Is it possible for a father to have a son in his senior years? Recently in the news, Al Pacino, age 83, welcomed his fourth child Roman with actress Noor Alfallah, age 29. A month ago, Robert De Niro, age 79, welcomed his seventh child with girlfriend Tiffany Chen.
Many times in building a family tree, age is a factor in identifying the right parents. This is especially true when the grandfather, father, and/or son shares the same name.
Normally, we apply today’s timelines in our biases. For example, let’s assume we are building a tree for John Smith. A record has John Smith born to Joe Smith, the father of another Joe Smith. However, this record may indicate Joe Smith was 80 years old when his son John was born. Our biases would cause us to think that Joe Smith the younger is the more likely father.
This biased thinking also tricks us into adding non-existent persons into our tree. For example, John Smith is born to Joe Smith, but unlike the example above, there is no Joe Smith Jr. Our biased thinking says that surely Joe Smith didn’t have a son at the age of 80, so it must be a son that we don’t know about… and so we add a Joe Smith Jr. to the tree.
Such is the case for Edward Farmar of Whitemarsh, Pennsylvania, the son of Major Jasper Farmar.
Edward Farmar was born in 1672 when Major Jasper was 62 years old. For some, the age difference doesn’t seem correct, so there must have been two Major Jasper’s. Or for some, Major Jasper’s father Robert was not the son of Sir George Fermor, but rather the son of yet another Robert Farmar. Adding the extra Robert or the extra Major Jasper makes our biased timelines seem more “correct.”
This biased thinking seems even more plausible when considering Major Jasper’s wife, Mary Gamble. How can Mary born in 1614 have a son at the age of 58?
She didn’t. When Mary Gamble died, Major Jasper remarried in 1671 to widow Mary Batsford, age 36. We know this from the birth dates of Edward’s siblings, his Farmar half-siblings, as well as legal documents of his Batsford half-siblings. Yet family trees will show Major Jasper had one wife, and name her Mary Gamble Batsford.
The moral of the story is that adding extra persons in our tree to make our biased timelines “correct” only creates more brick walls for ourselves and other family historians, especially when a deep dive of available records proves otherwise.
Philip Farmer is the author and publisher of “Thomas Fermor and the Sons of Witney” tracing the family history from 1420 to 1685, and “Edward Farmar and the Sons of Whitemarsh” following their 1685 arrival from Ireland into Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Harlan County, Kentucky.
