Category: Hartley

I have been building DNA/Genealogy Trees for my ancestors that have ThruLines that i have verified. On my Hartley side, I have looked at:

• Hartley
• Hathaway
• Snell
• Parker
• Hatch
• Howorth
• Churchill
• Cowen

I do not think that I have looked at Luther.

My Luther Genealogy

My great-grandmother Annie Snell was the daughter of a Bradford and a Snell. Luther is on the Snell side. Benjamin Luther and Rebecca Trafton were my 5th great-grandparents. They lived in Dighton, Massachusetts.

Luther ThruLines

I’ll start with my own:

ThurLines think that I match up with Lynn via Lynn’s ancestor Polly Luther. Polly is in white which means that she is already in my Tree. However, it seems as Polly may have married a Simmons:

A few of my siblings have the same ThruLine with Lynn.

Joyce’s Luther ThruLines

Because my father’s cousin Joyce is a generation back, she should have more Luther ThruLines and she does:

Joyce even has a ThruLine going back a generation:

I checked on my father’s other 1st cousin Maury’s ThruLines, but he doesn’t show any on the Luther side.

Joyce and DVanderzell

I’ll start on the oldest ThruLine. DVanderzell’s Tree matches the ThruLine conclusions:

The tree above has Susannah and the ThruLine has Sukey which I take to be the same person.

I’ll start a quick tree to check DVanderzell’s Tree. Winston was born in Taunton, MA. From Winston’s birth record, his father was from Dighton, MA:

The family soon moved to Montclair, NJ:

Here is the previous generation in Dighton, MA:

So far, the tree is checking out:

I am now looking for Jonathan Hathaway:

The family was in Dighton in 1850:

Jonathan to Susannah Sukey Talbot

From Jonathan’s death record, we see his mother is Susan:

At this point, I may want to attack the question from both ends. By that, I mean from the Jonathan end as well as the Sarah Luther side. I do have that Sarah married in 1773. I could go out on a limb and guess that she may have been born around 1753.

One reference to Susannah had this:

Here is the record for Sukey Talbot:

So there are two Jonathan Hathaways.

Sukey Talbot to Sarah Luther

The female connections are more difficult due to the name changes. I have this record from Dighton:

That means that all I am missing is a birth record for Susannah or Sukey Talbot. Here is the missing link:

A First Luther DNA/Genealogy Tree

Here Joyce and DVanerzell show as 6th cousins which agrees with the Ancestry ThruLines.

Joyce and Pat (Sally Luther Line)

Pat has a good tree, but the line diverges at Polly Sartwell:

Pat has her mother as Martha Goodenough. In addition, in my own tree, I have that Sally Luther married James Spooner. I am tempted to pull the plug on Pat for now.

Joyce and RWU12 (Gardner Luther)

RW’s tree diverges before Gardner Luther II:

Here are the Dighton records:

I am trying to figure out how to interpret this. It appears that Gardner Luther in my tree married a Nancy Horton in 1803. He then dies in 1825. Then there is a second Gardner Luther in Dighton. He dies in 1809. I am guessing that he is the son of the other Gardner and that this Gardner was born in 1807 and died in 1809. Then there appears to be a question as to whether the first Gardner Luther married a Nancy Horton or a Nancy Kelton.

I am now cutting corners to save time:

This Gardner is interesting because his parents were Gardner and Nancy Luther. He dies in 1875 on November 6, so would be born around 1809. Also this:

All this leads to the possibility that the ThruLine could be right.

I’ll start a quick tree for RW:

RW’s mother’s birth record was amended, so is not yet available. I’ll have to assume that RW knew who his grandparents were. Here is RW’s 15 year old grandfather in 1900 in Swansea:

At this point, I am checking into Elizabeth from the above Census.

Here is a 1907 North Attleborough Marriage record for William giving his mother’s name as Elizabeth Willmarth:

Here is a good hint. In 1880, Elizabeth was listed as the granddaughter of a Luther:

I got this 1906 Swansea marriage from RW’s tree:

I’ll just take it on face value. My tree is following RW’s so far:

Here is Mary’s marriage record:

Turns out Clement was quite a bit older than Mary and this was her second marriage.

Here two Luthers married.

Here is the family in 1850 in Swansea:

This could be Mary’s first marriage:

Here is the family in 1855:

This proves that the marriage between Mary Luther and Josiah Tucker above was correct.

