My name has been taken in vain, it seems.
Jeff Chipman <jeffchip9@hotmail.com> wrote:
I don't think there's any doubt that Elizabeth (Dale) Rogers was the
daughter of Diana Skipwith.
Incorrect. There has been doubt, raised here and elsewhere, by people
who understand this case and who understand the limitations of relying
on terms of relationship with alternative meanings, and on the partial
evidence of chronological termini.
So far nobody has delivered proof or in fact any evidence at all that
Mary (Dale) Harrison was not the daughter of Diana Skipwith.
This is what is known as a straw man. We are dealing with the temporal
recontructions of marriage relationships, with apparent
terminus-post-quem and terminus-ante-quem data only. Proof of a
mutually exclusive alternative is not required to cast the original
supposition into doubt.
OK. Let's review the case.
As some people know, the core of this is the issue of the maternity of
various children of Edward Dale of Lancaster Co., Virginia. His only
identified wife was Diana Skipwith (who happens to have documentable
noble ancestry, hence the interest and shrillness). In a short article
in TAG from 2000 (Charles Martin Ward, Jr., "A Refutation of the Alleged
Royal Ancestry of Katherine (Dale) Carter, wife of Thomas-1 Carter of
Lancaster County, Virginia," TAG 75 [2000], 27-29), it was pionted out
that Diana Skipwith used her maiden name in two documents in 1655;
therefore (Ward argued), Diana Skipwith was single as late as 17
November 1655. Ward then found that the earliest Diana Skipwith could
be *documented* as wife of Edward Dale was 9 June 1660. This is a
classic terminus issue: if we accept Ward's conclusion about the use of
the maiden name, then we have a 'terminus post quem' and a 'terminus
ante quem': we know Diana must have become Edward Dale's wife some time
between 17 November 1655 and 9 June 1660. Ward concluded that since
Diana was not Dale's wife in 1655, then Dale's eldest daughter
Katherine, who must have been born earlier than 1655, must have been by
another, previously unknown earlier wife. Taking the hypothesized
earlier wife, we also have termini for her: we know she was alive say
1653 (when Katherine, her apparent daughter, was born), and we know she
was no longer in the picture by say 1660 (to allow a decent interval
before the latest date Edward Dale could have married Diana Skipwith).
[* As an aside, I believe that a legitimate criticism might be made of
the maiden-name-use-disproving-the-marriage argument, if analogous
documents can be found, nothing has yet surfaced: the ones Douglas
Richardson discussed in 2001 differ too much from this case.]
So, given the 'terminus' or goalposts for the marriage, the logical next
step is, how does this affect our understanding of the maternity of
Edward Dale's children? Three children in question are Katherine (Dale)
Carter, Mary (Dale) Harrison, and Elizabeth (Dale) Rogers.
For good reason, Ward's article only looked at Katherine Dale Carter,
said in a contemporary document to have been the eldest daughter, who,
since she was married by 1670, appears to have been born by 1652 or 1653
and not as late as 1655 (if we take 17 as our minimum female age at
marriage here: it doesn't much matter which age we take for a customary
marriage minimum, though there is consensus that 15 is too young). Ward
argued that, accepting the Diana Skipwith documents as proving Diana was
not Edward Dale's wife in 1655, then we we must cut Katherine adrift:
she cannot have been Diana's daughter.
The next daughter, Mary, was known to have been alive on 16 Nov 1658,
when she was named as beneficiary in the will of one Vincent Stanford.
This means she was alive before Diana Skipwith was *known* to have been
married to Edward Dale. Therefore, her maternity has been cast into
doubt, though there is not enough evidence to say whether she was born
before or after 1655, which affects what category of doubt her maternity
is placed into. Years later, on 8 Dec 1674, Diana (Skipwith) Dale
called the then-husband of Mary Dale, Daniel Harrison, her
'sonne-in-law', in a power of attorney. The use of the term
'sonne-in-law' also does not prove Diana was Mary's mother. In a legal
sense, Harrison was her 'son in law' whether or not she was Mary's
biological mother.
