|
|
First Wife [1 March 2014]
If there were two wives???? It is fine to point out when things are not proven, but it is another thing to say they can't be true the way you exclude Joane Coffin (whom could or could not be correct for all I know). On the passenger list of 20 May 1635, his wife Agnes is 25, and his daughter Joanna is 15. There had better have been an earlier wife!!! True, we don't know her name, as she obviously died in England, since we know it was Agnes that accompanied Rev. Joseph to New England as his wife, but given that the first daughter was Joanna, and the first son was Joseph, a betting person would probably take Joanna as the name of his first wife, of which Joane could a form or an easy mistranscription. --Jrich 22:57, 2 March 2009 (EST)]
- I take no position, but note that Joseph's mother was named Joan, so there is no need for that to have been the name of his wife to account for the daughter's name.--Amelia 23:15, 2 March 2009 (EST)
- Agreed, though he named his first son after himself and not his father Thomas, so that would seem to be the pattern. Likewise, neither does it prove his first wife wasn't Joan/Joane/Joanna, and so is no reason to say Joane Coffin is hereby excluded as is stated in the Disputed Lineages section. At best all that can be said is that she is unproven. --Jrich 23:35, 2 March 2009 (EST)
- Since what I meant to say (I think) was that she should not be placed as a wife on this page since there is no evidence for her, I'll change the wording. I was probably in a mood after changing a bunch of unsupported junk that day! --Amelia 23:42, 2 March 2009 (EST)
- I note that Anderson's Great Migration sketch of Joseph Hull (3:455), published 2003, leaves the first wife, married by 1620, completely unnamed and the second, married by 1635, with a baptismal name of Agnes, no surname. Is there any credible evidence that the first wife was a Joan or a Joane or a Joanna?--jaques1724 12:23, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
- I assume it is an assumption based on the eldest daughter's name, but frankly I don't know. Is it "credible" (not a very objective word, there are degrees of circumstantial that people may feel differently about): well, it is more substantial than the evidence that says it isn't Joan (nothing as far as I know, and while I have run across people literally named "Living", I have yet to encounter any one named "Unknown".) Anderson is one person with opinions, his book represents his opinion fixed at the time of publishing, and while I agree he is the best and it is worth noting he didn't find any supporting evidence, his use of Unknown sometimes seems to represent his pique at not finding evidence rather than meaning various alternatives can't be, or aren't, true; or more to the point in this collaborative environment, aren't worth documenting as possibilities.
- I have no problem putting a {{cn}} on the page, or adding notes to the page saying this appears to be speculation based on the first daughter's name, but I do have problems removing it altogether, unless there is some evidence to bring to the page. The problem is that I don't know if there is anything else on which is this based or not, so I can't tell you if the evidence is "credible". That there is no evidence on the page merely is a reflection of how shoddy/self-centered Internet genealogy is, not that there isn't any. Even if it is unproven, what is the motivation to speculate her maiden name was Coffin? (Knowing this would probably be more than I know now. If the Joanna added yesterday - ignoring the Agnes part of the page - is the Joanna Coffin that is being speculated as his wife, then the proof is pretty clear: she is too young to be his first wife. But not knowing the speculation, I can't even say that.) Barring proof of who his wife was, all this needs to be documented so it can be refuted with evidence, not simply removed. I know there are some sources that address it, I don't have access to them. If they have "credible" arguments, it shouldn't be that hard to abstract the proof here, assuming it is more substantial than "There is no evidence...", which looks more like failure on the searcher's part than a failure of the hypothesis. (Yes it would be nice if posters were courteous enough to supply their sources so this wouldn't be such a one-way standard, but descending to their methods is not correct either.) --Jrich 16:31, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
|
|
