Primary, Secondary or what?

Much of the genealogical literature encourages researchers to consult “primary” records and at the same time decries the use of “secondary” records. This dichotomy is overly simplistic and often misleading. In examining a variety of documents it is frequently impossible to categorize any given source as either primary or secondary or whatever. Few of the documents considered to be “primary” sources are in reality documents created at the time of the event by a first hand observer. Let me take as an example a death certificate. Transitional genealogical literature would say something like, “a death certificate would be a primary source for the date of death but not for the date of deceased's birth.” In fact, any particular death certificate could be secondary or further removed as a source for the date of death and more reliable for the birth date. Categorization of records can produce a false positive or a false negative.

Here is a quote from the USGenWeb Project on the difference between primary and secondary evidence:

"Primary" Resources: Those that recount an event at or close to the time it happened; original records of events and may include: diaries, journals, state or federal census records, courthouse records such as deeds, will probates, birth or death records, baptism or marriage records. Also included as primary sources would be ship's passenger lists and military records.

"Secondary Resources: Published records, including: family histories, indexes or compilations of census or marriage records, any sort of history (county, state, etc.), and collections of cemetery inscriptions, for instance.

Primary records are, of course, the most reliable sources, but secondary records can provide you with many clues for further research.

Rather than viewing records in categories as primary or secondary, I believe it is more productive to view all records merely as evidence to be weighed, similar to the way that evidence is presented in support of a legal case. The instructions given to jurors illustrate this attitude. For example, one jury instruction routinely given at trials involves the evaluation of evidence. Here is one such instruction from the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals:

1.6 WHAT IS EVIDENCE
The evidence you are to consider in deciding what the facts are consists of:
1. the sworn testimony of any witness;
2. the exhibits which are received into evidence; and
3. any facts to which the lawyers have agreed.

In addition, the jury is routinely admonished to wait until they have heard all of evidence before making a decision.  As you can see, the concept is not to apply some sort of evaluation level to an individual document or record but to consider the relationship that the record has to the entire body of evidence available and to have the patience to wait until all of the evidence is presented before making a final decision about the issues of the case.

It seems that I am frequently dealing with someone who has found a primary source document and thinks the evaluation of the believability of the "evidence" contained in the document is basically over. After all, the document is a primary source! Simply locating a primary source document, no matter how defined, is not an excuse for discontinuing research. Until the document is evaluated in the context of all of the "evidence" available, no decision about the investigation can or should be made.

Routinely researchers come to me with issues regarding contradictory evidence. Just recently, one researcher was stopped by the problem that the death certificate, census records and a ship manifest did not agree as to the date of birth of the ancestor. My response was, “So what?” All that means is you need more evidence. In this particular case we looked for and found a marriage record in the newly added records on FamilySearch.org. The marriage record lead me to believe that the ship manifest was likely not the same person, or if it was, the record was inaccurate as to the age of the immigrant.

Returning to the death certificate, there is no way to tell whether or not any of the information was actually gathered or recorded at or about the time of death especially if the information is inconsistent with other documents and records.The mere fact that the record may have been created at or near the time of the event does not, in itself, give any more credence to the information contained in the document.
To cite another jury instruction, this one discusses the credibility to give the testimony given by a witness. Most of the same considerations apply to documents discovered in the course of genealogical investigation. Here is the instruction, again from the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals:

1.7 CREDIBILITY OF WITNESSES

In deciding the facts in this case, you may have to decide which testimony to believe and which testimony not to believe. You may believe everything a witness says, or part of it, or none of it.

In considering the testimony of any witness, you may take into account:

(1) the witness’s opportunity and ability to see or hear or know the things testified to;

(2) the witness’s memory;

(3) the witness’s manner while testifying;

(4) the witness’s interest in the outcome of the case, if any;

(5) the witness’s bias or prejudice, if any;

(6) whether other evidence contradicted the witness’s testimony;

(7) the reasonableness of the witness’s testimony in light of all the evidence; and

(8) any other factors that bear on believability.

The weight of the evidence as to a fact does not necessarily depend on the number of witnesses who testify about it.

Some of these instructions merit another post, but suffice it to say that simply deciding whether a document is a primary or secondary source would have little or no value in deciding the ultimate issues of the case. 

So what is the use of considering whether a document is a primary or secondary source? The distinction is actually quite meaningless and may, in fact be impossible to determine, but the terms have a nice ring to them and they have been repeated so many times that that they taken a the truth. In the real world, very few documents will prove to be completely primary source material.
Comments would be appreciated.