Scotch-Irish-L Archives

Archiver > Scotch-Irish > 2005-03 > 1110673047


From: "Linda Merle" <>
Subject: Re: [Sc-Ir] a sad and cautionary tale(sorry... long)
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 16:17:27 -0800


Gee Marilyn, here we are in New England, snowed in ... again!
They said the snow was stopping at 12. It's now 7 and it's
still happening. I checked at 3 and the weather site had a
winter storm warning extended to 5. I just checked now and
it's lasting till 10. Right! I really beleive them now....

And then you tell us your story!! Where's the Bushmills?!!!
Or maybe shoveling snow will help? This is hard to do right
now as the cat some guy abandoned on my doorstep with a
note 2 years ago (note said her name was Kali and she was
spayed) is in heat. She does this twice a year and has no
kittens. Maybe the vet missed an ovary? I donno, but there's
4 tomcats outside waiting for her and going out means I
gotta lock her up so she don't get out (stays out, getting
feline leukemia from those cats). And if I go out my dog
chases them, only they don't run so there's a big fight...
Sigh. that's my tale of woe.

ANyway don't feel bad, it's happened to us all. You at least
know about it. And maybe you can find someone who can use
all the info you gathered.

It's really hard to tell if you have gotten the truth.
I have a customer whose work I am doing and we constantly
wonder if we are deluding ourselves. Okay, the land
was finally granted by VA in 1781 but it says the survey was
1771....does that mean he was there for the survey? Can
we trust that if someone else had done the survey it would
say "surveyed by ?? in 1771"??? Hmmm... In PA it would! I
trust PA warrants but VA is a little funky....

You can take classes and lectures and read articles and
books on genealogical proof. "Evidence! Citation and
Analysis for the Family Historian" by Elizabeth Shown
Miles is good to read. This URL has the GPS
(Genealogical Proof Standard):
http://www.bcgcertification.org/resources/standard.html

We apply it rigorously and constantly but are still confused.
My client is a lawyer, so that helps. He can shred about
anything. To make things more difficult, a now deceased
person spent a lifetime working on this family and then wrote
a couple books (self published). THough expensive and impossible
to get now (out of print), they are useless as he didn't
provide any sources and he didn't explain why he was convinced
a certain man was the father of the usual 3 brothers or why
he thought they had come from PA instead right off the boat
from Our Favorite Place. My client offered to purchase his
notes from his widow but she ain't selling and she won't divulge
sources. I think he wants to remain the final word on this
family. Unfortunately the huge number of errors he's made
suggests his conclusions are worth about as much as a few of
mine! (Zilch - those are last week's conclusions. THis weeks
are of course true ...until next week. Maybe conclusions expire,
like licenses??).

I admire anyone trying to find Armstrongs. I got one lost in
Northumberland, named John of course. We all got a Johnnie
Armstrong in our tree -- and at least you and I have found
ours.

The tome (or tomb depending on your point of view) that
we are creating for my client has huge amounts of secondary
sources. We are going for primary on his line, but as we
pick up and drop these others, trying to prove or disprove
a relationship, using lots of abstracts, etc. Gotta -- tracking
down half the families in Virginia! Take a couple lifetimes.
Thank God for the LIbrary of Virginia and a lady I met on
another list stuck in the same county (Bedford/Campbell, VA).
With that in mind here's a website I found on night on
the place:
http://www.retroweb.com/lynchburg/attractions/main.html

Just remember that Boston DID have a molasses flood, so
why not?? It definitely made me want to visit next summer
if summer ever comes, which I doubt. If you are snowed in
you MUST check out the URL and enjoy.

Well....off to round up cat (gotta get her fixed again,
this heat-thing sucks even without kittens; whole yard
smells like cat piss....through 2 feet of snow) and walk
dog. Hope them tomcats run off this time as it's too late
to take him to vet for nose sutures. He's 80 pounds but
apparently they figure he's a push over.

Linda Merle





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