G2G: PGM: Did John Vincent have a daughter Elizabeth? Did she marry Thomas Dexter? Sandwich, Plymouth Colony 1648 [closed]

Question

Hi all:

In reviewing the currently attached marriage of Thomas Dexter to Elizabeth Vincent, daughter of John Vincent, the question has come up whether there is any evidence that John Vincent had a daughter Elizabeth.

This is what RC Anderson writes in The Great Migration Begins (1995).  (This information is essentially repeated in Leslie Maher's 2003) article in The American Genealogist, and then again in Anderson's Winthrop Fleet (2012)):

Thomas b say 1624 m by 1649 Elizabeth ______.... (The marriage at Sanwich of "[blank] [blank]" to Mary Vincent on 8 November 1648 has been appropriated to this couple [PCR 8:6], but this may well belong in another family.) 

In The Winthrop Fleet, Anderson states that "a marriage at Sandwich on 8 Nov 1648 of "[blank][blank]" and Mary Vincent had been thought to pertain to this Thomas Dexter, but on highly dubious grounds [PCR 8:6; Otis 1:323]."

This seems to be the only record that would identify that John Vincent had a daughter Elizabeth. The record in fact names "Mary" not "Elizabeth" and does not name Thomas Dexter at all (although the timing is appropriate for the birth of the first child).

John Vincent's daughter Sarah married William Dexter, Thomas's brother. But that's hardly enough to conclude that Elizabeth was Sarah's sister. Unfortunately, Barnstable County lost many of its early records in a fire, so it will make this difficult to research.

But, unless there is any new evidence, I propose that Thomas Dexter's wife be changed to Elizabeth Unknown, and that we create a profile for John Vincent's daughter Elizabeth noting that her existence is uncertain.

Comments

Oh hey, the descendants of Benjamin Hammond attribute Mary Vincent's damaged 1648 marriage record to him.

In favor: Benjamin's death record names a wife Marey, and Benjamin was an associate of John Vincent (they oversaw administration of a will together).

Against: neither of those things is real evidence, and Benjamin & Mary's first known child was born 1655 which is a suspicious gap.

This uncertainty is already mentioned in Research Notes on Benjamin's and Mary's profiles (though Mary's bio sounds more certain than it should, I may tweak it). Should we go further and detach?

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Personally, I'm okay with that remaining attached, although maybe an uncertain status would be appropriate.  

It at least refers to "Mary Vincent."

Answer 1

It sounds as if there is no evidence that John Vincent had a daughter Elizabeth, so detaching Thomas Dexter's wife as John's daughter is appropriate. But following the Wikitree rule that we don't create profiles without a reliable source, I don't see why you would create new profile as John's daughter. It would be better just to have a note on John's profile that a daughter Elizabeth has been claimed without evidence.

Comments

Because his daughter Elizabeth is listed in places, including otherwise good publications, and based on experience, someone will create a profile for her.  

The alternative would be to leave Elizabeth Vincent profile as is add the Uncertain Existence template there and create a new Elizabeth Unknown, but that would involve more connection changes, and if there's the option, I'd prefer to do it the other way.

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Perhaps John Vincent needs Project Protection to handle the problem. Unless the new Elizabeth Vincent profile is PP, it will be vulnerable to people adding information and relationships, none of which can be real.

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That solves the problem of the attachment, but not the creation of the profile.  We (PGM project) will PPP the appropriate profiles.

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I appreciate your input.  My main interest in posting this proposal was to alert interested parties in the change to the marriage and the mother of Thomas Dexter's children, and what will be the severing of a connection to the Vincent family.

As far as what we do about Elizabeth Vincent, I'll take your comments to the PGM team. If you want to message the project, you're welcome to do that too.  But generally, as a project, we prefer to keep these types of profiles (i.e. those supported in a number of publications) marked with Uncertain Existence, rather than merge them away.  That way when someone goes to create the profile, it will likely show up as a match.  This helps to manage our merge workload.

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Thanks for the alert, I just ran across this suppossed connection, so don't really have an opinion.