Jen printed out some names from familysearch.org to take to the temple. When she looked close, she noticed that one of them - "Deborah Massey" - was listed as a male. It was pretty clear that was wrong, so I figured I'd dig in and see what I could do.
It quickly became clear that Deborah was obviously a woman, born in Salem, Massachusetts December 21, 1738 and died in Salem, New Hampshire September 28, 1757. The Massachusetts birth records were already connected on familysearch as were the New Hampshire death records, but no one had seemed to try to fix the gender. I figured it shouldn't be too hard, but I wanted to make sure I was rock solid in my justification before going further, and that's what opened the Pandora's box.
The Massey family had two Deborahs listed, one born in 1738 and one born in 1750. That hardly seemed likely, so I dug deeper. As I dug I found that not only was Deborah Massey listed as being born in Salem, Massachusetts in December 1738, but also listed as being born in Salem, New Hampshire in December 1739. It was the same parents - Daniel Massey and Abigail Baker - and with the same siblings but duplicate records in the different states and with the variation in birth dates! In fact, both sets of state records listed the same family with the same city names but different states.
Being sort of geographically challenged I looked on the map to see where the two Salems are. Turns out that Salem, MA and Salem, NH are about 25 miles apart. That's not very far apart, but for 1738 that's a day or two of travel depending on travel method. For the time that was a fair distance. I wondered if maybe they lived partway between the two, but it didn't make sense to me that they'd end up with records in both states unless, perhaps, borders had changed! I looked into the history of the colonial borders of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. As it happens, there was a long-standing border dispute between Massachusetts and New Hampshire that was resolved in 1740. Progress! Now to figure out where that border dispute occurred.
I found that part of the city of Methuen, Massachusetts was affected by the border change. The new border sliced through the city of Methuen so that the northern Parish of Methuen became part of New Hampshire and was renamed...wait for it..."Salem, New Hampshire." So, if the Massey family had been living in Methuen, MA in the north end of the city, then in 1740 they would have all of a sudden become residents of Salem, New Hampshire. That explains why all their family and death records would have been part of Salem, New Hampshire. However, it still didn't explain why they would have had records in Salem, Masschusetts - 25 miles away.
Daniel Massey and Abigail Baker came originally from Salem, MA. Methuen didn't really have a congregationalist church until the 1720's and even then it didn't have a solid presence and building until much later. The records for the Massey family in Massachusetts came from the St. Peter's Episcopal church in Salem, MA and include baptisms for some of their children. I suspect that whenever they had a child, the Massey family made a trek back to see family and have the child recorded in the family church and then some years later would come back later and have the child baptized in the same church. Once Methuen and Salem, New Hampshire eventually built up a stronger church presence they might have stopped the trek back to Salem, Massachusetts.
I'm left with the disparity in birth dates, though: December 21, 1738 or December 1, 1739. The Massachusetts records tie back to original church records. The New Hampshire records are updates done by hand in 1905 - I'm guessing as a mass collection and updating of various record sources. There is no indication of where the original records they used might have come from - most likely from various municipal records. Since Deborah was born before the border dispute was settled, I find it likely that the MA records are more accurate because the NH records would have been created several years later, at which point peoples' memories might not have worked as well, or they were transcribed improperly, or any of a number of other possibilities. I have settled on the 1738 as the most likely to be correct.
The second "Deborah" on the record turned out to be spurious. It was the record of a different Deborah Massey who was born and lived a few decades later in the Indiana/Pennsylvania areas. She was married to a Huntsman. I looked into this record just a bit because it became quickly clear that the Hunstman line is not only highly worked, but in great dispute. Family members disagree on certain records and are rather immovable in their positions. It appears that the church has suspended work on those records due to the dispute. What a mess - I'm not wading into that!
The Deborah Massey mystery isn't quite done yet, though, because once I fixed up her record I found a possible duplicate. I resolved the differences in the duplicates and merged them, but the 'duplicate' brought with it the details of a marriage for Deborah. It said that Deborah married a William Woodbury in Salem, New Hampshire 1757. Search as I might - and I have looked extensively - I can not find any verification of this relationship. I found that Deborah's younger brother Jonathan married a Betsey Woodbury, but she had no brother or cousin named William. I have found a William Woodbury who was married near that time period, but not to a Deborah Massey. I have looked through records in New Hampshire, Salem, MA, Hanover, MA, and Beverly, MA to find anything with a William Woodbury, but I can't find any details of this marriage. The temple work was done in the 1960's so I can't delete it, which I wouldn't do anyway since I can't find anything to confirm or reject the information. The original source is apparently someone's old family record that contains to links to sources or justifications and was just imported to familysearch. Sadly, this one seems to be a dead end. If it is true, then it was a very short-lived marriage as they were married on February 3, 1757 and Deborah died in September of that year. There doesn't appear to have been any children - they weren't even married long enough to produce a child (unless she died in early childbirth or due to pregnancy complications - but I have no hint of any record of anything like that).
I think that this is where the Deborah Massey story ends. I cleaned up her gender and her birthdate and identified the source of her family's multiple records from geographical fiddlings between the colonies. Jen took her name to the temple and her work has been done. I don't see that I can do any more for Deborah Massey and hope that what I did was of help.
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