Blue Sky "Mary" Cornstalk - https://thecaseforblueskyandparkeradkins.com/ The REAL Story

I’m removing everything I can find in profiles except links to the blog. I’m not getting involved with legal issues or subjecting anyone else to them. We’re volunteers!

We've somehow splintered into multiple threads. So I'm linking to [this post] from me, where I linked to some collections where we can search for the evidence that Ronnie Adkins found. (He apparently didn't use in-line citations or footnotes, so we're having to reconstruct from a bibliography.)

The Hiram Adkins letters are digitized and available in four folders from UNC, which conveniently also offers subject indices:

1. DF-5203/1 Adkins
2. DF-5203/2 Adkins
3. DF-5203/3 Adkins
4. DF-5203/4 Adkins

If the Adkins bibliography is correct, we should be able to find evidence of Bluesky somewhere in those files. Would anyone like to help divide and conquer?

Mercifully, UNC provides indices, so you can eliminate papers you 'don't need to check. Lots of bills, receipts, and other ephemera that needs no review.

Oops, helps if I actually do the link properly. :) And I see my final italics screwed up, too! Apologies.

Here's the other thread.

Did he at least say which part of the bibliography corresponds with the section about Bluesky? Endnotes for that specific chapter, maybe? There's really no way to narrow down what he used to support this info?

We can't reasonably go back and verify someone's entire bibliography, especially if they didn't say which portions go with which assertions. But we could likely eliminate texts that don't need to be checked, as I was able to do pretty quickly with the Osborn piece.

Hopefully it's understood why, in a case where a self-published author didn't use footnotes or in-line citations, we can't just say "Ronnie Adkins had it right" on the Geni profile. He very well did have it right!...but we need to demonstrate why. The original sources are crucial here to maintain Bluesky's connection to Cornstalk in the Geni tree. If there's a serious desire to keep that connection visible on Geni, folks are going to have to step up and provide the original source. If it's out there, and if Ronnie Adkins could find it, we can find it.

I'm working my way through DF-5203/1. So far, none of the Hiram Adkins letters are touching on family history at all. I suspect what Ronnie Adkins used here were the letters showing relationships between living people, like letters that open with "My dear sister" or close with "Your affectionate son." But at least so far, I don't think this is going to solve anything for us.

Unfortunately, that means we're working with an unreliable text, and we have to consider that when evaluating whether it should be used as a source on Geni. Right now, his book seems to be our main source, which is probably not viable going forward if we can't retrace his steps.

To be clear, this is the same policy we have with all published genealogies -- if they were cited or can be retraced, then we can use them, but if the information can't be confirmed in available sources, then we can't. The issue has nothing to do with anyone not trusting Indigenous voices specifically; in fact, 99% of the time, it's upper-class WASP trees where this is a problem.

I've filed an NYPL reference request, since they have a copy of the book, but I don't know that it will help us. We'll see.

One thing that's important to remember is that even if the available, findable evidence is not sufficient to support Bluesky's inclusion in a collaborative tree like Geni, you can still of course list her in your private tree or in a shared/group tree on another service. It doesn't appear that you or most other commenters invested in this discussion are active Geni users, so having her relationship to Cornstalk cut on this website (if it comes to that) won't impact your personal trees or research in any way.

My understanding is that Ronnie Adkins includes Bluesky very briefly as an “oral tradition” without much commentary.

See https://www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000075748403140 For paraphrase.

Right, I totally understand that. But the accepted standard is that researchers say who gave that oral history and when it was given. It appears Ronnie Adkins didn't do that, which is disappointing for our purposes, because otherwise we'd be able to say definitively who he's citing.

We use oral history extensively in the West Indian tree, because we also don't have many paper records there for very similar reasons. But we're able to cite it by saying who was interviewed, who did the interview, and when and where the interview was conducted. And we can use notes from those interviews, too, or (in the modern era) full transcripts. That's the standard you'll find in pretty much any published family history, and it helps you evaluate and weight the evidence. (For example, someone telling a story of an ancestor within living memory is a more valuable witness than someone telling a story they heard from an ancestor.) It's a genuine bummer that we don't have that kind of specificity here.

I do think it's noteworthy that Ronnie Adkins hedged a bit (emphasis mine):

"To date there is no record of a will, estate settlement, etc., that would name all of Parker & Mary's children, however, death records, tradition & other sources fairly well prove the following..."

and

"The above is included not to embellish in any way, rather to give descendants of Charity some information on which to base further research."

To me, that's reading as, "I think this is probably accurate, but I can't say it with certainty, and I'm leaving this information as a lead for others to follow." I don't read it as him saying, "This is the definite, incontrovertible truth of the matter." This is an eminently honorable approach for him to have taken.

