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Subject: Re: [APG] How To Find The Unnamed Spouse
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 17:32:52 EDT
No I submitted it for publication in a short article in Northern Virginia
Genealogy back in 1998. However it was the French family that I used for my
certification. I learned so much from this one family as there were all sorts of
complex evidence that needed sorting. For example there was the problem of what
I found in the survey phase of the literature on Margaret the wife of Hugh
French. She was said to be the daughter of Daniel Gaines and wife who was said
to be Margaret Bernard. This was clearly an attempt to graft to a tree that
would take the family to a Jamestown connection. So I solved it this way. I
assemble a timeline from the available records on the two Margarets.
MARGARET (?) PROSSER, MILLER, FRENCH AND LATER SOMMERVILLE:
28 August 1673 John Prosser signed his will and named four sons including a
son Anthony.
30 June 1677 Prosser's will presented for probate.
16 February 1679 Simon Miller signed his will and named six Miller children
as well as his wife's son Anthony Prosser.
30 November 1683 Margaret as widow of Simon enters into a lease agreement
with Andrew Harrison.
7 May 1684 Simon Miller's will accepted for probate.
5 March 1684/5 Margaret's last appearance in the records as relict of Simon
Miller.
6 May 1685 Hugh French in court on behalf of the widow of Simon Miller whom
he married.
MARGARET GAINES:
January 1662 Daniel Gaines in court regarding the property of Ralph and Sarah
Rowzee. The property transferred hands from John Catlett the half brother of
Ralph Rowzee deceased, to Daniel Gaines the children's new step-father. This
record establishes a time frame for the marriage of Daniel Gaines and the widow
Margaret (?) Rouzee and determines the range wherein a first child could have
been born.
1682 Daniel Gaines signed his last will and testament. He named his wife
Margaret, and two daughter's Margaret, Mary and a son Bernard, sons-in-law Ralph
Rowzee and John Smith and a grandson-in-law John Smith.
When records on the two Margaret's are compared it is apparent Margaret the
daughter of Daniel Gaines, was too young to be the same Margaret who married
John Prosser and gave birth to a son Anthony by 1673, therefore they are not
the same person.
Another problem with this family was a prior researcher had assigned two
marriages to Hugh French and assigned two of the children named in his will to the
prior marriage. In this case it was the assembly of court orders that
resolved the problem.
I was able to establish the last time Margaret was in court as the relict of
Symon Miller [March 1684-85] and the date Hugh first appeared as being married
to her. That was May 1685 two months later. Once a marriage date was fixed
within a two month time frame, it set the stage for what I found on Hugh2 in the
Richmond County, VA court orders in 1705. Hugh the son was in court
represented by a next friend or "prochein ami" to petition for his share of his
father's estate. If Hugh was a child of another marriage, he would not have needed
representation of this kind before the court. He would have been of full age and
able to handle it himself. He was probably about 19 years old at the time.
You asked about my argument for certfication. I used the article published in
The Virginia Genealogist on Elizabeth the daughter of Robert Taliaferro and
Margaret French. That article took me into the Madison family as it was a Roger
Madison Elizabeth married.
Margaret Amundson, CG
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