Anne (Dudley) Bradstreet--Watch Those Dates

Randy Seaver posted a link for Tombstone Tuesday to this posting regarding Anne (Dudley) Bradstreet, the New England poetess.  I want to point out two things about the posting.  The first is that despite someone being famous, very little can be known about that person genealogically. The second thing is that people are careless [please insert nice, caring, P.C. word here] about their own ancestry.  If you post things to the Internet, a public forum, which I feel are less than correct statements, I feel the obligation to point that out.

Anne Dudley lacks definite birth/baptism and marriage records.  Her relative age has to be deduced.  The memorial tombstone uses the dates 1612-1672.  The poster, then notes that Anne was married to Simon Bradstreet in 1628 in Hardingston (no county given) England.  That of course would make her 16 at marriage.  There are several reasons why this cannot be true.  Anne's high social position (daughter of Gov. Thomas Dudley) along with the convention of the time, means that she most likely was at least 18 if not 20.  16 year olds getting married is a 19th century notion that people incorrectly place into the 17th century.  

So what do we really know?  Anne's eldest son Samuel died in Jamaica in August 1682, aged 51 years.  He was Harvard College Class of 1653. His birth can be estimated at ca. 1631 using this information, although both sources I'm using give ca. 1632.  So Anne was married no later than 1630-1.  Based on that date, I would then estimate her birth as ca. 1610.  Looking at what we know about Thomas Dudley, this works.  He is married on 25 April 1603 (at Hardingstone, Northampton, England--this is the place he married, not his daughter).  His first child, Thomas,  is born ca. 1605 based on his going to Cambridge University--A.B. 1624, A.M. January 1626/7.  Second child, Samuel has a baptismal record of 30 November 1608 in Northampton.  Anne would be next.  Based on the usual two year cycle of child birth where a mother nurses, 1610 is a good approximation for Anne's birth.

So, the best information makes her dates ca. 1610-1672, with a marriage date of ca. 1630.  See: Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins 1620-1633 (Boston, Mass.: NEHGS, 1995), I:584-5 (Dudley) and 213-14 (Bradstreet).  Also, Dean Crawford Smith and Melinde Lutz Sanborn, The Ancestry of Eva Belle Kempton 1878-1908, Part II: The Ancestry of Amanda Spiller 1823-1873 (Boston, Mass.: NEHGS 2008), pp. 49-99, the best treatment of the Bradstreets, including all the English generations, in print.  

Comments

[Randy Seaver]

Hi Martin.

Point taken.

I found a christening date "somewhere" "way back when" for 20 March 1611/12 in Northampton in Northamptonshire. I checked the LDS FamilySearch site to see if that specific christening is listed in the IGI from a parish register and it is not.

The sins of genea-youth come back to haunt me!

I do have the Great Migration Begins sketch for Bradstreet somewhere in my bookcase...

Will update my database too.

Cheers -- Randy