Should we trust Fichier origine and PRDH?

Question

Claude Lambert and I are having a serious disagreament about wether or not to accept informations claimed or disclosed by Fichier origine [http://www.fichierorigine.com/recherche?numero=240487] and PRDH [https://www.prdh-igd.com/Membership/fr/PRDH/Individu/25009] pertaining to jeanne Boucher - and indirectly her brother Marin Boucher whose parents are so far listed as unknown..

Claiming that at Jeanne's marriage, her parents were not mentionned, Claude refuses to accept the baptismal record of Jeanne Boucher which was numerized by Fichier origine, giving the specific date of birth of May 1, 1601 and naming her parents. PRDH recognise this same date of birth, marrying Jeanne to Thomas Hayot - thus accepting that the Jeanne Boucher born in 1601 is the correct match.

Earlier discussions and arguments from both sides on Jeanne Boucher's profile.

Your thoughts please.

Answer 1

A couple of thoughts, looking through the dispute.

What matters is, you have a baptismal record that matches a name. It's from about the right time. How confident are you that it refers to "your" Jeanne Boucher? 50%? 80%? 20%?

You can either add the parents to her profile, and say in the biography that you're not completely sure they're correct; or you can not add them, and suggest, in the biography, that her parents names might be Pierre Boucher and Roberte Parent. Provide a link to the source, regardless.

Since she doesn't have any parents, my personal bias would be to add them, even if I was 20% sure, and just flag them as 'uncertain'. You can disconnect them later if you need to.

The argument "Both of them are also ancestors of mine and I am not ready to accept anything about my ancestors." is completely invalid. Maybe you can claim first or second hand knowledge of someone who died in 1950. For someone who lived in the 1600s, it's specious.

Also, the point is not whether one website is valid or not. What matters is the evidence they provide. So the argument "do we trust and accept Fichier origine's findings? Do we accept PRDH's results? If not, we reject all the profiles that have mentions of them." doesn't make much sense to me, either. Not when you have a copy of an actual document.

Answer 2

No. We should synthesize the best of PRDH, Fichier Origine, PREFEN, perche-quebec.com and another available reliable sources.

Comments

You both seem to be trying to synthesize. I'm trying to understand why you wouldn't want to add Roberte and Pierre as her parents? Are there several possible sets of parents, and you can't choose among them?

---

I will ignore the part about  both seeming to be trying to synthesize.

I'm am trying to understand why you would not be comfortable with saying that Jeanne and Marin's parents are not known. Why risk making an error with an unknown?

There are dozens of websites making the error of saying that Jeanne and Marin's parents are Françoise Paigné et Jacques Boucher. Fichier Origine says the real Jeanne Boucher's are not known. Why is that not good enough?

There are those, including Gaston, who believe that Jeanne's parents are Roberte and Pierre but that Marin & Jeanne may not be siblings.

Saying you don't know can be a good answer.

---

Push comes to shove, I trust PREFEN's and perche-quebec.com's treatment for the families of Jeanne & Marin Boucher and Thomas Hayot the most..

---

The first thing you need to do is write a clear biography, and present the evidence. In the end, whatever parents you decide to add are less important than how well you present the pros and cons.

---

This is what we are trying to do.

---

Prefen has been closed for over a year except for some pdf files. No way to verify already out. Claude seems to have access but I dont know how or why.

---

Hogwash. The article referred to is a self-standing article « écrite en 2003 pour PREFEN par Jean-François Paboul avec révision et correction le 25/10/2005 par Beaussy Isabelle ».Just because part of the website is temporarily closed does not mean that the available information is not valid. Eventually, many such sources will dry up but history and genealogy marches on just the same. We have no option but to use the best available information and expertise.

---

Indeed, Wikitree should systematically retrieve these PREFEN pdf'so that if the website closes down permanently they will be available for the Percheron Immigation Category profiles involved.

---

Here is another PREFEN gem :

Jeanne Boucher est la sœur du migrant Marin Boucher mais on ne sait qui sont leurs parents. [Soulignement ajouté.] Toutefois, si l’on s’en tient aux déclarations de la migrante en Nouvelle-France, il existe une Jeanne Boucher qui pourrait être celle recherchée. 

