College Survival Scholarship Essay Contest Entry Form: Fill & Download for Free

Brief biography of Dr.Ambedkar1891: In 14 April, Bhimrao is born in the British-founded town of Mhow in Central Provinces (today’s Madhya Pradesh) to Ramji Sakpal and Bhimabai; Mhow, near Indore, was and still is a cantonment.1897: Bhimabai (Bhimrao’s mother) passes away in Satara.1900: In November, Bhimrao joins the government high school in Satara. He got his primary education at a school in Dapoli, a small town in Ratnagiri District, in Konkan Maharashtra.1904: Bhimrao joins the Elphinstone High School, Bombay.1907: Matriculation from Elphinstone High School, Bombay, with 382 marks out of 750. Marriage with Rami (Ramabai), daughter of Bhiku Walangkar.Bhimrao passes the high-school exam. This is a special moment not only for Bhimrao but also for the whole community. The community organizes a celebration. Krishnaji Arjun Keluskar, well-known Marathi author and social reformer, presents him with a copy of his new book, Life of Gautama Buddha. This probably is Dr. Ambedkar’s first “encounter” with Buddha. Marriage follows. Bhimrao marries Rami, renamed Ramabai, at a simple ceremony in the vegetable market in Byculla.1912: Graduation from Elphinstone College, affiliated to University of Bombay. His BA has papers in Persian and English. He scores 449 out of 1000 marks. While he is studying for his BA, Bhim’s father runs out of funds. Keluskar helps Bhim get a scholarship of Rs 25 rupees a month from the Maharaja of Baroda. In December, son Yeshwant is born.1913: Joins Baroda State Force as a lieutenant. On 2 February, Bhim’s father, Ramji Sakpal, passes away. In July, Ambedkar arrives in New York for higher studies in Columbia University1915: On June 5, Dr. Ambedkar is awarded an MA. He majors in Economics; Sociology, History, Philosophy, Anthropology and Politics were the other subjects of study. For his MA, he wrote a thesis titled “Ancient Indian Commerce”.1916: On 9 May, he reads a paper titled “Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development” at Dr Alexander Goldenweiser’s anthropology seminar. It is published in Indian Antiquary, Vol XII (New York) in May 1917.In June, he writes another MA thesis, National Dividend of India – A Historic and Analytical Study. Later that month, he goes to London, and in October, joins Gray’s Inn to study Law. He also takes admission at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He requests the Maharaja of Baroda to grant him permission to pursue his studies in London.1917: He starts working on his thesis, but he is informed that the period of his scholarship is over. He returns to India after spending a year in London working on the thesis for the MSc (Economics). In July, he is appointed Military Secretary to the Gaikwad of Baroda; he had agreed to join the Baroda service as a condition of his scholarshipIn September, he travels to Baroda to take up his job. He meets Annie Besant in Calcutta. The Indian National Congress adopts a resolution endorsing “the justice and righteousness of removing all disabilities imposed by custom upon the Depressed Classes” for the first time in its history.1918: In the new Journal of Indian Economics, he reviews Bertrand Russell’s book Principles of Social Reconstruction under the title “Mr Russell and the Reconstruction of Society”.In the new Journal of the Indian Economic Society, he publishes Small Holdings in India and Their Remedies. He publishes his paper Castes in India in the form of a book.Dr. Ambedkar becomes Professor of Political Economy in the Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics, in Bombay.1919: He testifies both orally and in writing before the Southborough Committee, which is investigating franchise matters in the light of the planned Montagu-Chelmsford reforms. Dr. Ambedkar demands separate electorate and reserved seats for Depressed Classes, in proportion to their population.He comes in contact with Shahuji Maharaj of Kolhapur through Dattoba Powar.1920: On 31 January, with the help from Dattoba Powar, Dr. Ambedkar launches Mook Nayak (Leader of the Dumb) newspaper. (Dr. Ambedkar was not its official editor, but he was the man behind it, and it was his mouthpiece. Nandram Bhatkar was the editor. Dyander Gholap succeeded him.)In March, Dr. Ambedkar presides over a conference of Untouchables, in Mangaon in Kolhapur state. Shahuji Maharaj is in attendance, too.In May, Dr. Ambedkar is a prominent personality attending the first All-India Conference convened by Untouchables presided over by Shahuji Maharaj of Kolhapur.Dr. Ambedakar resigns from his teaching job at Sydenham College to return to London. The Maharaja of Kolhapur and Naval Bhathena provide financial support. He attends the London School of economics and also Gray’s Inn to read for the Bar. He is a frequent visitor to the British Museum, where the likes of Marx, Engels, Mazzini and Lenin worked.1921: On 21 June, LSE awards Ambedkar an MSc in Economics. His thesis is titled “Provincial Decentralization of Imperial Finance in British India”.1922: In October, he completes his thesis, “The Problem of the Rupee”, and submits to LSE. He is also called to the Bar. He was not able to take the Bar examination earlier because of his work on the thesis.1923: Dr. Ambedkar travels to Bonn University, Germany. However, after around 3 months there, in March, Professor Edwin Cannan asks him to return to London. It is because his thesis is challenged on political grounds. However, after resubmission it is finally accepted. It is at once published in London by P. S. King & Son Ltd. He dedicates this work to his father and mother. Edwin Cannan himself has written the introduction. (How many degrees did Dr. B R Ambedkar earn?)In April, he returns to India. Dr. Ambedkar decides to start practising law. He does not have money to pay for the sanad, though. In June, Naval Bhathena comes to his rescue.1924: In June, he starts practising in the Bombay High Court. On 20 July, he launches the Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha (Group for the Wellbeing of the Excluded), to mobilize Depressed Classes. Its motto is “Educate, Agitate, Organise”. Dr. Ambedkar is the chairman of the managing committee.1925: Dr. Ambedkar’s LSE MA thesis as The Evolution of Provincial Finance in British India is published by P.S. King & Son Ltd; it is dedicated to the Gaekwad of Baroda (“for his help in the matter of my education”), and has an introduction by Columbia’s Prof Edward