Mother of Mary Bearmore?

Jonathan Bearmore's wife Kezia South was reportedly born about 1760-1770, with a typical age of 1765 given in various family trees. I suspect that she may have been a second wife, in part because the will for her father, Joseph South, left money to her children Samuel and Joseph, but no other children. Samuel and Joseph were both young adults at that time. Note that the administrator, Benjamin South, was Kezia’s brother, and a son of Benjamin, Elijah South, was the executor of John Long's estate in 1833. A Lydia Crownover appeared as one of the creditors receiving a share of property from Jonathan Bearmore's estate in 1798. That woman may have been Lydia Predmore Crowonver, reverting to her first husband's name, as she had been married a second time to Richard Prather, who had passed away in 1789. It would seem unusual for the time for a woman to be a creditor unless she were a widow.

Naming Patterns

Another child of Jonathan was Lucretia Bearmore, born 1783-1784 according to family trees, who married a James Rice in 1799. James and Mary's two youngest children were named George and Lucretia, after their mother’s two full siblings. Their oldest child was named Lydia, which does not appear higher in the Long family that I have seen, so I suspect that might have been the name from the family of his first wife. Lydia is also a name given by George Bearmore to one of his daughters. The name Kezia appears in the children of Joseph Bearmore.

 A Hypothesis

Family records for Lucretia Long (from a descendant who has since passed away) identify her parents as James Long and Rachel Crownover, but this does not seem to make sense, since I have not found any other records linking such names in Greene County PA, where Lucretia would have been born. Also, she seems to have been named after the sister of Mary Bearmore, her presumed mother. But perhaps this record was really referring to her grandmother--the mother of Mary Bearmore. The Crownovers (aka Covenhavens/Covenhovers/Conovers) are quite prominent in New Jersey, and the Crownovers were apparently linked to Jonathan Bearmore. What's more, there was a Covenhoven/South marriage that might even have produced a Rachel Crownover of the right age to have been Mary's mother. This is a lead that I am currently pursuing.