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"Ad hominem" means "an argument against the person". It means attacking the person you disagree instead of stating your reasons for having a different opinion.
You said (in response to my post explaining how it is known that William Herndon did not marry a daughter of Gov. Digges):
"Actually there is still a difference of opinion among several noted genealogists, as I'm sure you very well know."
That's the ad hominem bit. If you want to argue that the non-existence of "Catherine Digges" is a matter of opinion, you should cite the evidence which (you believe) leads to that conclusion. You shouldn't try to imply that the person you are disagreeing with "very well knows" you're right and is refusing to admit it. That is an example of an ad hominem remark.
I hope that clarifies the matter for you.
As for helping others, I agree that people very often don't experience it as helpful when someone points out that part of their family tree is fictional. Some would rather not know the facts. But not everyone feels that way. Some of us want to know who our ancestors really were.
When I first started looking into my family history, I was misled for a long time by myths which had been propagated about the Herndon family. I read in these forums that my 5th greatgrandmother was (a) a daughter of Edward Herndon; and (b) a granddaughter of Dr John Waller of Newport Pagnell; and (c) a granddaughter of Gov. Edward Digges.
I searched for evidence to substantiate these claims. I followed the trail, asking people why they believed these things were true. I found that most cited a family history book which was written by a Herndon descendant, John Goodwin Herndon, and self-published by him in 1947.
So I obtained a copy of that book, to see what basis JG Herndon had for the claims. I read that the claim that William Herndon had married "Catherine Digges" first appeared in print in 1902, in an article written by another Herndon (John Waterhouse Herndon).
JH Herndon said that he wrote to his cousin, asking where he got his information. He said that JW Herndon told him he heard it from a cousin, who said she heard it from Moncure Conway. Moncure Conway, according to JG Herndon, said he thought he got it from some letters written to him in the 1880s by "some members of the Herndon family."
Having discovered that JG Herndon's claim was based solely on various unsubstantiated assertions by other Herndons, I searched further. I found online the following two articles from the William and Mary Quarterly:
"Pedigree of a Representative Virginia Planter" [Edward Digges], published in October 1892, online at http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/va/schools/wmmary/quarterly/planter1.txt
Addendum to the above article, published in April 1893, online at http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/va/schools/wmmary/quarterly/d2000000.txt
Here is a quote from the second article:
"Further investigation shows that when Elizabeth, wife of Edward Digges, died, there were only three children, out of the thirteen mentioned on his tombstone, surviving in 1691. Only one of the dead children had a living descendant. This was Mary (1655 - 1691), who m. Capt. Francis Page and left a daughter Elizabeth. A son living in 1692, not hitherto known, was Edward Digges."
See also "Adventurers of Purse and Person", previously cited, for John Frederick Dorman's account. See also NEXUS, Vol. X, Nos. 2 & 3 p. 70 for the comments of Gary Boyd Roberts. See also http://genforum.genealogy.com/cgi-bin/pageload.cgi?neghs::herndon::457.html for the start of a quite hilarious thread in which various would-be Digges descendants express outrage that one or two of the genealogical societies have realized their error and now refuse to admit members who claim descent from "Catherine Digges".
So you see, after all my searching, it turned out that the Catherine story, the Herndon-Waller story, and the story about my 5th greatgrandmother, were all just myths, and a good deal of my time had been wasted on a blind alley.
Rather than see others being similarly misled, I now post corrections when I see the hoary old confabulations being recited yet again. Some may find that helpful, some may not. Such is life.
James
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