Anne Bennett Goode - Problems with Anne Bennett Goode

I'm going to post some things as a series of questions and answers.

“Virginia Cousins” is this free ebook on the family: https://books.google.com/books/about/Virginia_Cousins.html?id=ojBMA...
There’s also a pdf copy here: http://wvancestry.com/ReferenceMaterial/Files/Virginia_cousins_-_A_...

Goode family DNA project just for fun: https://www.familytreedna.com/public/Goode/default.aspx?section=yre...

How do we know her name was Anne Bennett? When and where was she born?

It looks like her parents are unknown, and the name is a not-unreasonable assumption.

I haven’t seen any direct evidence for her name, but everyone seems to accept that it was Anne Bennett
.
https://worldconnect.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&a... says “John married second Ann, said to be Ann Bennett, for the name Bennett appeared in later generations.”

I haven't seen any documentation for a birthdate. She was born in 1641 according to Genie

Many sources say she was born about 1632, probably in Holland https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/115708290/john-goode

Her birthdate must have been a lot later than, since the will makes it clear that four of the children were born after 1687. An alternate explanation would be that Ann died and John remarried, but there's not a whiff of that.

Her first child was apparently born around 1669, so I would estimate her birthdate as 1649 if we assume she was 20 years old.

Is there any evidence for who her parents might be?

Not that I've seen, but there's a clue below. It's not enough to justify assigning any parents to her.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/160361361 makes a convincing argument that she is not the daughter of the governor but says “However, the Governor had at least two male relatives in Virginia and several more in England who may be the father of your Anne (Bennett) Goode. One reason I think this is because someone of the Goode family purports to have DNA evidence tying themselves to Anna (Bennett) Bland. Also, early references to Anne (Bennett) Goode describe her as being from Holland, where many early Puritans (including some Bennetts) sought refuge before they moved to the Colonies [the governor was a Puritan]. Also, the governor had either a cousin (son of his uncle Edward) or a brother named Robert in Virginia. Note that Anne Goode's first son appears to be named Robert.”

Unfortunately they don’t cite the references.

When and where did she marry John Goode?

"About 1668" looks like a good estimate. It's generally agreed that they married in Virginia.

1666/67 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/111586841/john-goode

About 1668: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/160361361
1668-1670 Virginia Cousins page 35

Some sources say the 1670s but don’t explain their reasoning.

Who are her children and when were they born?

The “who” is easy. AIl the children listed in Geni are mentioned in the 1708 will of John Goode John Goode, l, ‘the immigrant’ There is one more son mentioned in the will, Samuel, who was John’s son with his first wife. The will states that Anna, Susannah, Thomas, and Joseph were underage in 1708 and that Anna and Susannah were unmarried. These four must have been born after 1687. Four daughters (Frances, Ursula, Martha, and Mary) received a token bequest of one shilling each. This suggests that they were already married and prosperous enough that their father didn’t feel the need to provide for them. Unfortunately he does not state their married name, just their first names. He made more substantial bequests to two married daughters, Katherine Roberts and Elizabeth Blackman.

There are two children credited to John Goode and his first wife who do not appear to exist (Joseph Goode and Mary Hurlburt). Mary was born in Connecticut which is obviously wrong, and Joseph is apparently a duplicate of a son that he had with Anne Bennett. The sources in general agree that he had only one child (Samuel) with his first wife.

“When” is hard. I’ll get that in the next post.

In most cases it's hard to justify assigning a birthdate for the children. There's not even a reliable indicator of birth order. We can say "1687 or later" for the four who were listed as minors in the will (Joseph, Thomas, Anna, and Susannah) and "before 1687" for the others, but that's about it. The estimates for their birth years are all over the place and some are obviously wrong.

Joseph has the best estimate at "about 1695". https://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=john%5Fd%5Fne... says he must have been born between 1692-1698 because he chose his own guardian in 1712. Geni currently has circa 1687.

