Tough nuggies.
You claim that there is randomness in the entries of the OED and you claim that you know what it tries to do. This is so mindbogglingly ignorant a juxtaposition of statements that it leave me speechless.
I do believe that the quotes I posted at the start of this thread would indicate that parents, or at least parent, mattered when considering the usage of the phrase natural-born at the time of the adoption of the Constitution. The alternative seems to me to be that the OED got it wrong, which is certainly a possibility but one that would need to be demonstrated.
ML/NJ
“You claim that there is randomness in the entries of the OED and you claim that you know what it tries to do”
You have this lingering problem with my use of the term random. I understand that the editors of the OED do not choose to quote willy-nilly. But you also must understand that they cannot cover every connotation of every historical usage of every term. The various excerpts may or may not pertain to the specific definition that the Framers used. That’s one of the reasons why there’s more than one excerpt cited, because while all of them fit the overarching definition offered at the beginning of each entry, not all historical usages of the term mean exactly the same thing.
Such is why I feel comfortable referring to the excerpts largely as random as regards our purposes. Most of them seem to pertain to British law, which as we all know in myriad ways differs from U.S. law. Only one of the excerpts is contemporary to the founding generation, that being from Blackstone. We all know that the Founders were familiar with Blackstone, but this particular usage isn’t very useful, as it doesn’t adress the “right of the father”/”right of the soil” argument.
None of them clearly establish any NECESSARY connection between the “right of the father” definition and the definition as used in U.S. law. If the connection is really as clear in the text as it is to your mind, I wonder why the “right of the father” was not included in the overarching definition itself.
Morovever, different excerpts contradict eachother. The 1876 excerpt clearly upholds a “right of the soil” definition of citizenship. How am I supposed to know whether the framers preferred that definition? The OED gives me no answer.