Baptisée le 1er mai 1601 à Mortagne-au-Perche, paroisse de Saint-Jean, elle est la fille de Pierre Boucher et Roberte Parent. Cette Jeanne Boucher a deux ou trois sœurs et un frère, tous baptisés ou inhumés dans la paroisse de Saint-Jean de Mortagne-au-Perche : . Noël, baptisé le 25 décembre 1604, frère jumeau de Noëlle. Il décède six jours plus tard. . Noëlle, baptisée le 25 décembre 1604, sœur de Noël. Elle décède trois jours plus tard. . Une fille anonyme, décédée le 8 mai 1605. . Martine, baptisée le 7 juillet 1606. . Une fille anonyme, décédée le 24 août 1610. 

Roberte Parent épouse en Secondes noces Richard Sorent de qui elle a deux enfants : Magdeleine et Marie baptisées le 14 février 1613 et le 4 mars 1619 à Saint-Jean de Mortagne. Le 25 janvier a lieu la publication de deux bans concernant le mariage de Robert  Roberte Parent et de Nicolas Legrand de la paroisse de Saint-Hilaire.  

---

I have added to [[Boucher-94|Jeanne Boucher]] profile a screenshot of parish's marriage register entry  along with transcript by PREFEN that reads:

Le quinsziesme jour de juillet aud(it an [1629] Thomas Hayot de la (pa)r(oiss)e de Soligni et Jeanne Boucher de ceste (pa)r(oiss)e ont este espousez

Note: Soligni = Soligny-la-Trappe

Which confirms that names of Jeanne Boucher's parent are not mentioned in the register entry.

---

This is the baptism entry of the lady baptised in 1601

http://gaia.orne.fr/mdr/index.php/docnumViewer/calculHierarchieDocNum/378791/1057:371440:372097:378791/0/0

(image on page 7,second entry, right hand page)

(I've been reading this as an observer. Certainly no stake in this!)

 I personally would want to know if it was normal in 17th C France for a woman to be married in her home parish . If so, then  I would also want to know how frequently the name occurs in this particular register.  Do we find a burial of a Jeanne? Is there a marriage of another Jeanne? ( (who were the god parents ? sometimes they are family)

 I've seen the proposed solution below and it does raise thoughts.   I'm used  to dealing with English registers in which parents are not normally included in the register until 1837 and mothers were often omitted in baptismal entries before 1812. I think the standard of proof demanded here would mean many English lines would fail this hurdle. (quite often it is impossible to go back further as there may be several interelated families with the same name)

 However,if  it  was normal to marry in the home parish and there were not  other  Bouchers on the register then I would have thought an uncertain linkeage could be made.

The bio of the brother states he was born in the same parish Unfortunately, even if he were baptised in the same parish, the register only starts in 1600.

---

The further back one goes in generations, the more of an impact this has on descendants. It looks to me that this issue has been researched extensively. All to say that, for pioneers like Jeanne & Marin Boucher, it is, in my view, not worth making an error about who the parents are unless you are 99.9% sure.

For example, in my family, due to an error in Tanguay and other more recent reputable genealogists, it took our branch of the family 50 years to find out that our ancestor was not Pierre Lambert born in ancient Normandie province but Aubin Lambert born in ancient Perche province. Such an error thus gets unnecessarily propagated ad nauseum. So, for pioneers such as Jeanne & Marin Boucher, it is better to be very conservative in assignment of parents.

Quebecois Project guidelines should accordingly be changed to reflect such conservativeness for pioneers born in France and Belgium who immigrated to Nouvelle-France.

---

So far as I know, these people are not in the lines in my family, but I will add to the debate that based on my research of the Crevier family in the registers of the churches in Rouen about the same time frame, while the banns were often published in the groom's parish, the actual wedding ceremony was usually in the bride's parish.  Also the further back you go in time, the less likely it was for the parents to be listed in the marriage record.  The further back you go, the more common it was to list only the father in the baptismal record.  In the early 1600's it starts getting to the point where you need to map out families and take into account all names and locations to try to figure out families.  It gets very difficult as the handwriting gets more difficult to read and there is less information in the older records.

