Question

how can Ann Gordon B. 1455 be daughter of Annabell Stuart and George Gordon when they did not get married until 1459?

Answer 1

The rule is, if there's a choice of 3 or more wives, but only one of them is a Princess, it's always the Princess who is your ancestor.  Whether the dates fit or not.

Comments

Best comment ever.

Answer 2

There are two possible ways I can think of:

1. Either her birth date or her parents' marriage date is not correct.
    
2. It just might have been possible, back in those days, for two people to create a child without having been married before the event.

Comments

Another example: the children of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and Kathryn Swynford were born decades before John married Kathryn. They were only legitimized about four years before the death of John. This was the 14th century. 

(Just finished reading Katherine for the umpteenth time.)

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Closer to home, my gr-gr grandmother was born in Germany almost ten years before her parents married. Her younger sister was also a pre marital baby. Parts of Germany had rules about not letting couples marry until the man could demonstrate that he could financially support a family. That didn't prevent the couple, however, from otherwise acting like married couples.

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I think there is a third option, that Ann Gordon, the mother of Richard Dickens, isn't the daughter of George Gordon, with Annabella Stewart or any other woman.  She definitely isn't mentioned in The Scots Peerage, volume 4, pages 529-531.

RJ is also right, in that Annabella Stewart seems to have far too many children.  It isn't clear who was the mother of most of George Gordon's daughters, but I think only 1 daughter has been attributed to Annabella Stewart.

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it was not unknown for children toeb born out of wedlock

Answer 3

It's  possible but did George Gordon actually have a daughter called Ann ? Just a quick check of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gordon,_2nd_Earl_of_Huntly   suggests not. Obviously it isn't always correct but this Ann has no sources to back up her existence, she also  has no husband attributed to her, yet has a son with the surname Dicken . if you click through her descendants, she  is 'grandmother' of a line of that moves from Scotland to  Northamptonshire  in England and conveniently ends with Amphyliss Twigden http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Twigden-18 who a bit more googling tells me was the wife of Lawrence Washington and an accepted  ancestor of George. Washington

There are two other profiles for Amphyliss

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Twigden-2  which appears to be the main one and

 http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Twigden-14  (though this one is born at Sulgrave rather than her husband Lawrence and a match has previously been rejectedhttp://www.sulgravemanor.org.uk/pages/56/rev_lawrence.asp   )

This is where I'm not sure whose attention should be drawn to this and how.

Comments

You're supposed to get the PM to "lead the collaboration".

Most of the time, this just means that you don't even bother starting a thread, because you know it will only end up looking like a personal criticism of the PM, which isn't what you want.

There are mountains of junk like this, and the only way forward that I can see is to put pressure on PMs to orphan all pre-1700 profiles for which they have no sources.  Easy come, easy go.  What can be their excuse for hanging on?  "Worked hard on it"?  Can't have, without a source.  "I'm a descendant"?  Without a source, you don't know that.

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This is already a orphaned profile. The person who added it has a closed account. They lasted about two months. Therefore it's free for the taking.

Looks like Sir William adopted it for awhile. Seems like EuroAristo and/or Magna Carta should be consulted. Probably MC. I'll ask Sir William to advise us.

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You have the correct answer Helen.  Ann Gordon, as a daughter of George Gordon, 2nd earl of Huntly, never existed.