Mistakes and How They Spread

I've been doing a good bit of research into some of the Gregg lines besides my own lately and recently, while searching for the name of Elsie Gregg's husband, I found a ridiculous number of records online in Rootsweb's World Connect that showed that she married first a Mr. Eves, and then second, Willard S. Gregg. Since I had just found the death record for Willard online, which clearly showed his wife as Emma and his parents as Samuel Gregg and Margaret Chandler, I knew there had to be a mistake, especially since Samuel and Margaret just happen to be Elsie's parents as well. By no particular surprise, none of the World Connect records happened to list a source for this particular mess, but it wasn't hard to figure out where it started - the infamous Hazel May Middletown Kendall book on William Gregg's descendant. Sure enough, on page 167, the mistake was there.

Tracking Down Marmaduke

No, not the cartoon dog, but Marmaduke Burr, several of whose children were buried at St. James Perkiomen. One of the ongoing frustrations of researching genealogy is coming across records that are just plain wrong and give limited, if any, sources for the information. Marmaduke’s record is an example, as many online trees list his parents as Joseph Burr and Mary Sloan, based on the marriage of that pair in 1798 at Newton MM in New Jersey. Yes, Joseph did marry Mary Sloan, but she died in 1801, making it rather difficult for her to be the mother of Marmaduke who was born in 1806. Her death is noted in the records for Haddonfield meeting in New Jersey.

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