Family:Gerard Spencer and Unknown (3)

Disputed or Questionable Lineages

"Nathaniel Goodwin, the first to publish a compiled account of this family, did not include Sarah and Elizabeth in the list of childen [Goodwin Notes 197]. Jacobus pointed out the document that demonstrated that Sarah, wife of Stephen Backus, was a daughter of this immigrant [TAG 27:164]. The earliest known reference to a daughter Elizabeth, who married John Stannard, was published in 1907, without supporting evidence, by William Henry Spencer [Spencer Family Record (New York 1907), 21]. Most later treatments of the family included this daughter, also without evidence, and so we do not include her in the list of children … [Dawes-Gates 2:775; TAG 27:165; McCormick-Hamilton 909]; the birth-order chronology is crowded enough with twelve children."^[1]

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Jared Spencer, in Anderson, Robert Charles; George F. Sanborn; and Melinde Lutz Sanborn. The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635. (Boston, Massachusetts: NEHGS, 1999-2011)
   6:423, 426.

   (Jared Spencer married) (1) by about 1638 ----- ----- [TAG 27:165]. … Jacobus observed that "Since the publication of Goodwin's Genealogical Notes in 1856, the early wife of Gerard who was the mother of his children has always been named as Hannah. The present compiler follows these authorities, though confessing that he has not seen an original source or quoted contemporary record so naming her" [TAG 27:165]. We suggest that the given name of his first wife may have been Grace. Two of the sons of Jared Spencer named daughters Grace [TAG 27:169-70], and Jared made a special point of making small bequests to these two grandchildren when many other grandchildren went unmentioned.

2. ↑ This marriage is not recorded in the published Lynn vital records.