Re: Sarah Dorsey m. Robert Shipley, Jr.
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In reply to:
Re: Sarah Dorsey m. Robert Shipley, Jr.
Virginia Martin 5/01/00
Re: Sarah Dorsey m Robert Shipley Jr:
Rachel DORSEY, daughter of Joshua and Ann (Ridgely), born 7/6/1717, died 12/14/1775 (QC Parish register). She married, date unknown, John WARFIELD of Warfields Range and is named in the will of her father (1747) as Rachel Warfield and also in the will of her mother (1771). John Warfield signs a receipt for inheritance from Mrs Ann Dorsey, 4/11/1772. This woman did not marry Robert Shipley and move to NC. See Dorsey & Nimmo, DORSEY FAMILY (1947), pp 38-39, 42ff, and J D Warfield, FOUNDERS (1904), 367-368 (and generally throughout).
Sarah Dorsey, daughter of Joshua and Ann (Ridgely), was born 5/27/1733 (QC) and died prior to 3/31/1804, when her will was probated in AA Co (JG2:271). She is named as Sarah Dorsey in the will of her mother, 1771, and also in the will of her brother Joshua Dorsey Sr, 1790. Newman, AA GENTRY, gave her as marrying __ Dorsey, but there seems to be no evidence she was ever married nor that she had any issue. Apparently she lived with the family of her sister Anne Dorsey, wife of Henry Ridgely; the heirs named in her will are 4 daughters of Henry and Anne (Dorsey) Ridgely (Anne Snowden, Elisabeth Warfield, Polley Sappington, and Sally Ridgely, the last described as "daughter of my late sister Ann"). Certainly she did not marry Robert Shipley and move to NC.
Note that DORSEY, p 47, erroneously attributes the 1804 will to Sarah Ridgely, born 1766 (QC), daughter of Henry Ridgely and Anne Dorsey, and gives her a non-existent marriage to __ Dorsey to account for the name. Sarah Ridgely (b 1766) married in 1806 (West River MM) to Jesse Tyson, Quaker widower. Her parents are identified in the record. FOUNDERS gives this correctly on p 352 but on p 380, probably inadvertently, identifies Mrs Tyson as RACHEL Ridgely, daughter of the same parents (who did not have a daughter Rachel).
All of the children of Joshua Dorsey and Ann Ridgely seem to be fully accounted for. Their names and birthdates are written in the QC register, of which Joshua himself was the parish clerk for many years. One of their daughters was Elisabeth Dorsey (1719-1803), who married her cousin John Dorsey (of Caleb) and left numerous descendants, of whom I am one. This is the earliest Dorsey-Dorsey marriage I'm aware of, though hardly the last.
The Shipley-Dorsey tradition seems to be fairly late (Warfield does not mention it in FOUNDERS), and no one to my knowledge has identified the Sarah Dorsey named in it. She does not appear to be placeable in the family of Hon John Dorsey (d 1716) nor of his brother Maj Edward Dorsey (d 1705) by his first marriage. The family of Maj Edward's second marriage is not as well documented as his first, though a woman who married by 1735 seems just a little old to be a granddaughter in the second family.
The Shipley-Dorsey-Hanks story itself may be incorrect, of course. FOUNDERS knows nothing of it, and in any case, the exact genealogy of Abraham Lincoln's mother Nancy Hanks is still unknown, as far as I am aware. Several different Hanks families claim to be hers but none had been able to prove anything more than a circumstantial claim.