SOURCES, EVIDENCE & PROOF: What is evidence?
Last issue, Phil Isherwood examined the nature of the ‘sources’ we use. This time he invites us to consider the ‘evidence’ and the way in which we employ it in our family history
Sources, documents, records, data, facts, information, evidence. They’re similar terms and can be easily confused. Of all these the most important is evidence. Knowing how to define, classify and use genealogical evidence is an essential skill for all family historians.
Building blocks
All family history research is based on three main building blocks: Sources, Information and Evidence.
Last month we talked about sources and how to classify them as Original, Derivative and Authored. We discussed that sources themselves aren’t information, they’re containers from which information is extracted.
In considering information, we discussed how to classify each information item as Primary, Secondary or Undetermined. We highlighted the ability to have higher confidence in primary information and the need to corroborate secondary and undetermined information.
This month we’re going to address evidence.
A definition of evidence
How do we define what ‘evidence’ means in genealogical terms? Let’s start with a dictionary definition:
“One or more reasons for believing that something is or is not true.”
Cambridge Dictionary. URL: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary.english/evidence, accessed 19 February 2023.
That’s pretty good, but it isn’t specific to family history research. I searched online across all sorts of organisations looking for a formal definition of genealogical evidence. The only organisation I found which offers a definition is the US-based Board of Certification for Genealogists (BCG):
“A research question’s tentative answer, which can be right or wrong, complete or incomplete, or vague or specific; can be direct, indirect, or negative.”
Board for Certification of Genealogists, Genealogy Standards, Second Edition, 2019, p.77.
Well, it may be specific to genealogy, but it isn’t written in plain English. What does it mean?
So, this is something I want to clear up. What is genealogical evidence? And how can we use it in the most effective way in our research? How does ‘evidence’ differ from ‘information’?
I think a more useful definition would be this:
• Information is the data we extract from a source relating to some factual event
• Evidence is information which relates to our research question
Example: Research question: ‘Did my great-grandfather, James ISHERWOOD, born 1885, serve at Gallipoli during the First World War?’
The family story passed down to me was that he�
