Person talk:John Harwood (15)

not trusting secondary sources [21 August 2015]

Note: There is also a Find A Grave listing for a John Harwood born on the same date, but living in Uxbridge until 1788. One source or the other must be mixed up.

Which is exactly why it is desirable to dig past the familysearch indexes and the Find A Grave memorials to get as close to the original source of the information as possible.

The probate clearly shows the son of William died, so the man in Uxbridge is not him. The legal record clearly describes the man who died in 1725 as the son of William, and there are few sources more reliable than probate records.

The cited Find a Grave in Uxbridge has no gravestone image, a big blow to its credibility. It is simply the research of some amateur genealogist (though they list their sources, as will be shown, they applied them incorrectly).

A John Harwood did marry Margaret Marvill in 1755 [1]. This is most likely not a man born in 1699 (especially as they proceeded to have several children [2] and [3]). Which suggests the submitter of the Find A Grave memorial is simply doing naive name matching, a bad genealogical practice that is the source of much wrong information found on the Internet.

A John Harwood did die in Uxbridge in 1788, "in his 89th y." [4]. This is age 88, so his birth would be about 1700. Ages at death are not precise, very often off by a year or two, usually inflated.

There are several John Harwoods born about the specified time.

• Son of James in Chelsmford 1695
• Son of William in Concord 1697
• Son of Peter in Concord 1703
• Son of James (again, indicating his first son John died) in Chelmsford in 1703
• Plus there is always the possibility of the birth being recorded under Howard or Hayward, or not recorded, etc.

The Uxbridge births above contain the record of the birth of John Harwood in Concord 28 Apr 1703. This exactly matches the son of Peter born in Concord. His birth was recorded at the time of his birth in Concord, and when he moved to Uxbridge, he registered with the town clerk and reported his birth as an adult. This is the man who died in Uxbridge in 1788. The Uxbridge records also show the birth of his son, John, in Mendon in 1730. It is his son that marries Margaret and has children in Uxbridge. The son's birth is also listed in the Mendon records as one would expect [5] where the marriage of John, son of Peter, to Hannah Aldrich may also be found [6].

Thus the Find A Grave contributer has used the birthdate of one John Harwood, the death date of another, and the marriage of a third. --Jrich 14:30, 21 August 2015 (UTC)