Thanks, Mr. Terry, for your reply. Actually I had emailed the below message to you a couple of weeks ago directly to the same email address you have listed, but perhaps it didn't go through so I'll just post it here. I look forward to any feedback you might have on this.
I believe I may have been in contact with you once in the past ten years since you first gave me permission to quote your Greer narratives back in 2000 or 2001. Thanks for your continued work, as I located your Rootsweb site and have added a link to my website on descendants of Sarah Day and John Greer. Soon, perhaps next time I head up I95 to Philadelphia, I might finally take time to pull off the highway and drive along Gunpowder River in the Joppa area to find the approximate locations where our Greer, Taylor, and Day ancestors lived.
I noticed you don't have any descendants listed for my ancestors Elizabeth Divers and Benjamin Booth, whose graves I visited while in Franklin Co., VA three weeks ago. Can I send you a GEDCOM or report on their descendants, especially a detailed one on descendants of their daughter Elizabeth Booth Walker from whom I descend?
I haven't done much original research on this, but if you want, one recommendation is to change the parents of my ancestor Mary Greer, wife of John Divers, from William Greer and Ann Fitch to Moses Greer and Mary Bayley. I'm doubting that her name was actually Mary Rebecca Greer as many have shown based on a tradition that William Greer had a daughter named Rebecca who married a Divers. I can send the circumstantial evidence (actually it's already on my webpage ancestor reports), but I feel fairly certain Mary belongs to Moses rather than William.
I was glad that someone discovered within the past few years that our John Greer actually settled in Onslow Co., NC and died there. I may have emailed you before when I learned he had several apparently illegitimate children by Chloe Jones, one of whom was named Mary. For a while I figured it was likely she was my Mary Greer who married John Divers, but am doubting that now, though it's still possible. If so, it wouldn't change my lineage much other than she'd be a daughter of John Greer instead of a granddaughter, but I'd prefer to keep the Day family in my ancestry. I suppose that it is still possible unless proof is found that John's daughter Mary married someone else.
Bryan S. Godfrey Mobile Phone: 804-543-7200 E-Mail: firstname.lastname@example.org
Below is what I wrote under my Family Tree Maker Notes page for Mary Greer, which shows up in my website's ancestor reports:
THE ANCESTRY OF MARY GREER, WIFE OF JOHN DIVERS
Bryan S. Godfrey, great6-grandson
The parents of Mary Greer have not been determined by the many Greer family researchers over the years. However, it seems a safe assumption that she was a granddaughter of John Greer and his wife Sarah Day of Harford County, Maryland through a son of theirs who did not leave a will or any other definite indication of all his children. The possibilities seem to narrow down to either William Greer or Moses Greer as the father of Mary Greer Divers, and I am convinced Moses is a better candidate than William. The records concerning the brothers William and Moses Greer are scanty after they left Maryland and settled in the area of Franklin County and/or Pittsylvania County, Virginia, and neither of them left wills which would be the best records of their children. Unfortunately, due to the repetition of names like Moses, William, Aquilla, and John through several generations of the John and Sarah Day Greer family, and even in the same generation, many Greer researchers have presented conflicting information. For example, their son Moses, who married Mary Bayley, has often been confused with Moses' brother William's son Moses Greer (ca. 1744-1834), both of whom lived in Franklin County, and the latter married a Nancy Bailey. One Greer tradition regarding the first William Greer is that he married Ann Fitch and had several sons and a daughter Rebecca who married a Divers and settled in Franklin County. Because several aspects of that family's tradition are definitely inaccurate, it is highly likely the tradition of Mary AKA Rebecca Divers being William's daughter is also. John and Mary Greer Divers did not name a son William. It is Moses and Mary Bayley Greer whom I believe to be the parents of Mary Greer Divers. Mary did not name a son Moses either, but I am still convinced Moses was her father. The circumstantial evidence is as follows:
1. The names Moses and Greer, sometimes together, occur among several immediate descendants of John and Mary Greer Divers. Their daughter Elizabeth Divers, who married Benjamin Booth (my ancestors), had a son named Moses Greer Booth. John and Mary Greer Divers' son Aquilla had a son named Moses Divers. The occurrence of the uncommon name Aquilla as a son of Mary Greer Divers is also strong circumstanial evidence of a connection as John and Sarah Day Greer had a son and many other descendants named Aquilla. However, Mary Greer Divers was apparently not a daughter of the first Aquilla Greer as he left a will in Greene County, Georgia, naming his children. Biographies of Moses Greer Booth say he was named for an early political leader of Franklin County, but the authors were apparently unaware that the first Moses Greer in that county was probably Booth's great-grandfather. His grandmother Mary Greer Divers was still living when Moses was born in 1803, so she could very well have requested he be named for her father.
2. The first Moses Greer married Mary Bayley/Bailey in 1737 in Baltimore/Harford County, Maryland, and Mary Greer Divers was probably born between 1739 (the year her husband John Divers was born) and 1745. So far Greer researchers have assigned only four sons to Moses and Mary, but suggest there were probably more children. Their names were James, Moses, Lowranter, and Aquilla. They were probably younger children, and Mary may have been one of the older children for whom no records of birth or baptism were recorded in St. John's Parish, Joppa, Maryland. This James Greer was probably the same one of the name who was a witness to John Divers' will in Franklin County. John and Mary Greer Divers' son Christopher gave the name Bailey Divers to one of his children.
For now I am listing Moses Greer and Mary Bayley as the parents of Mary Greer Divers. The worst-case scenario is that this is incorrect, but even if it is, it seems fairly obvious Moses was her uncle instead and that Mary was, in either case, a granddaughter of John and Sarah Day Greer.