OOPS!!! Captain Thomas Harris 1586-1682 is NOT Sir William Harris' Son?

I've edited and merged some of these accounts. (Though I don't actually manage any of them, I collaborate with many who do and I'm on the auto-approve list of several.) I certainly want to help correct the information and ensure I'm not propagating bad information! I haven't had time to fully investigate the situation, but I will soon. This is just a note to say I intend to help.

Can you merge the two Thomas' then edit the profile?

Thanks,

And this is something that we will all grow in investigating. You're quite right, none of us want to continually propagate the same errors over again. As I said in "collaboration pool," the problem is that is a fluid project. It is not static like a single family tree, wherewith soft research of compromising quality will create a Family Tree with royalties and anything you can think of. Add to it, no one is to "dare" question it's authenticity.

The energy spent with us online shows that we ARE interested in knowing our family's truth, whether good or not-so-good. Truth is our intent. I think the biggest hurdle is consensus. and source. We likely could be the ones that can research and find the correct ancestors to these branches.

I think this Thomas Harris is a close relative, whether nephew or cousin to Sir William, since they are from the same location. It's a matter of doing the research. But it's not my intent to place a person in my tree, to delude myself and others over royalty.

@Milton,

I don't think we'd want to merge the two Thomases. I guess it would be more like first finding the correct parents for Capt. Thomas Harris, and then see how they may relate or not relate to Sir William Harris. Most researchers conclude he must be a relative to Sir William, but how.

Okay, so how _should_ the tree look? If I'm reading it correctly, there are two Thomas Harrises, both of them sons of William Harrises? Is that right?

I will provide you the tree here:

http://www.geni.com/family-tree?ref=ph#6000000003962613089

This Captain Thomas Harris is NOT the son of Sir William Harris and ALyce Smith as shown in this tree diagram. The point is that many people who have included this family in their tree now have an error as to this Thomas Harris' ancestors. We have no information as yet who are the real ancestors. But we will discover such errors from time to time. We need to determine how to correct these errors.

Hope I'm clearer. If you haven't included this person in your tree, be careful not to include the erroneous information.

:)

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~confido/capthomas...

When I click on http://www.geni.com/family-tree?ref=ph#6000000003962613089 it tells me it can't fulfill the request.

Hi Michael,

Sorry about the confusion. Are you a Geni Pro subscriber? I'm saying that because I think there may be some limitations on being able to see the Family Tree if you're not subscribed. I have two accounts, one free and one not. So I think that's why you're not able to see the tree.

So sorry for the confusion.

Ann

I'm not a pro subscriber, but that doesn't seem to be the problem. Could you link to the account itself, not the tree? Maybe that would work.

Does the line then stop with Capt Harris? 1586-1682

Ann,
Not to spoil the fun here, but I cannot see anything in the William Harris will that at all warrants or even hints at your conclusions. Anyone who has done much colonial genealogy will tell you that old wills almost never mention children who have left the county (and far less the continent!) to reside elsewhere since it was unlikely the legatee would ever return to the ancestral home to claim it and any legacy would wind up going to the king. His not mentioning a wife merely suggests he died a widower. Additionally, such wills were often written hastily near the time of death and there was not much motivation for including historical information not pertinent to the legal business of the document.

Ann and Patrick, my reading of the evidence as presented is that while William Harris did have a son Thomas, that son died around 1617 and therefore was not the same Thomas Harris as the one who died in 1682. While this first Thomas was named in his father's 1616 will, he was not named in his brother's 1622 will, and Ligon's own statement is, "Between the dates of the two wills before mentioned, 1616, and 1622, no will nor administration of any Thomas Harris of this family is found, so he evidently was not deceased." The subsequent finding of the proven 1617 will at Chelmsford of Thomas Harris, son of the above-named William, would seem to clearly make Ligon's assumption disproved.

Ann, have you inserted this information in the profiles of the various Harris family members? If not, it needs to be included.

I suspect I was involved in part of this (the dating system in the display name appears to be the one I use).

