Thursday, January 31, 2013

Backtracking and Correcting/Married at First or at Last


Digging deeper and verifying the info I've found I've encountered those pesky errors which if perpetuated throw everyone off, and result in lost time an money.

  1. The first error can be filed under don't believe everything you read. Mistakes can appear even in the best books. The above snippet states Rebecca was married to Joseph when she was actually married to James Forgey son of Samuel Forgey. Need to strike this Joseph from my records for Augusta, Virginia.
  2. The next error seems to come under the heading repetition. Sometimes when someone is transcribing a record they may repeat a name in the wrong place. I believe Forgey was repeated twice at some point by someone transcribing a document. We know James Forgey was married to Rebecca Clements. Her sister Margaret was said to have been married to Samuel Forgey. Now I am finding she was likely married to Samuel Davidson . So it looks like there was a repetition error and his name was misrecorded as Forgey. So Elizabeth Forgey born 1781 may have been the daughter of Samuel Forgey Jr. and Martha Campbell, instead of Samuel Forgey and Margaret Clements. 
So now I believe I am on the right track. I am leaning towards believing that it is more likely than not that the William, Joseph, and James I have tracing are descendants of Samuel and Sara Forgy. It's seems Samuel Forgy and Sara Wilson were married in 1762 in Paxtang, PA. You may say how can this be when their son James Forgy was born in 1752? The will states Sara was James Forgey's mother not stepmother? Well some people in those days could be said to have married at first and other married at last. Meaning some were not officially legally married when some of their children were born. They may have lived in backwoods areas where it was not easy to get a marriage performed. Some may have worried about the legality of a backwoods marriages and may have gone through the ceremony again later also? They may not have had a church wedding the first time and had a second church marriage? In this case they may have married in Ireland had some question about the legality of their marriage for some unknown reason? It's also possible that Sara was James Stepmother and this fact wasn't stated?
So we have the couple Samuel and Sara and no William listed as a child? As it turns out Sara was pregnant in 1770 when the will was written and we don't know the name of the child? Could have been our William?
Another unknown is the names of all of Samuel Forgey II children. We also don't have the names of Samuel the 3rd's children. With all these unknowns it's difficult to place William, Joseph, and James. I believe the origins of these men will be found when we find out more about all of the Samuels in Samuel and Sara's line and get the name of their unborn child

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