Several issues for profile of Isaac Welles (Scituate/Barnstable) to clear up

Question

I see several problems on this profile for Isaac Wells that I'd like to see resolved:

(1) His wife Margaret's maiden name is currently Luce, but I have found no sources to support that, and believe her Last Name at Birth should be changed to Unknown. I suggested the change in 2019, and have received no comments about it.

(2) If Margaret's maiden name is changed to Unknown, what should be done with the profile for her "father", Unknown Luce-134, whose only purpose is to be her father?

(3) I think that Margaret, who likely immigrated with her PGM husband Isaac Wells in 1638, should also be PGM.

(4) On Isaac's profile there is evidence documenting two children, daughters, Lydia Wells-112 and Mary Wells-113. I could find nothing supporting two other daughters, Elizabeth Wells-1822 and Abigail Wells-6, and believe the two of them should be detached as children of Isaac Wells and his wife Margaret.

Comments

Kay, I looked through the sources and Margaret's findagrave memorial (unsourced but claiming a bunch of specific facts including the name "Luce" and her parents marriage at Horton, Gloucs while Margaret was baptized 100+ miles away in Cambridgeshire).  I don't see anything supporting a name of "Luce" so i agree with detaching her father with a note about why the profile was detached and changing her LNAB to "Unknown".  Margaret's profile obviously needs some cleanup.  The findagrave memorial also listed the extra two daughters again without source.

I haven't looked at the daughters much yet; "A" Elizabeth Wells did marry Henry Atkins in 1657 per Torrey but no idea "which" Elizabeth Wells she was so not weighing in on them yet.

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I cleaned up Abigail wife of Richard Bartlett and I agree there is no proof of her surname (Wells, Belknap or any other) that I've seen yet.  I will add a note on her profile and detach her from Isaac Wells and Margaret.

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Thanks, Brad. I've changed Margaret's LNAB to Unknown, and detached her "father" Unknown Luce. Can you add Margaret to PGM, or is there a different process for that?  

One other question: On Margaret's profile there is an image of a Great Migration page for Ralph Chapman that refers to Isaac's wife Margaret as Margaret (____) Wells. Wouldn't it be better to list that page as a "source", and remove the image?

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One of the PGM leaders needs to do that but since this post is tagged with PGM they are already aware.  It's standard practice (if we remember to do it) to add spouses unless there is some specific reason that it seems they did not immigrate along with the one who was listed by Anderson or in other primary records.  Since Margaret & Isaac clearly married in England she qualifies.

Re: the page from Anderson, yes you are exactly right and uploading the image of the page is also a possible copyright violation so it shouldn't be there anyway.  Thanks for noticing this!

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Okay, I'll remove the image from her profile.

I found one source for Elizabeth Wells (wife of Henry Atkins) being the daughter of Isaac Wells: The Farwell Family by Jane Harter Abbott and Lillian M. Wilson, M.A., Ph.D. (1929) on page 278 says Henry Atkins  "m. (1) July 9, 1647, Barnstable, Elizabeth Wells, dau. of Isaac Wells; d. Mar 17, 1661-2."

So we can leave Elizabeth as their daughter. I'll add that source to Elizabeth's and also her father Isaac's profiles.

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mmm yeah, I'm a little leery of that book.  She asserts a ton of specific facts but cites no sources.  Do any of the big names of New England genealogy (Pope, Hoyt, Torrey, Savage although some people don't like him, I get it, Shurtleff or Jacobus) show a daughter Elizabeth?  We already know Anderson doesn't.  Granted she had to come from somewhere.  One of the sources I read (of course I can't remember which one) put forward a theory that she had married previously so Wells was not her surname at birth.  That one didn't say it was proven but it did say what it thought her name was.

Henry Atkins' profiles cites the church record about their wedding and it mentions "at Brother Wells' house" which could have been her father Mr. Wells, or could have been another relative of hers like a brother, or could have been her brother-in-law if she was the "widow Wells"...point being I didn't see anything on his profile either that actually supports specific parents for her.

At any rate I think we should add some text noting that only this unsourced book claims her as Isaac's daughter, no primary records and (unless I'm wrong) no other major New England researcher credits it.

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I looked at all the Torrey sources I could find. That was the only one I saw that named her father. It's fine with me if you want to add your comments and remove her, or mark her relationship to Isaac and Margaret as uncertain.

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Kay and Brad, My understand from NEHGS is that any single page from their databases can be posted, as long as you use the full AmericanAncestors citation.

