Wrapping my Head Around the GPS

I have no trouble understanding the five items involved in the GPS when it comes to ancestors more than 2 or 3 generations back. Often there is not a single record that states who someone’s parents are and in some cases, those records may be incorrect. Like an incorrect surname of a parent. Or there may be more than one person with the same name.

Where I have trouble is applying the GPS to myself & my parents & some of my grandparents. 

I have birth certificates for myself and both of my parents. I also have done DNA on myself & both of my parents.

The first requirement of the GPS is reasonably exhaustive research. For myself and my parents, I have not researched every record out there. However, I don’t think any more research is required to prove that my parents are my parents or that their parents are their parents.

The second requirement of the GPS is documentation of each source. Citations have been written and attached to the fact.

The third requirement of the GPS is the analysis and correlation of the evidence. Not much analysis is involved here.

The fourth requirement of the GPS is to resolve any conflicting evidence. No conflicting evidence has been found. But I only have one document and a DNA test. There could very well be other documents that contain errors. And now that I think about it, I do have a copy of an application for a military id for myself that my Dad filled out that has the wrong birth year. I don't even know if this piece of paper was even used. Should this even be mentioned? All of the military ids I have for myself have the correct year of birth. 

The fifth requirement is a written proof statement or argument that identifies the evidence and the reasoning. Is this even applicable when something is obvious? 

Thank you for your thoughts,

Ann

Submitted byEEon Sat, 06/03/2023 - 09:14

“The first requirement of the GPS is reasonably exhaustive research. For myself and my parents I have not researched every record out there.”

Ann, let’s simplify this:

Criteria 1

The first criteria of the GPS is not “exhaustive" research. It’s reasonably exhaustive research. If we are raised by a set of parents, if no hint of adoption ever occurred, if we have an original and unamended birth certificate created shortly after our birth that states those two people were our parents, if we have a military ID created for us by our father himself, and we have a DNA test that matches us appropriately to the members of their family, then our body of evidence is “reasonable.”

Criteria 2 & 3

Documentation, correlation, and analysis. You’ve done this.

Criteria 4

Conflicting evidence?  You say none has been found, but your father made a mistake on the year. He’s human.  When you attach that document to your family tree, you might add a flag stating that Dad misremembered the year. (It’s a generally accepted truism that many guys aren’t good at remembering the exact birth day/month/year of every child—or even their own marriage.)

Criteria 5

As to the fifth criteria, which you describe as “a written proof statement or argument that identifies the evidence and the reasoning,”  you ask: “Is this even applicable when something is obvious?”

No. If you feel that your body of research must include a “written proof statement” on your own parentage, in addition to the documents that offer no conflicting evidence about parentage, then check out the glossary in the Standards Manual, p. 83, where “proof statement” is defined as “a documented data item or sentence …” 

So write a sentence. Some genealogical issues require long treatises to lay out the case. With other genealogical issues, the evidence doesn't require a lengthy dissection and analysis.