It is customary in which families have multiple generations of men with the same given name to identify them with a Jr., Sr., II, III, etc. added to their name. No matter how frequently professional genealogists remind researchers that they are not always father-son, too often it is assumed to be this. This ends up attaching the wrong child to the wrong household.
Especially in Colonial Times the usage of Senior and Junior does not imply a father-son kinship between the two. These terms were used by the clerks of the townships in order to separate out the identity of the individuals of the same name. They would often use the occupation of the individual to further identify which individual the record refers to. In these cases, the elder of the two men would get Senior attached to his name, while the younger got Junior. If a third individual with the same name also moved into the town, then these very suffixes can change for the earlier two individuals. Yes it can be confusing at times, but it’s meant to help identify each individual
The main point of writing this is to warn you not to take Sr. and Jr. as a given that it’s the father and son. Case it point, Timothy Partridge.
Timothy was born in either Barre or Medway, Massachusetts in 1764 to Thaddeus Partridge and Keziah Harding. Both towns have the same birth record for him. To descendants of Thaddeus and his second wife, Thankful Adams, it may come as a surprise that there was a child born to this previous marriage, as it’s not treated in George H. Partridge’s “Partridge Genealogy: Descendants of John Partridge” published in 1904. He completely leaves Timothy out of his treatise. I don’t know why. He should have seen both birth records in Barre and Medway, and the marriage records in Medway and Wrentham.
The problem with Timothy comes up in his marriage record to Lois Ware on 17 May 1787 in Wrentham, Massachusetts. In that marriage record, Timothy is referred to as “Timothy Jr.” As I look at the records of Wrentham, one would wonder why? There were no other Timothy Partridge’s in Wrentham at the time of his marriage.
One issue here is the treatment in Colonial times of individuals being married when they reside in a town other than the town the marriage occurred in. Timothy didn’t reside in Wrentham, Lois did. Timothy resided in Medway, and in Medway’s records we do see there is another Timothy living there at the time, Timothy Partridge who married Abigail Barber. And Timothy who married Lois ware was junior to this other Timothy. Hence the usage of “Jr.” in the records to identify him. The marriage record for Timothy Jr. and Lois Ware was also listed in Medway’s records as was customary at the time. However, the knowledge that these two Timothy’s lived in the same town at the same time, with one of them identified as Junior has identified them as father-son in many minds. But it is certainly incorrect. There is no birth of a Timothy to Timothy and Abigail, even though their children are well identified in the Medway vital records, and the couple never lived outside the town of West Medway.
So for all you descendants who thought you were descended from Timothy Partridge and Abigail Barber, you are actually descended from his first cousin, Thaddeus Partridge and Keziah Harding.
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