The next daughter under discussion is Elizabeth (Dale) Rogers. If it
can be proved Elizabeth was born after 9 June 1660, then we would be
done: she would be known as a daughter of Edward Dale by his wife Diana.
Unfortunately there is no birthdate or firm terminus post quem.
Elizabeth was married by 12 Mar 1677/8. Unfortunately, this marriage
date does not prove Elizabeth was born after 9 June 1660, so one can't
be certain (by the only secure terminus we have for their marriage),
that Elizabeth was Diana's daughter. Of course, by simple chronology,
it seems more likely that Elizabeth was Diana's daughter than Mary. But
in terms of proof, both Mary and Elizabeth are in a sort of limbo
because their known and possible birthdate data *may* fall *between* the
goalposts for Diana's marriage.
Perhaps a diagram will be helpful [monospace font required].
Here I have layed out the termini for the Skipwith marriage, the
apparent approximate birthdates (or termini) for the daughters, and the
chronology of the deduced earlier wife. The only three firm dates
(marked with asterisks) are Diana's last spinster attestation, her first
married attestation, and the date when Mary was known to have been alive.
15 Nov 9 June
1655 1660
* *
Diana not | | Diana is
married | | married
to Edward | | to Edward
_________________|.....................|___________________
*
..---->..|.. ..--->| ...<-->..|..
Katherine Mary Elizabeth
m. 4 May living m. by 2 Mar
1670; hence 16 Nov 1677/8;
hence prob. 1658; m. hence prob.
by by 1653 m. by 8 b. by 1660/1
Dec 1674
----------|.........................>|
unknown previous
wife deduced;
living say 1653
dead by 1660
So, the apparent earlier wife was alive when Katherine was born, say
1653, and may have been alive anytime up to a decent interval before 9
June 1660 (which might only be a few months, for a widower to remarry).
But I would conclude from this review that:
IF we accept Ward's view of the implications of Diana's use of her
maiden name in 1655, then:
1. Katherine was not her daughter, and Edward Dale must have had another
wife.
And then:
2. We cannot be sure of the maternity of Mary Dale Harrison (Diana or
the other wife).
3. We cannot be sure of the maternity of Elizabeth Dale Rogers (Diana or
the other wife).
One can go further and say:
4. If Mary can be shown to have been daughter of Diana, then Elizabeth
is quite likely also her daughter, but we cannot be SURE that Katherine,
Mary and Elizabeth were married at the same age and in the order in
which they were born. But see #2.
The fact that no one has proved that Mary is *not* Diana's daughter is
meaningless. I happen to think it perfectly likely that both Mary and
Elizabeth are daughters of Diana, but it cannot be proved until the
goalposts can be brought much closer together or the birthdates found,
or until some unambiguous statement of maternity is found.
Elsewhere Jeff Chipman wrote:
... You really think you're going to be able to break this line
with that kind of crap, don't you? I'm going to see to it that
you don't. ...
Your intentions are quite clear. It's interesting, the lengths to which
people will go to attempt to defend cherished lines from the expression
of such doubts.
You seem to be invested in this line as a descendant. I wonder whether
you are mistaking the interest in the methodological question here for a
sort of Tonya-Harding strategy, to make one's own remote gentry ancestry
(if one has it) look better by clubbing competitors' lines in the knee.
The shrillness of the defense of this case seems rooted in the sense
that this critical attention is not fair: it is only the anomaly of
Diana Skipwith using her maiden name in 1655 that casts the date of her
marriage and the maternity of Dale's daughters into doubt. It is true
that no other evidence has been found to show that the deduced earlier
wife (who must have existed if Katherine was a legitimate daughter of
Dale and Diana was not his wife in 1655) even existed. It IS ironic
that if these families were *less* present in the surviving
documentation, the line might never have been questioned. But various
intelligent, disinterested people, who are drawn to genealogy for the
kinds of puzzles it poses, have now got drawn to this case.
Nat Taylor
a genealogist's sketchbook:
http://home.earthlink.net/~nathanieltaylor/leaves/my children's 17th-century American immigrant ancestors:
http://home.earthlink.net/~nathanieltay ... rantsa.htm