A question about naming conventions of the 18th century.

[OnionPatch]

Last edited Sun Jan 18, 2015, 04:11 PM - Edit history (1)

I've been searching and searching for a 4x great grandfather who was supposed to be living in Washington County, PA around 1800. I've searched every record I can find for him but can only find another man with the same name. I ruled this guy out at first because he had a wife and children that didn't match up to my family.

However the closer I look, the more clues I keep finding that point back to this man and the possibility that he was married twice, first to the mother of my direct ancestor and two other children as a young man and later to another woman at the age of 37. The dates and all the clues I'm finding (including other family ties and even possible autosomal DNA links, etc.) line up perfectly for this theory except this: There is a child named Mary and a child named John in both batches of children. I feel I can probably rule him out because of this. Or....could someone in that time period actually have named some of his children from a second wife the same names as some of his children from a first wife? His first children would have been nearly grown by the time he had the second batch and both sets of children would have been living in different towns, about a hundred miles apart. Still, no one would do that in this day and age. Too bad I can't find a will.