Wife of Samuel Riggs

There is no evidence that Keziah Baldwin existed. (see below)

Source: http://boards.ancestry.com/surnames.riggs/1618.4/mb.ashx

Dawn, please see my site alvyray.com/Riggs. In particular, please see Vol. 3, Parts I, II, and III. I (with Robert Charles Anderson) have done a rewrite of early Riggs genealogy because it was so poorly done (please do not rely on Wallace's 1901 Riggs "genealogy" - it is full of errors). Our Riggs Genealogy Revisited is published in full, glorious, scholarly detail, with all the proofs, in a 40-page article in learned journal The Genealogist last year (see my Riggs site for further details). The facts, without the proofs, are repeated in my online volumes 3I. The Roosa problem is solved (she married Edward1, not Edward2, and Mary is NOT Mary Munn. There is no evidence that Keziah Baldwin existed. And so forth. I write this letter to you in hopes that this new, fundamental information about the Riggs family gets to be generally known among Riggs enthusiasts.

Your descent line is questionable. I mean that it is the one Wallace said was true but which RCA and I could not support with evidence. Again, Wallace is not to be trusted. See my Riggs Vol3III especially for what I call the "problematic" NJ lines.

It is time that we Riggses stop passing around bogus descent lines as if they were fact. They MIGHT be, of course, but there is no proof that I have been able to uncover after years of searching the records, and I have found lots of errors in fact. Nearly all of these lines go back to Wallace's say-so, and that's not good enough.

The best way of proving descent from Edward1 is DNA, considering how poor the written record is. Please contact me if you want to know more (or see DNA on my Riggs site). I would be particularly interested in your line in this regard. I think DNA is probably the only way we are going to solve the problematic lines. My email address is on my site. There are 80 so members of my Riggs DNA project now, and with it we have been able to solve several nasty problems. I cannot promise you a line of descent with DNA, only the fact of descent (with high probability).

Alvy Ray Smith