|
|
Family tree▼ Facts and Events
Children
| | Birth | Death |
|---|
| 1. |
|
|
|
| 2. |
|
|
|
| 3. |
|
|
|
| 4. |
|
|
|
| 5. |
|
|
|
| 6. |
|
|
|
| 7. |
|
|
|
| 8. |
|
|
|
| 9. |
|
|
|
| 10. |
|
|
|
| 11. |
|
|
|
| 12. |
|
|
|
References
- ↑ There are few records for this family, and most of the birth order comes from Source:Thayer, Bezaleel. Memorial of the Thayer Name, from the Massachusetts Colony of Weymouth and Braintree, Embracing Genealogical and Biographical, p. 140. This is a horrible source, never indicating how data is known, and full of errors of various types, especially many careless editing errors. It is hard to have much confidence in the data there in situations like this where there are few records to confirm information.
In this specific family, the question is about the identification of children and their birth order. The birth order given in this source can be proven to be wrong from the 1738 settlement of the father's estate. It is not simple to fix the birth order based on what is known and between this error and provable errors about two missing children (Richard and Jemima) and one incorrectly attributed child (Hezekiah), this presentation has little credibility.
Cornelius is oldest, and Ezekiel must relinquish his right to the real estate before Gideon is allowed to take it. So Ezekiel is older than Gideon. This source places Moses before Gideon and David after, but both are deceased, so in the settlement, they are listed after the living sons, and we cannot be sure of their actual placement. And Richard is not listed anywhere in the settlement so apparently died without heirs. A partial order, showing the survivors in 1738, is given in some notes by the judge: Cornelius, Ezekiel, Gideon, Eliakim, Eleazer, Jer'h, Jemima Spear. The question is where Moses, David, Richard and Jemima fit into the order.
The will of the father was written in 1728, 10 years earlier, and at that time, only Moses had died. The placement of Moses and Jemima does not appear based on birth order, and Eleazer and Jeremiah are explicitly identified as the two youngest sons, in that order. Assuming the paragraphs of the rest are in birth order, the order of the older surviving sons would be Cornelius, David and Ezekiel, Richard, Gideon, and Eliakim.
A son Hezekiah is never mentioned in Cornelius' probate, nor any heirs of his. He allegedly is the brother of Moses, and is the one who married Moses' widow, so should have been alive at the time. He is said to have married 1729 and died 1854 (!!! - one of those careless errors that plague this work - his probate is dated 1774). But the lack of mention in the will and in the settlement of his alleged father's estate suggests he is not of this family. Instead he is probably the Hezekiah Thayer mentioned as a son in the probate of Cornelius' brother Nathaniel Thayer (whose probate file indicates he had 11 children, 3 more than shown by Thayer).
Of course, there is the long-standing problem that Thayer shows the wrong wife and gives a marriage date of 1694 for an incorrect marriage without any evidence to support it. Thus his whole anchor point for his apparent estimates of births is questionable. Cornelius was born 1670 and old enough to marry in 1691. Gideon's is the first birth known, recorded as 1700 (by Gideon's request when he was an adult). There does not appear to be room for all of Cornelius, Moses, David, Ezekiel and Richard to be older than him, as suggested by the father's will. Moses married 1723, David in 1724, Ezekiel in 1725, Eliakim in 1729.
No answer is obvious. But the presentation in Thayer is seems practically random.
|
|
