Frances Wells (White) - Frances White Wells, again

After further research and much thought, I have concluded that Frances White Wells was most likely Sir Richard White IV's daughter by his first wife, Anne Gray (see: Visitations of Essex, 1612, 1634). She isn't specifically named in either Visitation, but they - like everybody else since - appear to have been primarily interested in persons who had the right to bear arms. If she was born circa 1620, she would be old enough to be sent to Virginia circa 1635, to marry Richard Wells sometime between then and 1640, and to have all those 10-11 children by 1653 without too much difficulty.

She also appears to be a major Weirdness Magnet and Strange Attractor, as I have found that every single family line - without exception so far - that gets within three removes of her in any direction, develops kinks and problems.

It is interesting to take a look at her father's Timeline (Richard Whyte, IV) .... by adding a link from Richard to his first wife's death, add adding for a conjectured marriage date before their first child (albeit maybe only weeks or a few months), the timeline makes clear that this Frances is:

a) in limbo between marriages of her father, of an unknown mother.

or

b) Anne Grey's death date and/or Frances' birth date need some tweaking (e.g.: maybe Anne died during or shortly after birth of Frances?)

or

c) Frances was out-of-wedlock daughter of Catherine.

Knowing the Whites are 'staunch Catholics', I would venture that (b) is more likely than (a), which is more likely than (c). Now, if there were some documentation to support any of these conjectures....

So, for now, we'll attach Frances to Anne Grey rather than Catherine Weston.

Make sense? (tagging: Private User, Carole (Erickson) Pomeroy,Vol. Curator, Terry Jackson (Switzer) )

Birthdate of c.1620 (same as Anne Gray's death) would also make her 16 yrs at birth of first child currently noted, which may be more likely than at 14.

Who has found an actual, documented death date for Anne Gray White? I haven't.

No one has ever found an actual, documented birth date for Frances White Wells, either - everybody calculates back from when they *think* she married Dr. Wells and/or had Mary Wells Stockett Yeats, and some of the calculations have been pretty bizarre.

I figure on a birth date somewhere between 1616 and 1620, which might have been "all she wrote" for Anne White, or Anne might have been able to hang on for a year or two.

However it went down, by the mid-1620's Sir Richard was a widower and looking to marry again. If you figure a marriage between him and Lady Catherine at circa 1625, with George as their first or possibly second child (if he wasn't the first, Elizabeth would have been - she's listed first of the three girls in the 1634 Visitation), you probably wouldn't be far off.

See also the notes in the "About" for Dr. Richard Wells.

I should add that there has been a lot of ASS-uming around Ms. Wells, to force her to be a daughter of Lady Catherine, no matter how wildly implausible it got, rather than of a "nobody" like Anne.

I've been so insistent about this because the dratted woman is my direct ancestor - so I'd really like to get the information right. (And I prefer the plain truth to a gilded lie, which makes me rather unusual, as I'll be the first to admit.)

Update: Ever since re-sorting the wives of Thomas Plummer Sr. and Jr., she *hasn't* been a direct ancestress. But she remains a Weirdness Magnet.

Mavis,
Frances is my 10th great grandma. Like you, I am more interested in the facts than (titles/royalty). I've been reviewing this branch thoroughly, trying to find out who her parents really were.
Have you seen this?.....Barnes, Robert W. "The Robert White Family." British Roots of Maryland Families II, Genealogical Publishing, 2002, pp. 240-242. Gale Genealogy Connect, [go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GENVRL&sw=w&u=azgcldo&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CCX4106200161&asid=45f8b0f55d183b3dd3370adbdeea481e]. Accessed 1 Nov. 2017.

(According to this ^^, Frances Petre is the same as Frances White who married Dr. Richard Wells in Virginia.)

I find this preface interesting:
"The Robert White Family
A line in question

Refs.: A: Pedigrees of Some of the Descendants of the Emperor Charlemagne, 2:308-309. B: ESBE:144 (cites the 1634 Visitation of Essex). C: HSPV 13. D: James Duvall Trabue, “A Reconsideration of the Wells-White Marriage,” MGSB 40 (1) 3-25.

This line was formerly questioned by Brice M. Clagett and John D. Baldwin, III, in Letters to the Editor of the MGSB, 35 (3) 468-469. He stated that no documentary proof of the marriage of Richard Wells to Frances White has been found and that the line was not recognized by either Harry Wright Newman or Gary Boyd Roberts. However the line was included in Volume 2 of Pedigrees of Some of the Descendants of the Emperor Charlemagne, edited by Aileen Lewers Langston and J. Orton Buck, Jr., with a Foreword by Timothy Field Beard, Genealogist General of the Crown of Charlemagne in the United States of America Repr.: Baltimore: GPC, 1986)."

Having a "Genealogist General of the Crown of Charlemagne in the United States of America" write the forward would seem to lend legitimate credibility to it, no?

I'd be interested to have your input on it.

Not necessarily. That "Crown of Charlemagne" beeswax is, let's say, ultra-inclusive.

Frances White Petre is absolutely NOT the same person as the Frances (White?) whom Dr. Richard Wells married. THE MATH DOES NOT WORK.

I went around and around this until I found out that Sir Richard White HAD had an earlier wife, one Anne Gray (daughter of Andrew Gray of Hinxworth, a very sharp lawyer) and had had *at least* two children by her. That gave an opening for an earlier Frances (reusing the same name for children of two different wives was A Minor Thing in those days) and provided a possible explanation for the mystery of *Jerome* White, Surveyor-General of Maryland, and why he would claim relationship to Frances and her daughter Mary('s husbands), and perhaps even why he left Maryland so abruptly without explanation. (*A* Jerome White, full brother of Frances White Petre, was involved in some degree with the negotiations to marry Mary of Modena to James of York (James II) - this just after Surveyor Jerome White bugged out. If it was the same Jerome White...?)

Newman was a stickler for hard primary evidence (most of the time), but he didn't have access to some of the research that has been done more recently. On the other hand, nearly everything regarding Frances Wells is circumstantial and anecdotal, therefore suspect. She certainly was *not* the daughter of Lady Catherine Weston, *nor* the same person as Frances White Petre, and that's as conclusive as it gets.