Ever play the message passing game in 3rd grade?

The teacher puts the whole class in a circle . “Emily”, she says, ‘I am going to whisper you a secret.” She whispers in Emily’s ear. “Now you tell Rachel”. Emily whispers the secret in Rachels ear. Rachel tells Aaron. Aaron tells Bob, And so on. It gets to the last kid in the circle, Tommy. Tommy says it out loud to the class. The teacher then says what the original secret was. Which of course isn’t very much like what Tommy just pronounced. The point is the message morphed by being passed from person to person.

Is this an aspect of hearsay?

Regardless, message passing doesnt work. Well, not very well.
This is why genealogists look for eyewitness reports of events, meaning they saw the event and recorded it at the time. The witness must have been at the place and at the time.

That is what a PRIMARY SOURCE consists of.

Gravestones are not primary sources, BTW. The people doing the burying are not witnesses to the birth and are not recording it.

A census record and a death certificate also are not primary sources. We do contrive a lot of birth dates from these documents, but these are contrived. And subject to error.

My wife’s family members keep asking me to do genealogy for them. They want me to interview witnesses, obtain documents, figure it out, and document it. They keep asking and asking and asking. I get quixxed about it and my wife gets quizzed about it like they are actually interested.

I say to them “feed me notes, documents, letters, records.” Communicate with me. Dont pass rumors and messages to my wife.

They to a person steadfastly refused to even lift a little finger to go along with this. And tell me I am supposed to do it all for them.

I am now telling them NO. Stop talking to me about this if you are not willing to help. You are wasting my time.