Merging and uncertain information

Question

Hi, I have been working on the Ray family from Prince George’s, Frederick, Montgomery & Anne Arundel for a while off wikitree, recently decided to give wikitree another try, (I always feel so underqualified and overwhelmed). As I was looking at the names in the Maryland southern colonies project tonight I saw this William Ray, I’m pretty certain he is the same as Ray-563 and I know but both have some unproven information, wives & mothers maiden names, their birth places. I just don’t feel fully confident in challenging those details, I can’t find anything to back up these facts but they seem to be details that are largely accepted as fact by most other researchers. What should I do in this case? I did write up a bio (or at least tried my best) for the father of Ray-563 yesterday and put some notes about unknown locations and maiden names, and I have a decent amount of research I’m confident about but haven’t figured out how id explain it in text yet. 

Sorry if I’m just overthinking this, just trying to understand

Answer 1

Hi J,

Have you reviewed the comments on the Ray-563 profile.  It is talking about how there are 3 William Ray (actually at least 4) and gives some arguments and info about each.  There is no info there if all of them have profiles, but the search info, narrowed down to just William's should help to verify that.

It would be nice if your research could help sort all that out.  I see you were doing that on William 1.

You might want to copy most of the above paragraph 1 into a comment on the profile or Ray-563