John Tanner: Greenwich and Argyle, New York

This building of the Bottskill Baptist Church was built many years after our Tanners left Greenwich. From Flickr.

I said on Friday that the information in John Tanner and His Family is not always accurate. Here is one example from page 26:

John Tanner had a large family even for his day. He was married three times, though not in polygamy, and fathered twenty-one children. His first wife was Tabitha Bently whom he married in Greenwich, New York. She was born August 23, 1780, and died April 9, 1801. The exact date of their marriage has not been found.[1] They had one child: 

1. Elisha Bently Tanner, born March 23, 1801, at Greenwich, New York. Died March 11, 1858. 

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[1] Genealogical material for this volume is taken mostly from the John Tanner Family.

It is not a minor genealogical detail that there was no such place as Greenwich at the time these events happened.

The area of Greenwich, then in Charlotte County, and later in Washington County, was settled starting the decade before the Revolutionary War. It consisted of five land patents: Saratoga, Kettlehuyn, Cuyler, Campbell, and Argyle. Argyle is the area we're interested in.

The current location of Washington County in the State of New York. From Wikipedia.

Relatives of the Tanners started leaving Rhode Island for the Argyle area in the late 1760s, and continued their emigration through the Revolutionary War and afterwards. When the Tanners moved to Washington County, New York, from Washington County, Rhode Island, in the 1790s, they moved to Argyle.

The first Baptist Church was established in the area soon after the Revolutionary War. It is said to have been the sixth Baptist Church established in New York State. Were the Tanners members of the Botskill Baptist Church? Possibly. John and Lydia Stewart Tanner's son Willard Tanner was buried in the Bottskill Baptist Church Cemetery in 1807. Lydia's parents, William and Amy Stewart, were buried there in 1826 and 1839. (Wade, Stuart C. Bottskill Baptist Church, Greenwich, Washington, New York, Tombstone Inscriptions. 1901. Copy provided at  DunhamWilcox.)

The Town of Argyle was divided in 1803, creating the Town of Greenwich, and after the division the Tanners seemed to live in Greenwich. So, births and marriages before 1803 should be listed as happening in Argyle, although as far as I know we don't seem to have good genealogical proof of any of the family events, just the family records as found in the Tanner books, and I don't know the history or accuracy of any of those.

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In the course of writing this short note, I found some information about the history of the Tanner Family before they joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that was so very fascinating and so connected to the history of their conversion to the Church and their activity in the Church that I will have to spend more time processing it and figuring out how to present it.