Method
The same method as the Falco and Defranceski archives. Every claim is tiered, and the tier is shown. An archive that cannot say what it does not know is not an archive.
The tiers
| Documented | A named source with a reference, and where possible the scan itself. |
| Inferred | A reasoned conclusion from documented facts, with the reasoning written out so that it can be overturned by anyone who finds it wanting. |
| Superseded | Asserted in the family record, and now displaced by a document that says otherwise. The old claim is kept visible, not deleted. |
| Disputed | Asserted in the family record but unsupported, or contradicted, by what can be seen. |
| Family lore | Told, remembered, not corroborated. Kept because it is precious; labelled because pretending otherwise is how family myths become family history. |
This archive starts at the bottom of the ladder
Nearly everything specific to this family is presently family lore. The Argentine origin, Rosario, the consulship, the horses, the ostriches — all of it is testimony, and it is presented as testimony. What is documented so far is largely context: the rarity and distribution of the surname, the town of Llerena, the Argentine Stud Book, the Oudtshoorn feather boom.
Context is not evidence about a family. It is the backdrop against which that family has to be placed, and it is worth having early because it tells you which claims are likely, which are hard, and where to look. It is never allowed to stand in for a record.
Rarity is evidence, and it has limits
With 2,124 bearers worldwide, Lerena is rare enough that clustering carries real information — the 61 in South Africa are very unlikely to be unrelated strangers. The archive will therefore let distribution propose connections.
It will not let distribution prove them. A proposal built on rarity is written down as inferred, with its reasoning exposed, and it stays inferred until a register says otherwise.
Living people
Living people are omitted from the build entirely — not hidden, not gated, not present in the output. Because this line reaches the present within three generations, that removes a substantial part of the story from public view, including most of the South African and all of the Australian chapter. The material is kept in the private working files; it is simply not published.
Public figures are treated differently, and only as public figures: a jockey's race record or a breeder's stud book entry is published information and may be cited as such. No claim of relationship to a living person is made from a shared surname.
A removal request is honoured within days, without argument and without requiring a reason.
Corrections
Corrections are the most valuable thing anyone can send. A family member with a date, a photograph of a document, or a flat contradiction of something written here will change the archive, and the change will be recorded rather than quietly made.
Two kinds of mark, and why both exist
A reader meeting a coloured chip should know which question it answers. There are two, and they are not the same question.
Documented Inferred Family lore
Used on the narrative pages, against a claim. This is the vocabulary the Defranceski and Falco archives use too.
Connected Excluded Unplaced
Used in the register and on person pages, against a person. Most of the register is unplaced, and that is the point of the page.
Living people
Living people appear by name only — no dates, no places, no photographs. That is the rule shared across this family’s archives, and it is stricter in practice than it sounds: a birth date and a city together identify a person completely.
Where a living person’s evidence bears on a dead one — a DNA test, a death notice they signed — the inference is published and the person is not. The DNA page → is the worked example.
This rule was broken until 10 September 2026, when the direct-line page was found to be publishing a living person’s exact birth date, two cities and both marriages beneath a caption claiming the details were withheld. Recorded on Corrections.