I could use some expert eyes to look at this unmerged match & give opinion.

Question

Stapleton-487  & Stapleton-50 may be the same person, but sources conflict as to birthdates . She had a daughter Mary, unknown birthdate that married Sir Nicholas Rigby. Sources I have found have him living in the early 16th century. This has me unsure of his mother in law's birthdate.  Profile 50 has it as 1414 & profile 487 has it as 1440.

 

I'm concerned that these may be 2 different people & some of the sources found have intermingled the 2 people into 1 profile.

Comments

A lot of research is reflected in this thread with significant sources of information.  As noted, some of the sources appear more reliable than others.  If I were tackling this issue, I would first, abstract the information from the sources and enter it on the biographies with inline citations, fact by fact.  Where there are apparent contradictions I would highlight them and note which source appears most reliable.  I would add the linkages to family members supported by the sources.  Then, and only then, I would either do a merge or explain why there are two different people and the merge is inappropriate.  

A merge should be the last step in doing research and bio write-up, not the first, because a merge is irrevocable.  Both of the profiles in question require considerable work -- a lot of which has been provided in this discussion -- before a merge is effected, although obviously enough current data is similar that a merge is always in the background of one's thinking.  

One of the profiles is an orphan.  If nobody is interested in the profile enough to adopt it, why is this discussion even taking place?

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Hi Jack...I decided to orphan the profile after posting this to G2G because I grew weary of debating the distinct possibility that this could be a different person. To me it is not apparent that the profiles are one & the same, despite what others believe. However, the profile has no connections & merging it with another profile will not adversely effect tree accuracy.

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@Doug, concerning the merge, as far as I am concerned no discussion ever succeeded to start about why the merge was blocked.

Just saying you have doubts is not a reason to stop a merge, only a reason to define your questions (FIRST) and then ask them.

I believe no one should reject a merge without first being able to clearly define why the merge is wrong.

I also think the unmerged match option is a very bad choice in all such cases. That comes up often on G2G and I think all experienced editors are aware that this is a messy and controversial option.

We do not have to reject or accept a match, or set it to an unmerged match. There are more options than those 3.

Second concerning improving the connections in this family in general, I can see how creating parallel and orphaned profiles is unfortunately an easy way out of some of the problems wikitree creates for editors. But I am not sure it is how we will make the genealogy better.

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If anyone wants to work on the genealogy, this source might well be a very useful one given that the Veteripoint, Stapleton, Musgrave connections revolve around Edenhall:

https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-2055-1/dissemination/pdf/Article_Level_Pdf/tcwaas/002/1913/vol13/tcwaas_002_1913_vol13_0023.pdf

 The shields of arms in the south window, near the chancel, were in the church in Bishop Nicolson's, time ; he says :—" In the great window here are the arms of Stapleton and Musgrave, Stapleton and Lowther &c." They really are, reading from left to right .—

1. Musgrave impaling Stapleton. 2. Veteripont „ 3. Hilton. and the Veteripont coat is that of Veteripont of Alston.

The first refers to the well-known match between Thomas Musgrave and Mariota Stapleton about the year 1450, whereby the Musgrave family came into possession of Edenhall. The second is, I think, put in wrong way round, an easy matter when you notice that the glass is made up of pieces of self-coloured glass fastened by lead strips. Thus it should be Stapleton impaling Veteripont, for the marriage of the two persons whose effigy you have just seen on the brass in the chancel and whose marriage took place about the year 1414

[...]

The more interesting glass, however, is that in the north and south windows of the chancel. You will see there four shields not in correct order ; the right-hand glass in the north window should be the first, and it Shows -MUSGRAVE impaling STAPLETON, with the inscription :—

Richard Musgrave Knight maried Johan, daughter and one of the heirs of William Stapleton.

If you consult Nicolson and Burn, Hutchinson or Dugdale, you will find that Joan is given as the wife of Thomas Musgrave of Edenhall, and only Denton, to whose accuracy Dr. Wilson lately paid a tribute, correctly states that it was MARIOTA who married that particular Musgrave (Accompt, Tract Series, p. 12o). The Inq. P.M. of William Stapleton is quite conclusive —" ` Mariota qui fuit uxor Thome Musgrave armigeri defuncti."

