[browardchad]

What concrete proof do we really have when and where his parents were born, or even who are his real parents? We cannot say, for certain, when his mother died, if at all, and when his grandmother died, if at all, and from what real causes?

You know, if you carry that argument to its logical conclusion, you really can’t prove the true identity of anyone – besides yourself – but then, using your logic, no one would be able to believe who you are either.

Here’s an experiment: think of someone roughly your age who you know, really well. Someone unrelated to you. A childhood friend or classmate whose date and place of birth in the U.S. you know and whose parents names you know. Now try to get the original copies of their vital records. You may be able to get a divorce record, maybe a marriage record, or find their birth listed on a public index, but you’re not going to get the original birth or death record, using legal means. If this person has died, you’ll probably find them on the Social Security Death Index, but that’s the same database in which you’ll find the Dunhams deaths recorded (mother, father and daughter) – and since you don’t believe that’s trustworthy, then it follows that you can’t trust it for your friend either.

So then, having failed to get those records, and not trusting those records that are publicly available, does that prove that your friend never existed, or that he/she isn’t or wasn’t who they claimed to be?

[Polarik]

I know when and where my grandparents were born. I have copies of their original birth certificates.

[El Gato]

. A childhood friend or classmate whose date and place of birth in the U.S. you know and whose parents names you know. Now try to get the original copies of their vital records. You may be able to get a divorce record, maybe a marriage record, or find their birth listed on a public index, but you’re not going to get the original birth or death record, using legal means

Well, if my school chum was still alive, I could ask him for a copy of his birth certificate, or better ask him to have a copy sent to me direct from the state vital statistics agency, in the state he claimed to be born in.

Assuming I had some reason to need the information, if he wouldn't do that, I'd start to get suspicious that he wasn't who he said he was, or that there was some other information on that certificate that he was hiding.