I'd agree with Pam in that the best thing to do to prevent this sort of mistake is to insert pertinent information in the About Me page, so that if there are mistaken merges, etc., attention can be given to the mistake right away, and further mis-merging halted. Ideally, there should be information not only about important dates (birth, baptism, marriages, death), but also the relationships (parents, siblings, spouses, children). Biographical information wouldn't hurt, either.

It's frustrating to run into situations where there is no such information to work from, particularly when faced with merging profiles with widely varying information (same name, same relationship to a nearby family member, but the dates being off, etc.). And if the information isn't in the About Me, whether this is correct or not, I tend to feel like the profile was placed with not so much research. So the window for variation that I tolerate becomes broader. I'm probably not the only merger that feels that way.

But I'm always willing to assist with corrections on mistakes like this, where they are pointed out, and of course where the help is welcome.

With much documentation connecting Captain Thomas Harris to so many of the families in Essex also involved in the colonization of Virginia it is very difficult to accept that he is not closely related to Sir William Harris. Has the will of Thomas Harris in 1617 been truly authenticated? Odd that it only recently appeared when these things were so well documented by royals. Are there any cross references such as church documents, other family papers, etc to support this issue? If he was very sickly then there should be medical notations in journals. I do not mean to be a nay-sayer; I simply want to know for sure before I change my husband's tree.

This discussion is about Capt. Thomas Harris, Ancient Planter

This same subject has come up again

I've had a few nasty surprises like that - for instance, finding a verified list of the children of Rev. Haute Wyatt, and (surprise!) Nicholas Wyatt is NOT on it. So despite widespread belief that Nicholas was the Rev.'s son - he wasn't.

(It was always suspicious that Nicholas was a Dissenter who became a convinced Quaker, while the Rev. was definitely Church of England albeit with Low or Broad leanings - but people can change as they grow up. On the other hand there are lots of Wyatts in Devonshire, including a fair number of Nicholases, and the area was a hotbed of Dissent. So the most promising place to look for ancestors of Nicholas would be there.)

Then there was Frances White Wells...there was just enough circumstantial evidence surrounding her that I wound up splitting the difference and treating her as the daughter of Sir Richard White by his first wife, Anne Gray. But primary documentation is still missing.

The siblings named in the 1617 Will of Thomas Harris in England match the names of the children of Sir William Harris of Crixie shown on the 1612 Visitations of Essex and the unpublished records of the heralds at the College of Arms in London who hold a Crown Warrant to keep records of all families of nobility. This is the body that grants new coats of arms or revised one to sons inheriting a title, also for Burke's Peerage listings. The only sibling not named is his sister Alice who had committed suicide in 1615 over her unhappy marriage to Sir Henry Mildmay. This will was published in 1994 in "The Virginia Genealogist"
so it is not something that just suddenly appeared. yDNA from lining direct male Harris descendants show a possible match to the line of Sir William Harris d1616, but back 5-6 generations.

So all the children of Sir William Harris of Crixie are accounted for, and Capt. Thomas Harris is *not* one of them.

Negative findings, even when disappointing, are still informative.

Sounds as though he's maybe a scion of a cadet line - the Visitations, even when they're accurate (and they aren't always), are generally not much help with that sort of thing.

We must remember- back in history they leave children completely out of a Will. Now, laws state they must name all natural born children. My 4th great-grandfather left children out of his will, but they were written in the Family Bible. I would never use one source of information to make a decision. The UK keeps wonderful records on our ancestors. If a son migrated to America, he would not be even listed in a will. I would look for Birth Records, Marriage Records.

We must remember- back in history they leave children completely out of a Will. Now, laws state they must name all natural born children. My 4th great-grandfather left children out of his will, but they were written in the Family Bible. I would never use one source of information to make a decision. The UK keeps wonderful records on our ancestors. If a son migrated to America, he would not be even listed in a will. I would look for Birth Records, Marriage Records.

Late getting back to this, but: sounds as though the problem is that Sir William Harris *did* have a son Thomas, but he died in England in 1617, so can't possibly be the Thomas Harris who hared off to Virginia.