Talk:Jacob Sodowski

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This stub should be nominated for deletion, as its only source is one extremely inaccurate sentence in the Catholic Encyclopedia. For better information on the person in question, see this page: http://www.poles.org/Sadowski.html -- I have no connection to Ed Pinkowski, but I have been able to verify that at least some of the information on that page is correct, unlike the info in the Catholic Encyclopedia entry. -- Goueznou, 173.52.247.95 (talk) 14:03, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To expand a little: The genealogical findings indicate that the Polish immigrant was named Antoni (not Jakub) Sądowski, and that he arrived in New Jersey by 1709 and moved to Pennsylvania in 1712. He is the individual who is supposed to have gone on fur trading expeditions into Ohio and possibly (although probably not) lent his name, ultimately, to Sandusky, Ohio. He died in 1736, at his home in Pennsylvania. Jacob Sadowski was his grandson, born in the 1740s or 1750s, and was part of an early survey team (in the early 1770s) into Kentucky. It appears that most of the research leading to this information was done in the 1960s by Pinkowski and his associates. There doesn't seem to be any evidence of a separate Jacob Sodowsky who came to North America in 1770; rather, that looks to be one of the many garbled versions of the family history passed down by various descendants, as mentioned by Pinkowski.

The two citations currently on this page are to a primary source (the map) and a tertiary source (the Catholic Encyclopedia), so neither of them fits Wikipedia's criterion of providing secondary sources (see WP:RS). Furthermore, the Catholic Encyclopedia was published in 1913 and cited an even older publication, which is clearly outdated information a century later; while the use of the map seems to me like WP:OR, or at least WP:Synthesis. On the other hand, even if the article were updated to reflect the more accurate information (and renamed to "Antoni Sadowski" or "Anthony Sadowski"), I only know of the page cited above, Pinkowski's 1966 essay, as a source; I'm not sure whether it constitutes a reliable secondary source, but even if it does, it would still be the only secondary source cited, which is not really sufficient. It's hard to locate on-line sources about this individual because there's a lot of duplication and outright plagiarism, and what remains never seems to be unambiguously reliable.

Finally, I'm not convinced that either the grandfather Antoni or the grandson Jacob is notable enough to merit a biographical Wikipedia article, or that enough is actually known about either of them to fill one out. Off-line sources are just as hard to locate. The claim that Sądowski is the origin of Sandusky is widely regarded as a fringe theory, as there is a plausible Wyandot etymology and, apparently, no certain evidence that the man ever actually did visit the area. Overall, I just don't get the sense that there is enough reliable, sourced, and notable information to justify the existence of this page at all.

I'm hoping someone can leave further comment here to provide some guidance on the notability issue, as well as on the question of how/whether to use genealogical sources for Wikipedia material. For instance, is a published book of will abstracts a reliable secondary source? That could affect the question of how much information is available, although I think I'd still have reservations about WP:Notability. -- Goueznou (still no user account), 173.77.108.24 (talk) 18:26, 1 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]