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And the pedigree at the end of this article both agrees and looks very useful in terms of details it provides:

http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-2055-1/dissemination/pdf/Article_Level_Pdf/tcwaas/002/1913/vol13/tcwaas_002_1913_vol13_0022.pdf

NOTE TO THE MUSGRAVE PORTION OF THE PEDIGREE. The Inqq. p. mortem of the Musgraves of the later portion of the fifteenth and the earlier half of the sixteenth century show without any possibility of doubt that the family which came into possession of Edenhall was that of the second son, Richard Musgrave, and the elder Stapelton daughter, Joan, widow of William Hilton. Every printed pedigree that I have seen, and every MS. pedigree, every one even of the sixteenth century and seventeenth; is curiously wrong save one—that made by Sir John Lowther about 1640. But he gives only Richard's descendants, and alludes in no way to those of Thomas and Mariota, and this pedigree itself is confused and very troublesome to make out. The inscription existing in Rev. J. Hodgson's time in Kirkby Stephen Church tells us, in its pathetic way, what happened :-

Hic jacet Ricardus Musgrave, miles, juxta Elizabetham uxorem ejus et Thomam filium et heredem eorum ; qui obiit IX° die mensis Novembris A.D. MCCCCLXIIII cujus anime propitietur Deus. Amen.

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A short note was written about that Ragg article I just posted, which raises concerns especially about the Hilton connection (which I am not sure Wikitree is reporting):

http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-2055-1/dissemination/pdf/Article_Level_Pdf/tcwaas/002/1929/vol29/tcwaas_002_1929_vol29_0030.pdf

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Denton's accompt of Cumberland, cited above as a good source, is online here: https://archive.org/stream/cu31924104091743

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Just to note a contradiction between the Hist Parl article on William Stapleton d 1432 and the Vipont pedigree.

Hist Parl has William marrying his son to his stepdaughter Margaret, but the pedigree makes Margaret to be the daughter of Nicholas the younger, not by Mary, but by an unknown previous wife.

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In case it helps, here is another old Vipont pedigree which claims to show the Musgrave and Stapleton connections. It is another Ragg article:

http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-2055-1/dissemination/pdf/Article_Level_Pdf/tcwaas/002/1911/vol11/tcwaas_002_1911_vol11_0021.pdf

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Apparently these Stapletons aren't a branch.  They came from a different Stapleton, north of Hadrian's Wall.

They could be extinct now.  Or there might still be a few lurking in the high forests.

Answer 1

I can normally follow logical discussions pretty well. But I must be missing something here. I can not follow the position of this type of merge needing to be a last step because "irrevocable". The logic seems to come from habits which are not relevant to this wiki or at least not to cases like this?

1. We are not talking about breaking a physical construction like a house down, but just some code on a website.

2. This is a single orphaned profile with no link etc, and all information on it matches the other non-orphaned profile. What doubts do we have and what extra work might be created here?

The profile basically just says that a Joan Stapleton married a Musgrave (first name not certain, dates not certain, parents not certain). And we have a profile for that person.

What am I missing?

All questions I can understand are about other parts of this person's family tree and have no connection to any discussion about this merge?

Comments

Yes. I only looked quickly but thinking about what the mill (/garbage disposal unit) should do, perhaps to avoid future problems some would should post a note on that Maud profile to explain why we know she did not have the daughter named Alice.

(Someone also has to look at that Wikipedia article, but I think it has spread to several articles there.)

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Collins's version goes back to Adam

http://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb10278556_00170.html

It loses the dvp altogether, and makes the grandson the son, with a knighthood.

But then Sir Richard is made to be nephew not son, and his DoB is 1423, which is about 40 years too late.

I think this explains why there are 2 Joans with different dates.

Betham's version

https://books.google.com/books?id=5ikwAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA79

still loses the dvp, restores nephew to son, and brings back the 2 doubled generations, and Sprotborough.

The mysterious co-heiress of Sprotborough is shown somewhere to be a daughter of Isabel Deincourt, all of whose kids were born by about 1325.

Apparently there's a good reason why so many sources fail to mention the peerage.

https://archive.org/stream/completepeerage01cokagoog#page/n434/

 

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The early Thomases are also confused.  It could be there never was a dvp.  Somebody might have sowed the seeds by assuming that the Baron was dead when he stopped being summoned to Parliament, so "documenting" a death that never happened.

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The baronetages also have two different daughters marrying Henry Wharton

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Look at the next page of Betham which is the generations I have been looking at (Edward III descents). It seems instead of being able to decide which generation the girl who married Martindale was in, she got put into 2 different ones (12 and 13). It seems to be difficult to know which of the younger children were in those two generations (also looking at more pedigrees).

