Talk:Ferdinand Ashmall

First to reach age 103 claim

I'm not arguing about WP:GNG, that's settled but I still don't believe we can assert that Ashamll was "First person known to reach the age of 103" absent a WP:SYNTHESIS of sources to make that claim. Of the three footnotes here, the third is a separate point so that's ignorable. The second is a single GRG table here which just says name, birthdate, death date, age and "Julia Hynde" [sic]. The first source here is from Julia Hynes and is a reliable source but doesn't actually call him the first known person to be age 103. I think the second source is relying on the first then. Hynes wrongly claims that he lived to age 104 which I think should be given weight against her reliability on the issue. However, more importantly she in fact says "If Reverend Ferdinand Ashmall really was 104 years old at his death and William Badger died at a similar age, there was likely to have been someone dying at a later age in the population at risk of 22 to 25 million in England between 1537 and 1800..." meaning that she even admits that she believes that he wasn't the first 104-year-old or the oldest one or anything like that. She isn't asserting that he was the first of anything, just discussing the proof of his claim alone. The only assertion then is from a single line in a GRG table about the oldest centenarians by year. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:32, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree that we shouldn't claim that Ashmall was "First person known to reach the age of 103", but we can and should say that he was known for reaching the age of 103. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 08:54, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Was he known for that? The vast, vast majority of the source note him as a Catholic priest but only Hynes and the GRG are looking at him due his age. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:22, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

That's why he appears in "The Local Historian's Table Book, of Remarkable Occurrences"; being a Catholic priest is hardly a remarkable occurrence. The Historical account of Lisbon college also talks about other members of his family being near-centenarians, so clearly considers his age to be interesting. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 12:40, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Looking at the source, it doesn't explicitly say why he's there. However I see that the page mentions Patterson, Palmer and others so it can be implied. I can live with that. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:54, 21 November 2015 (UTC)