John Ellis (abt. 1591 - 1676)

Why yes, it does appear that way indeed :) I submitted merge requests for the two Annes and for their 2 "John" fathers as well, all are actually uncertain. The 2 fathers are conveniently enough already both married to Joan Hookes-1, so these merges will re-consolidate the family line.

Those requests are still pending. I didn't want to merge away this entire family unit since one of the Johns (Benjamin-350) has some parents attached and other sourcing that warrants further research. But, Anne "Benjamin" should have the Uncertain Existence tag added, in my opinion. I didn't add it previously, I was waiting for the merge but there's no reason not to put them on now. Maybe her father John should also be U/E, I hadn't chased up the tree that far yet.

I'm now wondering if this couple existed at all. Should we merge them away?

Bringing the big hammer and making them disappear entirely? I wasn't really thinking in those terms as I worked on the merges, since somebody had enough faith in him to make him PGM previously.

Having said that, I guess with the lack of sources it makes sense except...the two NEHGR articles that are linked. I don't have a subscription to read them, so my question would just be if there is anything about him in those.

I think this profile represents a confusion with three different men named John Ellis. NEHGR 119:161 is pertinent to Ellis-556, who lived in Sandwich, MA. NEHGR 174:108 was written about Ellis-20241, who lived in Sandwich St Peter, Kent, England and migrated with the Pilgrims to Leiden, Holland. Lay researchers frequently try to connect Ellis-20241 as the father of Ellis-556, but there's no known method for proving any relationship. It would seem that Ellis-58 got caught up in the confusion resulting from lay researchers trying to link 556 and 20241.

It's interesting that many pedigree resource files on Family Search and Ancestry user trees refer to John Ellis of Kent's wife as "Blandina Ann Masterson" when she lived in an era when middle names were not used. I suspect Blandina Ann Masterson is a Frankenstein-like recombination of Ellis-58's wife (Ann Benjamin) and Ellis-20241's wife (Blandina Masterson).

On Ancestry.com, there is a record in the U.S. and International Marriage Records showing John Ellis (b. 1593) married to an Ann Benjamin (b. 1597):

https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=try&db=WorldMarr_ga&h=381928

I have been unable to find a primary source for this marriage.

Thanks Laurence, this Ellis-58 family is quite a little bowl of spaghetti. There is virtually no sourcing for either of his duplicate wife records although I want to do some closer reading on Anne Benjamin-140, none on his father Thomas Ellis-1320, none on his mother Margaret Brooke-157 (although she was also married to a "Thomas Ellis Hall-2381", sure she was...) leading to a supposed half brother John Hall-1618. So where do we stop pulling on the noodle? These folks mostly have other family linkages, so where do we stop disconnecting and merging-away people? I know that's kind of a rhetorical question and we just have to do the hard work of annotating profiles that are NOT merged away with research notes to try and prevent bad data in the future and then pick a set of lesser-of-evils profile changes and merges.

Yeah, regarding the ancestry.com auto-aggregated collection of unsourced user submissions like that one and "Family Data Records" and "Millenium FIle" and all those I'll just say...yeah...

But seriously I've been banging on these families for a few hours and it seems like there is no actual proof that this John Ellis or his wife Anne Benjamin (either 140 or 906, there is a pending merge on them along with their fathers John Benjamin-350 and 907 respectively) actually existed at all, or Anne-140's daughter Margaret Ellis-3189.

Ann Benjamin-140's profile quotes a work which co-mingles John Ellis-85 and the John Ellis-556 (of Sandwich) who married Elizabeth Freeman by saying that Ann Benjamin may have been John Ellis' first wife. But even if she was, it's the wrong John Ellis.

So all in all, Ellis-85 and Ann Benjamin-140/905 it seems should either be merged away or marked as "uncertain existence". Back to that philosophical question...I prefer the latter in this case since a fair amount of work has gone into researching them which could yet prove fruitful.

Thanks Brad, I like your idea to mark them as "uncertain existence" because in the future, someone will copy what they saw on Find-A-Grave, the Millennium File or the U.S. and International Marriage Index and re-create them. Hopefully someone will find the explanation for their uncertain existence and learn something. It also leaves a nice audit trail of the research that has been done here. Cheers!

I concur.

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Jillaine, since the comments are so nested I wanted to make sure you saw this I responded to Laurence below, I'm now in favor of categorizing this John Ellis and his wife Anne Benjamin (merges pending for the 2 Annes and their fathers) as Uncertain Existence and unlinking them from their parents (retaining information in the bio) but not merging them away since a fair amount of work has gone into them and I'd hate to lose that. We would also kick Ellis-58 out of PGM.

Concur and support.

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I am also unable to find any source information that conflicts with this groups findings. I am here to assist with merging these profiles into a collected "Unknown" to retain the research trail, and keep this from becoming a repeat addition of bad information. Let me know if I may assist in any way, I am standing by awaiting merge requests. I would prefer that those who have taken the most time to research be the ones to direct the merges, but my approval is assured.