Opinions wanted on cleanup of PGM immigrant Joanna (Blessing) Towne, parents, siblings [closed]

Question

To make this already long post less long, I'm not going to recap all the current profile setups and the research of W.G. Davis in his 1957 TAG article and the lack of helpful parish registers and wills regarding this early New England immigrant and her ancestors (NOT her husband William Towne and their later life, this is England-only).

In summary, there are 4 paths to follow for cleanup, de-duplicating and documenting this family so if you'd like to weigh in, please pick one or propose a new one.  There are some merges etc. required but let's not get hung up on that at this point.

1. The John Blyssynge-1 who married Joan Preaste in 1569 at Somerleyton, Suffolk, is the father of children born there starting in 1571 and then, Joan Preaste having died and John marrying first a Margaret (also died) and then another Jane/Joan, is also the father of Margaret Blessing Buffam (1590), Joanna Blessing Towne (1595), Alice Blessing Vermaise (unk) and likely Julian Blessing Goose (unk) the first 2 of whom were born 10 miles away at Caister on Sea, Norfolk and 3 of whom married at nearby Great Yarmouth.
2. John Blyssynge and Joan Preaste were parents of all the children 1571-1595 and the priest wrote the wrong name down for "mother" when Margaret was christened in 1590.
3. John Blyssynge-1 etc. is father of a John Jr. Blessing (no christening found) who was father of the four Blessing women and was married to a Margaret and a Joan.  Don't get distracted by the mysterious "William Blessing", I believe that John Blyssynge-1 likely had William at Somerleyton in 1575, but he is not found in the Caister parish register as a father and John Blessing is found there, so we move on.
4. Same as above but John Jr. had only one wife, the priest mistakenly wrote the daughter's name down as also the mother's name for either the christening of Margaret jr. or Joan jr.  

There is an unsolveable (so-far) sub-plot, was the Julian Blessing who married Thomas Goose in 1622 at Great Yarmouth the Julian born in 1571 at Somerleyton?  I say "no" because there were two Thomas Gooses born at St. Nicholas Great Yarmouth in 1591 and 1592 and either one of them seems a more likely candidate for the 1622 marriage to a younger generation Julian who would have been named for her aunt.  The older Julian Blessing would have been 51 at her first marriage, just not all that likely.  Or, this was "young widow Julian Unknown Blessing" who married Goose after her unknown prior Blessing husband died?  who knows...

I think we should align the profiles with one of these theories.  Right now it's a mish-mash and poorly & inconsistently documented.  Editing my earlier leaning after looking closely at dates, inserting a generation of John Blessing between Somerleyton and Caister on Sea requires that the younger man was married and having a child before he turned 18.  This is just not likely.  So now I'm leaning towards just one John Blessing but multiple wives because I still don't like asking Joan Preaste to have children across a 24-year span and we still have "Margaret" as the mother of Margaret Blessing born in 1590 AND of John Blessing born 1593.  No burial records have been found that would help solve this, or wills other than the ones in New England that Davis used to help prove that Margaret, Joanna and Alice were sisters (or at least half-sisters).

Comments

Freespace Page created to track this but I'm going to review the Hoover book before begining edits.

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The book "Towne Family: William Towne and Joanna Blessing, Salem, Massachusetts, 1635 : Five Generations of Descendants" by Lois Payne Hoover (Otter Bay Publishing, 2010) was reviewed on 18 Jan 2022 and it sheds no additional light (nor does it claim to) on the English ancestry of Joanna Blessing Towne.  Ms. Hoover cites Davis'' 1957 work which seems to remain the most informed publication on that English ancestry so far.  She asserts only that Joanna Blessing was the daughter of John Blessing and Jone (Unknown) which matches the Caister on Sea parish register.  She describes "Jone" as John Blessing's apparent second wife given that Margaret was the mother of his prior two children Margaret and John (Jr), again matching the parish register.  The author did not touch upon Joan "Preaste" at all, nor the age or origin of John Blessing, nor the 1597 and 1612 burials at Great Yarmouth of John and Margaret Blessing which is not surprising, as Davis was also seemingly unaware of those records.  In short, this book does not contradict or further support any particular origin theory of the parents of Joanna Blessing Towne and her sisters.

Answer 1

According to FreeReg, there is a son John Blessing, baptised at Holy Trinity, Caister,. Norfolk, 13 Jan 1593/4 the son of John and Margret.

It doesn't seem as likely that the priest would make the same mistake with the mother's name twice.  Though it does still leave open that the baptism of Jone Blessing the daughter of John and Jane, represents a mistake with the mother's name.

The digital copies of the written records for Caistor near Yarmouth are available in FamilySearch but I'm not sure if these are the originals or a later transcription (the handwriting does look similar throughout, which would suggest a later transcription)

Comments

FreeReg does have some other records that may help or confuse the issue even more.

