Family:Joseph Langton and Rachel Varney (6)

Rachel Parsons or Rachel Varney I

For some time, based on a citation in Torrey’s New England Marriages to 1700,^[1] many researchers have accepted that the Rachel who married Joseph Langton was Rachel Parsons. The reliance on Torrey, in turn, was based on a lack of marriage records for Joseph Langton and Rachel in the Massachusetts Vital Records.^[6] However Varney and related family historians both before and after Torrey have stated that the Rachel who married Joseph Langton was Rachel Varney, not Rachel Parsons. An examination of Torrey’s sources and a comparison with more recent research makes it clear that Joseph Langton’s wife was Rachel Varney, not Rachel Parsons.

Torrey’s Marriage Index

Clarence Almon Torrey was a twentieth century genealogist who, along with Donald Lines Jacobus, worked to increase the accuracy of genealogical research by insisting that sources for information be cited. (As an aside, it should be noted that a source citation is not the same as documentation.)

Torrey worked on his Marriage Index from 1927 to 1960. When he died, the manuscript version, with his sources, went to the New England Historical and Genealogical Society Library in Boston, Massachusetts. Because of its value and popularity, Torrey’s Marriage Index was eventually published in print form in 1985, with subsequent re-issues. In order to keep the published works to a length that researchers could access and afford, Torrey’s source citations were omitted.^[7]

As valuable as Torrey is, the introductions to both published versions indicate that the Index is a listing of “known or presumed marriages”.^[8] Like every other secondary source, then, it’s a good idea to follow through and find other documentation.

Rachel Parsons

According to Torrey, the Rachel who married Joseph Langton was born Rachel Parsons, and was Rachel Cook when she married Langton. He also suggests that she was a widow of a Thomas Varney, and notes that her third marriage was to William Vinson. He also appears to question her divorce from Joseph Langton, just before she married Vinson.^[1]

Already there seem to be potential problems, since Torrey lists four husbands (Cook, Varney, Langton, Vinson) for Rachel, not three, and it’s not clear where in the list Langton belongs. Presumably Langton follows after Cook and Varney, but before Vinson, but that would make Vinson the fourth husband of Rachel, not her third. It also confuses the issue of whether her name at the time of her marriage to Langton was Cook or Varney.

In fact, Rachel was never married to Thomas Varney, who was her brother not her husband. She married Langton soon after the death in 1650 of her first husband, Thomas Cooke, and William Vinson, her third husband, soon after she divorced Langton in 1661.^[9]

Torrey’s sources for Rachel, not available in published formats, were made available on the Essex County (MAESSEX) email list by Dale Cook. ^[10] They are:

"The Essex Antiquarian", 7:130

"Essex Co. Court Rec." 1:258, by which he almost certainly meant either "Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex Co. Mass.", 9 vols. (Salem: Essex Institute, 1911), or the originals at the courthouse.

"Mary Lovering Holman," 102:3-5 (I am not sure which work this is - it may be a published work by her, or one of her manuscripts at NEHGS.)

"Raymon Meyers Tingley, "Some Ancestral Lines; Being a Record of Some of the Ancestors of Guilford Solon Tingley and His Wife, Martha Pamelia Meyers, Collected by Their Son, Raymon Meyers Tingley" (Rutland, VT: The Tuttle Publishing Co., 1935), 85.

Of these sources, the only one that is an original source is the Essex County Court Record. That record, for July 1652 in Salem, (Volume 1, p. 258), states that Joseph was charged with “evil usage” of his wife’s child. The court ordered that the child remain with its grandparents, William Varney and his wife.^[11] Although not mentioned by name in the record, by implication, Rachel (who had a child by her first marriage to Thomas Cooke) is the daughter of William Varney and his wife. (The alternative, that the child was the son of a man named Varney, may be why Torrey includes Thomas Varney in his lists of husbands for Rachel, although there are no records to support his doing so.)

In the Tingley book, p. 85, under the children of Anthony Day, is the note: “Mary, daughter of Joseph and Rachel (Varney) Langton.”^[12] More explicitly, on p. 195 (not referenced by Torrey), Tingley states that Joseph Langton married Rachel Varney, daughter of William and Bridget Varney.

The question, then, is why did Torrey give Rachel the surname Parsons if two of his own sources either state or suggest that she is the daughter of William and Bridget Varney? The answer probably lies in the confusion generated by Bridget Varney’s will, particularly since Torrey similarly (mis)identifies Bridget as the possible widow Parsons.^[13]

Bridget Varney’s Will

In her will Bridget Varney refers to Jeffery Parsons, husband of William Vinson’s daughter Sarah, as her “son”.^[14] She also refers to William Vinson, by now married to Rachel as her third husband, as “son-in-law”. The easy, and not unreasonable, assumption is that Bridget is therefore the mother of Jeffery Parsons and that she was married to Jeffrey’s father before marrying William Varney. (It should be noted that Tingley never makes that assumption, instead stating that the relationship between Bridget and Jeffrey Parsons is undetermined.^[15])

Bridget Varney’s will has caused considerable confusion, not to mention some acrimony, among Parsons family researchers, particularly since the implication that Bridget was a widow of Jeffrey Parson’s father contradicted other documents passed down within the Parsons family. In an effort to resolve the problem, Willis Parsons traveled to England to do research in original documents there. The results of his research were published in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register.^[16] Of significance to the question of Joseph Langton’s wife is Parsons’ conclusion that Bridget was not Jeffrey Parsons’ mother, and that Jeffrey’s parents remained alive and well after Bridget married William Varney.

If Bridget Varney was neither the mother of Jeffrey Parsons nor the widow of his father, then the assignment of the Parsons surname to Bridget and by extension to Rachel, wife of Joseph Langton, becomes extremely tenuous, lacking documentary foundation.

