When I first started this blog, my avowed intention was to publish the results of my research into the Wade family and to do so in a format that would allow discussion, comments and suggestions. I am happy to say that I have had some very helpful comments and some additions made to my knowledge of some of the Wade family. I hope to publish many more Errors and Omissions posts and thus have added the #1 to this post. Each of these will highlight new information provided or items that I have either omitted or have different information about. I hope to receive many more comments and suggestions and thank everyone who participates in making this a more complete and correct story of the Wade family.
First, a note about sources. There are numerous “official” sources that I have used for obtaining information about the Wade family and I am happy to provide any source information on any details I include in my posts – so please, if you are interested, please send me a comment and I will respond.
Secondly, there are some sources that are treasured by family historians, some perhaps well-known and others not as much. My top three sources for the information about the early Wades are:
- Wade, Daniel Treadwell, The Ipswich Descendants of Jonathan Wade (New York: 1897). This is an unpublished handwritten manuscript of which I have a copy. The manuscript was compiled by my great-grandfather and has proven to be remarkably accurate when compared to official vital records. The manuscript was supplemented with handwritten notes by my grandmother, Helena Mein Wade, who faithfully recorded records of her children’s and grandchildren’s genealogical events. I have used this manuscript extensively to guide me through the Wade family tree.
- Schultz, Doris P, Jonathan Wade of Ipswich Massachusetts (privately printed, Alexandria, VA., 1989). This study of the four generations of Wades beginning with Jonathan was completed by Doris Powell Schultz as a requirement for her Certified Genealogist certification. I came across allusions to the book in the early 1990’s and managed to find an address for Mrs. Schulz. I had the wonderful opportunity to talk personally with this very active and busy octogenarian who was kind enough to send me “the last copy (except for my own).” Doris’s 131 page book was self-published and bound in Indiana and contains, like Daniel Treadwell Wade’s manuscript, complete information about the first “four generations, with two extended to show Jonathan’s connection to his famous descendant, Colonel Nathaniel Wade of Revolutionary fame, and the line that left Massachusetts early to settle in Rhode Island.” Her thoroughness and her documentation of her sources led me to very useful and conclusive material that I have incorporated, with due recognition, into my own work.
- The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633, Volumes I-III. (Online database: AmericanAncestors.org, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2010), (Originally Published as: New England Historic Genealogical Society. Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633, Volumes I-III, 3 vols., 1995). This incredible body of work is known to every family historian and genealogist who has worked on the history of ancestors who came to New England in the Great Migration. It has used rigorous methods to verify the data and carefully discusses differences and difficulty in the data such as confusion between individuals of the same name, differing dates given in official documents, and so on. As the most recently published scholarly source on this era, it is required reading by anyone who hopes to achieve any reliability and accuracy in their own work.
Since genealogical events are by their very nature detailed, it is difficult, yet most important, to verify the data against the sources to ensure accuracy and completeness. In my last post, I omitted a number of pieces of important information which I must add in order to make the picture complete and accurate.
Under Jonathan’s child #3, Prudence Wade, who married Dr. Anthony Crosby, I included a single sentence that read: “They had one son: Thomas.” In fact they had 5 sons, 2 of whom died young, tow of whom were married and had children, and one of whom died without issue. Here is the revised version:
3) Prudence Wade was born about 1639 in Ipswich, Massachusetts Bay Colony,and died on 1 Sep 1711 in Watertown, Middlesex, Massachusetts aged about 72. Prudence married Dr. Anthony Crosby, son of William Crosby and Anne Wright, on 28 Dec 1659 in Rowley, Essex, Massachusetts Bay Colony. Anthony was christened on 5 Oct 1635 in Holme-On-Spalding Moor, York, England and died on 16 Jan 1672/73 in Rowley, Essex, Massachusetts Bay Colony, aged 37. They had five children: Thomas, Jonathan (died at 6 months old), Jonathan, Nathaniel (died young), and Nathaniel.
As we move down the family tree, I will further expand the details on the children including the dates of birth, marriage, and death and other information that may be available.
Still dealing with Prudence, I neglected to include her third marriage which followed the death of her second husband, the Rev. Seaborn Cotton. Accordingly, I will add the following paragraph to the details of Prudence Wade’s life:
Prudence married for her third husband, on 7 November 1686, Lieutenant John Hammond of Watertown, Massachusetts, she being his third wife. There is some discrepancy in the marriage dates in that Doris Schultz cites George Brainard Blodgette’s Early Settlers of Rowley, Mass. for the date of “7 November 1685/6” while Robert Charles Anderson in The Great Migration shows the date as 7 November [1686?]. I have used The Great Migration date since the Rev. Seaborn Cotton, her second husband, did not die until 19 Apr 1686 making a 7 November 1685 date a virtual impossibility.
Finally, I completely omitted five of the 6 children of Elizabeth Wade and Elihu Wardell. Here is the corrected listing:
5) Elizabeth Wade was born about 1643 in Ipswich, Essex, Massachusetts Bay Colony. Elizabeth married Elihu Wardell, son of William Wardell and Alice, on 26 May 1665 in Ipswich. Elihu was born in Nov 1641 in Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was christened there on 5 Dec 1641. They had six children: Elizabeth, Elihu Jr., Prudence, Jonathan, Susanna, and John.
Once again, I will include their birth, marriage, and death dates when I deal with them in detail later on.
Having published these as errors and omissions, I will now avail myself of the freedom of the blog world to update my original blog so that all these corrections can be embedded in the narrative account and provide a more complete picture of the families.
My thanks go out to Bonnie, a distant (genealogically & geographically) but wonderful cousin, for helping me with these corrections.
©Charles Labarge
The Wades of Ipswich, Massachusetts 1610 to 2010 