Will the real Catherine Taylor stand up?

Started by Karl David Wright on Friday, April 3, 2020
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In Colonial New Jersey, an Edward Taylor and his wife Catherine settled in Monmouth County in the late 1600's. He had a large family with many sons, many of whom lived in Middletown, Monmouth County.

Edward apparently had at least three Taylor granddaughters named Catherine, all born at about the same time. We know this because there are three totally distinct marriages, with overlapping families. These are the Catherine Taylors involved:

Catherine Lippitt
Catherine Fitzrandolph
Catherine Gifford

Now, detailed birth and death dates seemingly exist only for Catherine Gifford. She's been assigned to father Edward Taylor for reasons which are unclear to me, given I see no records. Sources attached to Catherine Fitzrandolph establishing her birth year seemingly could also apply to any of the Catherines of Middletown as well. And, I admit, I created Catherine Lippitt's profile separate from Catherine Gifford's because the two women had clearly different and incompatible families, and yet web trees conflate them without fail. I placed her in a family where the dates worked and there were no other Catherines - no other evidence than that.

This discussion is about figuring out which Catherine belongs to which parents, and crisping up the relationships among the Taylor sons and their children.

This discussion is about

Erica Howton, you own a number of profiles in the area. Any information that you can find to bring to bear?

Another interesting tidbit of information:

A rather mysterious genetic relationship I've got would be readily explained if the Catherine that married William Gifford was in actuality the daughter of John Taylor . Right now, Catherine Fitzrandolph is assumed to be his daughter, and that makes her marriage a first-cousin marriage as well, through her mother. I think it would be more plausible to reverse the parentage of these two Catherines, if the records support it.

Another question: Are these all Quakers? They certainly well could be, but I don't know for sure.

I've gone ahead and swapped the parents of these two Catherines, based on DNA evidence. I've left information in the overviews that explains why. If anyone can find a will that might clarify which Catherine is the daughter of which Taylor I can adjust accordingly.

I've also confirmed that the Taylors of Monmouth County were indeed Quakers. So Private User perhaps you have some insights?

For now, I would leave all discrepancies in place until some sense can be determined. I view obvious errors as clues that will help you in the near-term..

Such as at John Taylor

The Quaker Meeting at Shrewsbury may end up being of help.

I have a project started but it's only in its nascent and undeveloped stage.
https://www.geni.com/projects/Shrewsbury-Monthly-Meeting-Quaker-NJ-...

I encourage you to join and add records.

start reading through the Shrewsbury MM on ancestry (if you have a subscription)

Here is a listing for Patience Lippit's marriage to <John Woolley> https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/2189/31906_284084-00058?pid=57...

I've updated her profile: Patience Lippit of Middletown

There's apparently a history of Monmouth County that was published in 1903 that is where many of these pedigrees are sourced. I have already found two additional places where I think errors may have been made (and I've corrected them):

(1) Which Thomas Stillwell Hannah Stillwell married. FindAGrave thinks it's Thomas b. 1666 in New York. But that Thomas already has a wife and a family that overlaps with the family of Hannah. There's a SECOND Thomas, though, also from the same New York Stillwell family, who serves better and has different dates. That's who I think was Hannah's husband.

(2) Who married Elizabeth Tilton . Pretty near every pedigree says "John Mott", but there's an actual marriage record for John Tilton, and I can't find anything at all about a John Mott from that time.

There's another one where the same husband is presumed to have two (overlapping) families with two different wives; I'll post when I remember who it exactly was. But the point was that misidentification seems to happen a number of times in this work.

Michael, as an experiment I tried locating the marriage record for Catherine Taylor marrying Robert Fitzrandolph. The meeting book moves for marriages in chronological order but skips from 1730 to 1741, and they were supposedly married in 1737. We then go to births.

Searching with Ancestry finds two records for this marriage:

https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&amp;dbid=2129&a...

... which basically seems to be a compilation of existing genealogical literature, probably there as a result of the 1903 volume I previously mentioned, and:

https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&amp;dbid=7836&a...

... which doesn't mention parents. No monthly meeting record (although sometimes they're not indexed, yes).

The 1903 book must have been based on something but I fear that those original records may be misplaced in this case. There are already known errors in the 1903 book as well.

I did a similar experiment for the Catharine Taylor marrying William Gifford (although in this case I already knew what I'd find). First, the actual 1734 record from the MM is missing (same missing chunk). None of the ancestry records mention parents. We have a number of them:

https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&amp;dbid=61376&...

https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&amp;dbid=2794&a...

https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&amp;dbid=61376&...

https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&amp;dbid=7836&a...

No Monthly Meeting records indexed either.

So what it appears to me is now accepted as "gospel" is potentially an error made in a 1903 volume. Let me dig that up and hopefully I can find an online volume.

No, pardon me, the actual work everything is based upon is here:

https://archive.org/details/historicalgeneal05instil/page/n6/mode/2up

It's dated 1932.

The Taylor of Monmouth section begins on page 84 of the scanned version. The pedigree contained within seems to be the source record for the "The New England Historical & Genealogical Register, 1847-2011"'s marriage records in Ancestry. But the pedigree is unsourced and does not even contain dates, most times. It was written by a descendant, who may have based it in part on family records reconstructed at some even earlier time.

This is why I created a discussion about what seems to be a simple matter.

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