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| David was born in Hardwick, Massachusetts on July 25, 1769. At some point he moved to Rutland, Vermont. Orlin tells us that he had four wives and 14 children, but except for the children of Nahum, Orlin seems to know little of David's families. Of the first two wives, he knows only the last names, Burbank and Purdy. Miss Purdy seems to have had only one child, and it appears that both mother and child died soon after the birth.
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It has not been possible to find definitive information about Miss Burbank, David's first wife. In one place she is named Judith, and in one place Polly. It is interesting that her third daughter is named Polly. The children of David and Miss Burbank are listed below.
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David's third wife was Sally Lyon; there were at least three children born to David and Sally. David and Sally's descendants are listed below. The sources for this part of the descendancy could serve as a prime example of how this material has been found. The primary source is the census, which contains a wealth of information in some years (1900 is usually particularly useful), but often offers challenges such as indexing 'Fay' as 'Gay' or 'Tay' or 'Douglas' as 'Douglass' or 'Pine' as 'Small.' Frequently, these errors happen because the handwriting of the census is very poor or very faint; sometimes the eye of the indexer just seems to slip. And sometimes it is the census taker who makes the mistake. Following a unit from year to year helps. In dealing with birthdates, census records must be used with caution; most of them give ages and not dates. Thus we may never know the exact dates for Miranda and Ruth; we have only the ages they gave at the time of various censuses, and they do not agree with each other. Census records were supplemented with LDS material, which was checked for source and matched against other records. A book provided the name of Augusta's mother and husband. WWI registration and SS records made their contributions. Ancestry family trees added the names of a couple of husbands, providing extensions of the lines after they were checked. And this research started from two mentions of Rufus found in material sent by Sylvia R. Manning, an independent genealogical researcher, whose hunts in Vermont files have been very useful. Some of her resources are listed on the entrance to her website.
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