Samuel (John's son with first wife). Geni currently has 1655 which is reasonable.
1655-58 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/115708290/john-goode
Before 1660 Virginia Cousins page 32

Elizabeth Blackman: it seems to be generally agreed that she was born in 1669. I've seen no documentation, but we may as well go with the flow. Geni currently has 1680.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/115708290/john-goode
https://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=john_d_newpor...
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/L1Q5-1VD

Martha: the sources agree on 1674. There's no documentation. Geni has 1680.
https://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=john_d_newpor...
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LY39-QB7

Mary: the sources agree on 1680. Geni has 1700 which seems too late.
https://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=john_d_newpor...
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LHJM-QCG

That's the end of the agreement on birth dates.

Frances Bridgewater I think Geni has the wrong Frances. Her birthdate of 1645 is impossible, and she's got the wrong husband according to https://alliedfamilies.wordpress.com/early-virginia-jones-families/ "Frances Goode who married John Elam and then William Harris, Sr"

https://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/elam/1377/ indicates that it was Martha Goode who married John Elam, not Frances. Martha isn't mentioned in the paragraph quoted above, so the quote might be wrong. Geni doesn't show a husband for Martha.

I can't find any satisfactory information on Elam or Harris, or clues about the birthdate of Frances. "Between 1668 and 1687" is all I can really say about her. Familysearch went with 1684 and that's as good as anything: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LQ52-SZ2

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Ursula Branch, my presumed ancestress. Her first husband (Samuel Branch) died in 1700 and his will indicates three children under the age of 21. His birthdate is documented as 1663. http://rayparsons.com/trent/ursula.html

https://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=john_d_newpor... gives her birthdate as 1690 which is impossible. https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/9Q7W-Z9D says 1681 which is pretty young to have three children by 1700.

https://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/branch/557/ estimates the marriage date as 1683 which seems too early. It looks like Ursula couldn't have been born earlier than 1670.

https://geesnmore.wordpress.com/charles-gee-and-hannah/hannahs-family/ indicates that Walter Scott (Ursula's second husband) "gave security for the estate of Samuel Branch’s children", apparently in 1708. So Ursula's children must have been born after 1687, like several of her siblings.

I can't find any solid information on the birthdates of her children. My best guess at her birthdate is to take the year her oldest child was born according to Geni and assume she was 20 years old = about 1673. It's better than anything else that's floating around out there.

Ursula Goode Branch has a false daughter: Katherine Elizabeth Mullins This is apparently a duplicate of
her daughter with her first husband: Elizabeth Mullins (Scott)

This profile seems to be a messed-up duplicate of Ursula Branch herself, with no visible reason why this woman has the names Goode and Branch attached to her: Ursula Branch The profile says she’s the foster daughter of Anne Bennett the governor’s daughter.

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I’m going to assume that Joseph was the youngest of the children. We have a semi-firm birthdate of 1695 for him. Anne Bennett would have been 46 then based on an estimated birthdate of 1649.

The rest of the “born after 1687” children:
Susannah: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Goode-104 gives her a birthdate of 1691. It’s the most reasonable estimate I’ve seen.

Anna and Thomas seem to have disappeared from the record, and may not have survived to adulthood. The only reasonable estimate of their birthdate is “after 1687”. If you want a nice tidy timeline, you could semi-randomly assign an unoccupied year to them such as 1687, 1689, or 1691.

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Robert is apparently the oldest of Anne’s sons according to https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/160361361 A birthdate of about 1670 or 1672 fits well into our timeline. Virginia Cousins page 51 says he was “born on the old plantation on the James” (John Goode’s home prior to Whitby). Whitby is specified as the birthplace for all other sons assigned to a specific location. The date Whitby was occupied is unclear.

Catherine doesn’t have too much time spread on her birthdates. https://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=john_d_newpor... says 1668 and https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/G9M2-67L says 1672. 1670 or 1672 fits the timeline well, picking one of those years for Robert and one for Catherine.

John: Virginia Cousins page 51 says born at Whitby 1670-80. Most sources give his birthdate as 1675, which fits the timeline well. Killed by Indians 1720-30

Summary: this is the timeline that I've constructed for the children's birthdates. It may not be completely accurate, but it appears to be more reasonable than anything else that's floating around out there. There's room to adjust the spacing somewhat without wreaking havoc with anybody's timeline.

1655 Samuel
1669 Elizabeth
1670 Robert
1672 Catherine
1673 Ursula
1674 Martha
1675 John
1680 Mary
1684 Frances
1687 Anna
1689 Thomas
1691 Susannah
1695 Joseph

When did Anne Bennett Goode die?

