Evaluating Genealogy Sources
Family History Records: Primary vs Secondary, Original vs Derivative
Jan 7, 2009
Professional genealogists label historical records and information as primary or secondary, and original or derivative, as part of evaluating the trustworthiness of the information. Serious family historians will do the same.
What is Primary or Secondary Information?
According to the Board for Certification of Genealogists, primary information comes from a person who was at the event, either participating in it or witnessing it. It is also judged on how soon the information was collected and the reliability of the person giving the information.
Secondary information, on the other hand, is given by someone who has heard about an event from someone else. When the details have gone through several people before being recorded, it becomes less important.
It is possible for a single record to have both primary and secondary information.
Genealogical Examples:
- Birth certificate: when reported by the mother, father who was present, or attending midwife/physician, the date of birth and sex of the baby are primary information. If the age or birthplace of the mother is reported by the father, it is secondary information.
- Death certificate: the date and place of death, reported by someone present, are primary information. The age, birthplace and parents’ names of the deceased would all be secondary – the only reason the person reporting would know these is by being told earlier.
What are Original and Derivative Records?
Again according to the BCG, an original genealogical record or source is one that is just that – original. It was not copied from another record, and is considered the most reliable.
A derivative source is one that was copied from another record. This might be by transcription by hand or machine, photocopies, microfilm, or abstracts. The more layers of copying between a derivative record and the original, the more potential for problems.
Genealogical Examples
- Parish records: An original parish record is reliable to the extent of the priest’s or pastor’s dependability. A microfilm copy is derivative. It makes the record easily accessible to the general public, but may be blurry, dark or smudged. Even more derivative is a typed index which was taken from a typed transcription of a hand transcription of the original.
- Census records: The “original” census record is actually derivative in many cases. Early census takers wrote on their own paper and then copied them onto the sheets which researchers see. Later censuses were copied twice, and the surviving version may be a copy or the original, according to Loretto Dennis Szucs, editor of The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy. More modern derivatives include online transcriptions of the census, indexes of those transcriptions, and even scanned images of the census pages. Different companies use different scanners and different clarification processes, and researchers have no way of knowing if the smudge taken out was just a smudge or was a census taker’s mark.
The BCG Genealogical Standards Manual states, “Because every repetition or recopying of data is an opportunity for error, the closer the derivative is to the original the more reliable the data are likely to be.”
Genealogists must evaluate the worth of each record and the information contained in those records. If information is unreliable, genealogists will continue to look for verification.
