[Phoenix]

Meticulous is NOT my middle name - largely because English sources are usually self evident. However....

My offline tree allows me to assign level of trust in a source - from dubious to convincing.

It also allows me to create additional facts, so you could have birthplace and birth date as separate fields. I would imagine that a birthplace without a birth date has got to be an unreliable source - in that it is recalled after the event, rather than contemporaneously.

I have used Heraldic Visitations - where men provided proof to the heralds of their ancestors. The only facts I would trust are a man knowing the names of his wife, his father, and his children. You can see errors, ommissions and duplications, particularly where brothers provide the information. And I have heard of men bribing heralds to produce a convincing (and utterly bogus) pedigree.

I would find it difficult to rely on a printed history devoid of sources, but I assume that even if vital records are missing, there are wills, land documents, legal disputes, membership of bodies etc?

I profoundly dislike ploughing in someone else's furrow, as I am never convinced that they were right and there isn't an alternative narrative that I will not spot.