Before 11/29/1708 (the date of John Goode’s will, which does not mention a wife) https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/160361361. Sometime after 1687 obviously, since she had four children after that date. Most sources go with a date around 1707-1708.

When was John Goode born?

1632 is documented according to https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/115708290/john-goode
The claims for 1620 are not documented, and some are apparently for a different John Goode:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/111586841/john-goode
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/MHLT-4K5?icid=amp_...
1620-1630 Virginia Cousins page 31
1610-1620 Virginia Cousins page 35 – book is not consistent with itself

https://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=john_d_newpor... has him buying land on the James River in 1642. This is probably a different John Goode.

He had some merge issues which I resolved, accepting 1632 as the correct birthdate. In the process I removed the title of Captain that was previously attached, since there don't appear to be any sources saying that he was the captain of anything.

Thank you, Caroline, for that wonderful summary and your excellent points of the impossibilities. I can give you just a little from far back in my dark ages when I researched this (and the rest of my) family. Before I start - just one strong point. Almost nothing this far back about the Goode family is concretely proven. That is why Anne's line starts and stops with her. We know next to nothing.

What I found - and still have - is that Anne Bennett was born about 1647 in The Netherlands. Since I have placed my research books at Mid-Continent Genealogical Library in Independence, MO, I cannot give you my source. My best guess is from "Virginia Cousins" which is about as much proof as any family history book can have - definitely no guarantee of accuracy. I have a death date of "before 1708,

About John. First, are you aware that his origin is listed as both "Whitby" and "Whitley"? In England, I found two Whitleys, one on the east coast and one near (but not in) Cornwall. My research says "Whitley in Cornwall". However, later study of an old map shows that Whitley is only "near" Cornwall. Perhaps Cornwall was larger at that time? At any rate, John was born ca 1620 and 1640. Given stories of his life, I tend to go with 1620. Even that does not seem accurate to me. Not if Samuel was an adult when John married Anne.

From England, John first went to Barbados where he married Frances. I have memory of her father's name which is in those books at above-named library. I have forgotten it now but do remember that John had some connection with that family. Could Frances's father have been Samuel? I seem to remember that he was recompensed for accepting - or did he ask for - immigrants from England. Maybe he offered to pay passenger fare of immigrants. My memory fails me there. Perhaps this story is in Virginia Cousins, a book I gave away eons ago. From Barbados, John moved to VA (Whitby?) near what is now Richmond. There he married Anne Bennett between 1668 and 1670

I believe there actually were two children by Frances: Samuel and Richard. Anne, being young enough to be John's daughter was also young enough to almost be sister to Samuel and Richard. Those two were so unhappy with this situation that they moved away and completely distanced themselves from John and Anne. If, as I was told, John's father was Richard, that would explain the son as Richard. I was in touch with a descendant of Richard who filled me in on some of the story.

I have that John Goode died 1 April 1709. Anne died before 1708.

There you are Caroline. One thing I learned early - and I'm sure you'll agree - is that we simply cannot make and guarantee "facts" that are 400+ years old. We can't even guarantee facts that are 400 days old. I make no guarantees of any of this. You are on a good road to pointing out the problems. I cannot be much help now as I gave up genealogy long ago and memory is failing. I only pass along what I have by way of a family tree from myself backward. If you have access to Mid-Continent Library in Independence, MO, you will probably find what documentation I found (not much about John and Anne).

Before I quit, a comment about Anne's birthplace. Quite a coincidence. Some 200 years after Anne, here came my Miller immigrant "born in The Netherlands". I have a paper from my father listing Miller and White children. Dad definitely says "The Netherlands". And the coincidence? These Millers intermarried with John Goode's descendants. :-)

Good luck. Hazel M White

One of the problems with early Virginia is that there were at least two Richard Bennetts: Richard Bennett the Governor and Richard Bennett Not-the-Governor. They're constantly getting mashed together in spite of all precautions.

Henrietta Maria Neale was the daughter of Capt. James Neale (cousin to Grace Neale Waters Robins of Northampton County, VA) and, it is said , one Anna Maria Gill. She married a Richard Bennett who was the *son* of Richard the Governor, but her husband drowned a few years later and she married Col. Philemon Lloyd. There was barely time for one, maybe two, children of her first marriage, and neither one was an Anne.