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CP2 supports the theory that the Baron had an obscure son (by 1st wife Roos) who died vp, so the heir was the grandson.  So that'll be where Hist Parl got it from.

So no Quincy line through Isabel Berkeley (given as 2nd wife not 3rd).

The other spurious wives are all absent - no Countess of Huntingdon or Countess of Cambridge or Dacre or Fitzwilliam.

Roos could be descended from William the Lion etc, but the VCH article (North Yorks, Youlton manor in Alne parish) didn't find the evidence.  Apparently she was disinherited by her father.

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/yorks/north/vol2/pp85-91#fnn109

 

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IPM of a relevant Roos? http://www.british-history.ac.uk/inquis-post-mortem/vol8/pp434-448

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Yep looks like he was the last Roos of Youlton.  His daughter Margaret was the 1st wife of Baron Musgrave.

But apart from South Holme he entailed all the property to his wife and his other daughter Joan, who married an Ellerker.

"William de Roos of Hamlake" was the 2nd Baron, Ros-25, who had married Margery Badlesmere and died in 1343.  The said heir was his under-age son William, who later died sp.

All of which is totally consistent with one of the Rooses of Helmsley, or his father, having subenfeoffed a chunk of spare property to a younger brother, for the junior line to hold of the senior line for a barbed arrow, a pound of pepper, and 1/8 of a knight.

Question is which generation.  The 1st Roos of Youlton was there by 1246, so he could be an unknown younger son of the Magna Carta baron.  Can't be later, could be earlier.  If earlier, less juicy ancestry.

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I don't see the connection between the Roos of the IPM and Roos-25.  Roos-25 is covered by Richardson (Royal Ancestry, IV, 491 but there doesn't seem to be any overlap to the IPM.  19 Edward III, by the way, would be 1346, so that would be the year of the IPM following the death.  Think we need at least one more link to tie it all together!

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Ros-25 is the late father of the landlord of the deceased.

We don't have a profile for the deceased, William de Roos of Youlton, or any of his line.

But the IPM says he held Lynton etc as a tenant "of the heir of William de Roos of Hamelak who held of the king in chief, a minor and in the king’s wardship, by service of a barbed arrow yearly".

Hamlake is Helmsley, the seat of the senior line of the clan, the Barons, so this looks like the common situation where some property is settled on a junior branch as a subtenancy.  The senior line continue to hold as tenants of the king, and the junior line hold as subtenants of their increasingly distant cousins at a low rent.

So in 1345 the Youlton branch's overlord at Helmsley Castle was the 3rd Baron, Ros-39, but he's not named because he's under age and hasn't taken possession yet, so he's identified only as "the heir of" the person whose estate he's inheriting.

I'm figuring Ros-25 the 2nd Baron, d 1343, was probably about 4th cousin of the deceased.  Closer would be more interesting but probably unprovable.

 

Answer 2

To everyone involved in this discussion....THANK YOU!  This type of intellectually stimulating discussion leads to great genealogy & a healthier tree. I'd give you all best comments, if I could.

Answer 3

And thanks to this

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/361864/cokaynes-complete-peerage

we now have the CP2 version.   Two independent primary sources to show that the IPM made a "curious error".  It was Mary who married (1) Hilton (2) Richard.

Who had which kids, wouldn't like to guess.

 

Comments

In this version the descent is linear - Thomas is the heir of Sir Richard (m Betham) and Thomas's heir is his son (by Joan), Richard, known as Richard the younger until his uncle Richard died.  He married Joan Clifford (desc Edw 3).

I'm suspecting Richard and Mary only had the one child, Mary.

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Did you look at the TCWAAS articles I posted above? Anyway, now I am focusing on the similar problem of the next generation. Sir Richard and Sir John, two brothers, married an aunt and a niece who both descended from John Clifford and therefore from Edward III. During the next century, different genealogists have had to work off the many records of border skirmishing, which the Musgraves seem to have been very good at managing. But it is not easy to know how many Johns/Jocks, Thomases, and Cuthberts there were. Two targets:

1. If I can come up with ANY line to modern times for Sir John I will be happy. I think I am starting to feel happy with one I found online.

2. Sir Richard seems (according to the articles of THB Graham) to be the male line ancestor of a bastard named Jock A Musgrave, who had songs written about him and who seems to have had surviving progeny.

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Of course CP only follows the senior line, straight down to the de jure 19th Baron.

