The Skaggs-Files

There is a marriage record in Maryland:

Bloyd, John, 11 Jan. 1796, Mary Willis

There could have been two wives - Mary Riggins and Mary Willis.

Hi Sunni!
I haven't written you for a while. I was looking at the Bloyd material today and wondered if you knew who the oldest John Bloyds wife was?
I know it was Mary and another lady E-mailed me and said she was Mary McCubbin. Since the old patriarch, John Bloyd had a good friend in James McCubbin, who was the Rev. War Soldier, I wondered if she could be his sister? I went into the D.A.R. on James McCubbin's record. I will have to look up which great grandfather of mine he was.
Anyway on the McCubbin line I am back to 865. I did subscribe to your Bloyd-Group.
Sincerely, Coleen Dochterman.

 

Colleen,
You have hit upon a subject that has been the center of a lot of speculation. What was John Bloyd Sr.'s wife's name?

For most of the 35 years I have been researching the family name, I thought her first name was Mary. That's what all accounts call her, especially John McCubbin, who is usually very reliable. However, the 1805 (or -06)deed of sale for John and Mary's property in Rockingham County, Virginia most definitely does not have her name as "Mary." It was transcribed on the typed version I saw as "Matthew," which of course makes no sense at all. But the only feminine name I can come up with that looks like "Matthew" is "Martha."

Furthermore, John and good ol' whatsername did name a daughter Martha (called her Patsy), which is right in line with tradition in that era. Maybe that's why everybody seems to have one given name and another "call name," as we say in the Cat Fancy. (a call name is what you actually call the cat by, for example, "Fluffy" might be the cat's call name, but GC, NW, JonJan's Golden Bit O' Fluff might be its registered name). Hum got off the track there. What I was trying to say is that maybe one reason families of this era seemed to give everybody nicknames that were very different from their given names was that their given names were the same as their mother or father.

Anyway, not too long ago I received a copy of a newspaper article that said John Bloyd Sr and his wife Martha had joined the Baptist Church in Hancock County Illinois in 1831. (As I recall, thank you Paula B, but it might have come from Sandy...)

So, okay. her name was most likely Martha in my opinion. But what was her last name?
Frankly, we don't know. And we won't know until we find a record of the marriage.

Names that have been proposed:
McCubbin--Several researchers in the last generation were convinced that her maiden name was McCubbin.(Thelma Setzer says her name as Mary McCubbin, but I have found her research to be a little sloppy on that line of the family.) If John Bloyd Sr. were married to a McCubbin, it would account for the family's close ties to the McCubbin family (although there were intermarriages enough between the two families in the next generation to keep them in close contact), but nobody has shown me conclusive proof and I tend to rely on John McCubbin's statement that there had been no intermarriage between the McCubbin and Bloyd families.

This really does not make sense because there actually had been a couple of McCubbin-Bloyd marriages in Rockingham County and Green County, but if you take it from John McCubbin's point of view, considering the people he knew of, the ones who came to Illinois with his immediate family, it does. Surely being the fanatical genealogist that he is, ol' John would not have missed a McCubbin being married to John Bloyd Sr, one reason being that her parentage might give him clues to his own unknown early ancestry. He really longed to be related to those earlier, snootier McCubbins of the Revolutionary War era in Maryland, I think. I really think McCubbin would have explored that link had he known about it. and if it were there.

Riggen--Another name that has been suggested is Riggen(s). I favor that because John and Martha/Mary named one of their sons William Riggen(s)Bloyd, and also because Maryland is teeming with Riggenses just before the Revolutionary War. I think we might very well find a Martha Riggen(s) somewhere in the records, and maybe a marriage for her too. You know, John Sr. signed his name "John Bloyth." Perhaps he originally called himself "John Blois," or "John Bloy." Those early colonialists played fast and loose with spellling. So we might be overlooking actual marriage records by looking under the usual Bloyd variations.

Another fact in favor of Riggens. Her daughter Elizabeth married a McCubbin (Nicholas), and in his book about McCubbin lines, Gleason McCuhbin says that Elizabeth's mother's name was Mary Riggen.

Wilkins--You willl occasionally see Mary Wilkins listed as John Sr.'s wife's maiden name. There is a Maryland marriage in 1786 of John Bloyd and Wilkins (and I would like to see who signed the marriage bonds on that), but this is way too late. John and Martha/Mary had already settled in Rockingham North Carolina and begun a family. If anything, that might be a first marriage for their son John. Evidently some Bloyds come to Sangamon County, Illinois very early from Green County. I wonder if they might be children of John Bloyd and this first wife? If so, it would explain why the Bloyd wagon train overwintered in Sangamon County en route to Hancock County.

Some things to chew on, that's for sure.
Sunni