Oldest Mother

#52ancestors Week 31 — Oldest

Oldest Mother in my Family Tree

 By Myra Vanderpool Gormley © 2018

 Genealogy is filled with conundrums. Sometimes just when you think you’ve wrapped up the research on a particular branch of your family, you discover a glaring improbability that sends you back to dig some more. 

One I’ve encountered a few times is what I call the “old” mothers problem — women having children way past their child-bearing years. I have seen many of them in online trees. The task is figuring out whether the basic birth and marriage information about the mother is incorrect, or is without valid evidence, or if there are just plain old typing or transcription problems. 

However, not only are the “old” mothers a problem, but the number of the children it is claimed they produced always turns on the alert signal for me. Did my Polly really have 16 children over a span of 32 years? Were they all single births? Might some of them have been her grandchildren? Where did any and all of the information come from about her and these children? Ah, that is where the basic problems usually lie. The information may all be from secondary sources or has been gathered from references unknown, unverified, uncited, and thus is unreliable. 

My Polly Price purportedly married Thomas Connally, about 1765, but as I searched through old notes, I discovered several conflicting places for this marriage — none of which I can verify. Was it in Virginia or North Carolina? Older genealogies (compiled by her descendants in the early 1900s) give both places. But they vary on the date. So far, I have not found a marriage record in either place. If, and that’s always the big IF, their eldest child was John William Connally, and if he was born 5 December 1765 in North Carolina, then an estimate of his parents’ marriage of 1764 or early 1765 is logical, but . . .

 Thomas Connally, the father, was bp. 12 September 1738 in Richmond County, Virginia (“Registers of North Farnham Parish [Virginia] 1663-1814 and Lunenburg Parish, 1783-1814”), but we don’t know when or where Polly was born. If she was born ca, 1740 (say, a couple of years younger than her husband), then she would have been about 57 years old when she had her 16th child in 1797. I don’t think so. 

In order to be the mother of 16 children as everyone claims, she would have had to been having children for 30 or more years, unless there were some multiple births, which none has been claimed, so a birthdate for the youngest child of this couple might well have been ca 1797 as determined from censuses. But Polly, must have been a young bride of about 14, because even stretching her age to be 45 when she had the youngest child, she must have been born ca 1752, not ca 1740, and thus would have been about 14 years younger than her husband. That’s possible, of course. But, I have no proof. 

My ancestor, David Connally, was No. 8 — the middle child of Tom and Polly. He was born 31 October 1776 and died 17 June 1848. His birth and date deaths are from his tombstone in East Point, (now Fulton County) Georgia and were recorded by Atlanta historian, Franklin M. Garrett, on 4 November 1930. In attempting to ascertain the birth years of the other 15 children, I’ve also searched for their final resting places in hopes their tombstones would provide additional information. Most members of this large family died before the 1850 census, which adds to the difficulty of sifting out all the Connallys, especially in northern Georgia. It appears that only Abner, William L., Christopher “Kit,” and Samuel W. Connally lived long enough to be enumerated in 1850 and thus provide estimations of their ages.

As best I can determine with the meager records found so far, Polly was having children for 32 years, starting in 1765 and ending in 1797. I find no indication that any of them were multiple births. Another possibility raises its head — maybe she is the second or even third wife and these 16 children are not all hers? However, no other wives for Thomas Connally have been claimed. If Thomas was married previously, that record has not been uncovered by researchers.

 Polly may be the oldest mother in my family tree, but I can’t accept the premise that she was having children in her 50s and as late as age 57 — not in the late 18th century. The only logical answer to this puzzle is that she married at a much younger age than has been assumed. 

If all 16 children are hers, as it appears they are, she certainly was a remarkable and obviously a strong woman. Yet, we know little about her — only the name of her husband, names of her parents (John Edward Price and Jane Prescott) and her children, and approximately when she died in Georgia (early 1820s). But when and where she is buried is not known. 

How sad. Polly, my 4-great-grandmother, I hardly know you.