Person talk:Mary Smith (857)

death date [2 January 2012]

I am just looking at this page because of Samuel Hale and not from any knowledge of the Smith family. However, it appears that it is a mishmash of unlikely dates, such as a wife born 1611 but a daughter born 1624 before a marriage in 1633. Source:Jacobus, Donald Lines. Hale, House and Related Families, Mainly of the Connecticut River Valley says Mary Smith married by 1643 (daughter Martha b. 1643) Samuel Hale and she was d/o Rev. Henry Smith and Dorothy ---. So the birth date of 1624 probably couldn't be much later... Source:Goodwin, Nathaniel. Genealogical Notes, or Contributions to the Family History of Some of the First Settlers of Connecticut and Massachusetts offers a possible answer, suggesting Rev. Smith had two wives and Dorothy was the second wife, not the mother of Mary, though it is surprising Jacobus didn't mention this. There is supposed to be a reference in Henry Smith's will indicating he had a first wife, and I have moved Mary to the first marriage to resolve her birth date before the wedding date. Should Jacobus reflect the correct information, and there was only one wife (e.g., Source:TAG, p. 10:7, Homer W. Brainard disagrees with Goodwin), the two marriages can be merged, but Dorothy d. 1694 and given that, to be the only wife, she would have had to had a daughter by 1624 and maybe 1622, she would have been over 90! So it seems like there were likely two wives...

But back on topic, I removed the death date 19 Jan 1712. That was the death date of Samuel Hale's second wife Phebe who was named in several probate documents as his widow, not Mary.

I also removed the death date 9 Nov 1693. This is the death date of Samuel. And since he had a second wife, his first wife Mary must have died before this. It is possible the death date of 20 Jul 1680 is legitimate though Jacobus doesn't identify a death date for Mary, nor is it found in Wethersfield or Hartford records. The last child of Mary is Dorothy, whose birth Jacobus estimates at 1667. --Jrich 17:44, 2 January 2012 (EST)

As late as 1952, Jacobus and Waterman, in the Hale, House sketch of Rev. Henry Smith (pp. 730-33), were accepting Mr. Brainard's conclusion that Rev. Smith had just the one wife. They cited the Brainard article and did not further mention Goodwin's notes, probably because Brainard had addressed that issue.--jaques1724 19:10, 7 July 2012 (EDT)

Brainard said he disagreed with Goodwin, but there was no finding of fact that ruled out two wives, or any conclusive determination of Henry's origins. I don't see how Goodwin inferred two wives, but that said, but I think Brainard ignored all the other reasons for thinking Dorothy was a second wife, namely outliving her husband by 45 years, daughter Dorothy being born well down in the birth order (often symptom of a new wife), and the basic lack of any hard dates pre-emigration. Not to mention that Dorothy did not mention any of the older children (i.e., older than daughter Dorothy) in her will even though three might have been living (exact dates not given, Phillipa's husband remarried 1688, Mary's husband d. 1693, Rebecca's husband d. 1707, will written 1681/2 according to Jacobus). If any estimate is off, it can only be off in the direction of making the one wife theory less tenable as they have been tuned closed to the limit to make the theory plausible. I would have liked to have seen the full list of 22 Henry Smiths who attended Cambridge as it is surprising Brainard did not find a single one in the decades of the 1600's or 1590's that was worth considering? --Jrich 23:50, 7 July 2012 (EDT)