Disputed Parents

Question

Occasionally I run a relationship calculator for another profile and the results take me back into the 13th or 14th century. I'm always somewhat skeptical of these long lines of descent since I'm aware of the difficulty of accurate and adequate sourcing.

In this particular case, the question of whether or not this Thomas is the son of his father Henry hinges on one phrase: "…late of the same Gent: dec'd, who was the son of Henry Durham, Esq." The location in question is Bermuda. Now we know that the phrase "late of" can be used to mean deceased or it can be used to mean he no longer lives in that location but has moved elsewhere.

I really would like to know if I can move one generation further back in a verified ancestral line. Could someone take a look at Thomas's profile and let me know what you think?

Answer 1

Shirley, although I' definitely no authority in this arena, to my mind "late of" is likely to refer to the subject of a sentence which in this case refers                (again IMHO) to '''the same gent, dec'd" rather than to Bermuda. That being said, I've had the same problem with disputed parentage. Mike a record in the notes after become aware of the dispute  but leave the parent field blank. I'm not sure that this is the best way to do this, but nonetheless although any potential lineage is broken, it seems more accurate.

Answer 2

'Late of the same' clearly refers to Bermuda. As a matter of interest is theer a comma between 'same' and 'Gent'? If not there should be :-)

Answer 3

My thanks to Shirley for bringing this topic up for discussion; it deserves a thorough airing.  

I'm currently the only profile manager who is actively involved in editing Thomas Durham's profile.  I think it is fair to say that I have done more than anyone else at WikiTree to detach dubious medieval lineages.  When I was co-leader of the Magna Carta Project, I made a specialty of doing that.

Last year I detached Thomas Durham's purported parents, but recently I added them back as "uncertain."  I think that was justified by the available evidence; here is a beginning explanation for your consideration:

I initially assumed that, as Shirley put it, "the question of whether or not this Thomas is the son of his father Henry hinges on one phrase: '…late of the same Gent: dec'd, who was the son of Henry Durham, Esq.' The location in question is Bermuda."

Upon further reflection, I think that any interpretation of the phrase "late of the same" allows the possibility that Thomas Durham of Richmond County, Virginia was the eldest son of Henry Durham of Bermuda.

I also think that the exact correspondence of Thomas of Richmond County's age at death with the baptism record of Thomas of Bermuda, together with the suggestive fact that Thomas of Richmond married the granddaughter of a boatmaker (boatmaking was illegal in Bermuda, but absolutely essential to maintaining a ship, requiring Bermuda mariners to maintain relationships with boatmakers elsewhere; and the Durhams of Bermuda were definitely mariners), together with the lack of an alternative theory for the origin of Thomas Durham of Richmond County, warrants maintaining Henry as his "uncertain" father.  So I suppose the question here is: Is the available evidence good enough for "uncertain"?

Regarding the 1734 Bermuda record that appears to cast doubt on Thomas of Richmond's supposed parentage, unfortunately we only have an abstract, as follows: "Richard Durham of Sandys tribe marriner Eldest son and heir of Thomas Durham Late of the same Gent: dec'd, who was the son of Henry Durham, Esq. The suit was in regard to property in Bermuda lately in the possession of Judith DURHAM, Henry's wife."

From this we can infer that Judith was already dead by 1734 and that somebody was still living in the house, denying grandson Richard, the rightful heir, the enjoyment of his property.  (We can imagine, for example that Judith had the right to live in the house as long as she lived, and that she married again after Henry Durham died, and Judith's second husband had a married daughter with children, and then both Judith and her second husband died, leaving the second husband's family in the house that Richard Durham had inherited, so he sued to get it back.)

We can also infer that Richard Durham's father Thomas was already dead in 1734 (because otherwise Thomas, and not Richard, would have been the heir).  Thomas was "late of Sandys Tribe," which doesn't mean that he died there.  It means at the very least that he had property there (the house inherited from his father) and maintained some sort of regular interest there, although as a mariner he would be elsewhere much or most of the time.  (Mariners could be gone for years; and in a seafaring colony like Bermuda, there must have been some leeway or loose interpretation of residency.)  

