Elizabeth LNUs

Randy Seaver’s blog, Genea-Musings, often gets me thinking about things. His recent blog posting, “How Many Elizabeth “LNUs” are in Your Family Tree Database,” got me wondering, how many do I have? In my trees, women without known spinster surnames are easy to determine. I give “last name unknown” (LNU) individuals the last name of their spouse in parenthesis. It might not be standard, but I find it more descriptive than using LNU, “unknown,” or just leaving the surname blank. Anyway, in my Brown/Montran tree of about 4400 individuals, I have five Elizabeth LNUs. Of them, two are direct ancestors, a 7th great-grandmother Elizabeth (Mannin) and an 11th great-grandmother, Elizabeth (Posey).

Randy’s blog also suggests taking a fresh look to see if any on-line records now provide clues to the person’s surname, so I decided to take a quick look at my two Elizabeth LNUs.

Elizabeth [Mannin] (c.1725-…)

Elizabeth had five children that I know about. John, Boaz, Samuel (my ancestor), Henry, and Davis. John, the oldest, was born about 1750, so I guess that Elizabeth married Meredith Mannin about 1749. Meredith was born about 1720, so, I’m going to guess that Elizabeth was born about 1725. Henry and Davis were born in Buckingham County, Virginia so I speculate that the family might have came from Buckingham County, also.

My search of Ancestry yielded several entries that didn’t seem to fit what I think I know about Meredith and Elizabeth. However, there was another researcher’s tree that suggests that Elizabeth was born in 1730. I emailed the individual to find out if they might have a source for that birthdate.

I know that I don’t know much about Elizabeth. I appear to have lost the sources of the information that I do have, so I know I need to recreate my previous research. I also think the pedigree information that I have is questionable and needs a lot more research. I would love to hear from anyone who can shed some light on this family.

Elizabeth Humphery (1626-1676)

In looking at Elizabeth [Posey][1], I realized I hadn’t researched her since I found some other individuals GED files back in the 1990s. I had imported details from three different GED files, a practice I wouldn’t do today.

From those files I had entered/accepted the following:

Elizabeth was born about 1626.
She came to America in 1643 and settled in Maryland.
She married Francis Posey about 1643 in Charles County, Maryland.
Her daughter, Ann Posey (my ancestor), was born about 1650 in Charles County, Maryland.
Her Son, John Posey, was born 20 Jul 1652.
Her husband, Francis, died about 1654.
She married John Belaine sometime before 1663.
They had at least two children, Grace & Nicholas.
Her husband, John, died in 1663. 
She married Alexander Smith about 1665.
Elizabeth died before 1669[2].

Looking at what I have reminded me that I need to do some in-depth research regarding her, also. The good news is a quick search of Ancestry.Com found several Ancestry Trees that contain an Elizabeth Humphery, the wife of Francis Posey. That family tree also includes several sources. I’ll add reviewing these trees’ sources to my list of tasks and apply them to Elizabeth and the other family members as appropriate.

Again, I am grateful for Randy’s blog Genea-Musings. It makes me look at things I haven’t looked at in years and reminds me of the mistakes of my past practices.

Lessons remembered:

Be sure to fully document the sources of all facts.
Don’t accept facts other individual’s trees without doing a fresh analysis of the facts presented.
Use other individual’s sources as hints for research and make your own assessment of its applicability and validity.

Research Areas

Redo my research leading to Merideth and Elizabeth (LNU) Mannin and document how I got to them.
Do fresh research regarding Francis and Elizabeth (LNU) Posey.

Endnotes