Thomas Craig

BIRTHPLACE IS AN OPEN CONFLICT AND THIS PLACE FIELD IS DELIBERATELY EMPTY. The 1860 census, taken while he lived, says OHIO. The 1880 census and a 1929 death certificate say PENNSYLVANIA - but both are posthumous and descend through his widow. AUDITED 23 Sep 2026 - his first audited note. THE THREE STATEMENTS, IN ORDER OF PROXIMITY TO THE MAN. (1) 1860 U.S. census, Madison Township, Clinton County, Indiana, post office Maples, page 143, dwelling and family 1053, NARA M653 roll 262: "Thomas Craig" 33, male, real estate 200, personal estate 75, place of birth "O"; next line "Lydia A" 20, female, born "Ind". Read on the manuscript 22 Sep 2026. The single letter O is calibrated against "Pa", written by the same enumerator two lines above on line 36 for Owen Weider, so the reading is not a guess and not an indexing artefact. He was alive and in the household, but the informant is not recorded and may have been himself, his wife or a neighbour. (2) 1880 U.S. census, Precinct 6, Travis County, Texas: each child's father-birthplace column reads "Pa." The informant is his widow, fifteen years after his death. (3) Texas death certificate of his daughter Mary Alice Catchings, Refugio County, 3 January 1929, field 11: "Penn." The informant is Mrs A. M. Clark, Mary Alice's own daughter, sixty-four years after his death. WHY THE PLACE IS BLANK RATHER THAN EITHER STATE. Statements (2) and (3) are not independent: both descend through the same widow's memory, so they are one family tradition recorded twice, not two witnesses. Against that stands one contemporaneous record whose informant is unknown. Nothing adjudicates them, and a place field cannot hold a conflict - any value entered here would assert more than the evidence carries. The birth YEAR, 1827, is agreed by all three and is unchanged. WHAT WAS REMOVED, AND ON WHAT GROUND. This event previously read "Ohio, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, USA". That string was never a garble or a sign of weak sourcing: it is this conflict collapsed into a single field by whoever built the tree - one source said Ohio, another said Allegheny, Pennsylvania. ALLEGHENY COUNTY HAS NO SOURCE AT ALL, here or in anything yet found, and was removed on that ground alone, the same ground on which an uncited Louisville came off another record in this tree on 22 Sep 2026. Do not reinstate it, and do not narrow a Pennsylvania search to Allegheny County. WHAT WOULD SETTLE IT, AND IT IS NOT AN INDIANA RECORD. He was born about 1827 in one of two states, and if Ohio is right the OHIO COUNTY is unknown - that is where a candidate parental household would be enumerated in 1830 or 1840. No record anywhere yet names his parents: FamilySearch's own tree carries him as person K42P-119 with two sources and no parents at all. WHAT IS STILL UNSOURCED ON THIS PERSON. His death date, 15 August 1865, has no source in this database and none on FamilySearch either, which carries the same date with zero sources - so the agreement between them is not corroboration. The instrument that would fix it is the Clinton County guardianship of his three minor children: Joan C. Bohm's abstract of Guardian Docket B, 1865-1884, is indexed by ward surname and gives the name of the deceased to whom the ward is an heir.