Family talk:William Fellows and Mary Ayers (1)

This Family Needs Work [29 October 2010]

Someone should merge duplicate children in this family. There appear to be several. There is also a duplicate of at least one child (Elizabeth) outside this family - with a suspect death date. This isn't my line and I am tied up with other cleanup right now, so I'll leave this to someone else. --DataAnalyst 21:23, 28 October 2010 (EDT)

Identity of Mary, Wife of William Fellows [28 April 2013] Moved from Family Page 28 Apr 2013

The identity of William Fellows wife Mary, as Mary Ayres, sister to John Ayres, has not been proven. Additional research and/or sources for this identification is needed. NEHGR 128:17 states she is "determined to be... without direct or documentary evidence." Additionally, William's daughter, Abigail, married Samuel Ayres, son of John Ayres and Susanna Symonds; making them (if William's wife is the sister of John Ayres) first cousins. Close marriages of this nature were discouraged and not common, even at this early marriage date (1677). [According to the history of the Family Page, this comment was added by Kpb2011.]

I have to disagree with the assertion that marriages of first cousins were "discouraged and not common …" Considerable research on both North of Boston and Connecticut Valley families of the seventeenth century shows that first cousin marriages were common (and sometimes necessary in close-knit, remote communities). What was forbidden, to varying degrees depending on time and location, was a man marrying his deceased wife's sister. This was considered incestuous by most Puritan authorities but had begun to dissipate as they moved into the early and middle eighteenth century.--jaques1724 13:15, 28 April 2013 (EDT)