places, when her name was Frances! (they did get it right once!), so I'm wondering if the clerk had been to the pub in his lunch break??

[Christine in Herts]

A couple of thoughts...

Was the winter of 1802-03 particularly hard?

T and F can be very similar in script.
The general shapes of Thomas and Frances are very similar.

Christine

[Christine in Herts]

Just found this oblique reference:

The absolute speciality of the winter 1941/42 is, that it is the third in a row of three successive very strong ice winters within three years. This has never happened before. Even the comparable winters 1802/03 –1804/05 did not match the severity of the three war winters 1939/40, 1940/41, 1941/42

seaclimate.com - Climate down 1939 – 42 (3)

and: Climate Since A.D. 1500
By Bradley, Raymond S. Bradley, Philip D. Jones

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Wha4DwRa2wgC&pg=PA175&lpg=PA175&dq=weather+winter+%221802-1803%22+records&source=web&ots=aukBhQ1G8m&sig=YE4n8Y6RlAYffvKRXzp6M_IyRf0&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result

The first half of the 19th century had a high proportion of severe winters: 37 out of 50. Particularly cold were the winters of 1802-1803 and 1808-1812, when records indicate that mercury froze in several Russian cities.

Perhaps those dates aren't actually in conflict. Maybe they couldn't bury him before then. Are there any burials there in the period November - March?

Christine

[Merry Monty Montgomery]

That's interesting about the weather Christine, but having dashed back to the fiche reader to check, whilst there were not so many burials in the 1802/3 winter as the year before or after there were atill about two thirds the usual sort of numbers.

T and F can be very similar in script.
The general shapes of Thomas and Frances are very similar.

Christine

I agree, but I've read dozens and dozens of these PCC wills and this one is pretty clear! Here's the first time they give her the wrong name.....

Untitled-1 copy.jpg

.....I'm just thinking if the clerk didn't notice he had written Thomas twice and then Frances on the following line for the same person, maybe his concentration levels were not what they should be?!! If that's the case, maybe he was the one going wrong with the date? Thomugh I would be happier if one bit of the date matched....eg if the date of death had been the 20th of X and the burial the 26th of X and not the other way round :(

[Phoenix]

Everything is subject to error.

Within the parish register you should at least, as Christine suggests, be able to tell what the burial dates on either side are. Even the smallest parishes tend to have a dozen burials a year.

The original info for a parish register is at least supplied to someone local.

Will registers are copies of wills that could have been written by ANYONE. What I particularly like are the blank spaces left where the contemporary transcriber could not read what was written in the will - and this was usually the name of a beneficiary!

[Phoenix]

Supplementary question: does the burial register give age at burial? Is it possible that it's a son/grandson/cousin etc being buried?

[Merry Monty Montgomery]

It's all of little consequence in this case.....It doesn't make any difference to me when this man died (within a year of two in any case!) -

Moses may turn out to be the brother of my 5xg-grandfather....I have been working on these PRs for 5 years already!!

Unbelieveably, I visited the place where he lived last week (Burford, Oxon) and it was only when I got home I discovered that the house where he lived is now a hotel, so i could have gone inside :(:( At £150 a night it would have been a fleeting visit though! lol

[Merry Monty Montgomery]

Supplementary question: does the burial register give age at burial? Is it possible that it's a son/grandson/cousin etc being buried?

No, it doesn't :(. He did have a son and grandson - all accounted for, and all the other Moses Smith's in the parish seem to have died from Smallpox as babies. Obviiously this Moses could be someone from outside of the area, but as he is near enough I tend to think he is "the one"! lol

He wrote his will 18 years before his death and didn't get it witnessed properly, hence his wife having to swear all sorts of things in court (it was the death of her - she only lasted four months after)... he left one shilling to his eldest (I'm saying he was already provided for!) and £300 each to the other two. His wife found the will in a draw where he kept his "papers of moment" lol (sounds like my OH's filing system! )

[Olde Crone Holden]

Off topic, I have a grisly record of a hard winter in Darwen, Lancs (can't remember the year off hand, but it was in the late 1700s) when the weather was so bad on the moors, with snow 6ft deep that the dead went unburied from November to April!

They did temporary burials in snowdrifts! This was not remarked in the parish register but was in a contemporary account of the Curate, who was more worried about not baptising newborns than not burying the dead.

OC

[Guy]

There is a LDS family history center at Poole in Dorset where you could order and view the original parish registers on microfilm.
They may be ordered for little more than the cost of postage from the USA.
Parish registers for Burford, 1715-1970 FHL BRITISH Film 952331
Cheers
Guy

[Merry Monty Montgomery]

Thanks Guy,

Poole might as well be the other side of the world! lol Maybe one day, eh?!

[Little Nell]

An interesting thread, Merry.

And of course we all have examples of primary sources that are incorrect, or clash with other primary sources.

I've got a Moses Smith in my tree but wrong place and time for your chap. He married one of the Williams sisters (with a name like Williams she could at least have married someone with a more distinguished surname, surely) and another Williams sister married a George Smith. Of course Moses and George aren't related!

[Christine in Herts]

That's disappointing - I thought that those were both very plausible explanations for the discrepancies!

Perhaps the clerk was copying from something with misleading script. If you're copying, it's extremely easy not to engage brain: the info goes in through the eyes and out through the hands without any processing or checking. I know because I've keyed rubbish off my own handwriting! :o

Christine

[Merry Monty Montgomery]

That's disappointing - I thought that those were both very plausible explanations for the discrepancies!

I agree!

Perhaps the clerk was copying from something with misleading script. If you're copying, it's extremely easy not to engage brain: the info goes in through the eyes and out through the hands without any processing or checking. I know because I've keyed rubbish off my own handwriting! :o

Christine

lol! Me too!! In this case I am drawn to believe the PCC will transcript may be wrong. It might have been easy to copy the date from the wrong piece of paper, or whatever......unless a whole sequence of burials have been incorectly entered in the register or incorrectly transcribed by....erm....whoever it was who transcribed them......I don't see that the burial date is likely to be wrong, other than a day of two.

I should be concentrating on Moses' birth in any case, seeing as I'm trying to prove if his brother was my 5xg-grandfather :( (Frustratingly, I have two Smith branches on my tree )

[Olde Crone Holden]

I remember getting extremely cross when I found my James mistranscribed as Thomas. What a stupid careless mistake, I thought, how can James possibly look like Thomas?

Um, very easily actually! When I looked at the original it really could have been either.

OC

[Merry Monty Montgomery]

lol OC.....I have the David/Daniel one!

My mum has a Quaker marriage cert from the 1840's which I had looked at hundreds, if not thousands, of times before I realised the name was Daniel not David!!

[Merry Monty Montgomery]

I thought of you today OC - I had to go for a hospital appointment and the woman in front of me refused to give her date of birth to the receptionist!

[Olde Crone Holden]

Quite right too, Merry, what business is it of the receptionist!

As you know, I have a raft of Daniel/Davids. I had only just got used to them when the Scottish research threw up a further flanker, as Daniel is Donald in the gaelic.....!

OC