The children of John and Lucy (Stanton) MacDowell, b. Stonington were:
...
ii. Mary, b. 9 June 1717 (or 1712); living 1768; m. (1) Stonington, 18 or 29 March 1736, Zebulon Chesebrough. In the original Vital Records of Stonington, Vol. 2, p. 74, her birth date is distinctly recorded as 1712. These vital records were evidently entered at a time subsequent to the births they record and it is extremely likely that the date should have been 1717, which date may have been misread by the clerk making the entry. The marriage of John MacDowell and Lucy Stanton is recorded as given above, 7 May 1715 and immediately followed by the births of all his children in chronological order, except for Mary, whose name and date appear between James, born in 1715 and Sarah, born in 1721. As all the other children were born approximately three years apart, it is improbably that there was a gap of six years between 1715 and 1721 and that Mary's birth would be entered out of order. If the recording of the year 1712 is correct, than John MacDowell presumably had a wife before Lucy Stanton.