Seligman.1926: Dr. Ambedkar submits evidence before the Royal Commission on Indian Currency (Hilton Young Commission)The Governor of Bombay nominates him as a member of the Bombay Legislative CouncilHe leads the satyagraha in Mahad to secure the right of Untouchables to draw water from the Chavdar Tank. He ceremonially takes a drink of water from the tank, after which local caste Hindus run riot, and Brahmins take elaborate measures for the ritual purification of the tank.1927: On 3 April, Dr. Ambedkar launches his Marathi fortnightly Bahishkrit Bharat. He himself is the editor.On June 8, he is formally awarded a PhD by Columbia University. His PhD thesis is titled The Evolution of Provincial Finance in British India (Note: different dates are given in different sources for this event, but this is the one given on his own official transcript, preserved in the Registrar’s Office, Columbia University.)In September, he establishes “Samaj Samata Sangh”.On 2 October, he presides over a conference of the students from the Depressed Classes in Poona.On 24 December, he addresses a second Depressed Classes Conference in Mahad.On 25 December, Hindu draconian law book- Manusmriti was burnt by a Brahmin GANGADHAR NEELKANTH SAHASRABUDDHE and Dr Ambedkar, along with people of various castes including the Brahmins were present during the event. (What was Dr. B.R. Ambedkar's reasoning behind burning the 'Manusmriti'?)1928: Dr Ambedkar becomes professor at the Government Law College, Bombay; his term ends in 1929. In March, he introduces the “Vatan Bill” in Bombay Legislative Council. Dr. Ambedkar is selected by the Bombay Presidency Committee to work with the Simon Commission. The Congress boycotts the Simon Commission because it has no Indians in it. In May he submits statements to the Simon Commission on behalf of the Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha suggesting measures that need to be taken to improve the condition of the Depressed Classes.1929: Dr. Ambedkar closes his second journal, Bahiskrit Bharat (“Excluded India”), which started in 1927, and replaces it with Janata (“The People”).On October 23, during a visit to Chalisgaon, he meets with an accident, and is confined to bed until the last week of December.1930: In March, he leads a satyagrah at the Kalaram Temple in Nasik to secure for Untouchables the right of entry into the temple. On August 8, Dr. Ambedkar presides over the Depressed Classes Congress in Nagpur, and delivers a speech favouring Dominion status.Dr. Ambedkar is invited by the Viceroy to be part of the First Round Table Conference, and leaves for London in October.1931: Ambedkar and Gandhi attend the Second Round Table Conference held from 7 September- 1 DecemberDr. Ambedkar was one of the first to demand complete independence, whereas Mr. Gandhi demanded dominion status, forgetting the resolution of complete independence declared in Lahore (1929)by the congress.1932: The All India Depressed Classes Conference, held at Kamptee, near Nagpur, on 6 May, backs Dr Ambedkar’s demand for separate electorates for the Untouchables, rejecting compromises proposed by others.By September 23, though, a very reluctant Dr Ambedkar is forced to accept joint electorates, with Gandhi fasting unto death in Yerwada jail, Poona, against the separate electorates granted to the Depressed Classes by Ramsay MacDonald’s Communal Award. The result is the Poona Pact. (Pavel S's answer to What was the issue of the conflict between Dr. Ambedkar And and Gandhiji?)1933-34: Dr. Ambedkar participates in the work of the Joint Committee on Indian Legislative Reform (Also Indian Constitutional reform), examining a number of significant witnesses. He also writes a treatise on the Indian Army.1935: On May 26, Dr. Ambedkar’s wife Ramabai dies after a long illness. In June, Dr. Ambedkar is appointed as principal of Government Law College, Bombay. He is also appointed the Perry professor of Jurisprudence.On October 13, Dr. Ambedkar presides over the Yeola Conversion Conference, held in Yeola, in Nashik district. He advises the Depressed Classes to abandon all agitation for temple-entry privileges; instead, he says, they should leave Hinduism entirely and embrace another religion. He vows, “I solemnly assure you that I will not die as a Hindu.”( Why did Dr B.R. Ambedkar hate Hinduism?)1936: He writes, but does not publish, a brief, moving, and largely autobiographical memoir called Waiting for a Visa.On February 29, Dr. Ambedkar’s conversion resolution is supported by the Chambers of East Khandesh.On 13-14 April, he addresses the Sikh Mission Conference in Amritsar and reiterates his intention of renouncing Hinduism.In late April, the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal withdraws its invitation to Dr Ambedkar to deliver the presidential address at the Mandal’s annual conference in Lahore, after reading the text of his speech. On 15 May, he publishes the speech text, with an introductory account of the whole controversy. The result is the now-famous The Annihilation of Caste.On 31 May, Dr. Ambedkar addresses a meeting of the Mumbai Elaka Mahar Parishad (Bombay Mahar Society) at Naigaum (Dadar), in Bombay – the only time he would address an audience of just the people of his community. He speech in Marathi is vivid and poignant.On 15 June, a conference of Devdasis is held in Bombay to support Dr. Ambedkar’s resolution on conversion.On 18 June, Dr. Ambedkar and Dr B.S. Moonje of the Hindu Mahasabha hold talks on conversion.In August, he founds the Independent Labour Party.On 18 September Dr. Ambedkar deputes 13 men at the Sikh Mission in Amristar to study Sikhism.1937: Dr. Ambedkar publishes the second edition of The Annihilation of Caste, adding a concluding appendix that features a debate with Gandhi over the speech text. This work would be a bestseller, going through many editions and creating much controversy.He forms the Municipal Workers’ Union, Bombay.On 17 February, the first general election under the Government of India Act 1935 is held. Dr. Ambedkar is elected member of the Bombay Legislative Assembly. Dr Ambedkar’s Independent Labour Party wins 17 seats.On 17 March, Mahad Chavdar tank case is decided, and Depressed Classes are allowed to use public wells and tanks.Dr. Ambedkar receives a grand reception at Chalisgaon railway station.On 17 September, Dr Ambedkar introduces the Bill to abolish the Mahar Watan in the Assembly.1938: In January, Congress introduces a Bill for the amendment of the Local