Wives of Jeremiah Harrison (1707-1798)

Question

I am an 8x descendent of Jeremiah Harrison (1707-1798) through his daughter Hester Harrison Cravens, and on down through the Cravens line, then Carter's  and Lee's of White County, Illinois.

I apologize if this has already been discussed, I have not seen the full discussion thread on the Harrisons.

I have seen so many conflicting accounts, some with sources and some without, regarding the wives of Jeremiah. I have seen everything from a first marriage to Elizabeth Patterson in about 1728 and then to Catherine Adams about 1744; but I've also seen the wives in reverse order with their maiden names reversed. Some researchers have suggested a Catherine Donnell in the mix, who may or may not be one of the two already mentioned. 

I have poured over the various submitted research, The Settlers of the Long Grey Trail, the Tubnis Hood Family book, the source documents among several genealogies, and I really don't know where the best likelihood exists of who Jeremiah's potential "first" wife may have been, or if there was another  (though it is clear his second wife's first name was Catherine (per his will)). Apparently either Catherine, or an earlier first wife was my 8th g-grandmother.

So I am reaching out to see if any have been able to gain any real clarity on the issue. 

Thanks so much for any thoughts you might have.

Answer 1

By any chance have you looked through these documents yet? I started to poke around to see if I could find you something definitive but then I realized there's around 600 documents here so I stopped.  I'll keep digging but figured I'd give you this to start with (provided you haven't already). https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/memories/LZ8D-P63

Also this one: https://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/guides/marriage-records/

Comments

Thank you very much, this is a helpful, more focused start! I too started through the documents but ran into the same thing - an  overwhelming number of docs to sift through.

I did go through the published books (Tunis Hood Families and Settlers of the Long Grey Trail) each having definite conclusions about this topic, but they were published so long ago and without modern day technology to share content and newly digitized (or found) records, so I believe the conclusions could be more definitive today.

Some well meaning researchers out there have created online trees with their conclusions (which contradict each other) but I trust the documented data to bring the answers. I'll start into the links you provided and see what pans out.

Please feel free to keep the conversation going for others who may have the same question.

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I am glad it was helpful! I understand what you mean about the well meaning researchers with the contradictions causing a lot of mix ups. When I'm doing my research now, I don't put anything in my tree from another persons information unless I see an online document to back it up....and even then, a lot of times the names are the same but the person is different! Happy researching!