Gardner dies in 1886 in Swansea and gives the names of Gardner and Mary Luther for his parents who are both said to have been born in Swansea:

Now we have come full circle, however, I had Gardner Sr. marrying a Nancy, so the death record could be wrong?

I have shown a connection from this Gardner to the elder Gardner and that the younger Gardner lived in Swansea most of his life.

Updating the Luther Tree

I gave the chart some color so it wouldn’t just be boring gray. RWU shows as a 5th cousin once removed to Joyce. This is also what the ThruLine suggested, so it checks out. The only thing I didn’t check into was who was the Charlotte Luther who married Gardner Luther?

Joyce and Lynn (Polly Luther Line)

Now we are back to Lynn:

The maternal side of Lynn’s tree agrees with the ThruLine – going back to our common ancestors:

All I need to do now is to build a parallel tree to Lynn’s to see if it checks out. This tree is starting out in Arkansas. I am having a little trouble finding Leatrice. I would think that she would be easy to find, but sometimes with a different name, the name is miss-spelled. Here is the 1930 Census:

I found this in the hints on the ThruLines. Leatrice is here transcribed as Leatrei. In addition, the last name is transcribed as Tolbert. The father was a school instructor and his family was from Mississippi.

Here is Marcus in 1900 in Mississippi:

Marcus’ father was a farmer (I don’t show but he was on the previous page). His father was from Massachusetts. Bingo.

The transcriber gives the father’s first name as Allen which I can now see. The mother is Telisia or something similar. I have seen that name before.

The Census records help me quickly build a parallel tree for Lynn:

Here is Allen with his family in 1850:

I don’t know much about Mississippi, but Marshall County where they lived is not too far from Memphis:

I am guessing Ephraim moved South before marrying as his wife was from Tennessee.

Talbot to Luther?

We are trying to figure out if Ephraim’s mother was Polly Luther. This record from Dighton is helpful:

Next, I just have to figure out if Marcy is the same as Polly. She is:

I assume that I got the name Polly from a genealogy book. It is confusing and I should put her name back to Mary. My understandiing is that Molly is a nickname for Mary which sometimes was changed to Polly.

Last Tree Update – for Now

Here is the new and improved Luther Tree:

Summary and Conclusions

• Out of the 4 Luther Lines I looked into, I was able to make connections on three
• The Luther Line has a rich heritage and history in the part of Massachusetts around Swansea and Dighton.
• This is my first Luther DNA/Genealogy Tree and verifies the Ancestry ThruLines
• Using DNA plus genealogy is a powerful tool in creating surname trees.

My Massachusetts genealogy has two sides. One side is my Pilgrim ancestors and the other side is my non-Pilgrim ancestors:

My great-grandmother Annie Louisa Snell was the source of my Massachusetts heritage. Her maternal side was the non-pilgrim ancestry and the bottom side or maternal side of the tree above was the Pilgrim ancestry lead off my Harvey Bradford.

DNA/Genealogy Trees

Looking through my files I see these Trees:

• Snell
• Parker
• Hatch
• Bradford
• Hathaway

What I don’t see for trees:

• Luther
• Churchill
• Cowing

I would like to update my old trees and add trees where necessary. The last time I started looking at this subject, I looked at Hathaway and realized I had a lot of people in that tree and more to add. This time, I would like to look at Luther, Churchill and Cowing.

Cowing

I know this name from my home town as Cowen. However, the more historical spelling is Cowing or Cowin. I don’t recall writing about any ThruLines for Cowing. Here are some from Joyce, my father’s first cousin:

Joyce and my family are under Experience Cowing. Joyce has no additional ThruLines under Israel Cowing, but she has three ThruLines through Jonathan and Patience Cowing. First, I’ll loo at Christine:

This has happened before. When I choose Kristine from the ThruLines and then check her common ancestors, I come out with a different line. I am curious to see if the Cowen connection is correct.

Here is Kristen’s paternal side from her own tree:

Here is the family in Middleborough, MA in 1930:

Philip was a chauffer for the Town. Philip was born in Westport, but his birth record shows that his father was born in Mattapoisett:

Here is Philip and his father Sanford and family in Westport, MA in 1900:

Sandford was a farmer.

Here is my tree for Kristine:

Mattapoisett became a Town in 1857, the year before Sanford was born. I just need to show that the Ruth above was Ruth Cowen.

