Family talk:Abner Smith and Marcy Goddard (1)

Identifying Abner's wives [30 November 2020]

I believe that Abner Smith from Warwick was not married to Mercy Goddard. There were several Abner Smiths so there is great confusion. Abner married Jerusha (aka Molly) Hutchins 11 Dec 1771 and she was the mother to 9 children. She died 3 Mar 1815 and was buried in the North Orange Cemetery. In Sep 1815 Abner married Lydia Harvey. They removed from Warwick along with daughter Abner & Molly Smith Gale and they all went to McDonough, NY where Abner died in 1823. Based on the gravestone inscription he was born about 1847.

I moved this here to the Talk page, where discussions occur. "I believe" does not constitute evidence. Please cite some records.

Conflating two unrelated names is a typical symptom of people trying to make sense out of partial information by forcing the facts into an unjustified pattern. I.e., see the discussion on Person:Joshua Atwood (8) of a similar case. The partial evidence, without forcing it into a preconceived pattern, strongly suggests Abner had three wives, but given the large number of Abner Smiths and preponderance of missing documentation, no definitive conclusion is possible.

Jerusha Smith is the only child that has an easy identification of her mother, as her death record names her mother Mary. It was pretty common to name a daughter, often the first daughter in the next marriage, after a deceased wife, which would be in keeping with the possibility the first wife Jerusha died, and Marcy/Marey was the second wife. Molly Smith died with age indicating a birth in 1753 but I find no birth record of any child of Edward Hutchins to show this death is the same age as the person who married in 1771. It is far more likely that Abner remarried between 1771 and 1815 than that a person named Jerusha went by the nickname Molly.

There is a intention in Warwick for Marcy, often confused with Marey. We know Abner had a wife Mary by the death record of a child, and gravestone of that wife. This is a matter of record, and there is a high probability this is the same person in the intention. So, it seems the one thing we know with the most confidence is that Abner did marry Mercy/Marcy/Marey/Mary/Molly Goddard.

But the bottom-line is that there is no evidence presented to show the man who married Jerusha is the same man who buried a wife Molly. Showing that Jerusha's name in her marriage record was misrecorded, i.e., refuting a primary record, requires significant amounts of contradicting evidence that is not there. So without evidence to show why it is so, references to "Jerusha (aka Molly)" are not very credible.

Even the statement "she was mother to 9 children" is only assumption, as there are no birth records for the children, no probate naming all the children. And given the fact that these children may belong to two Abner Smiths, or an Abner Smith with two wives, it probably is actually wrong. Even for the smaller number of children that are currently shown on this page, there is only circumstantial evidence for most that these are the parents (i.e., assumptions based on location, close connections that suggest family relationships, etc.)

A gravestone in 1823 may or may not be the same Abner Smith. Unfortunately the page that links to it does not provide the name of the cemetery this gravestone comes from, making it hard to check for related persons in the same cemetery (not found in Find A Grave). Actually despite a gravestone in 1823 the page linking to it says Abner d. 1780 and in general does not suggest careful research. But, regardless of all that, it does not contradict any of the above, so is largely irrelevant to this discussion.

"daughter Abner & Molly Smith Gale" is obviously incomplete (missing daughter's name)? But none of the three daughters on the page died in New York, so I cannot guess who this refers to. --Jrich 22:52, 30 November 2020 (UTC)