THE QUESTION OF SARAH HERRICK

Have you ever had a feeling when you're doing family research that something
is off, that some piece of information or conclusion is just too pat? I've had that
feeling for sometime now about the marriage of Joseph Ellingwood & Sarah
Herrick, and it concerns an assumption made based on the estate settlement.

In her book The Ancestors and Descendants of Asa Freeman  Ellingwood and
Florilla (Dunham) Ellingwood Florence O'Connor has a transcription of the
settlement with the comment that Sarah Herrick Ellingwood must have been a
widow since the settlement mentions "Daniel Herrick, Jr.son of Sarah Ellinwood." 
But if that was so, who was this Joseph Herrick helping administrate the estate?

When I bought Leonard Ellinwood's The Ellinwood Family I hoped there would
be more information about Sarah but he made no mention of her, or Daniel
Herrick Jr. He merely used a blank line for Sarah's family name.

By that time, I'd already found records on the Early Vital Records of Massachusetts
website of a brother and sister, Sarah and Joseph Herrick, children of a Joseph Herrick
and Mary Woodbury of first Beverly and then Gloucester, Ma.  :

Sarah Herrick, b. 21feb 1723/24 at Beverly, Ma.
Joseph Herrick, b. Aug 1729 at Gloucester, Ma.

So it seemed likely to me that the Joseph Herrick helping Sarah Ellingwood with
her late husband's estate was her brother.


But there's that matter of  "Daniel Herrick Jr., son of Sarah Ellingwood." Alright,
perhaps Sarah had married one of her Herrick cousins. I started searching  for a
marriage record for Sarah and a Daniel Herrick. I've found nothing so far in
Massachusetts or New Hampshire for them. Then I found this at FamilySearch:

According to this, a Daniel Herrick and Sarah Ellingwood were married  in
Lyndeborough on 18Mar 1779.   

Now, I can find only two Sarah Ellingwoods in Lyndesborough: one the widow
Sarah Ellingwood, and the other her daughter, and while cousins often married
in colonial America, I am pretty sure half brothers and sisters didn't. So who was the
"Danlel Herrick Jr, son of Sarah Ellingwood" mentioned in the settlement?
I believe he wasn't the son of the widow Sarah, but actually her grandson, and the
first grandson of Joseph Ellingwood Sr.

I still need to find more records to further prove my theory. I can't find a birth record
for Daniel Herrick Jr, and there are some family trees on Ancestry claiming the younger'
Sarah died in 1755 but they don't cite any source for that death,.

I still, however, believe Sarah (Herrick) Ellingwood was a Herrick by birth, and not by
marriage.