Sister Confusion: 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “The Name’s the Same”

 

Mathilda and Mary Macbeth: Ancestry Thought They Were a Single Person

Mathilda “Tillie” Macbeth: 1861-1944 (Maternal Great-Grandaunt)
Mary E. Macbeth: 1861-1947 (Maternal Great-Grandaunt)

 

While using Ancestry’s Pro Tools recently, I noticed that Mathilda Macbeth, my great-grandaunt, was flagged as a possible duplicate on my Ancestry tree. I looked her up and discovered that Ancestry was trying to merge her records with those of her sister, Mary Macbeth. How could this happen? They married different men, lived in different places and died in different years. Why did Ancestry’s algorithm think they were one single person? The only thing they had in common was the same birth year. I had a specific birth date of October 8, 1861 for Mary. Mathilda, however,, had just a year, 1861, followed by a question mark. I didn’t have a specific date for her birth. Time for some research to nail down Tillie’s birthdate, as these two women were quite obviously two separate people who simply shared parents.

Both sisters were born to parents Charles Macbeth and Nancy Herniman in Grand Island, Erie County, New York. New York birth records are very difficult to find, so I had no actual birth certificate to look at for either sister, or for any other of their siblings born in New York.

So where did I get 1861 as the birth years of Tillie and Mary? Another tree had included the October 6, 1861 birth date for Mary, and I had simply copied it. Not good genealogical practice. However, Mary’s age on census records corresponded to an 1861 birth date, and her headstone also shows an 1861 birth year, so the birth date was certainly possible.

Mary Macbeth Britt headstone from Findagrave

However, Mathilda’s census records also included ages that corresponded to an 1861 birth year, and her headstone also stated she was born in 1861. Neither sister had an obit or death certificate that provided their actual date of birth, so I was left perplexed.

Mathilda Macbeth Doolittle headstone from Findagrave

I speculated that Mathilda could have been born in January 1861, and that Mary was an “Irish twin”—a child born less than twelve months after the previous child. If Mary had been born a few weeks early, an October birthdate would have been over nine months after a previous January birth. However, my great-grandfather Walter Macbeth was born May 29, 1860, and another brother, Albert Macbeth, was born May 8, 1862. An early 1861 birthdate for Mathilda did not work with her brothers’ birthdates. The siblings’ mother, Nancy, simply could not have completed four separate pregnancies in the space of only twenty-four months.

I realized that the 1900 census could provide some measure of clarity, as it was the only U. S. Census to ask for each household member’s month and year of birth. Both sisters appear on the 1900 census, and both showed birth dates of October 1861. That’s when the light came on for me. They were twins! That possibility hadn’t occurred to me! While I still cannot confirm that they were born on the 6^th day of October 1861, I feel fairly confident that their birth month and year are correct.

1900 Census record for Mary Macbeth Britt showing Oct 1861 birthdate

1900 Census record for Mathilda Macbeth Doolittle showing Oct 1861 birth date.

The twins’ lives followed similar trajectories. The Macbeth family had moved from New York to the Mankato area around 1866. Mathilda married Frederick J. Doolittle on January 17, 1880 in Mankato, Minnesota at the age of eighteen. Frederick was twenty-eight. Frederick was a farmer in LeRay Township in Blue Earth County, next door to Charles Macbeth’s farm.

Mary also married another farmer in LeRay Township, Handy Britt. They married one year after her twin, on February 16, 1881. Mary was nineteen.

Sadly, Mary and Handy never had any children. Mathilda and Fred had one son, Bertram Urson Doolittle, born nine months after their wedding on October 26, 1880. However, Frederick Doolittle died on February 9, 1888, just seven years Bertram’s birth. Frederick was only thirty-six.

Following Frederick’s death, young Bertram grew up to help his mother, working as a butcher at a young age before Mathilda’s brother sent him to medical school. Bertram became a doctor, practicing in Indiana. His mother moved there to live with him until his tragic death at age thirty-four. She subsequently returned to Mankato and lived in an apartment building on Hickory Street and then in Nicollet County near her sister Nellie. She died March 8, 1944 at age eighty-two.

Mary and Handy Britt continued to live on their farm in LeRay Township until sometime in the late 1920s, when they retired from farming and moved to a house on Nicollet Avenue in Mankato. They lived there until the end of their lives. Mary died December 16, 1947, at the age of eighty-six. Her husband Handy died in 1949.

Mary and Handy Britt's house at 833 Nicollet Ave., Mankato

Despite Ancestry’s suggestion, I will not be merging the records of Mathilda and Mary Macbeth. Yes, they were born at the same time to the same parents, and yes, they had similar names. However, their names were not the same and they were not the same person. They were twins, not an error in my tree.  

 

Sources:

1900 United States Federal Census. Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004.Original data - United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1900. T623, 18.

Findagrave.com. Entries for Mahilda Doolittle and Mary Britt.