On page x, Introduction, appears a genealogy of the immediate families of Robert, Joshua, and Joshua Hempstead 2d.
First. "Robert Hempstead married Joanna Willie."
Now did he? There is not the slighest shread of evidence that his wife's name was Joanna Willie, or Willey. Miss Caulkins, in her account of Robert Hempstead, p. 272, History of New London, says nothing about who his wife was, merely gives the names of his three children Mary, Joshua, Hannah; it is only on page 310, in her sketch of the family of Isaac Willey, that she says "inferential testimony leads us to enroll among the members of this family, Joanna, wife of Robert Hempstead, and afterwards of Andrew Lister."
Where the "inferential testimony" comes in does not appear. It is by no means certain that her first name was even "Joanna;" in his will Robert Hempstead gives her the name "Joane" - not necessarily a two-syllable word, but pronounced as a one-syllable word, the "oane" sounded the same as "one" in "Cone."
