My Hartley Tree at Ancestry ends in John Hartley and Anne Bracewell:
Unfortunately, I do not have good genealogical evidence that these are my correct ancestors past Robert Hartley. There were so many Hartleys born in the area of Colne, that it makes it difficult to figure things out. I say this because when Ancestry looks for ThruLines, it is trying to look for matches to John Hartley and Anne Bracewell.
Summarizing the Hartley/Bracewell ThruLines
I have 7 Ancestry tests to deal with. These are me and four out of five of my siblings. Then there are two of my father’s first cousins. I’ll start with myself:
Here I have those that are believed to be the children of John Hartley and Anne Bracewell other than James. I have that my family is possibly from the line of James. Then I have the person that I match from that line. I match three from the line of Nancy. Then I have how much I match those proposed descendants of John Hartley and Anne Bracewell (in centimorgans)
Although this is helpful, I think that it would be more helpful to show this information on a family tree. I have already started such a tree:
This will show the branching of the matches, so I think this is more infomative. At the time I made this tree (2019), I had no matches from the Nancy Line. Now I have at least three:
However, I am now running into a different problem. Notice how there are two John Lees in this tree. It could be that one of these matches doesn’t belong in the tree or that the two John Lees are the same person.
Here is the same level of ThruLines for my father’s first cousin Joyce:
Joyce has three different matches and only one John Lee.
As a side-note, Maury who is my father’s other 1st cousin, does not have the same ThruLines. He shows James as son of Robert instead of John Hartley and Anne Bracewell:
Two John Lees
Before I add to my Hartley DNA/Genealogy Chart, I will want to figure out why there are two John Lees in my ThruLines. I’ll start with my larger match:
Joel and J.S.
J.S. has a nice tree:
Ancestry wants me to follow J.S.’s Line from Crabtree to Lee rather than from Crabtree to Betty Hartley:
It turns out I already made a tree for J.S., but I did not carry it far enough back:
I was following the Betty Hartley Line apparently:
According to an Ancestry Hint, this Betty Hartley Line appears to go to a Nancy Hartley who was from Thornton in Craven. Thornton-in-Craven is not too far from East Marton which is what I was looking at in my previous Blog.
Michael Lee b. 1803
Here is the family in 1841:
They are living in Reedy Moor ‘Folridge’ which I take to be Foulridge.
The faint red arrows points to Reedy Moor Lane which is to the West of Foulridge and North of Colne.
The 1851 Census has Michael born in Thornton, Yorkshire:
The Census is a bit confusing as Alice Crabtree is the daugther of Michael and Barbara Lee. I assume that Barbara had previously married a Crabtree. If this is the case, then Michael should not be the father of Alice as the tree shows above.
Here is Thornton where Michael is said to be born in the 1851 Census:
I think I see my mistake. It appears that Alice was married in the 1851 Census to Samuel Crabtree. Usually husband and wife are listed together, but here Samuel is listed as a lodger rather than a son-in-law. This marriage took place shortly before the 1851 Census:
Here is some more on Michael Lee:
Unfortunately, the marriage record does not give the parents for Michael Lee and there are two choices for his birth. One Michael was born in Harden and one in Higher Hague.
If the map is right, this is Higher Hague:
I think this may be Harden or near Harden Road a bit further North:
Michael Lee has a son Henry, which could favor Michael Lee being the son of Henry Lee of Harden. However, the date of Michael Lee in the Census records favors the later birth.
John Lee
Here is the marriage of John Lee:
Here we see that John is the correct father of Michael as he shows the connection to Thornton in Yorkshire. Expanding the 1851 Census shows John Lee:
John’s daughter Eliza apparently marries a Howorth. This Census is important as it shows that John was born in Colne. Based on his age of 70, John was born around 1781. This would make him 22 at the time of his marriage which is reasonable:
In addition, Ancestry recommends an earlier birth:
I assume this is based on his birth in Colne. However, I assume that Coln is also Colne. The ThruLines has John’s mother as Nancy Hartley.
Here is some more information on Eliza Lee:
She is living in Colne at the time of her marriage in 1841 and her father John Lee is a farmer. Here is some more helpful information on Eliza:
Her mother’s name was Ann. Actually, I alreaady had her as Nancy or Nanny. However, we see that she was born in Foulridge. Now, oddly, the father is a hatter.
Here is John and Family in 1841:
I can’t make out the name of the House he was living at. The two entries before this were Wanlass Wastes and Slipper Hill. My best guest would be Wanlass House. The map is a bit busy, but gives the relative location to the Wanlass Water Farm:
Here is the next page of the 1841 Census:
Was John Lee’s Mother Nancy Hartley?
For this to be true, the John Lee who was shown in the Census to be born about 1881 in Colne would have to be the same as:
Then the Nancy from this baptism would have to be Nancy Hartley. I have already shown that the wife of John Lee was likely Ann or Nancy Wilson, but was his mother Nancy Hartley?
Here we see a Thomas Lee/Nancy Hartley wedding in 1774 and a birth from the same couple later that year.
Who Were Nancy Hartley’s Parents?
