The date of birth formerly was given as 1710, so Geni flagged this as an inconsistency, since it would mean her parents were much too young to have children. So I've edited and left the birthdate blank. My main source of information is the Rutherford book on the Gassaways. None of the children of Nicholas Gassaway have source information on births and the Rutherfords even had to deduce which of Nicholas's three wives were the mothers along with the order of birth. The reasoning is pretty much sound but the fact remains that there are no confirmed dates or places of birth given there. For some reason Mary's birthplace is given as "Edgewater, Anne Arundel County, Maryland, United States" Which is also given as place of death. Does anyone know what the source of that information is? My opinion is that, if a piece of data is unknown or has no source then the data field should be left blank--with some exceptions.
However, a FamilySearch profile I will link to has birthdates for all of NG's children along with some other information. If correct, this would mean Mary's birthday was "25 December 1723 South River, Anne Arundel, Maryland, British Colonial America" Which is a much more likely birth year than 1710. Still, no source is given that I can find. This may be because I am not familiar with how to navigate the source information at FamilySearch--plus I don't have a membership at Ancestry.com so the one link I did try to go to had no info I could see. So I'm requesting that someone with better resources than I please see if you can track down the source--that's a very specific birthdate, so there should be something there somewhere. But until I see some kind of citation to source material, I don't trust it.
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LKSZ-QCW
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LC61-K3G
Also note that in the FamilySearch profile for Mary, her death date is given, but it is placed in NC, not Anne Arundel, MD. I would like to see corroboration of this fact as well. Short of this, I would like to know where the source for birthplace and deathplace (Edgewater) that is currently listed is and why it is locked if the source is not known, so in turn provable.
Note there are other problems with the FamilySearch profile of Nicholas. There is a second Mary Gassaway listed as a child of NG and Elizabeth Gassaway that is most likely not theirs. She is married to a Cheney, whereas the Rutherford book documents that the true Mary G married James Aldridge. There is also another Susannah listed and my four time great grandfather, James Gassaway, Sr. is not included as a child of NG and EG. So corrections need to be made to the FamilySearch info and is a big reason I don't trust citing it as a source at this time.
I intend to put some information in the Overview of Mary based on Rutherford and I will mention the putative birthdate given at FamilySearch and comment on it--I think that is the proper place for it until it is proven to be reliable. It may be a day or two before I can get around to it, tho. I also will make a photo copy of the relevant pages from Rutherford to list in Sources, I hope pretty soon.
