Christian Farley

Seen as daughter of Richard Berths & Mary Bryan. Her sister was Hannah Jefes

George m. Christian BIRTHS on 9 Apr 1641 in Woburn, MA. She was a Swede, whocame to this country on the same ship as he did, and whose father had died on the voyage and was buried at sea. They lived in Woburn for about 12 years, where he was listed on a 1645 tax roll as a 'clothier.' (His great-uncle Roger FARLEY was a well-known clothier in Yorkshire, as well as having other businesses in Worcestershire.)

Origins

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/149182465/christian-farley

CHRISTIAN'S SURNAME-- SPECULATIONS. Early Dutch/ Belgian/ Swedish ship captains often listed no surnames for arriving passengers on their ships. They would just show first names, the permanent part of someone's identity, given that last names in the affected non-British ethnicities were still changeable then, not hereditary as seen now. (A father and his sons easily had different last names.)

To separate passengers coming to America with the same first name, the shipmasters tacked on the father's first name (mother's name if still living and father deceased) and/or the place of origin ("von de" means "from the"). Once in the colonies and the surrounding British settlers insisted on a last name, the party questioned might resort to the same add-ons, with a father's or mother's name called a "patrynomic". The conversation might go like this:

"Which Christian are you?" "Well, my father has died, so there is no point in giving you his name. My mother still lives. You have her name. It is Bietres, or Beatrice in your language. I am her older daughter, Christian. If you wish, you can call me Christian Bietres. You can call my sister Johannah Bietres." The interviewer perhaps wrote as instructed, but also may have looked dumb-struck and said "oh", before writing down Christian Births and Hannah Births.

Spellings were not fussy then. A good book of European baby names will show similar spellings, Bietris, Beitris, etc. Varied Germanic groups, including lowland Scots, formerly spelled Beatrice in these older ways. (Using consonants, the pattern is B*tr*s. Thus, there is no "final e". The old-fashioned "s" stays, is not replaced with a soft "c".)

Books written 30 years later should have stuck with Sewall and avoided the maiden name issue. But, they did not.

The 1891 Source Using "Births"-- Edward Francis Johnson did take advantage of Sewall's having collected and organized the Woburn records, so went through them again, calling his book, "Woburn Records..."

He put this into type:

"George Farley and Christian Births, April 9, 1641"

If the original handwritten spelling looked foreign, Germanic/Dutch/Belgian or lowland Scots, then what he did is called "Anglicizing" (remade the strange sound into an English-looking word). If someone takes the German names of Meier, Koch and Kuhn and instead writes down Mire, Cook, and Coon, they are Anglicizing.

Never mind that no one else had ever put the surname as Births before 1891. However, he set a trend. Two later Farley family trees copied his book, their authors perhaps too far away to check original handwritten records, to sample the variety of spellings. For example, these Farleys were at times spelled Farlee and Farly in the Billerica records, but you'd never know that from reading the later books.

The 1898 Source using "Beatrice" Combining Births and somebody's else's recollection of a Beatrice, here is a quote from Henry Whittemore, the author or editor of the old book of 1898 called a "Genealogical Guide to the Early Settlers of America", page 185.

Notice that he oddly lets a second wife be in the middle of three supposed wives, with Christian at both the beginning and at the end. Seeing both Christian and Bietris/ Beatrice, It assumes George had multiple wives, when there were two names for one wife. It makes other errors:

"George Farley, of Woburn, married 1641, Christian Births; who probably died soon; petitioned with many others for religious liberty 1655, removed to Billenca, before 1655, had married 1643, and by wife Beatrice, had James, 1643; Caleb, 1645; Mary, 164?; Timothy, and perhaps more children at Woburn; at Billerica, by wife Christian, had Samuel, 1655; and Mehitable, 1656; member of the Baptist church at Boston, where the spelling is Farlow. He died 1693. "

Again, it's more likely that one woman used two names, identified herself as Christian Beatrice/Bietres. Secondly, the author ignores the recognition plaque in Billerica for Georg/George's co-founding of what turned into a Congregational church. We assume the author over-emphasized the one visit George made to a Baptist church with two neighbors, as George was fined just once for not attending his Billerica church. The neighbor called Mr. Hamlet/Hamblett was instead the one repeatedly fined for his multiple absences from the Billerica church.

CONTROVERSIES. Some other things, controversial at best, incorrect at worst, were written down in the 1800s. Again, these speculations were made roughly two hundred years after the people lived.

The dead could not speak then, any more than they do now, could not pop-up out of the coffin and say, "Why would you think that?". But, perhaps, in more modern times, science (DNA) and the internet's display of older sources can help speak for the dead.

These things have happened:

• Lessons on "patrynomic surnames" on the internet help interpret the odd and perhaps feminine-sounding last name of Christian, anglicized as "Births". The Swedes moved into America in the late 1800s, giving us all lessons on last names that sounded a lot like first names, as they were mini-genealogies. A Peterson or Persson fresh from Sweden literally had a Peter or Pers for a father. A Benson literally had a Ben, and so on. A woman named Maddi had a son called Madison, etc.

  ---

Links

• http://www.fulkerson.org/farley.html
• https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/149182465/christian-farley