Talk:William Lundy

A Biased Mere

I changed a mere to only because a mere makes it sound like he died young. Is there any reason this was done? See here Jakesyl (talk) 16:28, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Comment by 72.37.171.52

Relocated from the article text: "This article's was originally inserted to recognize an individual who had lived for over a century, and had observed this country through many of its most trying times, This introductory paragraph has been modified from its original content to add the thoughts of an individual who holds more faith in census reports from a sparsly populated SOUTH, in the early 1800's (No television, No internet, No radio, Not much of an organized mail delivery), in a time where most people in the south had little or no faith in the Northern government. However, most of the people who know of this man and the life he lived and people whose life he affected know his claim to be true. Neither his claim or any of the other three claimants (two from the Confederate Army, and one from the army of northern aggression) has been dicredited by any credible source." (relocated by Dravecky (talk) 20:27, 11 April 2008 (UTC))

Unreliable Census Records

I feel some mention of the fact that Census records from this era are highly unreliable. I could show a 1900 census record of my great grandfather showing he was 9yo when his first child was born then another census that (correctly) shows he was 19yo, which is approximated from his date of birth. These records were hand written on paper ledgers using fountain pens that were dipped in inkwells and often smeared badly or difficult to read even when the ledge was new, and so much more so about 100 years later when transferred to microfilm, then 50 some years later converted to digital records and often poorly done. It is often very difficult to tell what dates wee carelessly scribbled into the columns and there were several steps in which human error could have occurred. In my opinion the fact that his military pension was granted by the US government for service in the Confederate Army should put any doubt to rest. If one wants to claim someone is a fraud, then you need more proof than a highly unreliable date on a census which even if it is legible on the microfilm doesn't prove the census worker correctly entered it. Donb316 (talk) 19:04, 17 May 2017 (UTC)