Boards Act in which the Untouchables are defined as Harijans, ie sons of God. Dr. Ambedkar criticizes the nomenclature as in his opinion the change of name would make no real change in their condition. (He is against the use of this word in legal matters. In protest of this Bill, the Labour Party members walk out of the assembly.) (What is the exact meaning of hindi word, "Dalit"?)On 23 January, Dr Ambedkar addresses a Peasants’ Conference in Ahmedabad.On 12 February, he addresses a historic conference of railway workers at Manmad in Nasik.In April, he opposes the creation of a separate state of Karnataka in the national interest.In May, he resigns as principal of Government Law College, Bombay.In August, he attends a meeting at R.M. Bhatt High School, Bombay, that was held to expose Gandhi’s discriminatory attitude towards an untouchable manIn September, he speaks on “Industrial Disputes Bill” in Bombay Assembly. He opposes it because it takes away the worker’s right to strike.In 6 November, industrial workers go on strike. Dr. Ambedkar leads a procession in Mumbai from Kamgar Maidan to Jambori Maidan (Worli).On 10 November, he moves a resolution for adoption of birth control measures in the Bombay Assembly.1939: On 29 January, he delivers a lecture titled Federation versus Freedom at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics. It is published later in the year.In July, Dr Ambedkar addresses a meeting of the Rohidas Vidya Committee.In October, Dr Ambedkar and Nehru meet for the first time.In November, the Congress leaves the government. Jinnah arranges for a celebration calling it the “Day of Deliverance”, and Dr. Ambedkar enthusiastically joins him. Dr. Ambedkar is careful to emphasize, however, that this is an anti-Congress rather than an anti-Hindu move; if Congress interpreted it as anti-Hindu, the reason could only be, he says, that Congress was a Hindu body after all.1940: In May, Dr. Ambedkar founded the Mahar Panchayat.In July, he meets Subash Chandra Bose in Bombay.In December, Dr. Ambedkar publishes the first edition of his Thoughts on Pakistan.1941: In January Dr. Ambedkar takes up the issue of recruitment of Mahars in the Army. As a result, the Mahar Battalion is created.On 25 May, Dr Ambedkar forms the Mahar Dynast Panchayat Samiti.The viceroy appoints him a member of the Defence Advisory Committee.1942: He founds his second political party, the All India Scheduled Castes Federation, which goes on to perform poorly in the 1946 elections. Dr. Ambedkar is inducted into the Viceroy’s Executive Council as Labour Member, a position which he holds until his resignation in June 1946.Congress launches the “Quit India” movement. Dr. Ambedkar severely criticizes this move.(Why did B. R. Ambedkar support the British and oppose the “Quit India” movement?)In December, he presents a paper on The Problems of the Untouchables in India at the conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations held in Canada.1943: Dr Ambedkar speaks on “Ranade, Gandhi and Jinnah” at the 101st Birth Celebration of Mahadev Govind Ranade held in Gokhale Memorial Hall, Poona. It was published in book form in April, under the title Ranade, Gandhi, and JinnahIn September he publishes the paper he presented the year before at the conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations, Canada, as the book titled Mr Gandhi and the Emancipation of the Untouchables.On 25 October, he addresses the Reconstruction Policy Committee meeting. The speech titled Post-War Development of Electric Power in India is published in Indian Information on 15 November.On 26 October, he writes Urgency of Industrialisation of India (Times of India, 26 October).( Who is the father of modern India and why?)1944: On 29 January, he presides over the second meeting of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation, in Kanpur.He founds The Building Trust and the Scheduled Castes Improvement Trust.On May 6, he addresses the annual conference of All-India Scheduled Castes Federation at Parel, in Mumbai. This speech is later published under the title The Communal Deadlock and a Way to Solve it.1945: In February, he publishes a revised version of Thoughts on Pakistan; this second, expanded edition is titled Pakistan or the Partition of India. (The third edition of this book is published in 1946.)In June, he publishes a political manifesto, detailing the problems of dealing with the Congress and accusing it of many acts of betrayal: What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables. (He publishes a second edition, with major revisions in one chapter, in 1946.)In June, he founds Siddharth College of Art and Science, in Bombay, as an institution of the People’s Education Society that he established earlier in the year.In July, he exchanges letters with W. E. B. DuBois, comparing Untouchables with Africian Americans. In October, he publishes Who Were the Shudras? How They Came to Be the Fourth Varna in the Indo-Aryan Society. He dedicates the book to the great reformer, Jotirao Phule. It was published in 1946 by Thacker and Co, Bombay.His book Mahatma and the World is published by Thacker & Co.1946: Bharat Bhushan Printing Press, founded by Dr Ambedkar, is burnt down in a clash between Depressed Classes and Caste Hindus.In September, he goes to London to urge British Government and opposition parties to provide safeguards for the Depressed Classes.He is elected member of the Constituent Assembly. In his first speech in the Constituent Assembly, he calls for a strong and united India.1947: In March, he publishes States and Minorities: What Are Their Rights and How to Secure them in the Constitution of Free India, a memorandum on fundamental rights, minority rights, safeguards for the Depressed Classes, and the problems of Indian states.On 29 April, the Article 17 (forbidding and abolition of the practice of untouchability) of Indian Constitution is passed.In August (after Partition and Independence), Dr. Ambedkar accepts Nehru’s invitation to become Minister of Law in the first Cabinet of independent India. On 29 August, he is appointed chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution.1948: In the last week of February, Dr. Ambedkar submits the Draft Constitution for public discussion and debateOn 15 April, Dr. Ambedkar marries Dr .Sharda Kabir in Delhi; she adopts the name Savita. By then he is a diabetic and frequently ill, and she takes care of him.On 4 October, Dr. Ambedkar presents the Draft Constitution to the Constituent Assembly.In October, he prepares a memorandum on Maharashtra as a Linguistic Province for submission to the Linguistic Provinces Commission. It is later published by the Maha Bodhi journal, Calcutta.He publishes The Untouchables: A Thesis on the Origin of Untouchability (New Delhi: Amrit Book Company), as a sequel to his book on the Shudras.On 20 November, the Constitution adopts Article 17 of Indian Constitution, abolishing and outlawing untouchability.1949: On 26 November, the Constituent Assembly adopts the Constitution of India.