Do you ever start a genealogy task thinking it’s going to be quick and easy, but then find yourself mired in a mess? Or two?

That’s exactly what happened to me in the Tarbox branch of my family tree.

I’ve always been partial to my 3X great grandfather, George Rogers Tarbox, because he was the very first 3X great I discovered in the very early days of my family history research. That’s because the Tarbox family is an old New England family and they are all descended from John Tarbox, living in Lynn, Essex, Massachusetts in the 1640s.

George, though, wasn’t the problem. The first problem was his mother, Judith Haskell and then, much to my chagrin, the second problem was Judith’s mother, Judith Witham.

I’ve already shared the story about pruning the Haskell branch of the family tree because there were two Judith Haskells. One was born on 5 November 1780 and died on 12 May 1803, as the unmarried daughter of John Haskell and Hannah Parsons, in New Gloucester, Cumberland, Maine.

That was the Judith that a kindly town clerk told me was the wife of my William Tarbox. This was long before the internet age. In 2022, a reader alerted me to the death of this Judith, making it impossible for her to the the wife of William Tarbox.

In her place was Judith Haskell, born in 1781, probably also in New Gloucester. She was the daughter of Nathan Haskell and Judith Witham.

The pruning took place and I hurriedly corrected the tree (or so I thought) with the Witham line. Fixing the Haskell line was a minor repair because John and Nathan were first cousins.

So, my first snafu involved Judith Haskell, daughter of John, and Judith Haskell, daughter of Nathan.

Now I find myself in the position of another tree pruning along this same branch. I’m usually a pretty careful researcher, but this pruning happened while I was in the middle of an entirely different project and wanted to fix the tree quickly and get back to what I was working on.

Well, that didn’t work out too well as another reader contacted me via email asking about Judith Witham who married Nathan Haskell.

Here is the problem:

Daniel Witham and Lydia Sanders were the parents of Judith Witham, baptized on 28 June 1751 in Gloucester, Essex, Massachusetts. Nathan Haskell was born on 25 June also in Gloucester and he married on 27 October 1771. So, there appeared to be two young people who married a bit young for the time and place, but both were 20, and this seemed like an excellent fit for Judith Witham. It seemed especially so when Nathan Haskel and Judith Witham were married by. . . .Daniel Witham!

Well, the problem is with the Gloucester marriage record and one little detail not included in the abstract that I found:

We have [d. S. int.] – which means daughter of S. and intentions are also filed.

Now, this is an abstract of an original record and it could be that the letter ‘S’ was poorly written or wrongly interpreted, but I now think not.

Look at these Witham birth entries for Gloucester, Essex, Massachusetts:

Here is the original clerk’s entry (right page, top entry):

Here is an enlargement of the pertinent portion of the entry, which notes that Judith is the ‘Dauter of S. Witham of this Town’:

In this case, Daniel Witham and Samuel Witham are first cousins once removed and their daughters, both named Judith, are very close in age, probably born within a few months of each other (based on the somewhat ambiguous entry for Daniel’s daughter.)

What are the odds? I guess not as rare as I would have expected since this is the second generation in a row which has flummoxed me with cousins named Judith!

What does all of this mean? Well, the Tarbox branch of the family tree is about to get another lopping to update Judith Witham with her correct parents – Samuel Witham and Deborah Stanwood and maternal ancestors, too.