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GeneJ was kind enough to post a comment to the PM of Lydia (Wells) Chapman asking her to review this post and the comments on the profile of Isaac Wells for collaboration purposes.

At this point the consensus seems to be to

1. Add a first wife for Isaac (Lydia Danne), mother of Lydia and Margaret and Matthew (those latter two children also need to be added)
2. Rename his second wife from "Unknown" to "Danne" (Margaret, very likely related to Lydia, possibly her sister).
3. Split Lydia Wells daughter of Isaac from Lydia Wells wife of Ralph Chapman as it seems most likely that they were two different women; Anderson actually did not assert that they were the same, he only quoted Mary Lovering Holman as asserting this but the rationale for splitting seems to be much stronger than the rationale for making them the same woman (details on their profile)

Answer 1

This post and thread is a perfect example of how collaboration works on WikiTree. Kudos to both Kay and Brad for working through these difficult profiles and their (lack of) sources!

Comments

Thanks for the kind words Pip :)

Answer 2

The Lydia Wells https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Wells-112 who sailed from Sandwich, Kent as a servant of William Hatch https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hatch-316 is almost certainly not Isaac's daughter (sorry Robert Anderson).

Hatch was from Wye near Canterbury and it's unlikely that a servant would be from far away. Lydia was not a common name and the only baptism which fits is from Godmersham, literally the next village to Wye.

"England, Kent, Canterbury Parish Registers, 1538-1986," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QGNV-2Q3X : 12 March 2020), Lydia Wellles, 8 Aug 1620; from " Kent, Canterbury Archdeaconry Parish Registers Browse, 1538-1913," database and images, findmypast (http://www.findmypast.com : n.d); citing Baptism, Godmersham, Kent, England, United Kingdom, Citing Canterbury Cathedral Archives, England

None of the indexed references to Lydia's baptism give a father's name and the image from the parish register reveals why - her father is noticeably absent. That means she was born to an unmarried Welles, not a daughter of Isaac.

Comments

Thanks Matthew!  It's interesting that Anderson described Lydia two different ways.  In the GM Vol 2 p. 53 entry for Ralph Chapman he cites a family ancestry book that says she was "almost certainly" the daughter of Isaac.  On Lydia's own entry in GM Vol 7 p. 93 he agrees with you and says it can't be determined if she was a daughter of Isaac.  Must have slipped through the editorial process.  In the GMv7 entry he cites Mary Lovering Holman as the originator of the daughter theory ("...can scarcely by doubted...") but more and more I'm seeing examples where Ms. Holman was off-base.

At any rate we should probably tweak the text on the relevant profiles at least using your analysis and explanation.  Do you think she should be detached from Isaac & Margaret?  Or just marked "uncertain" in the data section?

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Anderson's final comment about the Lydia Wells who arrived in 1635 on the Hercules (on page 293 rather than 93) is "we are not able to determine whether the Lydia Wells who was the wife of Ralph Chapman was or was not the 1635 passenger." I read this to mean that he believes that Ralph Chapman married the daughter of Isaac, but we don't know if Isaac's daughter arrived in 1635 on the Hercules. Couldn't there have been two different women named Lydia Wells?

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He did leave it sort of vague, that's for sure.  My vote is "yes", 2 different Lydia Wells with reasoning below.

In the p. 93 entry, he said that contrary to what Holman said, all we can assert is that there was some "close connection" between Isaac Wells and the wife of Ralph Chapman, but not necessarily father/daughter.  So let's say she could have been daughter, cousin, niece (etc) of Isaac Wells.  What do we know so far?

1. Lydia-the-1635 immigrant was not proven to be and probably was not (leaning on Matthew's comment) the daughter of Isaac
2. Lydia-the-1635 immigrant was not proven to be Ralph Chapman's wife.

What if Ralph's wife's surname at birth was not Wells.  Arguing against this last is Anderson p.93 (estate of Isaac Wells' widow Margaret) where we have Ralph's father Isaac Chapman (so Lydia-Ralphs-wife's father-in-law) being "nearly related" to Margaret Wells which could mean a variety of things.  The simplest explanation is that Ralph's wife Lydia was born Wells and was a close relative, maybe daughter of Isaac and we have no contrary facts or analysis that I know of.  But was she the 1635 immigrant servant of William Hatch?  I'd agree that an out-of-wedlock Lydia Wells from the parish next to Hatch of the right age who was therefore probably poor with few prospects is a better match for the servant which means two Lydia Wells.

Maybe there should be separate profiles based on that but at least putting this all into the current Lydia's profile should be done.