In this case we can surmise that Thomas maintained a "pro forma" residence in Bermuda, with his eldest son Richard in the area keeping an eye on his eventual inheritance, while Thomas maintained his primary residence (with his second wife's children) in Richmond County, Virginia.  

In other words, it really doesn't matter if Thomas's primary residence was elsewhere; he was still tied to Bermuda by property, reinforced by the presence of his eldest son, who claimed Thomas as a "late" resident (based on Thomas's ownership of a house in Port Royal) in 1734, presumably long after Thomas had died.

This post is getting a bit long; perhaps I should stop here and entertain questions or objections.

Comments

Thanks very much for your discussion on this issue. I very much appreciate the work you have done on this family since I don't have the knowledge or access to the records. Your arguments are persuasive that the parents should be attached as at least "uncertain." I hope that if anyone else has information pro or con they will contribute to this discussion. It would be nice to be able to mark them "confident" or else detach them.

Answer 4

I'm more worried about "my three children" in the will.  I can make it work with one of those stories about how he deserted his family and skipped off to the back of beyond and married bigamously and started a new family and never mentioned the other family.  But I don't reckon he commuted.

Or perhaps he did commute, but without mentioning that the reason for all the business trips was "I'm leading a double life".

Answer 5

RJ, thanks for taking a look at this; I'm still working on the rough edges of how to present my string of snippets and suppositions/conjectures. 

I don't think it's necessary to assume that Thomas had two wives at the same time (although it is conceivable).  Here's how I imagine his timeline:

1660 -- Thomas is baptized at Port Royal.

c. 1680 -- Thomas marries an unknown first wife, possibly in Maryland or maybe in Bermuda.  Thomas is involved in the family's shipping enterprises, trading with Maryland and Virginia and probably Caribbean islands.  The Durham family has a long-standing relationship with boatmaker William Smoot (Sr.) of Charles County, Maryland, who builds and repairs pinnaces (landing and utility boats) for Bermuda mariners -- every ship needs a pinnace.

1681-83  Thomas and his first wife have sons Richard and Samuel.  (The name Richard comes from Thomas's maternal grandfather; presumably the name Samuel comes from Thomas's wife's family.)

c. 1684 -- Thomas's first wife dies, and within a year Thomas marries Dorothy a niece of William Smoot (Jr.) of Richmond County, Virginia.  It is possible that her apparent (but not proven) father James Gilbert was also from the Bermuda Gilbert family, as he doesn't seem to fit into the Maryland Gilberts.  Further research is needed.

1686 -- Thomas's daughter Mary is baptized in Richmond County, Virginia.  Thomas's father is still alive (and still having children) at this time; presumably Thomas continues as a mariner.  Thomas plans to leave his eventual Bermuda inheritance to eldest son Richard (as required by law), and knows that he needs to find a way to provide for second son Samuel as well as any younger sons by his second wife.

1690s and later -- Thomas continues as a mariner, getting eldest son Richard established in his own right, making regular business trips to Bermuda where his widowed mother (and her second husband?) are living in the house that will come to Thomas after her death, and that Thomas's son Richard will eventually inherit.  At the same time, Thomas arranges with his mother-in-law and her brother William Smoot (Jr.) to provide land that will eventually go to youngest sons Thomas and John.  Son Samuel, as a teenager, presumably goes to live with Smoot step-relatives in Charles County, Maryland; he witnesses the wills of two Smoot descendants in Charles County in 1704, just as he comes of age.  Then he marries the step-daughter of a well-to-do man who in 1705 gives Samuel a farm in Stafford County, Virginia.  

Samuel is now independently set-up in a different county, so there is no need or reason for Thomas to mention Samuel in his 1711 will (probated 1715), which has the major concern of ensuring that youngest son John receives the land that the family intended for him, skirting the law of primogeniture.  Any mention of Samuel in the will would just bring up another primogeniture headache, and Samuel was already taken care of outside of Richmond County (as was eldest son Richard), so there was no mention whatsoever of them in Thomas's will.