( Why is Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar regarded as the father of the Constitution? What were other constituent assembly members doing then?)1950: On 11 January, Dr Ambedkar addresses the Siddharth College Parliament on the Hindu Code Bill.Dr. Ambedkar speaks on Buddhism on several occasions.He founds Milind College in Aurangabad, Maharashtra.His essay “Buddha and the Future of his religion” appears in the journal Maha Bodhi Vol 58, April-May.He speaks on the merits of Buddhism at the meeting arranged on the occasion of Buddha Jayanti in Delhi.In December, he goes to Colombo, Sri lanka, as a delegate to the World Buddhist Conference.1951: In February, he introduces in Parliament the Hindu Code Bill that he drafted to enhance rights of women; it proves very controversial, and consideration of the Bill is postponed.In June, his essay “The Rise and Fall of Hindu Women” is published by the Maha Bodhi journal. Calcutta.In 9 September, Dr. Ambedkar resigns from the Cabinet, embittered over the failure of Nehru and the Congress to back the Hindu Code Bill as they had earlier pledged to do. He becomes the leader of the Opposition.On 15 April, he lays the foundation stone for the Ambedkar Bhawan in Delhi.In July, he founds Bhartiya Buddha Jan Sangh.In September, he compiles the Buddhist Prayer Book Buddha Upasana Palha.1952: In January, Dr. Ambedkar suffers loss in the first Lok Sabha Election of independent India. Congress’ Narayan Sadoba Kajrolkar defeats him. However, he enters the the Rajya Sabha representing Bombay.( Dr. B.R Ambedkar is Messiah of dalits, but he wasn't even able to win the general elections from reserved seats twice. Are there any untold truths?)On 1 June, he leaves for New York. Columbia University confers on him an honorary LLD, as part of its Bicentennial Special Convocation. The president of the university describes him as “one of India’s leading citizens – a great social reformer and a valiant upholder of human rights”.On 22 December, Dr Ambedkar delivers a talk at the Bar Council, Pune, on conditions required for the successful working of Democracy.1953: On 12 January, Osmania university confers the honorary degree of LLD on Dr AmbedkarIn April, he contests the Lok Sabha by-election from the Bhandara Constituency of Vidharba region but is again defeated by a Congress candidate.In May, Dr. Ambedkar establishes the Siddharth College of Commerce and Economics in Bombay.His political thinking includes analysis of the issue of linguistic states; he publishes Need for Checks and Balances (Times of India, 23 April 1953) on this question. (In 1955, he is still working on the subject, as the preface (dated 23 December 1955) to Thoughts on Linguistic States testifies.)1954: His health gives way; he is confined to bed for two months.While dedicating a new Buddhist Vihara near Pune, Dr. Ambedkar announces that he is writing a book on Buddhism and that as soon as it is finished, he will formally convert to Buddhism. He also claims that the image of Vithoba at Pandharpur is actually an image of the Buddha, and says that he will write a thesis to prove this claim.In May, he visits Rangoon, Burma, to attend a function to be held on the occasion of Buddha Jayanti.In June, the Maharaja of Mysore, donates 5 acres of land for Dr Ambedkar’s Proposed Buddhist Seminary in Bangalore.In September, he speaks on the Untouchability (Offences) Bill in the Rajya Sabha.In October, a talk by him, My Personal Philosophy, is broadcast on All India Radio.In December, he attends the third World Buddhist conference in Rangoon.1955: Dr Ambedkar delivers a speech on “Why religion is necessary”In May, He establishes the Bharatiya Baudh Mahasabha.In December, his book Thoughts on Linguistic States is published.1956: Dr Ambedkar completes the manuscript of The Buddha and His Dhamma.In June, he established the Siddharth College of Law in Bombay.From June to October, he is bedridden in his Delhi residence. His eyes are failing and he suffers from the side-effects of the drugs he is taking for his diabetes; he goes into depression.On 14 October, his formal conversion takes place in Nagpur, a town selected for reasons he explains in his moving speech, Why Was Nagpur Chosen? Many thousands of Mahars and other Dalits accept Buddhism along with him. The place is now known as Diksha Bhoomi.( Why did Dr. B.R. Ambedkar convert to Buddhism? What makes it so special?)After his conversion, Janta is renamed Prabuddha BharatIn November, he flies to Kathmandu to attend the Fourth World Buddhist Conference. Here, he delivers his speech on “Buddha and Karl Marx”.On 2 December, he completes the manuscript of The Buddha or Karl Marx, and gives it for typing.On the night of 5 December or the early morning of 6 December, he dies in his sleep at his residence, 26 Alipore road, New Delhi. The place is now known as Mahaparinirvan Bhoomi.On 7 December a huge crowd joins his funeral procession in Bombay, and he is cremated with Buddhist rites on the seashore. The place is now known as Chaitya Bhoomi1957: The Buddha and His DhammaDr. Ambedkar’s own version of a Buddhist scripture for his people, is posthumously published, by Siddharth College Publications, Bombay. His work Gandhi and Gandhism is also published this year.1987: Philosophy of Hinduism, India and Prerequisite of Communism, Revolution and Counter Revolution in India and Buddha and Karl Marx published posthumously as part of Dr Ambedkar Writings and Speeches: Vol 31990: Dr. Ambedkar is posthumously awarded India’s highest civilian award, the Bharat RatnaSource: Life and times of Dr B.R. AmbedkarFurther reading:What facts will completely change your perception about Dr B. R. Ambedkar?What was the contribution of Dr B.R. Ambedkar in the Indian freedom struggle?Which caste do people with the surname “Ambedkar” belong to?Is Hinduism a religion or a way of life?Are there any surviving Brahmins with the surname Ambedkar? If no, doesn't this indicate that Ambedkar is not a Brahmin surname?To know more information about Dr. Ambedkar click on the profile Shekhar Bodhakarand follow spacesGLOBAL AMBEDKARITESCastout Castes /JatiAnnihilation of Caste

