January
2012
The
main street of Westminster was The Strand on which sat the church of St.
Clement Dane. Across the
street were Essex House built in 1575 for Robert Dudley the Earl of
Leicester and Arundel House the home of Henry Fitz-Alan the 12th
Earl of Arundel, both of which ran from The Strand to the Thames. Arundel
House was built before 1539 for the Bishop of Bath of Wells.
While Essex House was demolished sometime between 1674 and 1679,
Arundel House still stands today.
The area known as Westminster was outside the gates, as was the parish of
St. Clement Danes where Ananias DARE & Eleanor WHITE were married.
It would appear that the WHYTE family resided in the parish of St.
Martin Ludgate, just inside the city gate, and records state that Ananias
DARE was a resident of the parish of St. Bride’s which is on the
Westminster side of the gate. All
three parishes churches were situated on the same street which was Fleet
Street inside the walls and The Strand outside.
So,
why did they marry at St. Clement Dane?
One can only speculate. The
WHITE family had become wealthy merchants with ‘connections’.
Did Eleanor leave as a bride from Essex or Arundel House?
Was their wedding feast held in either of these houses?
Why
is genealogical research so daunting in early London?
Because the parishes were very small, and it was as easy to walk to
one parish church as another, families baptized their children, married
and were buried in several different parish churches.
Added to that, the Great Fire of 1666 destroyed many of the
churches and some of their records. After
the fire, some churches were rebuilt, some congregations amalgamated with
other parishes and some churches were just demolished.
Most of this is well documented, but it takes a lot of reading to
follow where the parish records went.
In
order the put a complete London family together, it is necessary to search
just about every parish in the city as well as some that were considered
to be in the counties surrounding the city.
While the lesser populus stayed within the walls, the wealthy often
had a London residence and one or more estates in the country.
In my research for the Lost Colonists, and concentrating on the
DARE & WHITE surnames, only by finding baptisms for children in London
as well as one of the counties will I be able to find where the family
estates were.
Britain’s
Hidden History - http://www.johnchaple.co.uk/preromlondon.html
Wikipedia
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arundel_House
Wikipedia
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_House_%28London%29
Conclusions and Jumping to Them
By
Roberta Estes
One
of the things that people who study the sciences in a university
environment learn is how to think with both logic and reason.
This training is necessary to form a hypothesis and to construct
experiments that will truly address the question or questions that are
attempting to be answered, without bias.
This technique is called Cause and Effect Cognitive Reasoning.
However,
it's easy to get caught up with what is colloquially called "pretzel
logic." And for those
untrained as scientists, especially those who might want to believe
something specific, it's very easy to see how pretzel logic occurs.
Let's
look at cause and effect cognitive reasoning.
Example
1
1. Eighty percent of the cracks in blacktop streets occur when
the temperature is over 90 degrees.
2. Deaths in the elderly population increase when the
temperature is over 90 degrees.
Conclusion:
Cracks
in the street are causing an increase in deaths of elderly people. Equally wrong conclusion - deceased elderly people are
causing cracks in the street.
Why
are these conclusions wrong? Because
while items 1 and 2 are linked by the same underlying cause, neither of
them is the cause of the other. It
is incorrect to infer that they are.
Example
2
1. All canine animals are ferocious (for this example).
2. Bears are ferocious.
Conclusion:
Bears
are canine animals.
Why
is this wrong? Just because
items one and two are individually accurate does not mean that you can
draw any parallel, analogy or conclusions between items one and two.
This
becomes more difficult when we introduce factors where we know the outcome
to be true.
Example
3
1. All living things need water.
2. Roses need water.
Conclusion:
Roses
are living things.
While
this is factually true, it is not true because of the facts stated, but
because of two facts that are
not stated.
3. Dead things do not need water, and...
4. All thing are either dead or alive.
When
these two extra data points are added, we can then correctly deduce the
answer that roses are living things.
However, to do so by using only statements 1 and 2 would be a
logically incorrect process for the same reasons that our first two
examples were wrong. It's
difficult to understand this though, because we already know that all
matter is alive or dead and dead things don't need water.
This
is an example of letting pre-existing knowledge influence a conclusion.
Even though people claim to understand this logic process when
stepped through examples individually, and the methods for accurate
deductive reasoning, more than 80% of the population still fails simple
logic tests.
So
now that we understand how NOT to get caught up in logic traps, let's move
on to areas more relevant to genealogy.
Example
4
1. A DNA participant matches an individual whose ancestor is
known to live a few kilometers from the participants ancestor in Germany.
