She has been called Lucy Cornelius for many years, but no evidence has yet appeared for this name.
Pending the discovery of evidence which names this lady, it is proper to state that Nicholas Gentry undoubtedly had a wife, but that her name is not known. From his profile:
"As to Lucy being a wife of Nicholas, I would very much like to obtain some evidence for this. The only references I have found have been in LDS ancestral files which have no validity unless backed up by some historical documentation."[1]
It is also highly unlikely that she died at the age of 94 in Tennessee.
Questionable Biography
Many pedigrees identify Lucy as the daughter of Lambert Huybertsen and Hendrickje Cornelius, Dutch settlers in New Netherland, but there is no evidence for this relationship. Some or all of these pedigrees identify Hendrickje Cornelius as her father, but in fact Hendrickje is a female name and this person was a woman.
Lucy married Nicholas Gentry about 1681. Children: Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth, Samuel, Nicholas II, John, Mabel, David, James. She passed away about 1754.[citation needed]
Research notes
Note - the following two headlines/text appear to be a copy/paste but source is not clearly stated. Implied source:
Gentry, Willard. "NICHOLAS GENTRY, THE IMMIGRANT - A Case Study of Erroneous Data Entry" GentryJournal.org (accessed 10 Feb 2017).
Lucy Cornelius, Alleged Spouse of Nicholas Gentry[citation needed]
In point of time, the next questionable point after that of the "Red-coat tradition" that was added to the Nicholas Gentry data skeleton, was a wife who was identified as Lucy Cornelius. This started some time after 1909, for Richard Gentry does not include any mention of this possibility in his book. A record of an LDS Church "endowment" of Lucy, dated November 1923, sets a bound for the latest date of originating this data entry. This writer has never been able to track the source of the suggestion that Lucy Cornelius was a wife of Nicholas. So far, no one has come forward with any reference to the existence of Lucy outside of the Nicholas family trees. While it is not possible to prove that Lucy Cornelius was never a wife of Nicholas, conversely no one so far has been able to prove that she ever existed. It is significant that in a census of parish families in St. Peters Parish in 1689, neighbors of Nicholas, there were no Cornelius families listed. It is highly probable that Lucy's name was inserted in a family submission to the patron files of the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons, commonly abbreviated as LDS). As to how and why that may have occurred, we cannot say. Once included in the Ancestral File or International Genealogical Index, by church policy, changes are never made. The only corrections are by means of a new submission that includes the proper information. Like the internet today, the LDS records have always been a database that is widely available to genealogists. Its very availability makes it easy for incorrect information to be easily spread by users who do not have the inclination or the ability to properly evaluate that data.
In the 425 Nicholas Gentry family trees in our study sample, 290 (68%) gave Lucy Cornelius as a wife of Nicholas. A substantial portion of these trees also listed a second, and in a few cases, a third wife. The alternative wives will be considered below, but for the moment let us concentrate on Lucy. A great deal of gratuitous information has been added to the records of the hypothetical Lucy Cornelius. We can summarize this as:
Date of birth (added to 55 records): 1657 in Essex, England; 1659 in New Kent County, Virginia; 1655-1658 in England; 1665 in England; but most often 1660 in England.
Date of death: 1704; after 1704; 1706; 1710; 1734; 109 entries (38%) had 1754 or "before 1754".
Place of death: Most indicated New Kent, Virginia; "New Kent County, Hanover, Virginia"; or simply Virginia; 49 give Fort Nashboro, Tennessee [how this originated is difficult to imagine since Fort Nashboro was not built until 1779].
Marriage: 1677 to 1695, most often about 1686; the place was most often given as New Kent County, Virginia. Several trees added the notation "National Society Daughters of Colonial Wars lists marriage as 1686". A number of family trees, and some documents relating the history of the Gentry family, indicated that Lucy was married to Nicholas by proxy, the marriage taking place in the "Faculty Office" of the Archbishop of Canterbury in London, England, in 1690. [This is a legitimate possibility on its face, since the Faculty Office of the Church of England did perform proxy marriages under special circumstances. This possibility has been disproved, however, by a search of the record of marriages from 1685 to 1695 (stored in the Lambeth Palace Library in London, England) in which there is no mention of either a Nicholas Gentry or a Lucy Cornelius.][2]
Yet, there is strong DNA evidence that the Cornelius family is indeed related to the Gentry family. Those who have taken a DNA test need only look at their matches to verify this. The Cornelius family have helped verify the Cornelius/Cornell connection. Many of the tales passed down through generations and family Bibles are not documented, however, there is science to help verify the stories.
profile includes the following comment about references to her death location:
Searching for information in DAR records found, for Nicholas (b c1740), that he died "1782 FORT NASHBOROUGH WASHINGTON CO NORTH CAROLINA... KILLED IN DEFENSE OF THE FORT"
Daughters of the American Revolution, DAR Genealogical Research Databases, database online, (http://www.dar.org/ : accessed 24 April 2018), "Record of Nicholas Gentry", Ancestor # A044139.
As near as I can determine, this profile has project protection from the New Netherland Settlers project because the profile clearly needed project oversight and because of the persistent claims that she was the daughter of New Netherland settlers. The US Southern Colonies project would a better choice to manage this profile.
I disconnected the parents. There was no evidence for identifying Lambert Huybertsen and Hendrickje Cornelis as the parents -- particularly not for identifying Hendrickje as her father.
I don't understand why the recent merge was completed with Cornelius as the LNAB, instead of the Unknown profile, since there is no evidence for her having a last name. Is there any objection to changing the LNAB to Unknown?
UNKNOWN-6576 and Cornelius-1173 are not ready to be merged because: UNKNOWN-6576 is project protected. This means that it cannot be merged into any other profile. Profiles need to be merged into it instead.
It is Cornelius-1173 though that should be protected. So UNKNOWN-6576 needs to be de-protected first so that Cornelius-1173 can become the target profile for the merge.
Searching for information in DAR records found, for Nicholas (b c1740), that he died "1782 FORT NASHBOROUGH WASHINGTON CO NORTH CAROLINA... KILLED IN DEFENSE OF THE FORT"
Daughters of the American Revolution, DAR Genealogical Research Databases, database online, (http://www.dar.org/ : accessed 24 April 2018), "Record of Nicholas Gentry", Ancestor # A044139.
I don't understand why the recent merge was completed with Cornelius as the LNAB, instead of the Unknown profile, since there is no evidence for her having a last name. Is there any objection to changing the LNAB to Unknown?
It is Cornelius-1173 though that should be protected. So UNKNOWN-6576 needs to be de-protected first so that Cornelius-1173 can become the target profile for the merge.