Re: Standards of Evidence

Dear Michael,

Jeff is referring to an e-mail that I posted to the group yesterday as well
as sent him privately where I made the comment that if someone challenged a
lineage it was up to the person being challenged to defend the ancestry. I was

mjcar...

Thanks, MichaelAnne. It's really good to see you posting here again,
by the way. Jeff may not be able to benefit from your contribution,
but the rest of us certainly do.

Michael A-R

simply trying to make him understand that because Charles Ward wrote the
article in the January 2000 issue of TAG it was up to those of us who contend this
descent is accurate to refute Mr. Ward's data. We now have to definitely prove
the maternity or show why Mr. Ward's evidence or analysis is faulty for it to
be taken seriously. The article cannot be circumvented by dividing the

Nathaniel Taylor...

The simplest flaw in Ward's piece is his insistence that the use of the
maiden name has only one possible interpretation. This kind of
dogmatism, applied to a different document, is precisely what has
spawned this entire thread of threads.

daughters which is what he is trying to do as we do not have any exact chronology for
Elizabeth and Mary Dale and there is no evidence to support the theory that
these three women were half-sisters. In fact the will of Edward Dale seems to
indicate that at Katherine was a real daughter as she was left to provide for
Diana Dale and Elizabeth Rogers was left only a small sum of money. It doesn't
logically fit that a stepdaughter and her heirs would be left with everything
including care of her stepmother while a biological daughter would be left
very little and no responsibility for her mother's care. This point has always
indicated to me that whatever the status of Katherine Dale she and Elizabeth
were definitely full sisters.

Nathaniel Taylor...

This seems like a good point to me. I think Ward deliberately focused
only on a single issue--the use of the maiden name, and the implication
for the parentage of the only daughter known to have been born before
that date--essentially as a rhetorical device. As I've said already, I
think the majority of these other points, taken together, do seem to
line up against Ward's dogmatic interpretation of the use of the maiden
name.

Nat Taylor

a genealogist's sketchbook:

my children's 17th-century American immigrant ancestors:
http://home.earthlink.net/~nathanieltaylor/leaves/immigrantsa.htm

Best Wishes,
MichaelAnne