When editing an article for the Mayflower Descendant, I try to look for references the author might have missed, which, in turn, can sometimes lead down a rabbit hole of further information only tangentially related to the article at hand. The following concerns an upcoming article in our Winter Issue by Rich Hall on the Mayflower ancestry of U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois. The article is quite interesting, as it adds an additional generation on Senator Duckworth’s lineage for which she joined the Daughters of the American Revolution.[1] The Senator’s line has a number of generations of people marrying several times, with spouses who were also married several times. The following is one such example.

The Senator’s great-great-great-grandfather Augustus Stanley Smith of East Hartford, Connecticut (1825-1910) was married three times; his first wife, Electa, was the Mayflower descendant, by whom the Senator descends from John and Elizabeth (Tilley) Howland. Hall’s article described Augustus’s third wife Sarah Chipman, whom he married by 1864 – when their son Stanley was born – as “born in 1829, died in 1906, and ... buried at Union Cemetery, Waterford, Connecticut,” referring to the gravestones of both Sarah and son Stanley. Please note that Sarah is not an ancestor of Senator Duckworth, only the third wife of her ancestor, so the following account was a tangential pursuit regarding the overall article.

Noting Sarah’s birth in 1829, I initially thought a first marriage shortly before 1864 was somewhat late for the time, and I wanted to get both her marriage and death dates. I checked the Connecticut Death Records Index, 1897-1969, to get Sarah’s full death date, and learned she died in New London. I then went to the New London Vital Records on FamilySearch, which had the full death information, including her full date of birth and birthplace, and full names of both parents – Samuel Chipman and Phoebe Tift. Then, within these same New London Vital Records, I found Sarah’s marriage to Augustus on 8 July 1861. While the marriage record does not state how many times either party was married before, since the bride was listed as “Sarah Chipman,” I assumed this was her first marriage. While I could not find Sarah’s birth in New London in 1829, her death record provided the full date. I considered the facts on Sarah to be “complete.” Not so fast!

Although the marriage record does not state how many times either party was married before..., I assumed this was her first marriage.

My colleague Gary Boyd Roberts looked over Hall’s article and suggested I check the 1970 Chipman Genealogy, since most Chipmans of New England are also descendants of Mayflower passengers John and Elizabeth (Tilley) Howland through their daughter Hope Howland, who married John Chipman. Sarah was there with her parents on page 194. Except instead of noting her marriage to Augustus Stanley Smith, it said she married John M. Skinner in 1847!

I found a marriage between John M. Skinner and Sarah Chipman in New London on 5 December 1847, but then things started to get confusing. I found John with a wife Sarah up until 1863, when a son John Franklin Skinner was born in Rhode Island (two years after Sarah Chipman married Augustus Smith). However, this last John F. Skinner was the result of an 1859 Rhode Island marriage between John M. Skinner and Sarah E. Wilmarth. This same John M. Skinner was married again in Norwich, Connecticut on 25 March 1868 to Juliette Corbin, and appears with her in the 1870 and 1880 censuses with children by his [second?] wife Sarah. Was this even the same John M. Skinner who married Sarah Chipman? The short answer, yes!

Sarah Chipman was with her parents in the 1860 census under the name Sarah Chipman, but she was not with them in the 1850 census, when Sarah and John M. Skinner were also living in New London. Finally, the lightbulb went off – DIVORCE!!

I checked Connecticut Divorces: superior court records for the counties of New London, Tolland & Windham, 1719-1910, and there on page 128 was the following summary:

The full court docket is also available here on FamilySearch. This was the second time recently I used this index and the full divorce record for a Mayflower Descendant article. In both cases, the divorce records supplied substantial genealogical information; this other article also prompted me to make a rather elaborate chart showing the various interconnections between those families who were also in New London County.

When I mentioned this earlier marriage of Sarah to Rich Hall, he told me he had seen the Chipman genealogy, but since it mentioned that Samuel and Phoebe Chipman’s daughter Sarah married John M. Skinner, Rich had thought this was a different Sarah Chipman, and he had not looked at the marriage or death records to show Sarah (Chipman) Smith was the daughter of Samuel and Phoebe. I, on the other hand, did see the marriage and death records, but didn’t consider this earlier marriage until seeing the Chipman genealogy, which I only checked thanks to Gary. Always helps to have a few fresh sets of eyes to see if anything might be missing!

Note

[1] Senator Duckworth’s great-grandmother Daisy Dean Amick was raised by her maternal grandparents, who were identified as her parents in some records, when she was actually a child born to her grandparents’ elder unmarried daughter.