In this Blog, I would like to look for Pilling matches. I have a motive for this. Those who are descended just from Pilling will not be descended from Hartley. Theoretically, I could eliminate some of my matches from my Hartley ancestor search. As it is, when I look at many of my Hartley DNA matches, it seems like some of them could be Pilling relatives.
So as I think of the matches, it occurs to me that going forward in time from Mary Pilling, there would be matches that descend from Mary Pilling. However, going back from Mary Pilling, there should be no Hartley descendants that match us unless it is by coincidence. Hmmm…
Pilling Genealogy and ThruLines
I believe that my genealogy is right for Mary Pilling:
However, when I look at the ThruLines for my father’s 1st cousin Joyce, I see this:
This shows Horsfall coming from Robert. Robert died in 1835. May Pilling Hartley remarries Robert Wilkinson and has more children. I thought that the ThruLines were more messed up than they are. When I look at Joyce’s ThruLines for Mary Pilling, it looks correct:
That means that Ruth would be a great person of interest in looking at Pilling Clusters.
When I look at another of my father’s first cousins’ ThruLines, I see this:
Derek has an even larger match with Maury at 42 cM.
Maury’s Pilling Clusters
Maybe my chances of finding Pilling Clusters would be better with Maury than with Joyce.
I was thinking I should see an overall cluster, but I don’t see it.
The first group is the closest group of matches:
EB has a private tree, but according to shared matches, he is a nephew of Derek.
Cluster 2 includes two people from the Wilkinson Line:
Cluster 3
This seems to expand past the children of John Pillng born 1822 for the first three matches of this cluster. This tells me that there are two different groups, but Norman appears to be matched to both. This appears to be where the matches have gone from the known (Pilling and Wilkinson) to the unknown.
Cluster 4
Now that I have not figured out Cluster 3, I will move on to Cluster 4:
This represents the ultimate representation of Pilling clusters that I am aware of on my side’s matches. This would be one interpretation:
I was thinking that the first cluster were peole who descended from Mary Pilling. However, George is a new match.
When I look at George’s shared matches, he comes out close to the Wilkinson side. Perhaps I can fit him in. George has an unlinked tree:
George’s mother is from Massachusetts. Perhaps that is a clue.
I don’t know if I have a better Pilling DNA tree, but this one looks like it could use some updating – especially on the Wilkinson side:
I’ll add George to my tree as a floating tree.
I’ll go with the findagrave hint at Ancestry for Barbara – Geoge’s mother:
In 1950 George Nelson is a Taxi Driver living in New Bedford:
His sister Barbara A Nelson is listed in the same household on the next page:
The house is in the Sassaquin neighborhood of New Bedford:
Here is Barbara in one tree at Ancestry:
That same tree has father George Nelson dying before 1930. However, if that is the case, how can he be the father of Barbara Ann Nelson born 1931? This appears to indicate that George died in 1930:
Here is the family in 1940, but where is Barbara? She should have been about 8 or 9 at the time.
It appears that it is not easy for me to trace this match back to Wilkinson and Pilling.
More on William Wilkinson
Shared matches seem to indicate that the George match above could be a 2nd cousin to Richard and Paul:
That could mean that they both descend from William Wilkinson born in 1879. Here is Willia a death certificate for Wilkinson in 1936:
At the time, he was living at Lindsey Street, New Bedford:
Lindsey runs between North Street and Court Street. That confirms that this must be William in the 1930 Census:
According to Paul’s Tree at Ancestry, William had a second wife:
Back to the Clusters
George is somehow connected to the Wilkinson side, but I do not know how exactly. The next cluster is from from Ann Hartley. She was the daughter of Greenwood Hartley who was the son of Mary Pilling.
The Third Cluster
- Elliot
- Talia
- Jane
- Catherine
Jane and Catherine are in the order of 1st cousins to Maurey.
They descend from James Hartley. Cluster 2 descend from James’ sister Ann Hartley Burrows.
Elliot and Talia
Elliot’s family appears to be from Tasmania:
As Elliot’s tree only goes to about the year 1900, it would take quite a bit of work to trace it back to the Pilling family.
Cluster 4
The last person in the last cluster has this possible connection:
Victoria fits in with the theory that these should be Pilling clusters. However, the tree goes back quite far. The further a tree goes back, there are more possible ways that something could have gone wrong. Here is the earliest Howorth that Victoria has:
The information looks a little vague. I don’t mind trying a quick tree to see what I get. It looks like I already checked this out in 2019:
I have Edmund’s son Edmund born in Bacup. This is interesting as this is where the Emmet side of family lived. After a quick look at the ThruLines, I do not see an easy connection.
Summary and Conclusions
- Looking at the Pilling Clusters gave me a different perspective on this family and their descendants
- The largest result gave me four clusters. These were: Pilling/Wilkinson, Descendants of Ann Hartley Burrows, descendants of James Hartley her brother and a fourth presumably earlier group of Pillings.
- My assumption was that I would get a list of Pilling descendants that I could eliminate from my list of earlier Hartley descendants. It did not seem to work out that way and/or I did not look at a list to subtract them from
- I found an interesting match to the Wilkinson line, but could not figure out how he is connected.