Answer 4

OK, my friends, I'm at a rest stop on this amazing excursion, and ready to ask you to take a look at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Stapleton-50.  Progress to date:

1.  Joanne Stapleton has a new ancestry.  Previously she had York Stapleton ancestry grafted on to her Cumberland Stapleton father.  Now she has a line of four Williams preceding her in Cumberland.

2.  We have actively looked for evidence of a second Joan, but found none, which addresses the original question.  So I have re-proposed the merge, and in preparation for it, focused the discussion on Stapleton-50, which will be the surviving profile.

3.  We have uncovered a monster issue regarding Joan's spouse.  Two sisters married two brothers, and both documents and genealogists have mixed them up.  I've struggled to present the conflict coherently, and the present write-up at Stapleton-50 is my best effort.  It's been confusing and I just switched spouses back once more this morning.  How this is resolved will of course affect the next generation, too -- which children belong to which parents?

So I'm proposing that the couples are Joanna and Thomas Musgrave, and Mary/Mariota and Richard Musgrave.  There are a number of other profiles that are in process and will be affected by this, so please take a look and weigh in --  am I on the right track or have I missed something?

Comments

OK, so here is what has happened so far :)

1. While working on Edward III descents I find many obvious things to fix, I post a few sourcing notes and keep working. You can not do everything at once, although I try sometimes.

2. Having been dragged away from doing that useful work I think I have made all sourcing complications quite clear now.

3. The original merges I proposed are still not done. They had nothing to do with this specific marriage question. No source ever proposed two Joans. The Musgrave family still lies scattered in various parallel lines, including some with Edward III descents. Various spoilt children have their own version of Mum and/or Dad. 

So coming back to Jack's remark: "I expect we'll then find evidence that a particular child belonged with a particular parent, and of course, [...] often I don't even touch the data field and family linkages until the biography and citations are clear". Hmmm. Is that approach not putting the horse before cart?

If you touch a merge proposal and do not know of any doubts about it, that still seems like a type of "touching" of linkages to me. :)

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Jack, I find your description of your work stranger the more I look at what you've done. You did not leave connections alone at all, but went right into the profiles I was still working on. Why did you disconnect Edward [[Musgrave-441]] from his father Richard [[Musgrave-514]], turn that Richard into an uncle and invent a new father named Simon [[Musgrave-790]] who has no father? I do not see how any of this helps resolve the question about Stapleton marriages.

Please have a look at the IPMs and dates on Musgrave-514. His heir is Edward. You have covered that article now in copy-paste information from the Stapleton question.

Interesting that one of the IPMs says his mother was Joan though?

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It is a terrible mess. I will try to recover by converting the new Simon into a "new Richard" but the other Richards are all now mixed, and hard to edit because they have so much cut-and-paste on them, apparently cloning itself. Might be better in future to make a mini-pedigree on a project space page first?

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Concerning the Stapleton question, I see CP (who we cite for Simon, but who clearly have a Richard in that place, like everyone else) found another record for a couple named Richard and MARY. (They take Brownbill's side over Ragg.) "Moreover, Richard Musgrave and Mary his wife entered
the York Guild of Corpus Christi in 14.73 (Surtee: Soc., p. 88).

I am sure Mariotas sometimes became Marys, but I think we need to be careful about assuming they always did.

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I think I understand one more thing Brownbill is saying. I agree that Richard who died 1491 and had a 30 year old son could not come from a marriage which happened after 1457 (when Wm Stapleton died and he had one daughter who was a Musgrave widow and one who was a Hilton widow).

This makes it hard to believe that the male line went Richard-Richard-Richard, and Ragg does in fact do this. This is not a question about the mothers though because both Ragg and Brownbill think Edward's mother was Joane.

Something to think about: Mary is a name which only appears on records that create a conflict between records. Everywhere else, the sister of Joane is Mariota. I think we have no primary record which says Mary (that exact name) was a sister of Joane? I think the link is made by saying Mary was a Hilton widow, like William Stapleton's daughter, and so she must be the same as Mariota, and William Stapleton's IPM must be wrong to say that his Hilton daughter was Joane.

Anyway, concerning the Stapleton marriages we need to pick a serious option and annotate and mark as uncertain. But we have to be careful to avoid splitting up more of the Musgrave family into parallel lines that will be harder and harder to fix.

