This Blessing Story is not a Blessing!

Once again, I have ambled into a mess! The ancestry of my Joanna Blessing Towne is a confusing jumble of source information. I believe most of the details are accurate, but not necessarily placed in the correct place.

We begin with John Blessing/Blyssynge and his wife Joane Priest/Preaste who married 12 Oct 1569 in Somerleyton, Suffolk England. So far, so good.

In The Ancestry of Sarah Johnson, [1960]  Walter Goodwin Davis states that the Somerleyton Parish rector informed him that two Blessing children were baptized there: a daughter, Juilan in 1571, and a son, William, in 1575.

Davis goes on to add that three Blessing girls married in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England.
Margaret Blessing married Robert Buffram on 23 Aug 1613.
Jone Blessing married William Towne on 28 Apr 1620.
Julian Blessing married Thomas Goose or Vergoose on 31 Jul 1622.

A fourth Blessing girl, Alice, married a Firmage about 1616.

It is hard to tell if Davis assigned all four girls to John and Joane, or meant all but Julian to be William's children.

If the girls are intended to be the daughters of John Blessing then there is a major issue to be dealt with - Julian, if born in 1571, would have been 51 when she married. Sources for Thomas Goose or Vergoose have his birth about 1600. Talk about robbing the cradle!

If  Margaret and Joan Blessing were Julian's sisters, as several sources suggest, then the issue applies to them as well. Buffram and Towne were born in the 1590s.

Some sources have William Blessing, born 1575 to John and Joane, as the father of the four girls named above.

Returning to John Blessing and Joane Preaste and their family. The record for the baptism of Juilan [22 Sept 1571] has been located since Davis' article was published. A baptism for a William Rysynge in 1575 has been found, but not for a William Blyssynge. Possibly a transcription error? If the Blessings had other children, they were baptized in another parish.

In a court case in 1670, Joanna Blessing Towne gave her age as about 75, placing her birth in 1595. Assuming John Blessing and Jane Preaste were 18-22 when they married in 1569, Joane would have been well into her mid to late 40s in 1595. Odds were against childbirth at that age in the 16th century.

I think it can be safely said that the children of a couple married in 1569 were not marrying for the first time some 40-50 years later.

to be continued.....