Digging Into the Duggars

 

After finding a document regarding an exchange of property which named several children of Thomas Firth, my fifth great-grandfather, I was curious about one couple who didn't seem to fit into that profile. That couple was Howell Duggar and his wife Mary. Based on the pattern which seemed to be emerging from the connections in that document, I wondered about the possibility that Howell Duggar's wife might be another one of Thomas Firth's daughters.

Admittedly, contained among the signatures at the bottom of the indenture was one woman who signed her name as Polly Duggar, not Mary, as was named in the text of the legal record. Since Polly has traditionally been used as a nickname for Mary, regardless of the variance, I thought that was still a promising sign. 

Thanks to FamilySearch.org's Full Text Search, it didn't take long to uncover a marriage record from the Firth family's home location, Brunswick County, Virginia. The date on that record was December 21, 1795—about a year and a half after Thomas Firth had signed his own last will naming Polly Firth as one of his daughters.

The marriage register indicated specifically—and in quotes—that by the point of her marriage, Polly was "21 years of age."  On that December day in 1795, Polly was to become the wife of Howell Duggar, revealing the connection that had later included his name in the property exchange we had seen yesterday.

In 1799, as Thomas Firth's executor, Aaron Brown, wrapped up distributions from the Firth estate, Howell Duggar's name was once again mentioned, along with the husbands of Thomas' other daughters. And yet, as clear as those records may seem to be, there was one problem caused by these discoveries: there are other indicators showing that Polly Firth, daughter of Thomas, had been married before this point to someone by a different name.

Guess that means it's time to take a closer look at those other documents.