Can anyone with lookup access (NEHGS perhaps) provide more info on Waterman marriage?

Question

Is there any evidence for wife Bethia's maiden name?

Comments

On AmericanAncestors.org (NEHGS) I only found information about Richard's death. In a Google search I found "The Waterman Family, Vol III", by Donald Lines Jacobus and Edgar Francis, Waterman, 1954. On pages 3 and 6 it gives his wife's name as Bethia ____ indicating her maiden name is unknown.

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Richard's profile in The Great Migration Begins (Vol. III, page 1941) has a blank line for Bethia's last name. It states that she died at Providence on 3 December 1680, citing the Waterman Genealogy book that Kay cited in her comment.

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Nice work, Kay and Ellen.

I see waterman has two wives, Bethia, associated with him. The one with a Rice surname (and implied widow of Waite?). That profile cites the 1954 genealogy which Kay has just informed us provides no last name for Bethia. (Sigh... Another reason for checking sources!)

The Unknown profile should be protected and the two Bethias merged.

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Thanks y'all! I wondered where those last names came from and hesitate to merge to Unknown until certain.

Answer 1

The Roger Williams Family Association's 1987 "Descendants of Roger Williams" [supplement published 2003], in its "Waterman Line" compiled by Dorothy Higson White, assigns Bethia Waterman the maiden surname of Waite... but it does not specify, from among several sources listed, which (if any) of them are the basis of this claim.  (Jacobus & Waterman's "Waterman Family", Vol. III, is listed, but it is clearly _not_ the source, as it agrees with Anderson's GMB in leaving Bethia's maiden surname blank.)

It is true that "Waite" appears fairly often in succeeding generations as a _given_ name, which is a nice piece of _oblique_ or circumstantial evidence, but it is hardly conclusive on its own.  Bethia and Richard are among my direct ancestors and, as in other such cases, I'd very much like to know my 8th great grandmother's birth name.  But I'm not sure even the RWFA truly knows what it is.