Joseph Coombes and Mary Edwards of Stafford County, Virginia

If you're familiar with the Stafford County Edwards family, you've probably seen something like this:

Mary Edwards (c.1713-1767) married Joseph Coombes or Combs (c.1708-1763) of Stafford County (or Loudoun County), Virginia.

The dates vary a little, but they are almost always said to be from Stafford, born shortly after the turn of the 18th century. 

Mary is usually said to be the daughter of a John Edwards, sometimes John Edwards and Lucy Gray, who were supposedly from the Surry County Edwards line, other times a John Edwards of Stafford County who was supposedly born in 1682 and died April 14, 1747.

As you might expect if you've leafed through my blog posts on the Edwards family, this is claim is likely the result of confusion between unrelated people. But thanks to the fantastic genealogical research posted years ago at Combs-Families.org, this mistake is easy enough to clear up.

The evidence for the maiden name of Mary Coombes is the family bible of Henry Eves of Kentucky, which mentions "Edwards Coombes, Sen. died December the 8th. day Anno Domni 1820, aged 84 years."

This "Edwards Coombes" is almost always said to be the son of Joseph Combes and Mary Edwards of Stafford. His unusual first name is generally believed to be an indicator that "Edwards" was the maiden name of his mother. Researchers then use this to link her to the Edwards clan of Stafford County.

The problem is that researchers are confusing two different contemporary men named Joseph Coombes:

1. Joseph Coombes I of Stafford Co., Virginia (bef.1702-aft.1756), who appears in Stafford in 1723 and is known in court documents to have children named Joseph, John and Jane, wife of John Ashby. He last appears in Stafford in 1756 when he gifted his children property.

2. Joseph Coombes I of the Tonoloways (bef.1708-aft.1750). This man lived in western Maryland and Pennsylvania and is documented to have had children named Andrew, Samuel, Joseph, John, Edward, and Hannah. This man had zero association with Stafford County, Virginia. This Joseph is the father of Edward(s) Coombes (1736-1820) who served in the Revolutionary War from Pennsylvania and was mentioned in the Henry Eves family bible.

The inevitable confusion results not only from the same last name and repeating first names, but the fact that both of these families had members end up in Loudoun County, Virginia. Andrew Coombes, son of the Maryland Joseph, died in Loudoun in 1774, and the Joseph Coombes who ended up in Loudoun by 1763 could be his father. But in case you didn't want to rip your hair out already, the Joseph Coombes II who was son of the Stafford man ALSO moved to Loudoun County and died there some time after 1759. 

According to Combs-Families, one Joseph Coombes II married Ann Baylis or Davenport; the other married Elizabeth Harrison, later Sarah Ashby. One John Coombes married Alice Jolly and died after 1801 in Nelson County, Kentucky; the other John Coombes married Sith or Seth Bullitt and died about 1786 in Stafford County, Virginia.

Court records show these are two different families, fathered by different Joseph Coombeses. Their descendants seem to have jointly moved to Nelson County, Kentucky as well, along with yet another seemingly unrelated Coombes family.

You really can't blame genealogists for confusing these guys. Our only interest here is to show that the supposed Edwards connection with Joseph Combs of Stafford actually belongs to a Joseph Combs who lived in Pennsylvania and Maryland and shows no proximity to the Stafford County Edwards family. So the theory that John Edwards of King George/Stafford/Westmoreland had a daughter named Mary Coombes is entirely unsupported.