Person talk:Mary Tilton (15)

Discrepancies: birth date, parentage, marriage date [24 July 2011]

The age at death on the gravestone places Mary's birth in 1659. Further the tendency is that ages at death are overstated, making it more likely that her birth was after than 1659 rather than before. Yet her putative father d. 1653 and her putative mother d. 1654/55. Source:Whitcher, William F. Genealogical and Family History of the State of New Hampshire, p. 4:1968 says of William Tilton that there were three sons [two others born in England, and apparently did not come to Hampton, NH], and "no record of any daughters". All this makes one wonder if the parents are correctly identified.

A birth in 1659, however, would make Mary only 16 at the time of her marriage in 1675. This happened sometimes but was rare, and 1657 would be more likely based on the date of marriage. Even this date is after the death of her putative parents. Her husband died at age 80 in 1727, so born about 1647, but usually given as 1650 by various sources. This doesn't really help, since all the proposed dates make his wife younger than him, which is what would be expected.

There is a fairly complete listing of the early Tilton family found in Source:Davis, Walter Goodwin. Ancestry of Phoebe Tilton, 1775-1847, Wife of Capt. Abel Lunt of Newburyport, Massachusetts. Isaac Chase is mentioned as a business partner of William's son Samuel who, like Isaac, moved from Hampton to Tisbury. Davis says that "a young girl, Mary Tilton, was with them [Samuel and family]. Within two years she married Isaac Chase ... The parentage of Mary Tilton is not proven ...". He argues that making William and Susannah her parents is "improbable" because by pushing her birth back to 1653, her last child would have been born when she was 50. But Samuel wasn't married until 1662, too late to father a girl who married in 1675. Davis believes it far more likely that "she was his [Samuel's] illegitimate daughter, acknowledged and brought up by him and the woman of character whom he married, after the death of her natural mother." Clearly, this is speculative, but it probably would generate the types of pressures that would make an early marriage more likely. --Jrich 13:07, 6 December 2010 (EST)

I came late to this particular party, but if Davis believes that she is the "probable illegitimate child" of Samuel Tilton and an unknown mother, then why is she still assigned to Samuel's father and his second wife (who seems to have multiple names). Is there more recent information that identifies William's origin and the the identities of his two wives? Can you tell that I think William's family (personal page and family pages) is somewhat of a mess?--jaques1724 16:52, 23 July 2011 (EDT)

The page was created as a child of William by an earlier user. The talk page was created to document the alternate possibility which I believe is more likely, but obviously the illegitimate child argument has no proof and is purely speculative. There is no hard evidence that she wasn't the daughter of William, since it would be very reasonable that Samuel might raise a much younger half-sister, and ages at death are relatively unreliable. It would seem that if she was an illegitimate daughter, it should be possible to find some court record that says so, and since I personally haven't, I wasn't going to change the page, only lodge my objection here in the hopes that some more knowledgable researcher would provide the proof that conclusively rules out one or the other answer. Davis is merely guessing. The most that could be fairly changed, in my opinion, would be to remove all parents and leave her parentless, but that would just leave things open for some Internet genealogist to put in the first answer they find. --Jrich 00:11, 25 July 2011 (EDT)