With the Crevier family, that mapping was helped out by finding references to other documents.  The listing/index of sales of property in Rouen added additional bits of information that helped to confirm relationships.

Answer 3

I have a horse in this race as I am connected to Marin Boucher. I descend from quite a few of his kids. Namely Jean-Galleren, Marie Madeleine, Marie and a couple others.

Here's my take. People make mistakes when compiling records. I know this because I have Italian birth records that have some mistakes here and there. Fichier and PRDH are both great. They have served me well and matched documents I found on Ancestry.. However, both have good and bad points.

The only way you are ever going to solve this issue is if you go right to the source and look up the actual document.

Here's my suggestion. Put the marriage down as "around 1601" until you get a credible source or have someone actually go to the place and get the info from the church. Hopefully they would have the centuries old document. As far as the other issues go it seems to be up to personal taste.

Good luck!

Answer 4

Fichier origine states that there is no certainty whether or not the Jeanne Boucher for which they provide a baptism is the same woman who married Thomas Ayotte.  They do use the word ''Pourrait''.  Don't have subscription to PRDH so not able to see what they say about it.

Suggest you add French roots tag on this question, our friends over there may be able to shed more light on the matter.

As to how trustworthy Fichier origine and PRDH are, I have found errors in both, they are after all run by humans.  But they do accept evidence to correct their data (at least Fichier does, not sure if PRDH is still updating its files or not, run by IDG now).  And they do look at evidence before concluding anything.  Preference for one source or another is iffy at best, they ALL have errors somewhere, no way to avoid it.

I'm another one descended from her, so hello again cousins.  :D

Comments

Talk about going right to the source. Good work!

---

well, as she said, Jeanne did not meet criteria to be included in their published works.  Probably sent it back to researchers too, have had it happen before where they withdrew a file due to similar questions about conclusions.  So we are left where we were before of ''no known parentage''.  Her marriage to Thomas Ayotte is not in question.  Lots of French marriages are what is termed ''non-filiatif'', ie no parents named.

---

Re: It is now clear that Fichier origine withdraws its link between Jeanne Boucher 1601 and Thomas Ayotte.

This is not what Micheline Perrault says. She says « Nous n'avons aucun acte qui mentionne le nom de ses parents pas plus qu'à son mariage en France.  » We have a copy of the parish register marriage act entry which does indeed show that the names of the parents of Jeanne Boucher are not mentioned. But it also clear that Jeanne Boucher was married to Thomas Hayot in July 1629.

---

What I get from Gaston's response was that the woman born in 1601 could not be linked to the one who married Thomas Ayotte, maybe could have put it better, but he is not denying the marriage.

---

The wording of the original Fichier Original profile, now being removed from the database, still applies: 

Jeanne Boucher 1601 is still not ruled out as possibly being married to Thomas Hayot.     

I have downloaded in respective WT profiles the Fichier Original profiles for Jeanne and Marin Boucher before the links disappear permanently.                        

---

Thomas Hayot-38 remaines married to one Jeanne Boucher-94 born abt 1607

[[Boucher-94|Jeanne Boucher]] possibly the same person as [[Boucher-3028|Jeanne Boucher]]; Boucher-3028 remains a '''possible''' wife to [[Hayot-38|Thomas Hayot]].but is not linked to him - kept in possible reference into text fields.

Jeanne Boucher-3028 born May 1, 1601 linked to parents Pierre Boucher-1747 and Roberte Parent-1307 - not linked to Thomas Hayot-38 but kept in possible reference in text field.

Jeanne Boucher-94 possibly the same person as Jeanne Boucher3028

Does that agree with everybody?

---

Gaston, yes, it does, have you put an unmerged match so they will be easy to find if we discover more evidence?  Claude, the removal from Fichier origine publication is not permanent unless they never find more data to back up her fiche.

---

Gaston, I agree with your understanding of the issue described in your last comment.

Danielle, I agree that, in dealing with databases, including Fichier Origine's, it would of course be foolish to 'permanently' delete useful data.

---

Danielle, I did not put an unmerged match as it is easy to reverse it. Instead, I left a clear reference in the text section of Boucher-3028.

---

Fine by me.  Are we all agreed now?