Documentation and Analysis

In order to preserve their credibility, historians always use scholarly methods to substantiate their conclusions and claims when reporting their research. These methods encompass practices such as using primary sources to understand the reality of the targeted historic period. Documenting sources with citations in reports is only one of the important steps in the use of source material. This step enables other researchers to follow in the historian's footsteps in order to study the same documents if they have a particular interest in them. Another vital component of a historian's research is to thoroughly analyze their source material. Just because a document is classified as a primary source, it is not automatically worthy of full credibility. A study must be made of the whole body of source materials in a project to understand how they support or contradict one another.

            The aim of this blog is to present primary source materials that document the lives and social conditions of the Hobbs family during the period they lived in Cheltenham from 1832 to 1864. As an example for the above discussion of the importance of primary sources and their analysis, three documents concerning Caroline Hobbs will be reviewed in the following paragraphs.

            First, is a short handwritten autobiography that Caroline probably wrote about the time a local newspaper published an article about her in Logan, Utah in 1926.[1] This document is written by Caroline Hobbs Watterson herself and may be considered a primary source document. However, the content she is describing is not all her own first-hand knowledge. The inconsistency in the recollection of the oral traditions told to her by her mother, Ann Owen, is evident in the opening line of the autobiographical sketch.

 

            "My father's name was Thomas Hobbs you know he died 6 weeks after we were born so I never new him."[2] Other source materials used on this blog have disproved this statement for the identity of Caroline's father. A careful review of the remaining script reveals additional errors in the content.

            Caroline received two patriarchal blessings during her lifetime. Again, the information she reported to the scribe about her father's name conflicts in the two documents. She received the first blessing 13 July 1865. She reported her parents as Thomas and Ann Hobbs.[3]

  

            In the second blessing given 30 March 1916, Caroline's parents are recorded as William Hobbs and Ann Owen. It reads as follows: "A patriarchal blessing given by Patriarch Samuel Oldham, March 30, 1916 upon the head of Caroline Hobbs Watterson, daughter of William Hobbs and Ann Owen, born at Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England, June 28, 1846."[4]

            Even though the patriarchal blessings are primary sources and can be used to help document Caroline's life, it is obvious some of the information included in them must be weighed against other sources. Each piece of evidence in a research project must undergo an evaluation process that includes comparing it to all the other evidence. This is a core exercise in the development of sound historical arguments and claims. Numerous other sources for the identity of Caroline Hobbs's father have been posted on this blog. When they are all considered together, it is evident that her father's name was William Hobbs.

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[1] "Story of Life and Labors of Kittie Watterson," 27 November 1926, The Journal, Vol. XIIX, digital copy, Logan City Library archive, Logan, Utah.

[2] Caroline Hobbs Watterson, autobiographical sketch, undated, digital copy in possession of the author.

[3] Norinne Smith Holt Walton, Descendants and Ancestors of William Watterson, Jr. 1839-1920 (Murray, Utah: Family Heritage Publishers), 16.

[4] Walton, Descendants and Ancestors of William Watterson, Jr. 1839-1920, 15.