Follow Up on Isaac and Leah Sperling

In the post Isaac and Leah Sperling, I tried to understand whether they were siblings or cousins. I have enough information now to sort out the problem, which is complicated by the repeated use of first names in the family. A family tree at Ancestry.com provided me with the reference to the document that seems to make it all clear as mud. Below is the portion of the transcript available to me.

"Isaac Sperling, son of John Sperling and his second wife Catharine, resided in North Brunswick Township, Middlesex county. He was a Revolutionary soldier, serving in the Second Regiment, Middlesex County Militia, of which his future father-in-law John Gilliland was a lieutenant and his future brother-in-law Daniel Gilliland was a first sergeant. Elizabeth Gilliland Sperling was the daughter of John Gilliland and Leah Sperling. Isaac and Leah were first cousins. Isaac and Elizabeth were married in October of 1787, according to the pension papers.

This record (number 3078 of the GSNJ collection) consists of one page torn from a Bible and filed with pension application W6159. The entries, which appear to be all in..."

Being familiar with the script on the documents of the time, I am thankful to whoever read the originals and wrote out this summary for us. Big dollop of gratitude for that.

Now to put this information together with the rest of the family tree. If I strip an ahnentafel down to just those parts required to identify the individuals in the reference above, I construct the following,

1 Jan Michiel Sperlingh (German immigrant) m. Geertje Pieters
+2 Daniel m. Elizabeth unk
++3 Leah (b.1740) m. John Gilliland
+++ 4 Elizabeth (b.1767) m. Isaac Sperling (b.1759)
+++ 4 Leah (b. 1781) m. Abraham Sperling (b. 1759)
+2 Leah (b.1709)
+2 Petrus
+2 John m. 2nd wife Catherine
++3 Isaac (b.1759) m. Elizabeth Gilliland (b. 1767)
++3 Abraham (b.1759) m. Leah Gilliland (b.1781)

What I have done with the colors is show where an individual's presence is repeated. Isaac (b.1759) and Leah (b. 1740) are 1st cousins, as explained in the reference above. Isaac then married Leah's daughter. The same relationships are repeated with Abraham (b.1759). He is Leah (b.1740)'s first cousin, and he marries her daughter, Leah (b.1781).

Notes: 1. I list both Isaac and Abraham as b.1759, but those are baptismal dates, and there's no reason to believe they are twins. 2. I list Jan and Geertje's daughter Leah as born 1709, but I don't know the actual date, only that this is the earliest assumption, since that is the year her parents were married. 3. I don't know the birth order of Jan and Geertje's children, but placing John after Daniel makes sense to explain the 19 year gap in the age of first cousins. Other than that, their birth order is strictly random at this point.