doubtful about this parentage - should i detach?

Question

A while back i asked a question about the likelihood of this Mary who married in New York being the same child as one who was taken back to England.  It seems like a stretch.

Back then, not receiving a conclusive answer, i marked the status of her parental relationships as Uncertain.

I'm wondering if actually the best thing would be to detach the parents and just mention the situation on the profile.

With the name Cornelius and some of the purported ancestors being in the New Netherland project, I wonder if that project could take a look.

Answer 1

I wrote a long comment on her profile, where I agreed with disconnecting her from the parents. I cannot even tell where the idea that she was their child might have come from. It is not from the Revised Merritt Records or the History of the Cornelius Family.

By the way, the New Netherland Project does not have much interest in these English (and probably English) people who lived in places like Hempstead on Long Island. The project exists to deal with the people (and descendants) of the Dutch-controlled colony of New Netherland. These English fit within the declared scope of the project because they were in New Netherland, and some of them truly belong because they became Dutchified or had other substantial interaction with the Dutch-controlled colony, but English people who stayed cocooned in fully English settlements on Long Island are not the population the project was created to deal with.

Answer 2

I don't have a strong opinion, not having studied this very deeply. But I would not call the Revised Merritt Records a reliable source in this matter. That work, and the History of the Cornelius Family, both have the maddening habit of the better compiled works from 100 years ago: listing excellent quality land records, probate papers, etc. and then right alongside providing other information that is simply listed with no hint of the informant. Or maybe they just write that the information was "reported," and say nothing else. It is hard to just dismiss this information, since these sources used good-quality sources that were hard to access for the other information.

The maiden surname of Mary seems to be one of these pieces of information. Is there any other source that John had married someone named Cornelius?

Even if so, was it a married name? Or was it a patronym? Perhaps her father was a Cornellis. Unless some other sources are forthcoming, I would think it appropriate to detach her and put notes on parents profile and her own indicating the lack of a reliable source.

Incidentally, I added a source to the profile of Arent Cornelius, giving an abstract of a primary source document confirming the statements about "Adrian" Cornelius captain of the Canary Bird.