Re: A Possible Wife for John Alston of Wake Co., NC, ca 1774
-
In reply to:
Re: A Possible Wife for John Alston of Wake Co., NC, ca 1774
Mary Williams 3/18/06
Hi, Mary.I just noticed that you responded to my message and quite some time ago.Thanks very much.I didn't receive automatic notification, so sorry for the delay in responding.
I tried to send you an e-mail message, but I guess it didn't get through.
A problem with the idea that these legal manuevers reflectJohn Alston's attempt to adopt Mary's children from another marriage is that the children are all named after people in John's family.For example, as you know, John's mother was named Christian and his grandfather was George Lillington.Philip and Lemuel were also names used in the Alston family.Why would Mary Humphries and an unknown first husband name their children after John Alston's relatives?
I would like to suggest the possiblity that the children were John and Mary's but that some defect was found in their marriage that rendered it invalid, thus making the the children illegitimate, at least legally speaking.That would explain why no other last name for the children was noted in the records--because the children were Alstons already and had always used that name.
I agree that other explanations are possible.But the Mary Alston in John Humphries's 1801 will had to be married to some man named Alston.Frequent interactions between Mary's father and brothers and John Alston can be found in the Wake Co. records and they were all neighbors on Ellobey's Creek.John definitely had a wife named Mary according to the 1790 Wake County records and I think Mary Humphries is a good candidate to be that wife.Maybe more evidence can be pieced together with further research. I hadn't really noticed that all the kids were named after John's relatives until I went to reply to your message.Talking about these things with other interested people is helpful.
Thanks again for replying to my message.
Charlene