Genealogical documentation.This answer is going to be very long. I have a lot of ground to cover, and a particular sense in which I treat documentation like an elitist snob. I also feel a need to begin with the idea of the whole of genealogy as an exercise in elitism. This may seem like an understandable (if not a logical) position for someone like me, who takes pride in his accomplishments as a researcher, but it’s not my position.I. One might start by thinking genealogy is a pretty snobbish subject to begin with. Why go even farther into the weeds to find an aspect of it to be snobbish about? Once people start doing it, though—no matter how privileged their upbringing, nor how distinguished their own accomplishments—they generally find that many of their ancestors weren’t very privileged at all. Just ask Matthew Stewart, for instance, who came from “old money” that actually originated with his great-grandfather (The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy, The Atlantic, June 2018, part 9):I had long assumed that the Colonel was descended from a long line of colonels, each passing down his immense sense of entitlement to the next. … Robert W. Stewart was born in 1866 on a small farm in Iowa and raised on the early mornings and long hours of what Paul Henry Giddens, a historian of Standard Oil of Indiana [where Stewart was later an executive], politely describes as “very modest circumstances.” The neighbors, seeing that the rough-cut teenager had something special, pitched in to send him to tiny Coe College, in the meatpacking town of Cedar Rapids. It would be hard not to believe that the urgent need to win at everything was already driving the train when the scholarship boy arrived at Yale Law School a few years later.(However, the author’s views on modern-day inequality, expounded at length, are contested. See for example Jordan Weissman, Forget What the Atlantic Is Telling You. The 1 Percent Are Still the Problem, Slate, 18 May 2018.)Many of the sources that we find genealogically useful today are simply products of individuals’ efforts to make their way in life. They formed families, joined formal or informal organizations, traded in land and goods, and occasionally settled disputes in court or “out of doors.” In a modern society, all of these acts and more could produce records, whether the participants were “great,” humble, or somewhere in between. At its best, a genealogy is a collective biography of people of all classes, informed not only by records of the events that directly involved them, but also by a sensitive understanding of the social conditions under which the events unfolded. Elizabeth Shown Mills, “Genealogy in the Information Age: History’s New Frontier?” National Genealogical Society Quarterly 91 (2003): 260–77, at 277, conceives it as an answer to the fictional Martin J. Dooley of Chicago ([Finley Peter Dunne,] Observations of Mr. Dooley [1906/1902], 271, via Google Books).I know histhry isn’t thrue, Hinnessy, because it ain’t like what I see ivry day in Halsted Sthreet. If any wan comes along with a histhry iv Greece or Rome that’ll show me th’ people fightin’, gettin’ dhrunk, makin’ love, gettin’ married, owin’ th’ grocery man an’ bein’ without hard-coal, I’ll believe they was a Greece or Rome, but not befure.Not only is genealogy not a preoccupation with the aristocratic, as is sometimes alleged; a preoccupation with the aristocratic actually forecloses the full range of possibilities for genealogical study, and ultimately defeats its purposes, even when its subjects are the “greats” of the present day.II. No, my idea of elitist snobbery is not inherent in genealogy itself. It extends only to the nature and uses of the documentation that is proposed as evidence for family relationships. It’s not as if I haven’t been warned against it—or at least some version of it. This is precisely the purpose of Thomas W. Jones, Skillbuilding: Perils of Source Snobbery, OnBoard 18.2 (May 2012): 9, 10, 15, via Board for Certification of Genealogists.Jones begins with a distinction between sources that are preferred and those that are disdained. He proposes to base this distinction on “analytical tests”—evaluations of documents that focus on whether or not their contents are likely to be factually correct in every detail. However, Jones does not dwell on the content of these tests. He seems to suppose that genealogists apply the criteria, not to individual records, but to whole categories of documents. The most basic criterion of evaluation is whether or not the records appear, on their face, to reflect eyewitness testimony of events as they happened. Thus Jones’s examples of typical preferred sources include “most original court, immigration, land, military, probate, religious, tax, and vital records.” On the other hand, disdained sources “typically are derivative sources, often poorly documented, containing information from hearsay or an unknown person, like many online family trees.”It is somewhat surprising that Jones, writing for the membership of one of genealogy’s foremost professional groups, does not address the character of the information as primary, secondary or undetermined, nor the character of the evidence as direct, indirect, or negative. Even his depiction of sources as original or derivative is incidental. Yet all three dimensions—source, information, and evidence—are fundamental to Mills’s Evidence Analysis Process Map (Elizabeth Shown Mills, Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace, 3rd ed. [Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2015], front endpaper, emphases hers):Basic Principle: SOURCES provide INFORMATION from which we identify EVIDENCE for ANALYSIS.However, the mystery is dispelled when we remember that neither information nor evidence is judged according to the character of the source. “As a rule,” Mills explains, “primary information carries more weight than secondary, although either class of informants can err. Moreover, any statement can represent both firsthand and secondhand knowledge. … Therefore, each piece of information within a source must be appraised separately” (Evidence Explained, 25). Jones appears to be suggesting that source snobbery consists of assigning or withholding preference to sources, irrespective of their