While researching the history I have found that one source contradicts another source. What should I do?

Question

One source tells me Mr & Mrs O'Connell put the land up for sale in 1845 but another source says Mrs O'Connell named the streets in the area in 1880. If they sold the land surely they would still have a say in the street naming...do you think? What should I do next?

Answer 1

Two things to think about:

1. A lot of time people would sell portions of their property. So she could still own a portion of the land. Also, she might have sold the property but still have been influential in the area.

2. If you are using a secondary resource, like a history book, note that local history is often wrote by amateur historians that do not back up all of the facts they have with primary resources. You may need to do a search for when the streets were named and possibly do a deed search when Mrs. O'Connell sold her property.

Hope that helps.

Answer 2

Not a lot of detail here, but what if they land sold for a lot of money (a lot for those days) making the O'Connell family wealthy and influential in the area? Given that you're talking a time difference of 35+ years, it may not even be the same Mrs. O'Connell.

This is not necessarily an outright conflict; you're reading too much into it.

Answer 3

The sources refer to two completely different events. It is entirely plausible that the O'Connells could sell land one year, then name streets five years later. That is the only explanation I can draw from the details you provided, but you didn't give us answerers much to go on.

Answer 4

What you do next depends on how serious (at what level of scholarship) your research is. (Or if this is just for yourself, see below.)

If you are writing a paper for a regular course, I would say you should just explain your sources and point out the discrepancy.

If this is serious professional research (graduate school or above), you should try to find out which source is more reliable. There are various ways to do that, for example, testing each source's reliability on other issues.

Of course, you may just be researching this for your own purposes (family history, for example), and not writing a paper. In that case, just keep digging for more information, which may well be out there, but might take very long to find. (That's why this is not a good solution for someone who needs to turn in a paper.)

Answer 5

If they were still involved in the politics of the place then she could have named the streets because she still had influence. Maybe they moved to another piece of land still involved in the town. But if you want to go to a third source, it would break the tie.