Family talk:Thomas Richardson and Katherine Duxford (1)

Dates of birth/christening for Ezekiel and Samuel Richardson [21 December 2013]

Discussion Provided by User:Jrich in November of 2008

Samuel is described as the middle of the three brothers. It is not clear how strong this assertion is, but Ezekiel was clearly the first brother to come to New England (1630), and he appears to have married first, apparently being married before he came over. Thomas, the youngest was born in 1608, calculated from deposed age of 60 in 1668, and his recorded baptism. So Samuel's birth in 1610 given by the Richardson Memorial is improbable. A baptism for the oldest brother, Ezekiel, has not been found. The Great Migration Begins Study estimates his birth as 1604, and I have seen 1605 mentioned elsewhere, but given Samuel's baptism in "1602 (or 1604)", this is unlikely without abandoning the assumed ordering of the brothers. If Ezekiel is assumed to be born in 1602, as some sources say, then that would favor the 1604 date for Samuel. (However, since the birth of Ezekiel is nothing more than an educated guess at best, and his parents only have two recorded baptisms (Elizabeth and John) between their marriage in 1590 and the baptism of James in 1600, there is plenty of room for the birth of Ezekiel in the span 1590-1600, and so this is a very rough guess, at best.)

Additional Discussion, December 2013

Vinton, in The Richardson Memorial, describes Samuel Richardson as the middle of the three brothers. He did not have access to the baptismal data from the Westmill parish registers which was subsequently published by Watkins in 1903. Those parish registers state that "Samuel ye Sonne of Thomas Richardson baptized 22 Dec. 1602 [or 1604]."

Walter Goodwin Davis, in The Ancestry of Sarah Hildreth, p. 26 [1958], stated, "Samuel, bapt. Dec. 22, 1602; …", with no reference to the alternate 1604 date. The reasoning behind this "refinement" of the record is not known. Davis, on the next page, stated, "Ezekiel, b. probably c. 1604." As mentioned by User:Jrich, Robert Charles Anderson, in his Great Migration Begins sketch of Ezekiel Richardson, follows Davis.

However, the extracted record at familysearch.org is as follows:

Name: Samuell Richardson Gender: Male Christening Date: 22 Dec 1604 Christening Place: WESTMILL,HERTFORD,ENGLAND Father's Name: Thomas Richardson Indexing Project (Batch) Number: C07308-1 System Origin: England-ODM GS Film number: 991327

with the citation, "England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/NRWL-BJ9 : accessed 21 Dec 2013), Samuell Richardson, 22 Dec 1604." I suggest, then, that the person pages for these two sons of Thomas Richardson reflect a baptismal date of 22 Dec 1604 for Samuel, and an estimated date of birth of "est 1602" for Ezekiel."--jaques1724 19:36, 21 December 2013 (UTC)