Desire Howland Gorham

+3 votes
170 views
I show that Desire Howland Gorham is 11th great grandmother on this site, but the Mayflower society is telling me that I do not descend from her, and that my Sarah Hawes Shaw is a wrong person on my tree. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you, Jody
WikiTree profile: Sarah Shaw
in Genealogy Help by Jody Cleveland G2G1 (1.7k points)
retagged by Ellen Smith
[Edited to add link to profile]

3 Answers

+6 votes
Hi Jody - edit this post and add tags (mayflower, howland, help) so people in those projects will see your question.
by Shonda Feather G2G6 Pilot (415k points)
+7 votes

Hi Jody

In addition to the advice above, can you please clarify which relationship is in question? I looked at your connection to Desire Howland Gorham here:

https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:Relationship&action=calculate&person1Name=Howland-7&person2Name=Cleveland-2077

Are you saying that the Mayflower society believes that Sarah (Hawes) Shaw (1767-1850) is not the mother of Polly Shaw (1800-1880)? Or is some other relationship is in question? (If it is this one, you may wish to add 'Massachusetts' to the post tags in order to get help from people with research experience there.)

by Matthew Sullivan G2G6 Pilot (157k points)
The Mayflower society is saying that the this isn't the correct Sarah Hawes Shaw that is in my family tree. So the society is saying that I'm not a descendant.

To clarify: Sarah (Hawes) Shaw is said by the Society to not be the daughter of Thomas Hawes of Yarmouth? 

If that's true, forget about Thomas of Yarmouth, and Yarmouth in general. Start fresh with your Sarah Hawes and work backwards to find her death record and marriage record if you don't already have them. Look for the *original record* not an index item. Look for more information about her husband and children as well. The children's later census records and birth/marriage/death records may suggest where she was born. Follow her husband back to his origins to see where to look for further evidence for both of them. 

Your profile for her husband suggests that you know when he died, though you don't provide a source. If so, look for a will in the location where he died. He appears to have died before his wife, so she should be mentioned in any probate records for his estate. Also look for any land records that the couple may have produced. Any document along the way might provide that one clue to her origins. Or not. 

When searching for records for Sarah, be sure to look also for surname variations: Hawes/Howes/House. All are common in New England. And above all, don't fall into the trap of assuming that a match on a name is the same person, we've all done that at least once and it leads you into bad places in genealogy ;) 

+3 votes
Trees on Ancestry.com have Sarah's parents as Jacob Hawes and Elizabeth Hewins, just sayin'.
by Lynne Collins G2G3 (3.8k points)

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