"Samuel2 Parsons, son of 'Cornet' Joseph and Mary (Bliss) Parsons, … married second, ca. 1691, Rhoda Taylor, … daughter of John2 and Thankful (Woodward) Taylor. … The genealogy of this family by Henry Parsons (1912-20), p. 59, states that Samuel Parsons married third, 15 Dec. 1711, at Durham, Mary Wheeler. That was only a little over three months after the birth of his youngest child by Rhoda. Mary Walton Ferris, in her generally excellent Dawes-Gates Ancestral Lines (1931, 2:636, placing too much faith in the Parsons book, wove a pleasant fantasy that Rhoda 'died very soon after September 3, 1711, when her last child was born and Samuel, evidently needing a nurse and mother for the child, married thirdly at Durham, on December 15 following, Mary Wheeler. Unfortunately, for the reality of this picture, Rhoda actually survived the doughty Lieutenant for nearly a quarter of a century. In the splendid account of the Denslow family by George McKenzie Roberts [New York Gen. & Biog. Record, 77:64], the author falls into the same error of killing Rhoda off in 1711 and attributing a third wife to Samuel."
