One of my Butler genealogy breakthroughs happened with a DNA match between my father in law and someone I called Uncle Naffy. I wrote a Blog on that in 2015.
Prior to that breakthrough, I had trouble tracking my wife’s immigrant ancestor Edward Butler. Uncle Naffy was from St. John, New Brunswick and told me his great great grandmother was Mary A Butler. She was living in Cincinnati and moved to St. John. There she married. Armed with that information, I was able to find the marriage record between my wife’s ancestors, Edward Butler and Mary Crowley in St. John. The record was found in scrawly handwriting on a microfilm that was in the New England Historical and Genealogical Society Library in Boston.
This St. John/Cincinnati connection confirmed the research that I had done that had located Edward Butler and family in Cincinnati in the 1860 and 1870 censuses.
Uncle Naffy’s Great Great Grandmother Mary A Butler
Recently it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to create a tree for Mary A Butler to see if we could match up the two Cincinnati Butler families (George and Edward).
This was my first attempt. As I show later, the older children of George Butler would be from a second wife. My hope was that I would find that the George Butler above was the brother of my wife’s ancestor Edward Butler. One good thing is that I have that George Butler above, married Mary Whitty. Whitty is a less common name than Butler. A search for George Butler at Ancestry turned up this as a clue:
Here is a George Butler and Mary Whitty that gave birth to an Anne Butler on March 31st 1850 in the Parish of Ferns, Wexford. The good news is that the George Butler Family in 1860 in Cincinnati also had a daughter named Ann born about 1850 in Ireland. This is a good match.
A little more searching revealed a marriage between George “Butta” and Mary Whitty:
The transcriber saw Butta, but I can also see Butler there. I doubt that Butta is a very common name! As in the birth of Anne above, there is a Whitty and Hendricks as witness. The additional information is that they lived in Mountain Gate. I was curious as to where Mountain Gate is and was able to find a Mountaingate:
I have panned the map out a bit to show the relationship between Mountaingate and Mooncoin. They appear to be about 25 miles from each other. In one of my previous Blogs, I pointed out the my wife’s ancestor Edward Butler is listed as being from Wexford on one of his son’s death certificate.
Another Wife for George Butler?
There is also a tree at Ancestry that has Margaret Sinnett as George Butler’s wife. It appears to me that Mary Whitty died sometime between 1860 and 1870 and that George remarried.
Here is it clear that Mary must be from the first marriage as she was born before 1860 when Mary Whitty was still around. I could guess that Henry would be the son of Mary Whitty as there are 7-1/2 years between him and Rebecca. However, I cannot be sure just from the Censuses. So my basic take is like this:
I’m missing some children from George’s second marriage to Margaret Sinnett. I was having a hard time making this family come out right on the Ancestry Tree.
One last point about Margaret is that Pat has her mother Catherine as being from Killaspy, County Kilkenny. Here is a map showing an arrow where Killaspy is:
This was interesting to me because with the help of a Butler researcher in England, my wife’s Butler family has been located near Mooncoin on the top left of the map above. Mooncoin appears to be about 5 miles away from Killaspy.
Another Cincinnati Butler DNA Match
The previous image brings up another interesting point. My wife’s two Aunts have had their DNA tested at Ancestry. They both match Pat who descends from Rebecca Butler b. 1869 above. My father in law matches Uncle Naffy at Gedmatch. That makes a good case that George Butler is related to Edward Butler, my wife’s ancestor who also lived in Cincinnati.
Here is Rebecca Butler’s Certificate of Death showing her two parents.
This could be a case where the death record is not the best source of a birth date as Rebecca was shown as being 6 months old in the 1870 Census and born in October. So the day and month only are probably right in the death certificate.
Here is how my wife’s Aunt Lorraine matches Pat:
Pat matches my wife’s Aunt Virginia a little less: 29.9 cM across two segments.
Another Shared DNA Match At Ancestry
Pat and my wife’s two Aunts also have two shared DNA matches. These matches have this tree:
I’m not sure if it was Donna that took the AncestryDNA test. It appears that more than one in the family did. At any rate, the match is much higher. It is now at 183 cM across 9 segments. The average amount of DNA shared between a 2nd cousin once removed is 129 cM.
In comparison, here is Lorraine and Virginia’s tree next to the previous tree:
In the above scenario, Lorraine, Richard and Virginia would be 2nd cousins once removed to Donna and family. I’m not sure if Cornelias and John in Donna’s tree are right. Also, Donna’s tree has Henry, where I have Edward Henry. They are apparently the same person.
So Where Does That Leave the Butlers?
Here is a partially combined tree:
I say partially combined, because I haven’t connected the orange with the green side by genealogical research. I slimmed the tree down to just include the direct lines of those who have had their DNA tested. Uncle Naffy matches Richard at Gedmatch. Pat and Donna’s lines have not uploaded their results to Gedmatch. Pat and Donna’s line have shared DNA matches at AncestryDNA where they tested. Pat also matches Lorraine and Virginia at AncestryDNA. In addition, Donna matches Lorraine and Virginia. Richard and Uncle Naffy have tested at FTDNA, so unless Donna’s line and Pat upload to Gedmatch, those matches won’t be made known.
Summary and Conclusions
- The George and Edward Butler families are linked by new and old world locations and DNA
- More work is needed to link the George and Edward Butler families by paper research.
This is my family