Lt. Samuel Springer

Note about birthdate and wives

DNA links a descendant of Samuel's son Jesse with a descendant of the Peacock family. This match can easily be met if Samuel had a second wife who was a Peacock. That's not hard because there is a known Peacock girl nobody knew what happened to - Tamar, born in 1739. Samuel's sister married into the same family, so this is not at all a stretch.

However, this means that Amy Smith, who Samuel married early in 1773, died before about 1/15/1774, and that all of the children of this family were in fact the children of Tamar. This wasn't unusual in the times since the first child of a couple can and did kill many young wives. It is also consistent with what little we know about Amy Smith, whose exact year of death and grave have never been known.

The alternative is that Jesse's given birthdate is wrong by two years, and he was in fact born at the end of 1772, not 1774. This, too, has been known to happen, especially when family records and memories are used to figure out birth years. I have confirmed that the marriage date with Amy Smith was indeed duly recorded in June of 1773. Jesse's birth date seems to come only from web trees.

The key piece of information that tilts the picture in terms of Tamar being the first wife and dying before summer 1773 was the discovery of a Benjamin Springer, who died prior to early 1803, leaving a son Samuel, who was in need of foster care because he was younger than 14. This occurred on Cape May, and it implies that Samuel had a first son Benjamin, probably born around 1765, that came from an earlier wife, and was inconsistent with a 1773 marriage.

• Reference: FamilySearch Family Tree - SmartCopy: Feb 25 2023, 18:41:43 UTC