O genealogy

[flea]

Here it is, 9:45 (past my bedtime), and I'm wondering whether my ancestor (hmm, let's see, my great-great-great grandmother), Margaret Irwin Hays, snookered the DAR. Did Eliza McCully really have a baby at 44, in 1825? And if so, why does Margaret not appear on the list of children, which included "died in infancy" children, of which the youngest was born in 1813? A list that includes death dates in the 1890s, so not made before she was born or anything.

People, let me be a warning unto you.

Comments

[meara]

So, you think Margaret Hayes just...picked a random woman to list as her mother? Or someone else picked a random mother for her? Or?

or maybe there was some sort of more traditional "you're 44 but could theoretically pass this child off as your own when it's really scandalously your unmarried sister/daughter's"? Or "here, raise this orphaned neighbor/cousin/whoever, but you don't have to list her on kids you've birthed, but she'll consider you mom"?

[flea]

Well, my father, who has reams of paper files he inherited but hasn't sorted them properly, is pretty sure Margaret the legal daughter of who she said she is. But he also thought she was an only child, and if she is accurately describing her parentage, she's actually one of at least 9 kids, and possibly the youngest by 9 years. Yes, it's entirely possible that she's biologically an illegitimate granddaughter - I am sure that happened all the time - but her mother's birth date is also rather vague, so she could have been only 41 at Margaret's birth. If it comes to it, we can order from the DAR, for $10, the packet of data that she used to prover her case (in, like, the 1880s, but they seem to have it on file.) It's important because if her paentage is accurate she's the granddaughter of a rather important Revolutionary War figure, who also went to Detroit with Gen. Anthony Wayne at a time when Detroit was way outside the boundaries of the US. The kind of guy you might lie about being descended from, if your father had the same name as the man who married his daughter (and you gave a damn about the DAR.)

I don't have ancestry.com at home, so I'm hoping that some documentation there will clear things up.