contents (“information”) and interpretation (“evidence”). If someone does that with a source, then not only are the information and evidence not important to the evaluation; it is even hard to maintain that the evaluation is based on an “analytical test” or any other objective qualification.Under the evidence analysis process that genealogists had inherited from academic history, it was possible to speak of a source as a unity, and as primary or secondary in its entirety. This conception lasted long enough to leave its mark on Donn Devine, “Evidence Analysis,” Professional Genealogy: A Manual for Researchers, Writers, Editors, Lecturers, and Librarians [1st ed.], ed. Elizabeth Shown Mills (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2001), 327–42, esp. 333. At this point, Devine seemed to conceive of an original source as a document created near the time of the events recorded, by bearers of primary information. It was not universally recognized at the time that original records can and often do bear secondary information; that there is no time limit on the bearing of eyewitness testimony, short of the witness’s demise; and that different pieces of information within the same source might not bear the same weight. (I would guess that since 2001 Devine, who like Jones and Mills is a longtime associate of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, has adjusted to the Board’s position on the nature of an original record. This is succinctly expressed in Genealogy Standards, 50th Anniversary ed. [Nashville, Tenn.: Ancestry.com, 2014], 77–8 and passim.)One way to understand Jones’s distinction between preferred and disdained sources is as a revival of the old dichotomy between primary and secondary sources, under different names. On this conception, genealogists have a tendency to prefer some sources because they are treatable as primary, and to disdain others that are treatable as secondary. The instinct behind this practice is much the same one that gave rise to the old dichotomy in the first place. Unfortunately, the practice relies on obsolete standards of evidence analysis. Jones’s point is that sources of preferred kinds (“primary sources”) may contain errors, and sources of disdained kinds (“secondary sources”) may actually be accurate. Thus it is hazardous to assume that a source is accurate or inaccurate merely from a presumption for or against every source of the same type.III. Everything in Jones’s essay is true as far as it goes. It is often helpful for an eager researcher to remember that the involvement of people concerned in a record is not a guarantee of its accuracy. But what Jones doesn’t tell us about when we can trust a typically disdained source is practically everything.Jones proposes that a disdained source is exactly like a preferred one, in terms of whether it is validated by the sum of the evidence bearing on a given research question. Any information from any source must be correlated with information from other sources before any judgment can be made on its accuracy. Jones concludes, “effective family historians consult and assess all sources, regardless of type, that might help answer their research questions. They exclude no potentially useful source, and they trust no unverified source.”Jones’s Table 1 shows ten instances from nine separate articles in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly from 1995 through 2010, in which a preferred source was found to contain an error. By comparison, Jones strains to name instances in which disdained sources were used, in his own words, to “show the only or most efficient path to reliable, informative records, or … provide evidence critical to the researcher’s conclusion.” His footnote flag at the end of this sentence cites two additional articles from the same journal. In addition, among the references describing preferred sources with erroneous information, there is a third essay whose title indicates that disdained sources were also considered there, under different terminology.George L. Findlen, “Using Questionable Sources Productively: The Parents of Rial, Edwin, and George Plummer of Alna, Maine,” National Genealogical Society Quarterly 96 (2008): 165–76. However, as we shall soon see, its interest arises from much more than the author’s use of “anonymous undocumented queries written more than a century after Plummer brothers were born,” which is all that Jones’s footnote mentions.Thomas W. Jones, “The Three Identities of Charles D. McLain of Muskegon, Michigan,” National Genealogical Society Quarterly 96 (2008): 101–20 at 107.Thomas W. Jones, “The Children of Calvin Snell: Primary versus Secondary Evidence,” National Genealogical Society Quarterly 83 (1995): 17–31.These cases have particular bearing on what it means to decide a genealogical case based on a source that might be considered questionable on its face. They require closer examination.IV. We begin with Findlen. That the three Plummer men were brothers, and two of them were natives of Alna, was documented by conventional methods. Users of an electronic database accessed by Findlen had reported parents for Edwin and Rial, but this claim could not be documented in multiple collections of local records from Alna and adjacent towns.The breakthrough came when Findlen inspected two letters from one Alna-area historian and genealogist—Henry Otis Thayer—to another—William Davis Patterson. Thayer wrote on behalf of “A correspondent” (that is, someone who had previously written to him), giving something resembling the same names for George’s parents that later were given for Edwin and Rial’s, and requesting confirmation of the names of George’s father and grandfather.Because none of the other correspondence survives—not from Patterson, nor from Thayer’s source—it could not be determined exactly what Thayer had learned from the others. Nevertheless, Patterson was closely related to the Plummer family—a grandnephew of the Plummer brothers’ mother—and, in his personal files, recorded all three brothers as sons of the same proposed parents.Perhaps Patterson incorporated information relayed to him by Thayer and his informant, but he also could have relied on any number of local eyewitnesses as well, who were contemporaries of his Plummer cousins as well as himself. Curiously, Findlen does not mention these last possibilities. He rates all of the information in all of the sources as secondary, on the grounds that neither writer had specified any eyewitness or documentary