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Andrew, my purpose in working on the Musgraves was to see if I could find clues to the marriages of Joanne and Mariota.  I added Simon because WikiTree already had a profile for a Sir Simon Musgrave, and the material I had found, which cited Richardson's Plantagenet Ancestry, referred to a grandfather of Sir Simon who was also named Simon.  So I created a profile for the grandfather Simon.  Now that Simon has become a Richard, which I think makes him a duplicate profile that has to be merged away -- and if there is in fact a Simon Musgrave, grandfather to Sir Simon Musgrave, that leaves him without a profile..  I think we work in different ways, and I have no horse in this race.   We have resolved the issue of duplicate Joans which I endeavored to help resolve.   I will check the files I have worked on, remove anything which is glaringly mid-process, and take myself out of this project.  It feels glaringly unfinished, which I regret.

I believe Richard Musgrave 504 and Richard 68 are not the same person.  They are in different generations.  Therefore  I rejected the merge.  Musgrave 779 is the much more likely candidate for merging, but the profiles have not been filled out so one is working in the dark.   Nevertheless, I'll reinstate the merge.  As I said, I have no horse in this race.  

I do thank you for the extra clarifying work you did on Joanna's profile.

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Hi Jack, I will commit to these profiles for a day or so, and try to work on resolutions on all issues including getting the merges done.

As usual I have lots of opinions about how Wikitree could work better. :)

1. I think the merging system is the cause of this diversion. I call this a diversion not because there is not a real issue with the Stapletons, but because there is lots of work to do on Wikitree and so it should not normally be necessary to stop one person from making clear improvements. Wikis work as long as chicken and egg problems do not keep getting created. The unmerged match and profile manager system in pre 1500 profiles creates them constantly. When two questions arise about one profile, on a wiki it should be allowed and encouraged to solve ONE AT A TIME, rather than going for perfection all at one moment.

2. Instead of copying and pasting unfinished ideas and notes around multiple profiles, I think that in that phase of work it is better to stick to one profile or even better, a project page which helps others also keep track. In this case, not to forget, I actually was doing that - not for the Stapleton question, but for the Simon question it was very relevant. You see there that Simon is named as the father of Edward by Collins and basically no other source. Collins is a derivative source and often contains errors. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:Lionel_of_Antwerp_descendants#.5B.5BClifford-239.7CThomas_Clifford.5D.5D

I never found these Musgraves handled in Richardson by the way, so if you found a reference please let me know.

3. Several of the directions you started moving towards are based on very weak sources, whereas there were strong ones available. I gave you a lot of links, which you copied from, but somewhere in the drafting process you clearly lost track of which quotes came from which sources. It can be important to go for the strongest sources as quickly as possible, and keep notes.

4. A result of the broken merging system is that you keep seeing people say that two profiles can not be merged because (a) the information on the profiles are not clear and (b) the two people must be in a different generation. How can you say both (a) and (b)? In the case of the Richard Musgrave who m. Betham (a) is true and therefore (b) can not be a valid opinion. Surely we all realize that in Wikitree "birth years" such as "before 1421" often come from events that happened long after birth, during adult life. So a 20 year difference in "stub" articles is common and understandable given the wikitree policy of not allowing people to create needed profiles unless they have a birth or death year. We should not forget that?

5. Just to make it clear, we all know there are ways to get merges done more predictably. You just have to change all the information so that 2 profiles look identical. Cynical though, if the aim is to get a second opinion? I do not like working cynically so I tend to post the links to sources etc, and I hope no one rejecting a merge will ignore that information. It just never works. I understand that, but it is very frustrating. I blame the system.

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On the Stapleton question, after going over it from every direction (or a lot of directions) I actually think it still comes back to something very similar to what we had before:

1. Mother of Richard who died 1491 is Joane. Apart from this being one thing Ragg and Brownbill agree on, she is mentioned as alive in his IPM (apparently not often noticed) and Richard does not yet hold Edenhall etc like his descendants did.

2. Father is Thomas. Ragg (and Hale) raise good points, and Brownbill does not get rid of them, but Ragg's resolution did not create consensus and has at least as many problems as the more common solution. It does however justify several relationships being marked as uncertain.

If anyone can see a problem with that reasoning please say so.

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The last source from Brownbill to check is perhaps the best, and removes some doubts. The Close Rolls definitely say, in 1480, that Richard is the son of Thomas and grandson of Sir Richard, who was a close connection to Bethams. We already got his mother's name from his IPM, and it was Joane.

Eventually I will move all the debate notes to a project page I think so that I can link to it from multiple profiles, and only keep critical records in each profile.

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OK, I have created a project page so I can shorten some of the profiles and add to some others. Also it can be a place where people post the latest evidence! https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:Musgrave_of_Eden_Hall#The_Sibling_Problem

I think there might be more complications in this families so we can add sections when needed.