Here is the 1865 Census for Mattapoisett:

Findagrave shows this for Ruth:

My tree now suggests that Kristine does go back to Seth Cowen:

My understanding is that Kristine should be a 5th cousin to Joyce. So that is a little closer than the 5th cousin once removed on the Hathaway side. The DNA match would be either from the Cowen side or the Hathaway side. There is no easy way of knowing.

A First Cowen DNA/Genealogy Tree

That line was relatively easy to trace as the family stayed fairly local.

Helen and Joyce

The next family is fun because it involves a genealogy friend, Helen, who lives down the street from me:

If I can show that Helen matches  Joyce by DNA, it gives creedence to our genealogical research. I trust Helen’s research, so feel no need to evaluate it. Here is her tree:

Helen’s line goes to Seth Cowing Hiller, then to Patience Cowing and then to our most recents common ancestors, Seth Cowing and Penelope Crapo.

I’ll add Frances and Helen to the Tree:

A few interesting things about this tree:

• These three lines represent three Cowing children born within about 4 years
• These families mostly stayed in the same part of Massachusetts for about 300 years and if you look at the Mayflower ancestors, that would have our families here for 400 years, so we have deep roots in this part of SE Massachusetts.

Jon and Shaun

My sister Heidi and I have no Cowing ThruLines from Seth Cowing, but my brother Jon has one:

Shaun has a modest tree, but has more on his maternal side. I don’t have a tree for Shaun, so I will create one. Shaun does show that his maternal great-grandfather was from New Bedford:

This obituary ties Stacey Smith to Francis Swift:

Francis was born in Utah and wed in Wyoming:

Here is the 1930 Census for Salt Lake City:

Here is my tree so far:

I forgot to mention, that when I look at the specific match for Jon and Shaun, a Hathaway connection shows up. It is likely that Jon and Shaun are connected on both lines:

This comes up now because there is a Hathaway in Shaun’s Line.

The marriage record for Francis and Amanda has a lot of information:

This has Francis born in Sandwich rather than New Bedford. It also has their parents’ names.  Here is a tree update:

Where Hattaway is likely a transcription error for Hathaway.

Here is the book transcription of the marriage of Nathan Swift and Pamelia Cowing:

And here is her birth record:

So it is pretty clear where this is going as Israel is the son of Seth Cowing.

Here I have the connection between my brother Jon and Shaun:

I did not check out the Hathaway connection, but that one is likely also. That means, that it is unclear as to whether the actual DNA that Jon and Shaun share are from the Hathaway side or Cowing side.

Lori and Gretchen

I see that my sister Lori has a potential Cowing connection with Gretchen:

The good news is that I already have Matthew Hiller in my tree, so I just need to get Gretchen back to Matthew instead of to the colonial Seth Cowing. I am having trouble finding Seth from the information that Gretchen has:

Gretchen has that Seth died in New York City. I found this draft card:

The only problem is that the tree I got this from has Seth’s wife as Grace Appel:

Gretchen’s tree suggests a Webster as the wife.

Looking at Helen’s ThruLines

I thought of another way to substantiate Gretchen. I have access to Helen’s ThruLines:

Clearly, Gretchen has a large match to Helen and is related. Here is Helen’s tree:

The other three that show as children of Matthew Hiller could not be from Beuretta Webster Hammon if Helen’s tree is right as Beuretta dies in 1880.

Here is the family in 1900:

Charles is apparently out of the house, but George, David and Jennie from Helen’s ThruLines are there. This seems to be a good enough of a connection for me.

I’ll add Gretchen to the tree:

Gretchen and my brother Jon are 5th cousins once removed.

My sister Lori also matches Gretchen. Also my sister Sharon matches Shaun.

Cousin Maury’s ThruLines

My father’s cousin Maury has also tested at Ancestry. He has these ThruLines to Cowing:

Maury and my family are under Experience Cowing. The Hiller family is under Patience Cowing. Here are Maury’s ThruLines on the Hiller side:

Maury and P.S.

Since I last wrote, I see another ThruLine for Maury. It is on a different Cowing Line that I would like to investigate:

Mary is the oldest child of Seth Cowing on the ThruLines. Mary is on my tree. She must have married Philipp Briggs:

We are trying to go from the Wing back to the Nye family:

Here is Addie’s birth record from 1864 in Sandwich:

Addie’s father, George B. was a butcher.

