Did William Monk marry his niece?
I am researching William Monk b 1763 in Edgefield SC married to Jerushia Parrish. He along with his father migrated to Georgia and eventually came to Bulloch Co Ga.I have seen posts on this forum, the Parrish forum and on trees published on Ancestry.com that indicate that Jerushia was William's niece being the daughter of Mary Ann Monk, his sister and Henry Parrish.. Melan(Melon, Menon)Monk is given as the father of both William and Mary Ann.
Surely this can not possibly be true. I would think that the colonies would have been following both biblical and legal(from England) prohibitions against such a union. I have seen a statement from someone on one of the forums that William did indeed marry his niece. This seems an irresponsible statement without documentation.
If anyone has documents proving that this took place, I would like to know of them. Until then I am going to assume this is a case of more than one William, Mary Ann, Jerushia, or Melan. I'm betting on Melan being more than one individual since there are so many different spellings of his name.
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Re: Did William Monk marry his niece?
T E Cox 1/11/09