We would be looking for a Nancy born aroun 1753, assuming that Nancy was 21 when she married:
- This Nancy has a baptism date of 1747/1748 because this was before the time the calenday shifted. The new year used to be March 25, so it would have been still 1747 in February, but more like our current 1748 if I understand it correctly. At any rate, Nancy would have been about 27 at the time of her marriage.
- This Nancy would have been 19 at the time of her marriage.
- This Nancy would have been 18 at the time of her marriage
- This Nancy would only be 15.
These are some more of the children of the couple:
If the traditional naming pattern was used, Nancy would have named her second son after her father. Unfortunately, that would have been John. My first two choices for the father of Nancy were aslo named John Hartley.
There are too many John Hartley marriages to investigate. However, here is a possible scenario. Say I pick the Nancy Hartley who was born in 1754 in Trawden. She could have been the daughter of this couple:
Let’s further suppose that Nancy was the daughter of Anne. They may have named her Nancy to distinguish her from her mother Anne. This seems to be a house of cards, but one that may be gaining support.
I already liked the branching of this ThruLine:
What I mean by that is that there are three different matches all going back to Nancy Hartley. The only thing I would change at this point is that it appears that Nancy was born in 1754 rather than 1752.
A New Hartley DNA/Genealogy Tree
I have found these trees to be helpful. I don’t have immediate access to the tree I showed earlier in the Blog, so I wrote up a simplified version:
I previously had only two lines represented which were my line (James) and the Robert Hartley Line. Now having three lines makes the possibility of my descent from John Hartley and Anne Bracewell seem more likely. The interesting thing about my previous tree is that my immigrant ancestor’s second cousin Richard Holgate had moved from Blackburn to New Bedford. I wonder if Greenwood ever got in touch with him in New Bedford.
Additional Lee Lines
I would like to look at the other two Lee Lines. One should be easy as it has a John Lee from 1779. This is the same John that I had surmised was correct in the previous Line going down to J.S.
John and Joel
My match with John looks like this:
It appears that the only connection I need to look at is between John Lee and Martha Lee. It turns out that I already have an image of the 1841 Census with Martha in it. It turns out that John also has that same reference:
However, DNA match John in his tree, did not make the same connection that I did with Ann Lee being Nancy Wilson. Interestingly, if I had seen John’s tree, I would have focused on the Richard Hartley/Martha Bracewell Line. That shows how helpful these ThruLines can be.
I also see that John and I have a shared match with J.S., but also a Wilkinson. The Wilkinson match is confusing, because I think I am related to the Wilkinsons on the Pilling side rather than the Hartley side.
Here is Martha’s baptismal transcription:
Here is my addition of my 6th cousin John to the Tree:
That is, of course, assuming that I have the correct tree.
Gabrielle and Joel
Ancestry appears to want me to evaluate Gabrielle’s entire line. Gabrielle’s tree goes back to Jane Lee:
The marriage record for Edith Miles gives her parents:
We find the Lee name in the marriage index:
Here is my version of Gabrielle’s tree so far:
Jane’s Anglican Marriage record gives her birthplace and parents:
In the 1871 Census for Burnley, we see that Robert Lee was from Colne:
Here is 11 year old Robert Lee living in Lenches, Great Marsden in 1851 – next to another Robert Lee family:
Here is Robert’s family enumerated on the previous page next to the Shackelton family:
Robert Lee Sr
The above Census has Robert born in Earby, Yorkshire:
In my list of children of Thomas and Nancy Lee above, I stopped at 1788, but the list goes on:
My guess is that these were all from the same family. The only problem is that if Nancy was born in October 1754, she would have been 46 going on 47 when she had Mary. Possible, but somewhat rare. In support of Mary Lee, I see at the start of the Blog that my father’s first cousin Joyce has a ThruLine going up to Mary Lee born in 1801.
Revised Hartley/Bracewell DNA/Genealgy Tree
The tree is starting to fill out:
This tree compares well with my Ancestry ThruLines:
I have the three matches from the Nancy Hartley lineage. I have not checked the Susan Hartley Line yet. I have Paul instead of Nora from the Robert Hartley Line. I will check out the Susan and Robert Hartley Lines in my next Blog.
Summary and Conclusions
- I started out trying to summarize the ThruLines going back to John Hartley and Anne Bracewell. These were difficult to summarize without trying to verify them.
- Instead, I looked at the genealogies of the ThruLine matches going back to the Nancy Hartley Line. These three all either checked out or proved to be possible or likely.
- It was helpful that Nancy Hartley had 10 children
- I found it significant that the branching for these matches went back to around the year 1800. Two matches were from the UK and one was from Australia.
- I entered the Nancy Hartley Line onto a Hartley/Bracewell DNA/Genealogy Chart
- Having these extra matches appear to solidify the likelihood that my ancestors could have been John Hartley and Anne Bracewell. I had earlier identified them as the most likely candidates and the ThruLines seem to back that up
- I continue to maintain a healthy skepticism concerning the results and want to be open to other possibilities. Going back to 6th cousins opens up a lot of possibilities and other family lines which are out there.
- In my next Blog, I will follow other ThruLine leads from John Hartley and Anne Bracewell.