John Browne (1503 - 1562)

As I've argues from the beginning, we are missing a generation. John Browne I was yhe son of Robert and Anne Browne, making John Browne II Robert Browne's grandson. John I and Thoma were the sons of Robert and John Browne I had sons,John and Thomas. We need verifiable sources, howver,

Hi David, my point, and I think Giles', is that even once the missing John Browne I is created, there still won't be any actual evidence in these profiles that he was son of Robert Browne and Anne Gardiner... Unless it is forthcoming or I missed it.

I guess this is what you are saying when you say "we need verifiable sources"? I guess my point is we don't have any, so we should not leave this relatively random connection in the tree. We could and probably should leave a note with links to Robert and Anne G., But I don't see anything supporting their ongoing connection. Do you?

I don't either. Anne Gardner's findagrave support that he was wife of Robert Browne, who was descended from a whole string of John Browne's. "Suffolk Manorial Families" shows that John Browne II had a brother named Thomas Browne. Quite a few genealogies support the idea that Robert Browne had two sons, John and Thomas,the same two mentioned in Robert's will and theb connect him to the additional two John and Thomas Browne. So is the best course of action to add Unknown Browne as the father of John Browne II and Thomas Browne currently listed in wikitree and put the disputed facts indicating that he wight be JOhn Browne I, son of Robert Browne,listed in Robert Browne's will?

Shoot, I think I misread. John Browne Of Whitham 1562 is not John Browne I. It is this guy who is labeled John Browne Ii. I am back to being unclear on what evidence you are basing knowledge that this John Browne Ii had a father named John. Could you point me to that?

We are missing a generation. I know genealogies are not sources, but they suggest that John Browne of Witham should be John Browne II. There's too much time for Anne to have given birth to both John Browne II of Witham and his brother Thomas Browne in the early 1500's given her birth year even though she lived to over100 years old. Admittedly, all thos genealogies might be wrong. We need more real evidence for that as well. I remove his suffix, but I'm not pre-500 certified

to enter Unknown Browne as their father.

I hope one day we can find out the true ancestry of John Browne of Whitham. I want to say thank you to you David and Daphne for your work into this matter :).

But for now I feel I must state the following to hopefully prevent any further confusion.

John Browne is not the grandson of Robert Browne, and there is no missing generation. We have two men living with the same surname in two different counties around the same time and that's it. How does this prove they are related? It doesn't, it doesn't prove anything. The only thing these two men have in common is their surname, and this surname is super common, it's basically Smith 2.0. Most ancestry trees on the internet are full of lazy connections, most of the time it's people trying to connect themselves to a noble family or some sort of elevated class. This is extremely cringe and annoying for people who are ready to accept that past a certain point their ancestors were basically anonymous in their home countries. I blame this practice on those stupid Heraldic Visitations that were conducted in the 1500 and 1600's. These documents are held up as indisputable facts by many, even though those things were full of errors. In fact that is the primary reason they were stopped. People took advantage of the system and recorded things falsely or just lied to the people taking them. The Suffolk Manorial Families is an example of one of these, but it doesn't list the father of John Browne, probably because John Browne's father wasn't worth recording because he wasn't anything special. John Browne's son Henry was a Yeoman clothier and it is probably the same thing his father did. Yeomen clothiers were wealthier farmers who ran clothing businesses on the side and as a result of their impacts in their villages they could have lived in manor homes. But again John Browne probably made his wealth and as a result got recorded because of it. But there is no proof to tie him into the family of Robert Browne. I am glad to see his parents listed as unknown and I don't think there needs to be any references to Robert Browne or Anne Gardiner, just disregard it because most family trees that support it are more than likely wrong.

Here is a link that shows some of the errors with Heraldic Visitations. https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Herald%27s_Visitations

I can accept the fact that the genealogies connecting John Browne II to Robert Browne are more likely than not fake genealogies and those of the Howard family of New Jersey get copied many,many times. John Browne had notable descendants of his own, to which people want to claim descendancy, but some of his descendants remained in England. I just realized there was a generation gap between Robert and John that didn't make any ense. The fact that Robert's will listed a John Browne with a wife of Alice would make it fairly easy to pass him off as the father of John Browne II and Thomas.

John Browne II's grandparents as well as those of his brother Thomas are Robert Browne and Ann Gardiner. We have a missing generation consisting of John Browne I, Suffolk Manoral Families didn't list that connection, so we need to find documentation of it. John Browne I also had a brother named Thomas.

How do we know for sure though that’s these Browne families are indeed the same? Also I’ve seen some dispute if this Anne Gardiner is indeed the daughter of William Gardiner