It’s been a while since I’ve written on my Hartley autosomal DNA and Lancashire connections. Part of the reason is that there haven’t been any or many clear DNA connections on the Hartley side. Perhaps my Hartley lines were not that prolific or the descendants that were there haven’t taken DNA tests. I have found at least one documented Howarth/Howorth connection that I wrote about here.
My Hartley Lancashire Genealogy
My great grandfather James Hartley was born in Bacup, Lancashire. His father lived in Trawden, Lancashire.
James had about as many children as I have identified ancestors for him. All his and his wife’s descendants of my generation are my 2nd cousins. The problem is separating their DNA from his wife’s Snell side. I am stuck at James’ grandfather’s level. I have James’ grandparents as Robert Hartley and Mary Pilling. Before that, on the Harltey side, I have an educated guess for the parents.
Finding an Old EMail of a Hartley DNA Match
While I was looking for an email, I came upon an email from Cai. Hehad his grandmother Jane tested and I was a match with his grandmother Susan.
The part of Jane’s genealogy that Cai and I focused in on was the Hartley part:
Notice that the first male Hartley in Jane’s line was Peter Hartley, born quite a while ago in 1698. However, the name and the place Trawden, Colne were hopeful. Peter is Jane’s mother’s mother’s father’s father’s father’s father’s mother’s father if I have it right. Put another way, Peter Hartley is Jane’s 6th great grandfather. Assuming that Jane and I both descend from Peter (a big assumption as we have no documentation) and that we are both at the same generation from Peter, that would make us 7th cousins. Note that at Gedmatch, the estimated number of generations to a common ancestor between Jane and me is 4.6. That appears to be wildly optimistic or Jane and I just share more than the average DNA given our distant relationship. Peter Hartley is 8 generations from Jane. This seems to be some DNA that has stayed around for a while. There are studies that show that if you are going to match someone distantly, that DNA may hang around for quite a while.
More on Jane and Chromosome 15
I have some other known Hartley descendants and I checked to see if they matched Jane.
Here is Jane’s match to my 2nd cousin Beth, me, my brother Jon and another 2nd cousin Patricia. Actually, my sister Lori should be in there also.
Mapping Chromosome 15 for Joel, Jon and Lori
By knowing how Jon and Lori compare to me and each other, I can map out the DNA that we got from our four grandparents For Chromosome 15, it looks like this:
This shows the DNA we each got from our four grandparents in relative colors. I don’t know which color represents which grandparent or whether the top of the Chromosme is maternal or paternal. To figure that out, I have to look for matches with a known person. In this case, I will look at how my father’s cousin Jim matches the three of us:
On Chromosome 15, Jim matches Lori and me but not Jon from 80 to 95M.
The only place between 80 and 95M where the colors are the same are blue. That means that Hartley is blue as Jim matches us on our Hartley side. That also means that the top of the Chromosome (orange and green) is maternal. Here is where Jane matches Jon, Lori and Joel on the blue Hartley segment near the beginnig of Chromosome 15:
Theoretically, the match could represent the DNA from James Hartley wife Annie Snell. However, all of Annie’s ancestors were from around SE Massachusetts back to colonial times. As I am not aware that Jane has any Massachusetts ancestors, we can assume that the connection is in Lancashire.
More on Jane’s Hartleys in Lancashire
Cai kindly sent me some ideas to go on. He showed me who he had for the children of Peter Hartley b. 1698:
Here are six children of the Peter born in 1698. If we assume that the relation was on Peter’s male Hartley children, that narrows the possibilities down to four. It looks like I had started my own tree based on Cai’s:
I had also found another apparent brother of Peter. Here is what I wrote to Cai in 2016:
I assume that these are the first Peters you mention. However, I note that they lived in Trawden. My guess is that at some time they moved from Trawden to Great Marsden. It looks like Peter had a brother John:
Baptism: 24 Jan 1694/5 St Bartholomew, Colne, Lancashire, England
Johannes Hartley – fil Petri Hartley
Abode: Trawden
Register: Baptisms 1679 – 1697, Page B37, Entry 9
Source: LDS Film 1471023
Baptism: 14 Mar 1695/6 St Bartholomew, Colne, Lancashire, England
Joannes Hartley – fil Petri Hartley
Abode: Trawden
Register: Baptisms 1679 – 1697, Page B39, Entry 17
Source: LDS Film 1471023
I’m not sure why this is in twice. Perhaps a baby died and they named another son for him, or it was recorded twice or there were 2 different families!
At any rate, this is the difficult part of genetic genealogy. To do this right, I would need to build down all the trees. This is much more difficult without a census to show you where the family units were.
Back to the DNA on Chromosome 15
Above I showed how Jane matched me, my brother and sister and two 2nd cousins on the same segment of Chromosome 15. As my 2nd cousins and my siblings all match each other, that would be a Triangulation Group or TG. A TG indicates a common ancestor or ancestral couple.
Here is the match with my family and my two second cousins:
Triangulation really isn’t needed here as we know that James Hartley is our shared common ancestor. However, normally I wouldn’t know if the common ancestor would be James or his wife Annie. As I mention above, in this case it does appear to be James and not Annie based on Jane’s matches at Chromosome 15 to my family and 2nd cousins. We know that Jane descends from some Hartleys in the area where my Hartley were from, but her Hartleys were from about 100 years earlier. This is the situation I have drawn out schematically below:
I have a line going from James Hartley to Peter Hartley, but really, it is just pointing in the general direction of Peter. That seems to be as accurate as I can get with the DNA right now. I do have other DNA matches, but it is not likely that their trees are as complete as Jane’s tree. One good thing about the combined trees that I drew above is that the dates seem to match up. Greenwood Hartley was born in 1831 and Jane’s Richard Alston was born 1822. Robert Harrtley was born 1803 and Robert Alstead was born 1791. All I have to do is fill in the gaps between the ? Line.
People That Match Jane and Me
At Gedmatch, I plugged in my kit number and Jane’s to see who our common matches are. I went down to a match of 20 cM and got this group that matched my and Jane on Chromosome 15:
It is likely that these people also have ancestors in Lancashire. Nunber 1-4 are Lori, Jon, Beth and Patricia already discussed above. Jane is #7. Lori matches me on the whole Chromosome. Remeber in my chromosome map above, Lori and I both had a full Hartley Chromsome on #15.The others matches are difficult to track down.
#6 is Shannon from Australia and has a tree at FTDNA. Hargreaves in Shannon’s tree sounded familiar. I checked him out on her tree. Shannon has a John Hargreaves born 1826 in Lancashire. Turns out that was the best lead of the bunch above (other than Jane).
Summary and Conclusions
I am basically stuck genealogically going back on my Hartley Line. Due to where the Hartleys lived, there is a jungle of similar names which makes the Hartley genealogy difficult. Jane’s DNA results gave some possibility of going down from her Peter Hartley Line of 1698 to see if there is a match-up with my line. That seems to be my best bet right now.