We all know the phrase associated with the word “assume”, and assumptions are always the bane of any historian or genealogical researcher, but sometimes those assumptions seem so logical that you don’t even realise you’re making them, so it is important to double-check even the most water-tight links and connections.
Take John Holderness, victualler of Harwich, for example. On the 4th of April 1762, he married Sarah Dandison at Harwich St Nicholas, and John & Sarah Holderness had five children baptised at the church between 1765 and 1771. Three years is a reasonable, if larger than average, gap between marriage and first baptism, and Sarah wasn’t in the top tier of common names, so everything seems good so far.
The gap is just large enough to warrant investigation, however, and sure enough, come July 1763, we find the burial of Sarah Holderness, wife of John. Sometimes at this point there can be theories racing through your head – maybe it’s a different John and Sarah, maybe it was a baptism record recorded as a burial in error – so it’s important to find the second marriage record, and lo and behold, the next year holds a marriage between the widowed John Holderness and Sarah Gemmerson – gap and wife’s forename solved.
(As another example of an accuracy check, two sources for this marriage hold two different pieces of information – Ancestry has the marriage as the 15th of March 1764, while FreeReg has the surname as Halderness, and the month as April.)
Another good example comes further back in time, and the famous name of Christopher Newport. On the 3rd of July 1584, the burial register of Stepney St Dunstan holds a record for Jane, the “wife of Christofer Newport of Harwch“, these being the Virginia venturer’s parents. Three months later, the marriage register of the same church records the marriage between Christofer Newport and Katherine Procter; easy to link the two, but all evidence suggests this was Newport junior (he was about 23, they had at least one child together, three months would be a rapid turnaround for an ageing widower).
Still with the Newports, sometimes these things remain a little mysterious. In 1591, three records stand out in the Stepney St Dunstan registers:
- 4 January: Burial of Em Newport, wife of Christofer Newport of Limehouse
- 29 January: Christofer Newport marries Ellen Ade
- 29 June: Burial of Christofer Newport the elder
No record of Newport marrying an “Em” or similar has been found, and the “of Limehouse” distinction could apply to father or son by this point. Also, burying one wife and marrying the next in the space of a month seems off, especially as Newport junior’s known previous wife was called Katherine.
However, we know for a fact that Ellen was Newport junior’s wife, as she was buried on the 25th of August 1595, described as such, plus his next marriage was just over a month later, to Elizabeth Glanfeild, on the 1st of October. So, although it doesn’t add up on the surface, it would look as though Newport junior married three times during Newport senior’s life, who must have remained widowed until his death.
Harwicensis 