THE QUESTION OF LYDIA PHELPS' PARENTS PT4: CONCLUSIONS

I haven't been able to find any  a marriage record as yet for Jonathan Phelps and
Beulah Parker, but I am convinced that Jonathan was the son of Samuel Phelps and
Elizabeth Andrews and that Beulah Parker was the daughter of John Parker and
Joanna Ames.

 The reasons I've come to this conclusion:

Discrepancies in "Aunt Betsey"(Ames)Putnam's story about her parents.

1. Her statement that when Lydia Phelps met and married John Ames it
was his second marriage. There is quite a bit of information on John Ames
but there is no mention of a first marriage in any of it.

2.Her story that Lydia's parents were of Scottish descent:  I mentioned in my
last post that I recognized the names of Beulah's mother Joanna Ames in what
William Richard Cutter had written about the family. This is because I already had
Joanna Ames in my database. She was the daughter of my 8x great grandparents
John Ames and Priscilla Kimball, and she married John Parker. The Parker, Ames,
and Kimball families had been living in Massachusetts for over a century by the
time of Lydia Phelps' birth.

The probate file and Phelps genealogy information :

The match of the names of the children of Jonathan and Beulah in the probate file
with the names in Charlotte Helen Abbott's genealogy of the Phelps family. 
This gives credence to me of her identification of Jonathan as the son of
John Phelps and Elizabeth Andrews, members of two more long established
colonial Massachusetts families. I've used her genealogy of the Barker family as
a reference while working on my grandmother's family and found her to be
very reliable as I've been able to find records to verify her Barker genealogy.
 
Name Patterns:

Once again, the names of the children of Jonathan Phelps and Beulah Parker were:
Joanna
Lydia
Jonathan
Francis.
  
Joanna is also the name of Beulah Parker's grandmother in Cutter's genealogy of
the family.

Lydia is the name of  Jonathan Phelps' sister in Abbott's Phelps family genealogy.

Jonathan could be named for his father or a number of other men with that name in the
Phelps and Ames families.

Francis was a Phelps family name because of the marriage of Rev Francis Dane's daughter Hannah to Samuel Phelps in 1684. (Ironic considering the events of the Salem Witch trials between the two families.) They are my 7x great grandparents through my Abbott line.


I still need to find a marriage record for Jonathan Phelps and Beulah Parker,
but for the reasons I've given here, I believe they are my 6x great grandparents.

LOPPING A BRANCH OFF THE FAMILY TREE

Ouch!

It appears I have to do some tree pruning. Several of us
climbing our West Family tree have believed that Lydia
Phelps, mother of Arvilla Ames and the grandmother of
Jonathan Phelps West was the Lydia Phelps whose parents
were Jonathan Phelps and Beulah Parker. Last evening I
found fairly strong proof that is not the case.

You can view it here. The work is copyrighted and I won’t
say anything more while I try to contact the person to get
permission to blog here about it. I’m deleting my previous
Phelps ancestry post so as not to lead anyone else down
a wrong path.

On the good side, I am still descended from Edward Phelps
through Hannah Phelps, wife to Ephraim Abbott.

But I’ve lost the Andrews, Dickinson, and some of the Parker
lines. One of the hard parts of genealogy: removing ancestors
that are interesting when you find out they don't belong on the
tree!

Ah, the pain!