The court case found by John K. Gott (in the matter of Robinson vs. Rector Executors), and other material, was used by John P. Alcock to try to decide the mothers of John Rector's children. John Alcock observed that was no reason to doubt the birth of John Rector, in 1711, so he was very young when he came to Virginia. Salmans, who wrote a Rector history, put John's marriage at March 1731, without saying whether it was an old style or a new style date. We have no evidence that this is a correct date, and, since John would have been only about twenty at this time, we are slightly suspicious. We know that Catherine (Cattren) Rector was left fifty acres in her father's will, written in March 1733/34. These dates do not seem consistent with the death of William Robinson.
Using the dates of birth of the Rector children, which are mostly conjectures, it seems that Catherine Taylor Robinson married John Rector about 1733, and not the implied 1723 from the lawsuit. Some dates may be inferred for the dates of birth of the Robinson children. The net conclusion is that the Rector children, starting with Charles about 1740, are hers. John Rector's first child is another John who was born about 1733. Between these dates there is no certainty.
One conclusion is that the 1723 date was meant to be 1733. In line with this, perhaps John Rector married Catherine Fishback just before this time. Perhaps she did not survive the birth of her first child, John, Jr.
After John Alcock had come to this conclusion, he found a birth record for Catherine Taylor, daughter of Charles and Anne Taylor, for 2 July 1707. So, if she was married about the age of 17 this would be 1724. If she had five children at about two year intervals, this would be about 1733 or 1734. Remembering that she was the mother of thirteen children, five Robinson and eight Rector children, she must have married John Rector about 1734.
These comments are taken from a longer analysis by John Alcock in " Beyond Germanna, volume 6, number 6 ".
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.