Tracking Down DNA from Colne, Lancashire or Part One of the Hartley Brick Wall Series

So far, I have done pretty well at finding out from which grandparent I get my DNA. However, figuring out where the split is for my great grandparents is a bit more difficult. Due to a brick wall problem with the Hartley genealogy, I would like to know which of my DNA is Hartley and which is Snell. There are different ways to do this. One way is to find matches with UK, NZ or AU at the end of their emails. These matches would also match where I got DNA from my Hartley grandfather who was the son of a Hartley and a Snell. My Hartley ancestors came from England in the late 1800’s. My Snell ancestors were in England also, but going back to the 1600’s which should be too far back for the DNA to track in most cases.

One match I found was Linda. She has a UK address to her email. She is on Ancestry and Gedmatch and has trees at both places. Here is her match with my siblings, Heidi and Jonathan:

Linda also has a smaller match with my father’s cousin Joyce on Chromosome 10.

Linda and the Colne Connection

Linda has a large tree with over 16,000 people. I am interested in some of her ancestors in the Colne area. My ancestors lived in Colne, but the church where they were baptized and wed was in Colne.

This is the Ancestry map enlarged to the max. My dot is blue in Trawden. Linda had more than one ancestor in Colne and lists one in Winewall and one in Wycoller. Wycoller is now a park which explains the green area. It would be a short walk from Trawden to Winewall. All the places may be walked to with not too much difficulty. Linda’s ancestral surnames in the area are:

• Jowett, b. 1878 Colne: too recent for what I am looking for
• Three male Waddingtons, born in Colne: 1710; 1737; and 1805. The last male Waddington would be too recent my purposes.
• Thomas Rycroft b. 1684; Matilda Rycroft b. 1772, both in Colne
• Female Crook, b. 1711, Colne
• Hannah Foulds, b. 1720, and a male Foulds, b. 1692 both in Colne. I recognize the Foulds name as a prominent local name from my previous research in the area.
• Allison Blackburn, b. 1688, Winewall
• Robert Waddington, b. 1770, Wycoller

Of course, there is a possibility that none of these names are associated with Hartley. However, as there is a DNA match and a place match, there is a possibility that there is a match on one of these lines.

Linda’s Colne area tree

I feel like I’m exploring in someone’s house when I look at their tree. Here is the part of the tree that I am interested in:

Coghill didn’t show up on the Colne area map as her birthplace is listed as Lancashire. There should be a sweet spot in the tree above assuming that we are related. I am looking for a connection to my tree, so connecting person cannot be too recent. If we go back too far, it becomes improbably that there is an autosomal DNA match. Here is my Trawden Tree:

Going down the middle row, I am not certain about James Hartley and Betty Baldwin. I am quite sure about Greenwood Pilling and Nancy Shackleton. That means that my first choice would be to connect Robert Hartley to Linda’s tree somehow. In Linda’s Waddington line, the William Waddington or Foulds Rycroft family could have had a daughter that married a Hartley that had Robert. That daughter would have come about following a Hartley/Waddington or Hartley/Rycroft wedding.

Hartley and Waddington

When I search the online Colne Parish records for Hartley/Waddington, I get these two records:

I was looking for a female Waddington that married a Hartley. We see that in the second listing above. Also of note in attendance was John Crook. Crook is a surname in Linda’s line. There is a Mary Waddington born in 1752, but she is the daughter of John possibly a generation earlier:

Here are some of the children of William and Mary Hartley in the time frame that I am interested in. There were very likely more than one William and Mary Hartley family. At least the family at Noyna-end and Aldershead seem to be different based on the closeness of baptisms. This is also assuming that the baptisms were close to the birth dates. In fact, three baptisms in 1773 could indicate three different families:

Baptism: 21 Mar 1773 St Bartholomew, Colne, Lancashire, England
William Hartley – son of Wm Hartley & Mary
Abode: Noyna-end
Register: Baptisms 1756 – 1774, Page 92, Entry 16
Source: LDS Film 1471023

Baptism: 12 Aug 1773 St Bartholomew, Colne, Lancashire, England
Jonathan Hartley – son of Wm Hartley & Mary
Abode: Aldershead
Register: Baptisms 1756 – 1774, Page 94, Entry 6
Source: LDS Film 1471023

Baptism: 17 Oct 1773 St Bartholomew, Colne, Lancashire, England
Robert Hartley – son of Wm Hartley & Mary
Abode: Greenfield
Register: Baptisms 1756 – 1774, Page 95, Entry 7
Source: LDS Film 1471023

Baptism: 25 Dec 1775 St Bartholomew, Colne, Lancashire, England
Robert Hartley – son of William Hartley & Mary
Abode: Wycoller
Register: Baptisms 1774 – 1789, Page 11, Entry 12
Source: LDS Film 1471023

Baptism: 22 Dec 1777 St Bartholomew, Colne, Lancashire, England
Ellin Hartley – daughter of William Hartley & Mary
Abode: Wycoller
Register: Baptisms 1774 – 1789, Page 25, Entry 24
Source: LDS Film 1471023

