'''Researching Records for the Several Marcy/Mercy/Mary Billingses'''

Profile managers: Christopher Childs [send private message] and David Edis-Bates [send private message]

In connection with an extensive effort to research, and correct on WikiTree, the many errors in Billings family genealogy that were introduced over a century ago by the fraudulent work of Horatio Gates Somerby^[1][2] (and have now been spread literally around the world via the Internet), an added effort has also been made to clear up the confusion surrounding:

a) MARY BILLINGS, baptized with three siblings at New London, Connecticut Colony, on 1 September 1672 (and thus, perhaps born significantly earlier);

b) her sister MARCY (or MERCY), evidently born at Stonington 27 October 1674 (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F7WX-S6N), and then apparently baptized at New London on 14 March 1675[/6?] (her name edited, in the margin of the birth record, from "Mary" to "Marcy"; but then mistranscribed, in one or more key records, and/or incorrectly reverted to "Mary");

and

c) the wife MARY of Capt. John Whiting of Wrentham, Massachusetts Bay, whom he married in 1688 _and who may be the Mary Billings christened at Stonington in 1672_ [but who also – just to complicate matters – has not, in fact, been fully proven to be a Billings. For details of research into this question, please see the profile of Mary (Billings) Whiting.]

Research, and conclusions, to date (6 April 2023):

Marcy Billings is clearly shown as the mother of an illegitimate son, Beriah or Bariah Grant, christened at Stonington on 24 July 1698. A typewritten transcript of the church record, hopefully faithful to the original, lists the christening thus:

"GRANT, GRAUNT Bariah, illegitimate son of Marcy Billings, bp. July 24, 1698; Marcy, conf." [It's assumed here that "conf." means "confessed". There could perhaps be other interpretations.]

(Source: Connecticut Church Records Index. Stonington Vol 111. Connecticut State Library, Hartford, Connecticut; Ancestry free sharing link: https://www.ancestry.com/sharing/2952294?mark=7b22746f6b656e223a2253734e455262795a795148357964536c657478397a2f3879317746486f6c744a427243537a6359753953633d222c22746f6b656e5f76657273696f6e223a225632227d )

The printed, published History of the First Congregational Church, which seems slightly "streamlined" and may thus not be quite as faithful to the original as the typewritten transcript, omits the Grant surname... but it agrees that Beriah's mother was Marcy Billings (see https://archive.org/details/historyoffirstco00whee/page/201/mode/1up ; near the bottom of the page).

Marcy certainly appears to have had a liaison with a Mr. Grant, but they were plainly not married (and there is no record of their having married subsequent to Beriah's birth and baptism). Just who he was, _we do not know_, and a correction has been made to the profile of Grant-2364, which without evidence gave that gentleman the given name of "Noah"; the profile now correctly represents "Unknown Grant". (WikiTree does not have a data field where one can attach a partner who is not a legal spouse, so leaving Mr. Grant linked as "husband" of Marcy Billings may be the best we can do... but Marcy's current surname should not be shown as Grant. An explanation in the narrative body of the three affected profiles is called for, would be helpful, and is proposed.)

It seems clear that the profile Billings-327 is intended to represent the mother of Beriah Grant. Therefore, it is proposed to change the given name on that profile from Mary to Marcy... making it consistent with the very clear 1698 baptismal record for Beriah. Billings-1508 should then be merged into Billings-327, retaining the data and information in the former. We do also know that at some point, as noted above, the original handwritten Mary was corrected to a marginal Marcy in her 1674 birth record; the later record of Beriah Grant's birth is evidence that the correction was justified, and that it rightly represented the intent of the parents to name this daughter Marcy (or Mercy), and not to duplicate the name of the daughter Mary born several years earlier. -- As Mary, Mercy, and Marcy can be virtually interchangeable in the old records – not to mention that the child's mother was also named Mary – the original recorder may probably be forgiven for having first entered Mary in the birth register in 1674.

A "person of interest" in the quest for the possible identity of the father of Marcy Billings's illegitimate son, Beriah Grant (father currently shown as Unknown Grant), might be the Josiah Grant^[3] whose burial in Stonington's Old Tangwank Cemetery is correctly shown in the listing at https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-99F5-39SZ-G?i=351 (image #352 of 1249; also see https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/26507039/josiah-grant). His Stonington burial record, showing death in June of 1732 at "age 64 yrs. 9 da.", indicates that he was born about 1668, which coordinates with a Windsor birth record of 19 March 1668/9^[4] and – since he was at Stonington before 1696, when he there married Rebecca Miner^[5] – makes him a somewhat logical match for Marcy, born in 1674. (Note that no known Noah Grant, the name previously given to Beriah's father in the profile Unknown-2364, could have fathered Beriah – born in late 1698 – as the earliest known Noah Grant of Connecticut in this time period was not born until December of 1693^[6].)

-- Christopher Childs, PGM Project Research