In Canada there is a census that has what appears to be our family: Jacob Vincon and his "Mrs." and a list of kids whose names coincide with the commonly believed list of kids in our family.
Most people take one look at that and say, "Hot dang! We found our family in Canada!"
Well... not so fast.
The problem is, how do I know if that really is the right list of kids in our Jacob's family? If I had grown up hearing Great talk about her Aunts Harriet and Mary, and Uncles Richard, John, Japheth, Jacob and Joseph, then I'd say the list was good, but that's not how it happened. I got that list from other genealogists on Ancestry, which means that the odds are good that they got those names FROM that same Canadian census.
Which is why they coincide perfectly.
You can't use a source to prove itself.
We can compare it to another census here in the U.S., and if we do, we get an iffy result: The Jacob and Mary Vincient in the 1870 census in St. Clair County MI are different ages and have different kids.
Ah, but these kids are younger, and they fill out the rest of the list of names that the common wisdom on ancestry say are in the family! Except, yeah, those other people on Ancestry probably got that information from this other census.
To make it worse: both these documents could still be right and refer to our family, but they also could be two completely different families, neither of which are direct ancestors of ours.
Furthermore, when the censuses were taken, the family may have lied to the census taker, or the "informant" who gave the info may not have known anything, and they just made up the answers.
Why would the family lie?
Well, one of the legends I found from a second/third cousin who is also descended from Jacob, is that he or his father had accompanied the Prince of Wales in a canoe when the prince visited an Indian village during a tour of Canada in 1860. DNA indicates that it is entirely possible that Jacob or his father were Native. (After tracing a lot of our family back, the Native DNA has to come from him, his wife, or from Peter LaGuire's unnamed mother. Those are the only choices left. Furthermore, more descendants of the Vincent line have Native DNA than of the LaGuire line. So... Jacob or his wife, Mary Tebo are likely it.)
Given the prejudice against Native people, and against the French, in Canada and northern U.S. at the time, it is easy to see why the family might have been passing for white, and passing for English. And if they were trying to stay under the radar, it's even possible that they didn't intentionally lie, but the person who was answering the census (who could be a neighbor, or servant, or landlord) just didn't know. So they said, "Yeah, they're from Upper Canada, yeah, they're Church of England."
Or it could be another family entirely. Or this is our family and the legend is completely wrong.
So how do we sort it out? How do we verify the names of OUR Jacob Vinson's family.
One place to start is the death certificates (and obituaries) of his children. Frank Vinson/Vincent-- our great great grandfather -- was the informant on Jacob's death certificate. And though he left out a lot of information about his father's background, he was specific about his mother's name, and his father's age.
So we find other death certificates and start comparing. So far Richard, and Jacob Jr. are consistent. And there was a John Vinson who witnessed Frank's marriage, so even though he could have been a cousin, it's a good indication that they were associated.
But death certificates have their own interesting issues. More about that Next Time.
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