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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Nick Vogel on Friday 13 May 16 01:49 BST (UK)
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Asking a question about my ancestor Jonathan Fairbanks of Dedham Massachusetts. He is mentioned in the 1650 will of George Fairbanks, clothier of Sowerby, Yorkshire. There are arguing theories about who Jonathan's parents were. In George Fairbanks' will (he died unmarried and childless), he mentions his own siblings, as well as his cousins, and mentions a "Mr. Johnathan Fairbanks" although he doesn't designate his relationship to Mr. Jonathan. A copy of the will was sent "to his loving cousin Jonathan Fairbanks in New England."
One site asserts that the "Mr. Jonathan Fairbanks" mentioned was not Jonathan in New England, but was some cousin who became a local vicar. That doesn't make much sense to me because why bother sending a copy of the will to New England to show someone who isn't even a beneficiary of the will? It doesn't state what the relationship is to "Mr. Jonathan Fairbanks" but then sends a copy of the will to Jonathan Fairbanks in New England "cousin" to George the clothier, so I can't think of why Mr. Jonathan Fairbanks mentioned wouldn't be the Jonathan in Massachussets.
A lot of sites have been claiming that Jonathan Fairbanks of New England was a younger half-brother of the George Fairbanks of Sowerby, and that because they weren't very close, George describes him as a cousin rather than a brother. They say that in the 1600's cousin was a term used in general to describe kinsmen. That doesn't make much sense to me when he describes his siblings in the will as brothers and sisters, but then sends a copy to his "cousin" in New England, but maybe I'm wrong. Has anyone else ever heard of someone describing a half-sibling as a cousin back in this time period?
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Hi Nick,
Sorry I can't help but.......while researching a friends family, I came across a "half cousin" & to this day I have been unable to find the "true" connection but the surnames were very different.
Annie
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Hey Annie, thanks anyway. Another thing people are trying to figure out is if one of the candidates for father of Jonathan, was a George Fairbanks of Heptonstall, and if that is the same as another George Fairbanks who lived in Sowerby (a few miles from Heptonstall) who was the uncle of the clothier George.
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From memory didn't the British refer to North Americans as "cousins"?
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My grandmother used to refer to cousins, children of cousins, and cousins of cousins - if you see what i mean - as "Cousins". It seemed to imply a fairly close relationship, but not a sibling parent or child. A "Half cousin" as I heard it from the same generation, meant a child of a cousin, a step-cousin i.e., related only through marriage - or, to her, a cousin of a different generation! Oh dear. So hard to untangle. I'd quite forgotten about the "Half cousin" term until I read this
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I have never met anyone who is a half sibling being described as cousin. I would be surprised if it happened. After all, they were accustomed to describe stepmothers just as "mothers" in their wills, and I think a brother would be a brother, half or not. Cousin is a looser term for a more distant relationship, cb
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For the era you are referring to, in my experience the term "cousin" meant kinship of some kind, and it was a rather loosely used word. I have seen it refer to actual cousins as we know them, nieces/nephews, and more distant kin as well. Half or step siblings however were usually referred to simply as brother or sister, which confused me the first time I saw it, as the there were two surnames involved.
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In Shakespeare's time "Cousin" was used for a variety of relationships.
http://www.shakespeareswords.com/cousin
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Cousin could be used to imply a relationship of any sort
As could the term "in-law"
So if the half-brothers were not particularly close, either through age, distance or any other reason, then describing him as a cousin is certainly feasible
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Thanks very much for the replies guys. I haven't seen a copy of the will, but the sites mentioning it say that the handwriting on the back of one of the copies, addressing it to his "cousin" was different from the handwriting used to copy the will itself, implying there were two different people working on writing it. So having said that I don't know if the scribe would have bothered with how close the two of them were, or would have just called the cousins the cousin or the half brother the half brother, regardless, since the will seems to designate George's relationship to everyone mentioned, other than "Mr. Jonathan." Like I said, some people contend that Mr. Jonathan is not the same Jonathan in New England, but I don't know what the point would be in mailing him a copy of the will across the ocean if it weren't.
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Unfortunately there are some American family historians that will make connections that just aren't there.
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Yes, sometimes it does get frustrating, especially with common names like John, Jonathan, George, etc., and a family like the Fairbanks' of whom there were a lot in the surrounding parishes.
There are two articles I've been looking for online, though with no luck, to compare and contrast the arguments, one from 2012 trying to assert that Jonathan was the half-brother of George of Sowerby, the article is called "Jonathan Fairbank of Dedham, Massachusetts, and his family in the West Riding of Yorkshire," published in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, and another older article, written in 1961 by Clarence Almon Torrey titled "The English Ancestry of Jonathan Fairbanks of Dedham, Massachusetts" that says Jonathan's father was a George Fairbanks of the village of Heptonstall a few miles away, and that since Heptonstall's parish registers are missing from something like 1590-1600, that's why his baptism doesn't appear.
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Missing registers? That's convenient when you're looking to find a connection isn't it? :)
It's good that you're not taking their word for it, and checking their work.
I'll see if I can find these articles for you.
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Unfortunately there are some American family historians that will make connections that just aren't there.
