> Is anyone aware of any widower who has been punished for marrying his wife's > sister or for first cousins marrying in MA in the 1600s? > References please. > > thanks, Charles __________________ I've just returned from a week in New England (and yes - Plymouth too!!) and am catching up on email. In partial answer to your question above Charles, I cover a case in my next book where a woman married the widower of her neice. She was admonished by the church but he was not. Lydia (Barnes) Barnes, dau of John Barnes & Mary Bartlett married as her first husband, Lemuel Barnes in 1735 <Plymouth VR> (who happened to be her 1st cousin). Sometime before 1756, she married as her second husband, Jonathan Samson, the widower of Sarah Drew, dau of Lemuel Drew & Hannah Barnes. The Plymouth church records of 5 July 1756 state that a committee was chosen to look into the case of "Sister Lydia Barnes it being supposed that she was married to Jonathan Samson one that had been husband to her neice". <1:302> Note that she is called "Barnes" not "Samson" which would reflect the view of the church towards the marriage. This issue does not surface again until 1769 when "Lydia Samson" requested a hearing. This record states that she was suspended from Communion many years ago. On 25 Oct. 1769, the church met and decided that although "the Members of ye Chh were, the greater Part of them, by no means satisfyd of ye Lawfulness of such a Marriage, but of the contrary Opinion, The Affair was accordingly dropd without so much as the Formallity of a Chh Meeting". I found no mention of this topic in "Crime And Punishment In Early Massachusetts" by Edwin Powers but did find the following in "Woman's Life in Colonial Days" by Carl Holliday, p.279-80: "Then, too, as late as Sewall's day we find mention of severe laws dealing with intermarriage of relatives: "June 14, 1695: The Bill against Incest was passed with the Deputies, four and twenty Nos, and seven and twenty Yeas. The Ministers gave in their Arguments yesterday, else it had hardly gon, because several have married their wives sisters, and the Deputies thought it hard to part them. 'Twas concluded on the other hand, that not to part them, were to make the Law abortive, by begetting in people a conceipt that such Marriages were not against the Law of God" <Sewall's Diary, vol.II, p.407>. Susan E. Roser www.rootsweb.com/~canms/canada.html

And the Barnes' family seems to continue the trend! In 1837 my ggrandparents, Albert Vinal Barnes of Hingham, MA and Miriam W. Barnes of Cohasset, MA (1st cousins) married. Priscilla > in > > Lydia (Barnes) Barnes, dau of John Barnes & Mary Bartlett married as her > first husband, Lemuel Barnes in 1735 <Plymouth VR> (who happened to be her > 1st cousin). Sometime before 1756, she married as her second husband, > Jonathan Samson, the widower of Sarah Drew, dau of Lemuel Drew & Hannah > Barnes.