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The birth and death dates of Ann (Hudson) Owsley are not known, only that she was living at the time of her sister Lucy's will in 1756.
For many years, Ann, wife of Thomas (II) Owsley, was erroneously believed to have been a West. It was a reasonable conclusion at the time, based upon the appointment by Thomas of "my loving wife and my Brother Hugh West" as executors in his 1750 will. Hugh was interpreted as Thomas' brother-in-law, making Ann his sister and a West. What researchers didn't know at the time was that Thomas' mother, also named Ann, had remarried John West—a land record in 1714 names her as "the Widdow West, late the widow of the sd. Owsley"—making Hugh West his half-brother, not his brother-in-law, and Ann West his mother, not his wife.[1]
Who, then, was this Ann, wife of Thomas?
In 1756, the will of the unmarried Lucy Hudson of King George County, Virginia, contains the following bequests:
"... give and bequeath to my cousins Samuel Peril and Pine Housley all my money & the money of a Thousand Weight of Crop tobacco which Capt. Joseph Strother hath to sell for me. To my Sister Ann Housley my Mothers green cloak & the Country Cloth that is at the weavers Vizt."[2]
"Housley" is a common variant of Owsley, interchangeable at the time and still used by Owsley family descendants to this day. "Pine" is a nickname or variant used in other documents of that time to refer to Pointz Owsley, the son of Ann and Thomas. The word "cousin" was used more broadly at that time to refer to close family relations—in this case, both Samuel and Pine were Lucy's nephews.[2]
Lucy Hudson, in turn, is named as a daughter in the 1750 will of Sarah (Woffendall) Hudson Settle, and in 1730 administration on the estate of William Hudson had been granted to Sarah, his widow. On the basis of these facts, Ann, wife of Thomas Owsley, is identified as a Hudson and the daughter of William and Sarah.[2] Also see "Ann (Hudson) Owsley or Ann (Unknown) Owsley?" on G2G.
DNA of known descendants of Thomas (II) Owsley, analyzed between 2003 and 2005, established that the second son named in Thomas' will, John Owsley, does not share the paternal line of his older or younger Owsley brothers,[3] though he was recorded throughout his lifetime as a son of Thomas and Ann Owsley and received an inheritance from his (adoptive?) father. (The Y-DNA tests performed do not provide any evidence of the sons' mother or mothers.)
This has given rise to various unproven theories explaining the "'non-paternal event": one theory offered by the Owsley Family Historical Society states that John was a son of Ann from an otherwise-unknown prior marriage; older brother Thomas (III), presumed to have been the son of Ann, must then be attributed to an otherwise-unknown earlier wife of Thomas.[2] It is also surely possible that John was the product of an extramarital relationship, or that John was adopted from another family entirely and raised as an Owsley.
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