Family history is full of statements that look equally certain on a screen but are not equally supported. This site keeps the difference visible. The confidence badge tells you how firmly a life or relationship is supported, and linked citations let you inspect the evidence yourself.
Record evidence means that a specific historical record has been located and read. It may be a civil register image, census sheet, parish entry, military roster, city directory or funeral-home register. This does not mean that every word in the record is correct. A death informant can misremember a birthplace, a clerk can misspell a name, and an index can omit details. It means the statement accurately reports what an identifiable record says.
Family knowledge and later accounts can come from what relatives remember, a volunteer memorial, a transcript or a published online tree. We keep those clues because they may lead to the right record, but we mark them Unverified when no independent document has yet been found. Repetition across several sites does not turn a claim into proof, especially when those sites may copy one another.
An inference is a conclusion drawn by combining evidence. The inference may be strong. For example, James D. Leahey’s age, parents and middle initial fit the Denis Leahey baptized in 1886, but no record preserved here explicitly says that Denis and James were the same person. “Probable” means the evidence presently favours that conclusion; “proved” would require a sufficiently thorough search, reliable correlation and an answer to meaningful conflicts. Those principles echo the Genealogical Proof Standard (external address omitted for offline reading), which calls for exhaustive research, citations, analysis, conflict resolution and a reasoned conclusion.
An unsuccessful search is still useful when its scope is clear. “Not found in St. Mary’s published baptisms for 1884–1894” does not mean “never baptized in Bayonne”; another parish or an unpublished year may hold the entry. When two pieces of evidence conflict, the disagreement stays visible until it can be responsibly resolved.
Confidence words are deliberately plain:
- Proved: the relationship or event is supported by direct evidence, or by a well-resolved body of indirect evidence.
- Probable / strongly supported: the current evidence points one way, but a real gap or alternative remains.
- Possible / plausible: worth pursuing, but more than one explanation fits.
- Unproved / open: the site is preserving a question, not supplying an answer.
Always ask, “What exactly does the source establish?” Peter Cooney’s regiment and death are documented, but the sergeant cannot be silently merged with the Peter born in Derrycriff in 1890. A New Jersey marriage index can establish that two names were paired in a year while still failing to name their parents. Good family history does not eliminate uncertainty by hiding it. It makes the known, the likely and the unknown easy to tell apart—and gives the next relative a fair chance to improve the answer.