Rachel Varney

In addition to the sources cited by Torrey, a more recent family history by Margaret Collacott and Ruth Grandin also states that Rachel was the daughter of William and Bridget Varney, and recent widow of Thomas Cooke when she married Langton.^[17] They also give William Vinson as Rachel’s third husband. In other respects, their work reflects the same confusion caused by Bridget Varney’s will that has plagued both Varney and Parsons family researchers.

In an effort to resolve the various issues related to the Varney family history, Kathleen Barber and Janet Delorey conducted extensive documentary research in Massachusetts. They also corresponded with archives in Barbados and England, seeking evidence from original documents in those countries. The results of their research were published in The American Genealogist.^[18] With respect to the question of Rachel’s surname, she was the daughter of William and Bridget (Deverell) Varney, and her name was Rachel Varney.

In addition to demonstrating that the Rachel who married Joseph Langton was Rachel Varney, Barber and Delorey also cite court records that attest to her divorce of Joseph Langton, based on Langton’s on-going mistreatment of her son by Thomas Cooke. Finally, the life of her brother Thomas Varney, suggested by Torrey as a husband for Rachel, is also well documented. The child mentioned in the Court Record cited by Torrey was the son of Thomas Cooke, not the son of Thomas Varney.

Rachel Parsons or Rachel Varney II

Genealogical Proof Standards^[19] are today much more demanding than those that Torrey and Jacobus commendably attempted to impose. Judged by those standards, the work of Parsons and of Barber and Delorey adequately document that the Rachel who married Joseph Langton was Rachel Varney, not Rachel Parsons.

Footnotes

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} Torrey, Clarence Almon. New England Marriages Prior to 1700. (1963).

   Langton, Joseph, & Rachel (Parsons) [Cook] (-1692), Varney, w Thomas, m/3 William Vinson, 1661; 26 Jul 1652, div 1661?; Ipswich

2. ↑ Roberts, Gary Boyd. Ancestors of American Presidents. (Boston, Massachusetts: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2009)
   p. 38.

   Ancestors of Millard Fillmore. Joseph Langton "of Ipswich, Mass., m. by July 1652" to Rachel Parsons or Varney, d. Gloucester 15 Feb 1707, m. (1) Thomas Cook; (2) as above; (3) William Vinson, imprisoned for withcraft at Ipswich, 1692.

3. ↑ Barber, Kathleen Canney, and Janet Ireland Delorey. William Varney of Ipswich and Gloucester, Massachusetts. The American Genealogist. (Jul 2006).

   Barber and Delory say "before 1652". Rachel last appeared in Court Records as Rachel Cooke on 31 Dec 1650, and Joseph was in Court on 1 July 1652 for mistreatment of her child, giving end dates within which the marriage most likely occurred.

4. ↑ Barber, Kathleen Canney, and Janet Ireland Delorey. William Varney of Ipswich and Gloucester, Massachusetts. The American Genealogist. (Jul 2006).

   "On 22 May 1661, the court judged Rachel Langton 'or Verney' to be 'free from hir late husband, Joseph Langton.'"

5. ↑ Shurtleff, Nathaniel B. (Nathaniel Bradstreet). Records of the governor and company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England: printed by order of the legislature. (Boston, Massachusetts: W. White, 1853-1854)
   Vol. 4, Part II, p. 8, 22 May 1661.

   "In the case of Rachell Langton, or Verney, the Court judgeth it mete to declare, that she is free from hir late husband, Joseph Langton."

6. ↑ Massachusetts Vital Records 1600-1849 Online http://ma-vitalrecords.org/
7. ↑ Clarence Almon Torrey. New England Marriages Prior to 1700. Baltimore, MD, USA. 2004. http://www.Ancestry.com/ pp. v-xv
8. ↑ David Curtis Dearborn, NEHGS Reference Librarian, in Dick Eastman Online, New England Marriages Prior to 1700 on CD-ROM http://anc.rootsweb.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=4254
9. ↑ Kathleen Canney Barber and Janet Ireland Delorey. “William¹ Varney of Ipswich and Gloucester, Massachusetts”, The American Genealogist 81:3 (July 2006) and 81:4
10. ↑ Dale H. Cook, Re: [MAESSEX] VARNEY, Rachel Ipswich say 1630, 04 Nov 2004. http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/maessex/2004-11/1099608736
11. ↑ Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Volume I, p. 258. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft/Essex/vol1/images/essex258.html
12. ↑ Raymon Meyers Tingley, Some ancestral lines : being a record of some of the ancestors of Guilford Solon Tingley and his wife, Martha Pamelia Meyers. 1935. http://www.Ancestry.com/
13. ↑ Torrey, op cit, p. 766
14. ↑ Mariana [Ruggles], Will of Mrs. Bridget Varney of Gloucester, 03 May 1999; Essex Roots; http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/essex-roots/1999-05/0925778923 ; See also, Barber and Delorey, op cit, p. 165
15. ↑ Tingley, op cit, p. 189
16. ↑ Willis S. Parsons. “Jeffery Parsons of Loddiswell, Devonshire and Gloucester, Massachusetts”. The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 142:(July 1988)
17. ↑ Margaret Oliver Collacott and Ruth Thompson Grandin. Ancestors and Descendants of Zephaniah and Silence Alden Hathaway. 1961. pp. 220-221; http://www.Ancestry.com/
18. ↑ Barber and Delorey, op cit
19. ↑ The Genealogical Proof Standard, Board for Certification of Genealogists. http://www.bcgcertification.org/resources/standard.html See also, Criteria for Genealogy Well Done