Earlier this month I sent the following inquiry to Robert Charles Anderson,
author and compiler of the THE GREAT MIGRATION: IMMIGRANTS TO NEW ENGLAND
1620-1633, 3 vols. (Boston, 1995). He is the leading authority on colonial
New England genealogy.
<< Bob,
I notice that in your account of the daughters of Alexander Carpenter (TGM
1:314) you estimate Agnes Carpenter's birth as "say 1585."
While the record of Samuel Fuller's second marriage names the bride as Agnes
Carpenter, the record of his third marriage describes him as the widower of
"Anna" Carpenter (ibid., 716); as I recall, the "g" in Agnes was
silent at
this time. Would not the Wrington record of the baptism on 16 December 1593
of "Anne daughter of Ellexannder Carpenter" likely be that of Agnes/Anna
(Carpenter) Fuller? You mention Myrtle Hyde's publication of the Bath and
Wrington parish records pertaining to this Carpenter family (of which the
aforementioned is one) but give no details as to the "discrepancies [that]
remain." Is there anything about those discrepancies that bears upon this
matter?
Best regards,
Gene Z. >>
Here is the relevant portion of Anderson's reply:
<< Gene,
Seven years having passed since I wrote the Carpenter sketch, I doubt that I
can reconstruct exactly what my sequence of thoughts was, but here goes. I
will call them "Considerations" rather than "Discrepancies."
Consideration One: I was confronted with two sets of records, those published
by Janet Pease and by Myrtle Hyde. The source cited by Pease was the IGI,
and I certainly would not have relied on those. As best I could tell from
what Myrtle wrote, she was relying on the research of others, done eighteen
years earlier. I knew nothing of the research skills of either Gerald K.
Deacon or H.C. Smith, and I suspect that on this basis I was unwilling to
accept these records without reservation, although they certainly looked more
reliable than those set forth by Pease.
Consideration Two: There was a gap between the Bath baptisms and the Wrington
baptisms, from 1584[/5] to 1590, into which two or three children could be
placed.
Consideration Three: Although Agnes frequently appears as Annes or Annis in
New England records, and "Agnes" and "Anne" may be considered
interchangeable, one also sees families in which there are both an Agnes and
an Anne or Hannah.
So, based on these considerations, I was probably reluctant to make the
identification of the Anne baptized in 1593 with the wife of Samuel Fuller.
I have no idea why I assigned 1585 as an estimated date of birth for Agnes,
probably just fitting her into a gap among the other daughters.
Were I doing this today, I would proceed somewhat differently. First, I
would consult with Myrtle to see what she could tell me about how she
acquired the records she published. Second, I would probably use those
records directly in the sketch, with a proper citation and caveat for each
baptism. Third, if I did then use the baptism for Anne in 1593 for the child
who became the wife of Samuel Fuller, I would add a note stating the
potential problems.
One of my most general guiding principles throughout the Great Migration
Study Project is to prefer errors of omission to errors of commission. I
learned this lesson while working on Mayflower Families Through Five
Generation Volume 2, and then being involved in the dustup over the third
volume of the same series, on George Soule, more than twenty years ago.
Incorrect leaps of logic, no matter how many times they are corrected in
later publications, will live forever. Since I spend much of my Great
Migration time trying to clean up after my more injudicious predecessors, I
try not to add to the clutter myself.
I suspect that you are correct to suggest that the Anne baptized at Wrington
in 1593 was the woman who became the wife of Samuel Fuller, as Agnes, but in
1995 I was obviously not willing to make that statement. ...
RCA >>
One needn't have an immediate interest in the family of Alexander Carpenter
to benefit from the wisdom contained in the next-to-last paragraph.
Gene Z.