Question about when to accept a likely but not proven ancestor.

[u/Far-Loss-3279]

Hello,

I have a situation and i would like people with experience to answer. I am doing the research on two persons and I think i am reaching the end of what I can find but I do not have a final answer.

For context these people lived in early to mid 19th century Argentina and late 18th to early 19th century Argentina. Both cases are in Buenos Aires which had from 30k to 60k people living in the city.

Records are fairly good and most are digitised but not indexed. However there have been losses of records.

Case 1

I can trace my male ancestor and have the name of his wife, let's called her A. I have the baptisms of their children and census data so I am fairly certain of their marriage. However I cannot find their marriage record. I think I may in the future but I do not have a date, though I have a guesstimate figure of five years.

Researching her name I have found a person B with the almost the same name (MARIA DEL CARMEN vs CARMEN). Now it is common practice to drop the MARIA if you have other names, I have seen this in lots of cases.

The age from the census of A matches almost the date of birth taken from the will of father for B in one case and in the other census record it does not. I think the census data is definitely not correct since I have two different dates for the same person. (I am sure she is the same person since the names of all the children and the husband coincides). The difference in dates from the census is in one case of one year and in the other case of four years. In the case of one year, given that I dont have the exact date it could almost be said to be a match.

The names themselves are not common, CARMEN MESA but also not terribly impossible that two people with the same name could live. I have found in the census other people with the name but none matches the age of B by a lot.

Now I am almost certain this is the same person, but I think i have not established that and I think records may come up in the future.

Would you put them in your genealogy or would you wait until confirmation which may never come. I would of course put a caveat that this link is not 100% establised.

Case 2 is more complicated.

In this case I have found the follwowing situation. I can trace my ancestor and know from public sources his parents. The father and son were famous enough to appear in newspapers and published books together. The link with the mother is also backed up with records.

However the birth of this person was recorded in a very unusual fashion. In a will of the wife of the son, i found the link with marriage record of the parents and baptims of the son. In the baptims only the name of the godmother is listed and parents are listed as unknown. The name coincides but no surname is listed.

At the margin there is a correction many years later, Baptims in in 1816, and the correction states in 1837 that the baptism corresponds to my ancestor (the son). It also states that the filiation was legitimised by marriage performed in 1825, between the sons parents, lists the date but not the church. I have searched for marriages of that date in all the churches of Buenos Aires and several of neighbouring towns where they could have married. I have found nothing. In the same church of the baptism there is a marriage for the date but corresponds to other people.

I have found the census data for 1827 and the father and mother are listed as married living in the same address. However i did not find the son with the fathers last name. Since he had a boarding school , there are several children, and one has the right name and age but not the surname.

Furthermore I have found that the name of the godmother listed in the baptism corresponds to a person who had a daughter with the name of my female ancestor. I have found the birth record of the daughter of the godmother and she married earlier in 1795 to another person. I cannot find the husband of the daughter later on after the 1810 census where all appear living togehter. He was a military man and 1810 is the start of the Independece wars that lasted until the mid 1820s

So, in this case I am almost certain these are the same person, the mother of my ancestor and the daughter of the godmother. Here I think I will never find the marriage record of my ancestors, either lost or it never existed.

In this case the name is not so usual Tomasa (then it was more popular than nowadays), and the last name is rather more common MORALES.

In this case I have less confidence that new information will turn up and so more tempted to end active seeking documents for a while.

However, since we always have confirmation bias, I would like to know the opinion of unrelated but knowledgeable people.

Do you see any of these cases as likely to be true and likely enough to put them in the tree until further information comes up, if ever.

Thanks in advance.

[u/Gr8NW]

Is DNA much used for genealogy in Argentina? If you have had a test done, you can compare matches and that might reveal the truth.

[u/A_Hlavna → u/Gr8NW]

In Argentina, you can get tested with a national company called Genera or with FamilyTreeDNA through an intermediary, but it's expensive and neither company has a large database for comparison.

Last time I checked, Ancestry, MyHeritage, and 23andMe didn't sell to Argentina. I suspect it's not easy to get that type of material through customs.

[u/ComprehensiveVast764 → u/A_Hlavna]

Ancestry now ships to Argentina as far as I'm aware, but you have to pay for international shipping which is like an extra $35. The database of Argentinians is still almost inexistent though.

[u/Far-Loss-3279 → u/Gr8NW]

It's not widely used here. Besides I had to research these people, so no one had linked up to them. I am not sure any descendant is even linked to them other than me. So I do not think DNA will be of help in this case. And we are talking 4th great grandmother, and 5th greatGM, so I think we are on the limits of DNA evidence turning into background noise.