The Shemwell Family

Several issues have surfaced regarding Captain Henry Ullery's spouses and biological children. Several key documents that would clear up the relationships are needed; but, I am unable to find then on various genealogy sites (Family Search, Ancestry, MyHeritage, Rootsweb, etc). I believe the issues could be resolved if we can find Birth and/or Christening Records that list the Mother/Father of his assumed children. Until those records are found, I have made some judgements, based on the data found across the Web, as to his probable family tree. The family trees found on the genealogy sites (noted above) compositely show that Captain Henry Ullery (LC78-NF2) was married to Mary Ann VanGundy (MY4Z-QTF) on March 24, 1812. Records exist for the marriage event as well as records documenting that Henry died on August 6, 1812. I have been unable to find any other record showing that Henry was married to anyone else. The issue arises when the descendants of Henry/Mary/?? are reviewed. The sites show that they had 4 children: Eliza Deliliah (b 1796), Mary (b 1797), Elisabeth (b 1801), and Sarah J (b 1813). Considering that Henry/Mary were married in 1812, the only plausible child that was theirs would be Sarah J who was born in late 1812 or early 1813. Those dates are consistent with Henry dying in August 1812. Although other website trees (well over 100+) show that Henry/Mary had the other children, that doesn't make sense since they were married in 1812 and the 3 other children were born in 1796, 1797, and 1801. I am assuming that Henry/Mary did not have these children out of (or coincident with) wedlock due to the children's birth dates. It would seem that Henry would have been married to an unidentified spouse around 1796, or so. He would have been about 21 years old which was a reasonable marriage age in the late 1700s. But, there seems to be no record of that marriage; although I did find an Ancestry tree that stated he had a "partner" that he was married to on March 24, 1792. The suspicious point is the month/day for both assumed marriages are the same. Plus, the Ancestry tree did not have any supporting records. In fact, none of the genealogy sites that listed the Henry family tree had any bonifide source for marriage other than the one that was with Mary. Most of the sites had no sources for the tree at all. I did look at about 30 website trees (of the more than several hundred) that had numerous tree sources; but, no sources were found for the earlier marriage. It is possible that the marriage was not recorded or just not yet found in the many records. Based on the dates involved, I am assuming that Henry was indeed married twice. His first marriage must have occurred in about 1796 to an unknown spouse. Their children would have been Eliza Deliliah, Mary, and Elizabeth. His second marriage occurred in 1812 to Mary and their child was Sarah J. Considering that the 3 children show up on trees claiming Mary is their mother, it is reasonable to assume that their biological mother died with Mary subsequently filling in as a step mother. Had Henry and the unknown spouse just divorced, the three young children would have probably stayed with their biological mother and not the father. It is highly probably that the unknown spouse died in the 1801 (after Elizabeth's birth) to 1811 (before Henry's marriage to Mary) timeframe. For now, I will update Henry's tree to show that he was married twice. He had 3 children with the first wife who died in the 1801 to 1811 timeframe. Henry remarried in 1812 and Mary assumed the role of "step-mother". Henry and Mary had a single biological child, Sarah J. I believe the tree changes are consistent with the various birth/marriage dates and builds upon the existing trees found across the genealogy sites. More work is needed, though.