Yes I just disproved one quite recently in the Millenium File on Anc which I'd never heard of before but it's about prominent pioneering Mormon families who emigrated to Utah and their connection back to England. Whilst they had the right fairly common names they'd been linked to the wrong family (mine) as there were two very large families in very similar places, and of course it's been copied multiple times over and over. ::)
I'm very interested to hear an answer on this the OP's question about cousins/half siblings as I've been looking at a lot of wills lately though none that early.
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**Edited to say I don't think the actual Millenium File went right back to the couple in question it was when other people had added it later to their trees then found what they thought were correct family, so I kept getting multiple shaky leaf tips which led me to them all. It only takes one person to make a mistake on their tree, then it's copied over and over. ::)
The Millenium File stopped but others continuued it.
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As you can see on the first page of this thread, BotB, there is a little doubt about it. I can only comment from my own experience, but have never seen cousin used in the context of half- or step-siblings. Just about every other family relationship mind you...... ::)
The link to the Shakespearean quotes is interesting, but it is a generation or two before the time of the OP's will. Unless there has been an academic study done on the usage of the word "cousin", I guess we will never know definitively.
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Cousin could be used to imply a relationship of any sort
As could the term "in-law"
So if the half-brothers were not particularly close, either through age, distance or any other reason, then describing him as a cousin is certainly feasible
Even in the modern age the terms Uncle and Aunt can be used to mean "close friend of the family, roughly the same age as the parents".
And the qualifiers "in-law" and "step-" are often (period-dependant) optional.
(side-bar; are step-relationships more common today than they used to be? Today people remarry after divorce, but I hadn't realised 'til I started this hobby just how very common remarriage after the partner's death was, pre 1900)
BugBear
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Unless there has been an academic study done on the usage of the word "cousin", I guess we will never know definitively.
Speaking as one who (when I'd done less genealogy) was fooled by a "brother" (in an old document) who was a "brother-in-law" (modern parlance), is there an information anywhere describing the various usages, and how they varied over time (and/or place) ?
BugBear
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It was very common if there were young children involved, Bugbear. A widow with a young family usually had little or no means to provide for them; a widower in a similar situation needed someone to look after his children, and run his home.
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Unless there has been an academic study done on the usage of the word "cousin", I guess we will never know definitively.
Speaking as one who (when I'd done less genealogy) was fooled by a "brother" (in an old document) who was a "brother-in-law" (modern parlance), is there an information anywhere describing the various usages, and how they varied over time (and/or place) ?
BugBear
Not that I'm aware of, but I am sure that if there is, someone will post a link.
Sometimes you need to look a little wider at the family circle; I confirmed that 4 men described as "cousins" in a will were actually nephews by looking at other wills and PR's.
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Having read numerous Wills from this period (and for that matter other periods) over the years I would also agree that it is more than likely referring to nephew. I've never seen it used in relation to a half sibling, they would tend to use brother or sister, as they would also generally for brother or sister in law. You need to look more closely at the siblings of the Will writer. If he had half siblings any of their children would be referred to as cousins also. Unfortunately, though, they were also known to use kinsman for nieces and nephews too. It can get confusing.
The use of aunt and uncle for non-relatives is a more modern courtesy from my experience, but you can obviously get exceptions.
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Thanks guys. Well for what it's worth I did find a transcript of the will here, though not much new info from it.
https://books.google.com/books?id=SgkIAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT27&lpg=PT27&dq=will+of+george+fairbanks+sowerby+clothier+1650&source=bl&ots=-QyhrWsQde&sig=55VmxvpxwWkPH19Pj8OXWolAhLA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjSqfXPpufMAhVFxoMKHaXKDnYQ6AEIOjAF#v=onepage&q=will%20of%20george%20fairbanks%20sowerby%20clothier%201650&f=false
It seems that John and Isabel Fairbanks (parents of George Fairbanks the clothier, author of this will) did have a son Jonathan, but the names Jonathan and George are used a lot over and over by all the Fairbanks' families in the surrounding parishes so who knows who was being referred to. Like I said, there's another George in Heptonstall about five miles away from Sowerby some people think is Jonathan's father, and then a "George Fairbanks, son of George Fairbanks" is mentioned in this will, and then there's some other relation named Jonathan Fairbanks (who some people think is the son of the George mentioned in the will) who became the local vicar.
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Nick, I had a look at some of the trees available on the net (not just ancestry), and I didn't see one that actually provided documentary proof of who were the parents of the New England Jonathan Fairbanks.
I had similar trouble for many years finding a link for my paternal ancestor in England; he came out to Australia, and I couldn't find any proof of where he came from, until I found a letter written to him by his sister-in-law. Without proof, you can say anything fits.
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In George Fairbanks' will (he died unmarried and childless), he mentions his own siblings, as well as his cousins, and mentions a "Mr. Johnathan Fairbanks" although he doesn't designate his relationship to Mr. Jonathan. A copy of the will was sent "to his loving cousin Jonathan Fairbanks in New England."
Hi Nick
I am no expert by any means, but when reading your post, it comes across to me, that the Jonathan in New England is George Fairbanks cousin or at least, a great friend and that the word "cousin", just wasn't mentioned in the main body of the will. It sounds like Jonathan was a favourite cousin and/or friend until Jonathan emigrated? . Why put "loving cousin" on a will, to someone who was distant or not close, as some people are arguing in the pro half sibling camp. If they were as loving as implied, and half siblings, then I would think it would say loving brother.
Just my thoughts anyway:)
I do wish you luck, its always hard trying to prove something when everyone else has something different to you.