I think those kind of letters are the kind of oral history Ashley describes documenting. Those memories are precious to capture.

We’d have to look at them.

All kidding aside, sworn affidavits from living people wouldn't prove Bluesky's existence or ancestry. They would prove that people living in the 21st C. have a family story, which I certainly would like to believe is true but which cannot be proven to the satisfaction of the Genealogical Proof Standard, which Geni tries to follow.

The kinds of oral histories needed would be much, much older. And with a family that has produced as much written material as the Adkins family, going well back into the early 1830s, we have no reason to believe such a document can't be found.

"So Ronnie had received the information in writing or he had written it down. We know from their close collaboration that one of the persons from whom Ronnie received the tradition was from Clinton Mays..."

Does the Ronnie Adkins book actually attribute the information about Bluesky to Clinton Mays, or are we inferring? Was Clinton Mays within living memory of Bluesky?

We're focusing on the wrong thing here. Oral accounts of people living today or in recent decades aren't going to help meet the GPS. We need older documentation. There are excellent Adkins family files in multiple collections, with writings by highly-literate family members, going back to the early 1800s.

Ronnie Adkins apparently found the info about Bluesky but didn't cite it. Let's find what he found, get it properly cited, and put the question to bed. Do it as a tribute to him and his hard work.

A separate note...

There are only 30 people managing or curating Bluesky's Geni profile, which is not particularly high for a profile from that era. And even with all the threads that have been created about Bluesky, few active Geni tree-builders have engaged; it's largely been people who don't use Geni beyond these discussions. That tells me that the active Geni community isn't particularly interested in this subject to the degree that non-users are, and that the amount of time being expended on this matter is out of proportion.

I'm happy to keep entertaining this for a bit longer, as it's an interesting puzzle and I do hope it works out in your favor. But at some point, the onus to meet the Genealogical Proof Standard has to be on the people requesting the changes. Since accounts of living people don't meet the GPS for a profile this far back in time, it's up to those folks to instead find materials that do. I have faith that they can.

Private User - would you mind reviewing Mary Adkins in light of Dorene’s comments? To me, “parents unknown” could not be clearer. But maybe I’m missing something.

I updated / cleaned up Parker Adkins yesterday.

New members should be directed to add biographical and genealogical days at the lowest point in the tree.

Just a quick response, since I'm actually trying to tend to my paying job today. :)

Mary's profile very clearly says her ancestry is unknown. It doesn't list any parents, it doesn't have a birth surname in the data fields, and the relationships are locked, meaning no one can add any unproven parents. It links to Mary Fry's profile at the very beginning of the "About" and says, without any kind of hedging, that they're not the same people. So I see no grounds for objection there.

I am assuming that your objection, Dorene, is to the subsequent information in the "About," where a brief overview is given of each of the competing theories. I see no issue with that -- that's the norm on Geni, and it's the norm in basically all genealogical publishing. If there are multiple theories and neither is fully proven to the satisfaction of all, you give a quick glimpse of each, no matter how much each side might strenuously disagree with the other(s).

Crucially, the profile isn't endorsing any of the theories -- unless we say that it's endorsing Dorene's theory by not giving her a birth surname or parents, and by definitively stating that Mary is not Mary Fry. So if anything, it's giving Dorene and those who agree with her the upper hand.

For me personally, I would edit the "Origins" section to elaborate on the DNA question. I would note that one "camp" says the Native American ancestry is disproven, and another camp says it's proven. I would also -- probably to Dorene's chagrin (sorry, Dorene!) -- note in doing so that neither camp has provided their full methodology or had their findings published in a peer-reviewed, reputable publication, so we can't actually make any calls about this. So again, just give both perspectives and let the reader figure it out.

But otherwise, it's a balanced profile in my view, and I think Erica has done an admirable job trying to keep it that way. Each "side" is going to disagree with the other side being acknowledged or presented, but this is simply how it works in a collaborative tree when we don't have an authoritative answer. We leave it up to the reader to delve deeper into each argument and make a choice for themselves. Trust readers to be smart, to be fair, and to know how to double-check someone else's research as needed.

If there are further objections about the profile's neutrality, we should forward them to Geni Customer Service and see if they want to weigh in. But from where I sit, the profile is doing exactly what a collaborative profile should do in a case like this.

I disagree slightly with Ashley. Mary (unknown) is not (much) controversial at this point; that she was the mother of two of Parker’s children is. So I don’t feel a detailed exploration of that question belongs in “her” profile; it’s a discussion item. If I descended from one of her uncontroversial children, I would be annoyed at the space taken about it, when I want to read about Mary.