Mary Harris - @Mary Harris

The source for these profiles, the Robert E Harris 1994 book on "From Essex England To The Sunny Southern USA" had been proven false in the first few generation before Robert even published his work. I had written him repeatedly about these errors in his manuscript but his only reply was that he had copied all of the first three chapters exactly from the John Bennett Boddied 1954 book on "Historical Southern Families, that he only looked for documents to support those in these chapters and didn't have the time to go back and renumber all of the generations if he removed all of those from unrelated Harris lines. Both Boddie and Robert Harris had taken the ancient Harris family legend of a Thomas Harris and wife Alice West as the progenitors of a long line of Harris in Isle of Wight county Virginia, and combined that with the known facts of a Thomas Harris dying in IOW in 1672 with a widow Alice and INCORRECTLY ASSUMED that they were were same couple of the family legend. Boddie was well aware of the Thomas Harris d1677 in Charles City, but he ignorred him as he couldn't connect him to those in IOW. Yet they both ascribed the 1000 acre patent of 1658 to the Thomas Harris d1672 instead of researching the patent to find that it belonged to the Thomas Harris d1677 who had abandoned the marshy speculated land by 1668 when it was repatented to Joseph Bridger. Thomas Harris d1677 had purchased the Charles City plantation from his brothers widow in 1663, so he didn't need this land.Then they wondered why none of this 1000 acres is mentioned in the land dealings or Will of Thomas Harris d1672. This Mary Harris was actually the daughter of Thomas Harris d1672 and his 2nd wife Alice Newman and was still living when named in her widowed mothers 1672 prenuptial agreement with John Sojourner to protect the interests of her children by Thomas Harris d1672 to their share if his estate. Boddie had a personal interest in trying to tie all of the unrelated IOW Harris lines into one as his direct ancestor William Boddie had married 2nd or 3rd to Mary Hunt Edwards, the mother of Judith Edwards who married Thomas Harris d1712. Therefore the ancient legend of a Thomas Harris being the progenitors of a long line of Harris in IOW may be true, it just wasn't the Thomas Harris d1672 and widow Alice Newman.