2. The matches ancestor is Jewish.
Conclusion:
The
participant is Jewish.
What
is wrong with this conclusion? This
is the same situation as Example
2 where the two individual statements are true, but no connection can be
drawn between the two facts.
Could
this be true, meaning could the participant's ancestor be Jewish?
Yes, but one cannot state that it is true through logic or
deductive reasoning based on only the information presented here.
More information is needed.
What
might the scenarios be?
The
two individuals may have a common ancestor in the Middle East before the
dawn of the Jewish religion and migrated to Germany independently.
The
two individuals may share a common ancestor in Europe, and one family may
have subsequently converted to Judaism.
The
two individuals may share a common ancestor in Europe, and one family may
have subsequently converted from Judaism.
There
is not enough information given in items 1 and 2 to reach any conclusion
about Jewish heritage for the participant.
To conclude otherwise would be incorrect at best, and potentially
unethical, depending on the circumstances and motivation for drawing the
incorrect conclusion.
Example
5
1. A Y-line DNA participant claims to have Native heritage.
2. The DNA participant carries yline haplogroup R1b or a
subclade.
Conclusion:
Haplogroup
R1b indicates Native heritage.
This
is the perfect example of pretzel logic.
This is incorrect because while these items individually may be
perfectly accurate, there is no logical link between the two.
Here's why.
The
individual may not have Native heritage at all.
The
individual may have Native heritage, but not on the paternal line.
If
the individual does have proven Native Heritage on the paternal line by
genealogically accepted documentation sources, such as the Guion-Miller
Rolls, the paternal ancestral DNA can still be European because many
European males fathered children with Native women and those children were
considered full tribal members due to their mother's tribal status.
However, the DNA of these fathers is still of European origin,
regardless of whether the children were considered tribal members or not.
No
DNA tests on pre-contact burials produce any evidence of European
haplogroups, so there is no reason to suspect that any haplogroup R1b
members were part of either initial or later migrations to North America
before European contact.
Example
6
1. A male in the Melungeon project carries haplogroup E.
2. An individual in the Portuguese project carries haplogroup E.
Conclusion:
Men
who carry haplogroup E are Portuguese.
Equally wrong conclusion - all Portuguese men with haplogroup E are
Melungeon.
Why
is this wrong? I'm sure by
now you recognize the error in the logic.
These two statements, while individually true, have nothing to do
with each other. What might
be more accurate situations?
There
are many men in Portugal who carry haplogroup E.
Haplogroup E was born in Africa and through migration and
enslavement, haplogroup E subgroups are found throughout Europe and the
Americas.
Melungeon
males who carry haplogroup E need to be individually evaluated as to the
locations of their matches, both current and ancestral, and results
combined with genealogy.
Melungeons
are defined as a particular group of individuals in a specific place and
time, and people living in Portugal are not included in the group defined
by documented records.
People
who are members of haplogroup E can be found in nearly every geographic
project, so finding one in the Portuguese project and logically connecting
the Portuguese to the Melungeons due to this finding would come under the
category of either pretzel logic or perhaps the desire for a particular
outcome.
Searching
for Data to Support a Desired Outcome
Drawing
a conclusion and then attempting to fit data into the conclusion isn't
science, it's deception, but unfortunately, to the uninitiated, it can
sound quite compelling. This
is why academic peer review panels exist in the scientific world, to
insure unbiased reporting of results and accuracy of logic in the
scientific process. There are
no internet police to regulate the truthfulness or accuracy of websites
and what they have to say, but in academic publishing there are editors
and peer review boards, and they are brutal. They do however, insure that the consuming public can have
faith in the results within the limits of what science had to offer at the
time of publication.
Summary
The
internet is the perfect breeding ground for pretzel logic.
People desperately want to believe one thing or another, someone is
Native or isn't European, is Jewish or isn't, for example, and using
pretzel logic, they can convince themselves, and sometimes others as well
that A and B separately are true, so combine them to get C.
This isn't a recipe, and A and B can't simply be combined.
At
the following website, compliments of California State University at
Fullerton, several examples of different types of faulty reasoning are
provided. http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/rgass/fallacy3211.htm
Dr.
Robert Gass, who provides this website, specializes in Human
Communications in the areas of persuasion, arguments, critical thinking
and deception detection. http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/rgass/
Don't
fall into the pretzel logic trap. Be
sure when you're evaluating logic statements and scenarios, especially
those described by others that you don't allow previous knowledge,
preconceived ideas or personal desires to cloud your vision.
Be sure to ask yourself if these factors might be influencing the
position of the individual making the statements.
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