BEGATS AND BEQUEATHALS

Or, Subtitled: “John Lauderdale his book 1781”

The John Lauderdale I’ll begin discussing with this posting is one of the more difficult ancestors I’ve worked on as I’ve researched family history over the years. Part of the problem in getting a clear picture of him is that there has long been colossal confusion about when he was born and whom he married. He has been mixed up, including in DAR records, with a John Lauderdale who was considerably older than this John was, and who did not marry Milbury Mauldin, daughter of John Mauldin, as this John did. As I’ll explain in a moment, attempts have also been made to turn this one John Lauderdale into two men named John Lauderdale, father and son, with claims that the son was born in 1768 (when the records we have place John’s birth in the mid-1740s) and is the John who married Milbury Mauldin.