Richardson Research Questions

If you follow my blog or have visited my website, a major research focus of mine is my Dad's RICHARDSON family.


I've come up with a series of research questions that I am going to focus on for this family.

1. Who were the parents and siblings of Jonathan (I) Richardson? 
2. Where did the Richardson family live before Leyden, Mass.? 
3. What was the name of Jonathan (I) Richardson’s wife? 
4. What other children did Jonathan (I) Richardson have besides Jonathan, John, Joseph, and Daniel? 
5. Was William Richardson (son of John) born in Ontario Co, New York or in Vermont? 
6. Who were the parents of George O Pierce (grandson of William Richardson, son of John)? 
7. What was the name of the wife of George O Pierce? 
1. Request sent to Onondaga Public Library in Syracuse, NY for NYS Vital Records Index lookup for both marriage record and death record. 
2. Received following citations: 
1. Marriage: George O. PIERCE, m. 9 May, 1885, Venice, #5177 
2. Emailed Venice Town clerk for instructions on how to order copy and costs on 3/30/2017. 
3. Death: Hattie Pierce, d. 1 March, 1897, Canadice, #9088 
8. Who were the neighbors of the Richardsons in Lot 70 of Livonia? 
9. When did John Richardson move to Ontario County? 
10. When did the family of Sarah Richardson and Asa Davis discover and convert to Mormonism? 
11. When did John Richardson and his wife Betsey Phillips die? 
12. Where were Jonathan (II) Richardson and Rhoda Thompson during the 1830 census? 
13. How many children did Jonathan (II) Richardson and Rhoda Thompson have? 
14. Is William Harrison Richardson (b. 1814) son of Joseph Richardson and Abigail Fisk the same William Henry Harrison Richardson that died in Lisbon, Juneau Co, Wisconsin in 1874? (Where were his male children born?) 
15. Did William Ryder Powell and Mary Martin actually marry? Did they divorce? Is William Ryder Powell the father of Mary Martin’s son John Powell? 
1. https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/New_York_Vital_Records#Divorce_Records 
16. Was William Ryder Powell prosecuted for horse stealing in Livingston or Allegany County, New York? 
1. Probably in the Supreme Court of either county. 
2. https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/New_York_Court_Records#Types_of_Criminal_Courts

Richardson conundrum

So I ordered (via fax) copies of the documentation for Jonathan Richardson Sr (the progenitor in Livonia, New York) from the DAR last week and they came on Monday.

I was excited to see that they had included documentation of later generations that I didn't expect.  Also, copies of four deeds from Franklin Co, Massachusetts (at the time of their creation, the land was in Hampshire County).  These four deeds appear to fit with the fact that a Jonathan Richardson (occasionally identified as a "Jr") sold land in Leyden, Massachusetts, around the time that the Jonathan Richardson family appears to move from Massachusetts/New Hampshire/Vermont/eastern New York, and appear in Livonia.

However, it also brought up more issues.  The documentation include a circa birth date (c.1742) and a place (Brattleboro, Windham Co, Vermont, which I *guess* could be correct, considering that Brattleboro was the first Vermont settlement [1]), as well as a wife's name: "Hannah Warren."

WHERE DID THIS NAME COME FROM?

I have not seen "Hannah Warren" on any document; I have not seen the name Hannah; I have not even seen a name for a wife of Jonathan Richardson Sr.  I know he had one - men obviously can't give birth - but her identity is a mystery to me.

Of the aforementioned Hampshire County deeds (now Franklin), there are two where Jonathan buys land, one in 1794 and one in 1796, and two where he sells the land - both in 1804.  (I plan to fully transcribe and post these later.)  The two where he sells land do not include a wife renouncing her right to dower (for a great post on dower, see The Legal Genealogist for an example in Michigan; the comments discuss Massachusetts not having repealed the right of dower until 2008, to take effect in 2011[2]).  So now I am really at a conundrum.  Is this "my" Jonathan?  Is it his son, Jonathan Jr?  Where is the wife that should be there, if, as I hypothesize, this is "my" Jonathan Sr?  Jonathan Jr was already married in 1804 so if it was him, his wife Rhoda should have signed away her right to dower.  I was under the impression via the 1810 census that she had moved to Livonia with the family, but maybe I am operating under a false assumption.  That could be a sister or sister-in-law rather than a wife.

The other choice is that the researcher did not think those pages important, and so did not copy them and include them in the DAR application!  But now at least I know that there is something there.

But I am still at an impasse as to connecting these two men as one person, and if either of them are really the man that supposedly served in the Revolutionary War.

*spin, spin, spin* These guys give me hurt-y brain.  On the plus side, at least I know that I am not the only one - I just got an email from a distant cousin that explained that she stopped work on this line because they made her crazy.

(I am tempted to put a LOLcat here, but I will deny myself the pleasure of silly cat photos.)


[1] Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com), "Brattleboro, Vermont," rev. 17 June 2012.

[2] Judy Russell (The Legal Genealogist, legalgenealogist.com), "Reversion of Dower," 17 April 2012.