basis for naming the parents of Rial, Edwin, and George. Findlen’s rationale for the identification lies in the statements’ mutual corroboration and apparently independent origins.In truth, there actually is very little reason to believe that the findings of Thayer and Patterson were wholly independent of one another. There also is no reason to believe that each didn’t draw on additional sources—Patterson in particular being, Findlen concedes, “as well-positioned and qualified as anyone in the early twentieth century to identify the Plummer brothers’ parents” (p. 173). His record is surely the one that is most likely to have drawn on the widest range of relevant surviving testimony at the time, and the one that best sustains a “preference.” Thayer may give some of the same information, but even Jones, in “Perils of Source Snobbery,” admits that merely duplicating information from one manuscript to another does not constitute corroboration. (“For example, a family Bible’s birth date chiseled onto a gravestone remains uncorroborated.”) Thayer’s facts might well have been copied twice—from Patterson’s notes to his letter and then from Patterson’s letter to Thayer’s. For all the attention Findlen gave to his sources’ claims to authority, he seems to have quailed at the thought that any of the claims might have been superior to the others.One has to ask, finally, what Findlen would do without Patterson. He would be reliant, by default, on Thayer. His second letter suggests that Patterson might have already reported the correct answer, but Thayer was not quite ready to accept it. By Jones’s standard of evidence analysis, this would leave Findlen in quite a fix. He would have to consider whether the case could be decided on one manuscript after all. Or, he could simply confess that this is very close to the state of the case with Patterson and Thayer together—because, on balance, Thayer gives little reason not to assign Patterson the priority.Neither do the twentieth-century queries—which, contrary to Jones’s characterization, were not anonymous at all. They were signed by their contributor, George E. Plummer of Berkeley, California, whom Findlen identifies as George’s great-grandson. The range of topics that George E. engaged over the time span in which the queries were printed shows that he acquired relevant knowledge as the series progressed. However, no other correspondence to or from him is available, and we once again have no means of determining his informants’ names—or what facts he might have obtained, directly or indirectly, from Thayer and Patterson.As with Thayer, it is impossible to rule out contributions by Patterson in George E. Plummer’s writing; and because of this, we once again have no choice but to evaluate Patterson’s information on its own terms. That Patterson acquits himself remarkably well is not an index of what Thayer, Plummer, and Findlen might have learned independently of Patterson, because Findlen ultimately has not demonstrated that there is any such outside source on which to draw.V. Jones cites his McLain article, like Findlen, for a very limited purpose: as “an example of undocumented family trees on Ancestry.com as key to solving a complex genealogical problem.” In fact, this abbreviated reference serves his purpose in “Perils of Source Snobbery” better than his reference to Findlen.Jones had not succeeded in establishing the parents of Charles D. McLain by conventional research methods. He had found a possible, post-divorce second marriage for him, but no direct proof that it pertained to the same man—although he found the circumstantial evidence in favor compelling enough to pursue. So he searched for entries of this wife among the online family trees. According to an entry contributed by DeWayne G. Baker, one David R. McLain had entered the same marriage. Baker also identified his parents. Conventional methods of research on this family, now focused on David and his parents as well as Charles, produced further circumstantial evidence in favor of identifying David with the same man who had entered both of the marriages.Jones makes it quite easy to see how the Ancestry search marked a turning point in his research. However, had the narrative centered on Charles’s life rather than on the process employed by Jones, it could just as easily have been written without using Ancestry. Throughout the rest of the article, Jones does not refer to it again.The essential point is that Jones somehow obtained a statement that David had been credited with the same 1886 marriage that Jones himself was prepared to attribute to Charles. The medium on which he obtained it is novel, but the technique is not. An undocumented statement literally handwritten on paper might have roused him to the same mission, which he would have tried to fulfill with the same procedure.Without Jones’s subsequent research, of course, this purpose could never have been realized. But now that we have means of sustaining the identification that are better than referring to Baker, with his lack of documentation, we need never refer to Baker again—as an authority on this claim or any other. In other words, having used something “as a hint” entails no future obligation to regard it as a reliable source on other genealogical statements. This is part of the bargain: what it means to say, once again with Mills, that “each piece of information within a source must be appraised separately” (Evidence Explained, 25).If one undocumented statement in a source of overall doubtful accuracy has been useful for research, it still leaves a genealogist free to disregard all the other statements in the same source. How’s that for snobbery?VI. The title of the Snell article suggests it was written under the lingering influence of the old dichotomy between “primary sources” and “secondary sources.” Before Elizabeth Shown Mills had even printed Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1997), let alone devised the conceptual distinction among sources, information, and evidence at the center of her Evidence Analysis Process, this borrowing from the tradition of academic history was understandable. Still, a question beckons. Did Jones’s view of “secondary evidence” in 1995 correspond with his view of “disdained sources” in 2012?His summary of the preferred source in “Perils of Source Snobbery” describes it thus: “Will omitting testator’s eleven children and falsely identifying three heirs.” As to the latter, Calvin Snell’s will suggests