The George Hubbards of Connecticut

I hit a snag the other night as I was researching the Hubbard family. Going back along the Sheldon line, I found a great grandmother by the name of Thankfull. This family was all in the Middleton, CT area in the early 1700's.

I had followed the Miller line back as far as I could through the male relatives, so I thought I'd look for the Hubbard family. I'd already seen their name pop up in a number of the same records so it didn't look like it was going to be overly difficult.

You would think that record keeping from this time would be missing or poorly kept. It happens that way sometimes, but I seem to find more vital (birth, marriage, and death) records for these people than I do for people of the 20th century. I untangled Thankfull from the rest of the group right away. I even found her father, Nathaniel Hubbard.

And that's where everything fell apart. There were two George Hubbards. Both were born within a few years of each other in England. Both immigrated around the same time. Both settled in Connecticut by way of Massachusetts. They even lived in a few of the same towns and both had a son, Daniel about 1645. Possibly even knew each other.

You see the problem here? Which one was my George? How was I going to get all these records straight when people already had the two of them tangled up in their own trees?

Ancestry.com gives you this great option of making your tree public to other members. It makes it super easy to connect other family members that other people have researched. The problem with it, is that some people just add records and names to their trees because someone else did. They don't look as closely at the dates or vital information as maybe they should. I've fallen into this sticky situation before too. (Remind me to tell you of the Joseph Moore/Blue Jacket fiasco sometime.)

So how can I untangle this crazy web? Well...I know that my George must be the George that died in Middleton. Why? Because the rest of the family settled there. It wouldn't make sense for him to have died in Guilford.

George of Guilford was also a little older. He married and had two children in England before he came to America.

 My George married Elizabeth Watts in Hartford, CT in 1640. I know I'm looking for an Elizabeth because I found records of Nathaniel's birth. And that's the final proof. George and Elizabeth Hubbard had a son, Nathaniel in 1652. They other George didn't have a Nathaniel. And Nathaniel is really important to me because he had a daughter, Thankfull who married a Miller who...ok, you see where I'm going.

I suppose they could be the same person. Elizabeth could be a second wife and they could have had these 15 or 16 children, but it's unlikely. And if you look closely at the dates, you realize that it's easier to see them as two different people with the same name. (Not all that uncommon actually.)

So, now that I've untangled the snag in my mind, I need to get all my ducks in a row on ancestry.com. Never fear 9th great grandpa George. I'll sort this all out in the end. (Here's a fun fact: You have 2,048 9th great grandparents. The number doubles with every generation.)

By the way...the picture above is from Middleton, CT. It has the names of my family on the plaques. How awesome is that!