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Facts and Events
Needs a lot of work.
The wife of John (88) is commonly identified as Mary, Mary Margaret, Margaret Mary, or Margaret. Frequently, such a pattern of identification/misidentification is attributable to attempts to reconcile conflicting records. Sometimes such conflicts arise because the husband married more than once. Sometimes the different records represent different couples altogether. In both cases, the fact that at a minimum we are dealing with different wives, often goes unrecognized. In order to reconcile the conflict in names, genealogists assume that some records use the wife's middle name, and some use her last name.
In the present case, we have firm records to show that the wife of a John Maxwell on Beverley's Manor c1750 was named "Mary". This John maxwell could be either John (88) or his son John (89). Identifying her as the wife of John (88) is based on the presumption that land records on Beveley's Manor are for John (88). Those land records, however, show that the wife of this John Maxwell was .....The only record that might show her as "Margaret" is his importation record of 1740 in which he lists those he imported, which includes first "Margaret", and toward the end a "Mary". Genealogists often assume that "Margaret" was his wife, given her first place in the sequence of names, but the record does not show this explicitly. Margaret could easily be his eldest daughter, his wife having previously died. Beginning about 1750 we have at least four records (primarily land transcactions) that formally identify John's wife as Mary. Not Margaret, and not Mary Margaret, and not Margaret Mary. Just, plain "Mary".
Thus the only name we can be certain is attached to John's wife is "Mary". A likely scenario that could lead to this is:
1. John's first wife dies before John gives his importation oath, and therefore is not mentioned. Her death may have occurred prior to the actual importation sometime before 1740.
2. The names listed in the oath of importation are all his sons and daughters, though other possible relations might be correct as well.
3. Sometime after his importation John remarries and his new wife's name is "Mary".
4. In this view, his children born before the 1740 Oath of importation would be by his first wife, and those after 1740 would be by Mary.
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