Talk:Edward Bishop (Salem witch trials)

Untitled
Edward Bishop is perhaps titleable as Edward Bishop Jr, since his father's name was also Edward. The earliest sources I read had a bit of confusion as to which of the 3 Edward Bishops (there were perhaps 4 living in Salem MA in the mid to late 1600s), father son or grandson, was the husband of Bridget Oliver Bishop. The title here is a compromise resulting from me not having much skill with the wikipedia format, me trying to disambiguate from Edward Stanley Bishop who has somehow managed to preempt the name, and me not being too sure whether there were one or more Edward Bishops in line before him in the family who also had a claim to use the name. If somebody has more skill here with the disambiguation format, then I am happy to see them make an improvement in the Edward Bishop confusion and naming of this article.John5Russell3Finley 00:15, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup
This article needs cleanup, first and foremost needing a precise and concise (it rhymes I know) lead. --Imaginationac (Talk | Edits | [mailto:imaginationac@gmail.com Email]) 19:16, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Today I did some cleanup on this series Bridget Bishop and 2d and 3d husbands husbands. I started the husbands' articles because I could get the info in there and it seemed to stay put better in the husband articles. I think there may be some confusion in Upham between Edward and his son Edward. However Upham is respected and I don't have all the other sources, and Savage seems to agree with Upham. So for the moment I am mostly just cleaning up things here.John5Russell3Finley 18:21, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

This page needs some major corrections: the Edward Bishop who was arrested and broke out of jail was the husband of Sarah Bishop, NOT Bridget Bishop. There has been an historical confusion between the two Bishop women. I will see what I can find in current sources and cite them. Ogram (talk) 15:21, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually this Edward Bishop (husband of Bridget Bishop) is most often referred to as Edward Bishop Sr. His son is usually referred to as Edward Bishop Jr. Edward Bishop Jr. was married to Sarah Bishop. It was Edward Jr. and Sarah that escaped from "Gaol" (Jail). Edward Bishop Sr. was never accused as a witch, but he was called as a witness.Stephen Luce (talk) 18:15, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Today I simplified the intro, mostly restructuring using simpler words. I also removed the name Upton, since I have been unable to find that source (if Upham is meant, I have not yet actually found the proof that he is wrong, though tag 57 makes a stab at it, and perhaps further documented expansion on that subject could prove that assertion).John5Russell3Finley (talk) 21:30, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

The last revision had quite a bit of mashed up stuff and misunderstood a few concepts. Several of the sentances no longer made sense. Not sure what the editor was doing, but it looked like a group had been for some time making it clear It Was Going To Do This... I deleated some of this stuff especially the readding of stuff that we had earlier decided (during the last series of edit wars) that it just didn't have the support of the best available sources...if you want to discuss it we have had a forum for this for several years now-please do use SWT task force page for further discussion before making sweeping changes here. The previous revision didn't realy improve the article. John5Russell3Finley (talk) 01:50, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Recent Revisions
I guess it's still a bit of a mess, however I added 2 categories. I have tried to keep infomation that was stated as factual even when I had reservations about it's truth. I think some of it may be is just speculation, and have tried to identify such and link it to a probable source (viz. Greene's Article in TAG). Using a sockpuppet to do editing is really Awfully bad practice, and reeked of something akin to vandalism. Please try to remain with wikipedia if you add to this article, it leads to better flow of ideas when you register as a contributor.

If anyone makes serious changes here they ought to link to reputable sources.

My research leads me to suspect that The American Genealogist Article ". Mrs. Bridget Playfer Wasselbe Oliver Bishop, widow of Samuel Wasselbe and Thomas Oliver, wife of Edward Bishop: TAG 57(1981 ):1 29-38, 64(1989): 207 (D. L. Greene and R. C. Anderson)" could be linkable on line if one is a member of that publisher.

I have not yet read the Greene article myself, so I have limited my changes.

TAG has not always had a good reputation. In the 1970s there was a bit of a fuss about one article where parts of it were fabricated, so I am inclined to remember that they were at one time not known for checking the facts and sources in their articles. 1981 is within the conventionally suspect time-frame but I have not deleated the info linked to the TAG article in the interest of furthering a discussion of this topic.

I have reservations about the stuff in here about Edward Bishop III, and about Edward Besop's statement.

John5Russell3Finley (talk) 23:57, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I am trying to clean this article up to the point where I feel that removing the clean up tag is something I can do myself. Today I removed the name Lambert, mostly because I can't figure where we got it, which has been troubling me since I rewrote this article. If someone else added Lambert then please readd it with a source/foot note. I have searched through Salem Vital Records and have determined that if she was Elizabeth Lambert that neither Cash nor Lambert would be her maiden name, but SVR is not clear as to if she was Elizabeth Lambert, so it is either some other source or someone has made a bit of a leap. I will seach some more but I think I got Lambert myself from a websource who didn't provide even a secondary source. I also turned the what we know part into a heading. John5Russell3Finley (talk) 16:40, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I think we don't need a cleanup tag here anymore, so: If no one has commented about this or removed the tag I will remove it in 1 week John5Russell3Finley (talk) 19:26, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Today I removed the tag that said there were no categories for this article, I had added a category earlier. If you examine this concerning that, then can you please comment a little about the cleanup tag ? I think this article may be OK, but if someone actually does have an opinion about this article's "wikiness" please do express it, because I am inclined to remove the cleanup tag this week. John5Russell3Finley (talk) 15:48, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

If no one objects I will combine this section and the section above (cleanup) and put the bits in chronological orderJohn5Russell3Finley (talk) 21:34, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Today minor cleanup in Greene, mostly restructuring and clarifying, removed "preachy" element. John5Russell3Finley (talk) 15:06, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

I have separated most of the elements in the Greene section and moved the sentance about the jail break to the generally accepted facts section. The problem with this is that I can't find the written source for half of it, and TAG (which as near as I can discover is now under the editorship of this author) never did reply to my request for a list of his articles on this subject...John5Russell3Finley (talk) 16:47, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

tag 57
The American Genealogist (#57) containing the above mentioned article: had some typos, and didn't have all of the expected info. This article refuses to find who was the father of Edward Bishop. There were several men of the right age and surname listed in Salem MA Vital Records. It is to some degree an attempt to bash Upham's scheme of 4 Edward Bishops all related: father son grandson greatgrandson which (given that Briget Oliver Bishop's decendants continued to live in that community and that one of them was a local school teacher into the early 19th Century: which could imply that the correct info actually was available to Upham) still seems likely as not possibly the truth. The analysis of the sufix Jr. was poor. The analysis of the date of Edward Bishop's marriage to Bridget Oliver: after having found the exact month it goes on to ignore it throughout the rest of the article, which is then placed aproximately 7 years later. John5Russell3Finley (talk) 18:18, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Conventionally accepted as likely factual
My thought here is that this section makes the most sense as a list of "facts". In that form each item has its own little space to itself. This allows the reader to examine each item on its own, and to combine them in their head or to refuse to accept an individual item, and accept any or all of the other items quickly and with less influence of any of the other items than would occur in any other format.John5Russell3Finley (talk) 16:11, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

I really think this makes a better 1st section title. We could have the facts, then we could have a section that involves the stuff we and others think (admittedly if We are the only one who think it then what WE think should probabably be Here in this discussion section or in the SWT taskforce pages). Anyway: I think the title Relationships is senseless, could the editor explain it ? or, if you don't want to discuss it could we consider putting the article back into some sort of multi-section format more like what we had before ? John5Russell3Finley (talk) 16:53, 11 November 2012 (UTC)