Burial of John Blessing 29 Jan 1593/4 at Caister (this may be young son, baptised earlier that month, but doesn't specify that)

Burial of John Blessynge 23 Sep 1597 at St Nicholas, Great Yarmouth

Burial of Margeret Blessing 09 Nov 1612 at St Nicholas, Great Yarmouth

Two marriages of Margaret Blessing and Jone Blessing as already noted

Marriage of Thomas Goose, widower and Julian Blessinges, single, St Nicholas, Great Yarmouth, 31 Jul 1622.

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Actually the original record of the marriage of Thomas Goose and Julian Blessinges isn't that clear cut.  It looks like it is an abbreviation 'w' for widower and maybe an old fashioned 's' for single?

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Thanks John, I did see those burials but didn't bring them up since the post was already pretty long.  The young John seems pretty straightforward birth & burial but the 1612 Margaret burial was an oddball, I don't know where it fits in. The burials don't say "wife of" or "child of" and we are obviously missing a lot of register entries for this family.

I'm not crazy about "the priest wrote the wrong thing" theory, it's an easy out but the other option is missing a few more register entries for death & remarriages.

The Caister register looks like a later transcription, I agree but I hadn't gone through it so I'll look through that one.  It's definitely possible that the Goose/Blessing marriage is from the 1571 Julian Blessing, and maybe that "s"-looking character meant "Spinster" which would be appropriate at that age.

Frankly, none of those theories are provable with what we have so far so I'm not trying to say which is right or wrong, I think it's just a matter of picking one and editing/documenting the profiles appropriately so future researchers can understand why they are set up the way they are.

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If we take the transcriptions as 100% accurate copies of a priest who was 100% accurate, then the mother of Joane Blessing was "Jane", not Joan so eliminating Joan Preaste as her mother.  Once we vary from that assumption, we can say "maybe her mother WAS Joan" and "maybe Margaret's mother WAS Jane...or maybe all of their mothers was Joan..."  but it's obviously weak to say "the transcription was 100% accurate for one item but must have been wrong for the others" just to support one particular theory.  Back to my central point of unprovable given the current (lack of) information.

And just to make it more aggravating, there is a 1624 baptism to Thomas & Agnes Goose at Great yarmouth, and children of William and Isaac and George goose but none for Thomas & Julian.  Does this mean it was the 51-year old Julian getting married who of course would then NOT have children?  Or just more missing entries?  Or some other explanation?  lack of proof once again.

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Re: incorrect parish register entries, going back to the simplest explanation, I think it is that Joanna's mother was Margaret (just like the two prior children) and the priest or transcriber wrote the wrong mother's name.  That would also explain the Margaret Blessing who died in 1612, she would be John Blessing's second wife and the mother of his last 3 children.

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In regards to the transcription of the baptism of Joan Billing with a mother Jane.  The Genealogist (another collection of databases, not the journal) has the original parish records as well as the transcription, and in the original there is a blot on the second letter of the mother's name, making it look like an 'a', but otherwise the rest of the name looks exactly the same as the daughter's. I would think that originally it was the same name, which makes it more possible that the priest made a mistake and repeated the daughter's name for the mother.

Given the name Blessing is very rare, at least in the parishes of Caister and Great Yarmouth, then it seems reasonably safe to assume, that the Margaret Blessing buried in 1612 is the mother, and probably the John Blessing buried in Great Yarmouth in 1597 would be the father of the children.

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Is that a subscription database?  It seems like the explanation with the least number of mistakes would be Joanna Blessing's mother's name written incorrectly as Joanna when it should have been Margaret.  The 1597 burial of John the father would also eliminate another missing parish register.

Answer 2

My thinking on this sort of question is to ignore the books completely and go with primary sources. If there is not enough information, then say so and disconnect offending profiles with research notes. It may be that more information comes along and it is very difficult to fix lineages that are wrong once they have been set up. I just think that picking one of the theories is likely to lead to problems. I suggest that if the sources don’t support the theories, then disregard all of them until enough sources have been found to confirm. Unfortunately, there isn’t always an answer.

Best regards, Maddy

Comments

Thanks Maddy, I agree with you in general.  Davis in 1957 was careful not to over-reach his primary sources and his theory did fit all the records he had at the time, or at least didn't contradict them.

Now that we have more primary records available, it was time to incorporate those records and, in my opinion improve on Davis' theory as best we could.  So the way they are set up now is supported by all the primary records found to date.  I did not set up a mother on Joanna Blessing-3 Towne because of the difficulty in assigning one.  In order to assign one, we would either have to assume that a priest wrote her name as her mother's name by mistake, or we have to assume another set of missing parish records over a 3-year period when John Blessing seemed to live in the same parish the whole time.  I don't feel comfortable making either assumption.

My main objective was to clean up the existing mess that reflected misinterpretations of Davis and relationships that contradicted primary records both old and new.  If I've done my edits correctly and assuming the proposed merges go through, that will be accomplished.

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You’ve done a wonderful job on the profile and presented the evidence perfectly. Well done!

Maddy

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Sorry, I didn’t mean to post that last in bold type. Joys of an old iPad !

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I appreciate the compliment, and the creative use of font options ;)

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Brad, many thanks for your work on this profile. I appreciate the research time and effort you've invested in her, and! I'm in agreement with the current state of her profile.