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→Likelihood of Events: added transciption errors
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Even if the events were clearly recorded, you must also determine if the events described in the records really could have happened. Some events (such as joining the military at the age of ten or twelve, being born on the father's birthday, or owning a considerably larger estate according to a probate inventory than recent tax lists or census records indicated) are less credible than others. Such events are possible but unlikely. | Even if the events were clearly recorded, you must also determine if the events described in the records really could have happened. Some events (such as joining the military at the age of ten or twelve, being born on the father's birthday, or owning a considerably larger estate according to a probate inventory than recent tax lists or census records indicated) are less credible than others. Such events are possible but unlikely. | ||
If the records present an unlikely situation, you may have stumbled across records of two unrelated people with similar names. Evaluate the chronology of the situation: could this event have happened as the record says it did? If a man's will was proven on 28 November 1754 and his death record gives a death date of 15 December of the same year, one of the records is wrong or does not pertain to the same person. | If the records present an unlikely situation, you may have stumbled across records of two unrelated people with similar names. Evaluate the chronology of the situation: could this event have happened as the record says it did? If a man's will was proven on 28 November 1754 and his death record gives a death date of 15 December of the same year, one of the records is wrong or does not pertain to the same person (or that a transcription error occurred, recently in in the past). Carefully evaluating the original sources can sometimes help. | ||
== Establishing Proof == | == Establishing Proof == | ||