Looks like Richard Bennett Not-the-GovernorRichard Bennett Sr. (not the Governor) had a daughter Anne who married a John "Goad" - on the other hand he now has a son Richard who has been hash-mashed with the Governor's son.

This ALWAYS happens. *NO ONE* can keep the lines separate because "There Can Be Only One" - even when there really were two, or three, or more.

Thank you everyone. If John Goode had a son named Richard from his first marriage, he must have died before 1708 because there is no mention of him in the will. John Goode does mention his son Samuel in the will but unlike the other sons he doesn't leave any land to him. They say that this was because of friction between Samuel and his stepmother Anne, who influenced John to basically disinherit the kid. But Samuel's name was mentioned in the will anyway, so estrangement wasn't a reason for having one's name left out of the will. It's reported that John Goode had a brother named Richard, so that might be the origin of the rumor.

It says at https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/115708290/john-goode "John Goode was born about 1632 as he swore he was 72 years of age in 1704 (Henrico Co., Deeds and Wills, 1697-1704, p. 426)." In this time period, any time an older gives their age you should think "plus or minus five years", but this is as firm a birthdate as we're going to get.

I haven't seen any reasonable justification for saying that Anne's father was Richard anybody. Apparently we don't even know for sure that her last name was Bennett, and none of her sons were named Richard after their alleged grandfather. It looks to me like people said "here's a woman named Anne Bennett, who was her father, oh look here are a couple of guys named Richard Bennett, it must have been one of them." I've seen no evidence for her birthplace either. It's generally agreed that she married John Goode in Virginia (although I saw one off-base source that said Barbados), but I haven't seen any documentation for where she was before that.

Anne Goode the daughter of Richard Bennett "Not the Governor" has Whitby listed as her place of death, so she's definitely a duplicate of our Anne Bennett. At least they didn't give her a bunch of duplicate children. Her husband John Goad has the same parents traditionally assigned to our John Goode.

More doppelgangers, with some differences in the children and the line of descent:
John Goode, l, ‘the immigrant’
Anne Goode

My interest is in Ursula so I look primarily at her. This lineage makes her a granddaughter of the original John Goode through his son John Junior, with a much later birthdate of 1706. Then she marries John Harris instead of Samuel Branch and Walter Scott.

We know that the original John Goode had a daughter Ursula because he names her in his will, and the will does not name her as a minor child so she must have been born before 1687. An argument is made at http://rayparsons.com/trent/ursula.html that she was too young to have married Samuel Branch, but it's based on a mistaken belief that she was a minor in 1708. On the contrary, it looks like she was too old to have had a child with John Harris in 1729 as claimed at the link.

It's entirely possible that John Goode Junior had a daughter named Ursula who married John Harris. I haven't investigated this. But there are no timeline problems with Ursula the daughter of John Senior marrying Samuel Branch.

This link gives her a birthdate of 1705 and has her marrying all three men (Branch, Scott, and Harris): https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Goode-986 This is impossible, since Branch died in 1700. The marriages of the older Ursula to Branch and Scott are reasonably well documented, and the one to Harris looks like a younger Ursula.

BTW the most famous person in this particular line of duplicates is Col. John Jordan Harris Most sources believe that his mother's maiden name was Ursula Jordan, not Goode, based on the family's use of the name Jordan and its non-use of Goode. This link has a discussion: http://sites.rootsweb.com/~mysouthernfamily/myff/d0053/g0000031.html

I don't see any documentation for a middle name cor Col. John Harris. 1732 is a mite early for middle names except among the upper-upper crust, and not always them.

Maj. Jordan Harris is his son according to Geni so at least it's plausible. I haven't investigated to see how real any of this is.

I leave it to you Caroline. As I said I am no longer doing genealogy and I no longer have my books so I can check documentation. All I have is a pedigree chart. I do remember being in touch with a gentleman who had Richard and Samuel as sons from the first marriage. If there was a Richard - IF - could it be that John had already provided him with property and simply did not name him in the will for that reason? It's all yours and good luck.

Just one off-hand comment. Isn't it amazing how many Richards there are generation after generation behind John and no real data on any of them other than wives names? Always it is Richard. One does wonder.