Baptism: 7 Oct 1781 St Bartholomew, Colne, Lancashire, England
Peter Hartley – son of William Hartley & Mary
Abode: Green-field
Register: Baptisms 1774 – 1789, Page 61, Entry 2
Source: LDS Film 1471023

Baptism: 2 Feb 1783 St Bartholomew, Colne, Lancashire, England
Richard Hartley – son of William Hartley & Mary
Abode: Two Laws
Register: Baptisms 1774 – 1789, Page 71, Entry 4
Source: LDS Film 1471023

I recognize the name of Aldershead where Jonathan was born. This was not far from Seghole where the Pillings lived. However, Jonathan appeared to have died young:

Burial: 16 Aug 1776 St Bartholomew, Colne, Lancashire, England
Jonathan Hartley –
Age: infant
Abode: Aldershead
Register: Burials 1774 – 1789, Page 7, Entry 12
Source: LDS Film 1471023

Robert would seem to be a good choice for the father of my Robert, but I see no Robert, son of Robert being born around 1803 when I believe my Robert was born based on his burial record:

Baptism: 8 Jan 1792 St Bartholomew, Colne, Lancashire, England
Robert Hartley – Son of Robert Hartley & Mary
Born: 8 Jul 1791
Abode: Edge
Occupation: Weaver
Register: Baptisms 1790 – 1812, Page 23, Entry 22
Source: LDS Film 1471024

Baptism: 22 Jan 1809 St Bartholomew, Colne, Lancashire, England
Robert Hartley – Son of Robert Hartley & Susan
Born: 26 Nov 1808
Abode: Lanshaw Bridge
Occupation: Innkeeper
Register: Baptisms 1790 – 1812, Page 254, Entry 13
Source: LDS Film 1471024

I have the same problem with Robert son of William:

Baptism: 7 Oct 1792 St Bartholomew, Colne, Lancashire, England
Robert Hartley – Son of William Hartley & Margaret
Born: 5 Jul 1790
Abode: Boughgap
Occupation: Weaver
Notes: [Robert & Henry bracketed together]
Register: Baptisms 1790 – 1812, Page 33, Entry 254
Source: LDS Film 1471024

Baptism: 20 May 1810 St Bartholomew, Colne, Lancashire, England
Robert Hartley – Son of Wm Hartley & Mary
Born: 6 Jan 1810
Abode: Spouthouses
Occupation: Weaver
Register: Baptisms 1790 – 1812, Page 279, Entry 158
Source: LDS Film 1471024

There was only one Robert born of a Peter Hartley in 1809. There was also only one Robert born of Richard in 1796. That seems to rule out those possibilities.

Let’s try Rycroft

I haven’t eliminated the Waddington line for the mother of Robert – only for the father of Robert. And I have only eliminated Waddington assuming that the baptisms took place at Colne. I am also not looking for the mother of Robert as that would be a more complicated search. For example, what if a Waddington married and her husband died. She then married a Hartley. Likely the wedding record would show the married and not the birth name.

There were not a lot of Hartley/Rycroft weddings that I could find. Here is a fairly early one.

I did find a Susanna:

Baptism: 16 Oct 1714 St Bartholomew, Colne, Lancashire, England
Susanna Rycroft – filia Johannis Rycroft
Abode: Winewall
Register: Baptisms 1697 – 1734, Page 155, Entry 16
Source: LDS Film 1471023

However, Linda doesn’t have a John Rycroft in her ancestry after 1640, so I’ll rule that out for now due to the fact that a DNA match may not make it that far back.

I found this entry interesting:

Here we have the names Hartley, Rycroft, Foulds and Waddington. This Hartley Rycroft was the daughter of Betty Rycroft:

Baptism: 2 Sep 1798 St Bartholomew, Colne, Lancashire, England
Hartley Rycroft – Son of Betty Rycroft, Spinster
Born: 25 Jun 1798
Abode: Lane Head
Register: Baptisms 1790 – 1812, Page 99, Entry 200
Source: LDS Film 1471024

Here we are getting complicated as the Hartley is only the first name. Was the mother trying to name the father? This Betty was likely the daughter of Foulds:

Baptism: 6 Nov 1774 St Bartholomew, Colne, Lancashire, England
Betty Rycroft – daugr of Foulds Rycroft & Mary
Abode: Trauden
Register: Baptisms 1774 – 1789, Page 4, Entry 3
Source: LDS Film 1471023

Any Hartley/Crook Connections?

In looking through my Blog, I see that I didn’t look at the Crook surname. I use the Lancashire online search when I look for my Colne records. Linda has a Thomasin Crook born in 1711, so that goes back quite a way. I see two Hartley/Crook weddings in the early 1600’s which would likely be too early for a DNA match. Here is a later Crook/Hartley wedding, but I am not sure how John Crook is related. Also Mary Hartley is from Otterburn in Yorkshire. Otterburn looks to be about 20 Km North of Colne.

So this is all very interesting, and I have learned more about Linda’s ancestors, but not so much about mine. However, I do feel that breaking down the brick wall could come from these kind of back door methods in conjunction with DNA matches.