that there were two sons and one daughter who are not thus named elsewhere. So much for “primary evidence.”What “secondary evidence” does he raise up in opposition to it? It consists of four separate post facto writings that each name incomplete sets of the children of Calvin Snell. One is a compiled four-volume Snell manuscript, dated 1934; one is a 1979 memorandum by Calvin’s great-granddaughter, copied from notes dictated to her by her mother, Calvin’s granddaughter; one is a genealogy of a son-in-law’s family, printed in 1896; and one is a loosely organized manuscript of uncertain date and authorship. He introduces them in the text as “unofficial sources” (p. 20), but summarizes them in a two-page table whose heading calls them “Secondary Sources” (p. 22). Now, of course, they are more properly described as “sources bearing secondary or undetermined information,” exactly the type that drove all the other studies I have described. This one meshes seamlessly with the others.Jones’s sources do not agree on every name, but there is considerable consistency across the lists. As with Findlen, Jones takes this consistency as evidence that they were composed separately from independent precursors. Jones has more justification for his use of the procedure; it is much easier to rule out the participation of one informant in the creation of multiple records in the Snell case than the Plummer case, and the Snell sources all contradict Calvin’s will in similar ways.Even so, it is still possible to rank them by preference, choosing any criteria that we like. Suppose that I rank them according to the likelihood that each source had immediate contact with Calvin or his children. Personally, on these grounds I would first take the 1896 source, then the 1934, then the 1979, then the undated. If any grandchildren of Calvin can be proven to have lived through 1934 or had contact or correspondence with the author of the Snell genealogy, that alone could put its reliability at a par with the 1896.Anyone may disagree with my ranking. The point is that when we get down to making empirical judgments—especially in cases where our information is contradictory—we need defensible reasons for selecting one apprehension of the facts over another. We may even refrain from making a judgment if none of the available apprehensions of the facts seem to be satisfactory. In the process, we sometimes rate one source more highly than another, even if they disagree minimally over the facts. In a conflict, we are not debarred from declining to accept a source because of factual claims that resist validation, and we are not entitled to believe things solely for self-ratifying reasons.VII. Whether you have had the forbearance to read all of the above or not, I feel that a summary is in order. Genealogy is already mistaken by many for a preoccupation with the elite. But researchers don’t accomplish anything worthwhile if they bring that attitude to the topic, and in any case I doubt that many people with a sophisticated grasp of the subject consider it a channel for elitism and snobbery.What I have, instead, is a qualified dissent on Thomas W. Jones in “Perils of Source Snobbery,” particularly if it entails a presumption that one source is never to be preferred over another. I have no brief against his claim that a piece of information cannot be excluded on the mere grounds that it arises from a derivative or authored source of doubtful accuracy, nor that standard original records do not always provide adequate proof of basic facts. In principle, there is nothing objectionable about these claims.However, the proposition that pursuing identifying statements in non-standard sources can overcome the limitations or complete lack of relevant original records requires a more powerful defense than Jones offers in the essay, simply because it seems so unbelievable on its face. Jones does cite a few cases to offer support for this claim, without defending it at length. Unfortunately, Jones overstates George Findlen’s reliance on a twentieth-century researcher’s queries, and in addition Findlen himself seems to overstate his source writers’ absence of coordinated effort.Jones’s own McLain and Snell cases are more informative on the procedure of developing an acceptable statement of probable facts from a combination of derivative records and corroborating statements from original records. However, even his cases do not foreclose the possibility of ranking different derivative sources according to singular criteria, and judging the strength of a statement’s probability according to how much confidence it seems to warrant compared with other sources touching on the same question.I certainly don’t expect a research project beginning with a collection of documents, each apparently unacceptable on its face, to end by affirming their probable accuracy on the sole grounds that they happen to agree on more points than they disagree. I am reminded of the literary critic Frederick Crews in another context, speaking of “the classic sophistry of … ascribing a cumulative weight to reports that, when regarded one by one, are lighter than air” (“The Mind Snatchers” [1998], Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays [Emeryville, Calif.: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2006], 204). In every successful instance under review, there are always independent documentary grounds for believing that the genealogical claims are accurate. Deciding the truth of genealogical claims on these grounds whenever possible, and withholding judgment on “disdained” sources as long such evidence remains unavailable, I take as essential precepts of responsible source snobbery.If, as appears likely in the Plummer case, the main sources of information all appear to have developed from one spring, there is no need—and considerable risk—to posit the “independent” later creations of records whose freedom from influence of the main spring cannot be verified. We may have no option but to accept that there is only one truly original record for a given statement of fact. In that case, the search for corroborating evidence aims only to show that this record pertains to, and gives reliable information on, the person whose biography and family relationships are the objects of the study.Some of the ideas above, especially as they relate to Professional Genealogy (2001), I had also shared in July 2016 with other members of ProGen 29. They bear no responsibility for my adaptation here.