Family talk:John Slafter and Unknown (3)

I don't think Abiah Gillett is the correct wife here. Abiah Gillett married John Slater in 1669. She was the widow of Isaiah Bartlett (m. 1663). The Windsor Vital Records say "John Slaughter was married to Abiah that had been wife to Elisha Bartlett July 15th 69 " The Simsbury Town Records have a list "Children listed in order "there are the names of the children Borne to John Slater by Abiah his wife who was daughter of Nathan Gillit." The list shows children born between 1669 and 1682, including " John Slater the first Son of John Slater was Borne the one and Tweenty day of Febbry And one Thousand Six hund and Sixty Nine." They then both died in Simsbury in 1713 and 1716.

So they aren't the couple that married in 1682, and it seems exceedingly unlikely that they were having kids in Lynn when Abiah was 60. It looks like from the data that there's a John Slafter that's the father of the children listed, and perhaps had a wife Abiah. It looks like that that Abiah should just be edited to remove the reference to the one born in Simsbury.

Simsbury TR: Source:Simsbury, Connecticut, births, marriages and deaths - I got the microfilm.
Windsor VR: http://www.srv.net/~huskers/windsor.htm

--Amelia.Gerlicher 22:11, 13 June 2007 (MDT)

I agree that two different Johns have been conflated here. There is the John Slaughter who lived in Simsbury and Windsor CT, married Abiah Gillett or Bartlett, had children in Simsbury between 1669 and 1682, and died in Simsbury in 1713. Then there is the John Slafter who lived in Lynn MA, had ten children there with an unknown wife, moved to the Mansfield/Willington/Tolland CT area by 1716, and lived there at least until 1739 and as late as 1754. Alas, this conflation of John Slafter of Lynn marrying Abiah Gillett has been perpetuated in many genealogies found e.g. on rootsweb worldconnect, as well as multiple LDS member contributions found in the IGI. I've seen no evidence that John Slafter of Lynn's wife was named Abiah (nor any evidence of her name at all). It's also not clear where this specific marriage date of 16 Oct 1686 originally came from, though I find it in suspect IGI and Pedigree Resource File contributions associating John Slafter of Lynn with Abiah Gillett.
I'm thinking what I ought to do is to rename this page from "John Slafter and Abiah Gillett (1)" to "John Slafter and Unknown (1)", and also make the former page a disambiguation page instead of a plain redirect. --TomChatt 04:40, 27 September 2007 (EDT)