Here is the family in 1870:

Next, I just need to find George’s mother. George’s death record gives his mother’s name and birthplace:

Here the Cowing Tree is filling out:

Co

This is not as far as I could go, but it is as far as I would like to go for now.

Summary and Conclusions

• I was able, with not too much difficulty, to pretty good Cowing DNA/Genealogy Tree thanks to my father’s cousins Joyce and Maury and my brother Jon
• In some cases the common ancestors also came up as Hathaway. That is probably partly because my ancestor Experience Cowing married Joseph Hathaway. However, the matches would have had to have had Hathaways in their ancestry also
• In other cases where Hathawy did not show up in the ThruLine matches, I assume that Hathaway ancestry was not there in the DNA match – at least during the time period that we are looking at.
• I am ready to move on to more DNA/Genealogy Trees

This is an extensive series of Hartley ThruLines, but I feel like I am getting further back on my Hartley ancestral line than I have in years of genealogical research that did not use DNA.

In this Blog, I would like to look at this ThruLine:

This is a ThruLine between Joyce, my father’s first cousin and hudson. The ThruLine for Hudson goes by way of John, born 1771, son of John Hartley.

First, I look to see if I have created a tree for Hudson and it appears that I have not. Hudson has a good tree:

However, it has a blank right where I need it. I assume that Hudson lives in Australia:

Here is Humphrey and family in Burnley in 1911:

Interestingly, Humphrey’s wife was from Philadelphia.

Looking for Humphrey Layfield’s Mother

It doesn’t take much to figure out that Humphrey’s mother’s first name was Hannah. This is the Census for Burnley and this family was all born in Burnley according to thie Census.

This record is helpful:

That leads me to this tree:

I need to verify that Elizabeth’s father was Thomas Hartley. An Ancestry member kindly posted this image:

The name Hitchon is a new one to me, but it is not the line that I am interested in. We do see Thomas Hartley as Eliizabeth’s father. This appears to be Briercliffe where Elizabeth was born:

Could this be the same Hannah Hartley?

It appears that Thomas Hartley could have died soon after the birth of Elizabeth Hartley. Based on hints, this is my best guess for the marriage of Thomas Hartley:

Who was the Father of Thomas Hartley?

We are looking for a John. Thomas’ first son was named John, possibly after Thomas’ father. It appears that this is a bit difficult. Here are clues from Ancestry:

There was a marriage for this couple in Burnley:

However, I cannot tell if this would lead me back to John Hartley and Anne Bracewell. I do see this hint from the ThruLines:

However, I am not convinced of this connection at this point.

Other Hartley/Bracewell ThruLines: Joel and Nora

I do not believe that I have looked at this connection:

Lets take a look. Nora’s mom was from Texas. Nora’s grandfather was born in Pennsylvania, but his parents were from England. Here is the 1920 Census from Fort Worth, Texas:

I am looking for Samuel’s mother. In 1870, the family was in Philadelphia:

Here is my evolving tree for Nora:

Nora’s tree is pretty good and goes to the Robert and Peggy that I have documented already:

However, there is a conflict with a tree I already have for Karen:

Was Ann Elizabeth Longbotham Originally a Tomkinson?

This is probably Richard Longbottom in 1841 in Salford:

There was an Elizabeth Tomkinson who traveled to Philadelphi:

She appears to be with her father and mother. Here is the family 1841 in Pendleton, Salford, Manchester:

From this, I turned the page on the arriving immigrants from England:

Assuming I have the right woman, she must have married in Philadelphia. I feel like I am again using the criteria of ‘is this line possible?’ rather than can I prove this line.

According to the 1851 Census, Elizabeth and her family were born in Salford:

Was Ann Tomkinson a Hartley?

There appears to be more documentation here. This record is a bit messy:

William Tomkinson dies in 1915 and his mother should be Ann Hartley, however, it is transcribed as ‘Fathly’.

Here is an entry from ,

Genealogical memoirs of various families of Tomkinson (1620-1904) by Newton Powers Tomkinson, published 1904 in Philadelphia

Here is the transcription of the wedding mentioned above:

More on Nora’s Hartley Ancestry

Let’s check the Tomkinson Genealogy on the Hartleys. Here is a marriage between John Hartley and Elizabeth Crossley:

Next, a lot would be riding on the birth date of John Hartley. The most logical choice appears to be this John:

Generally speaking, babies were baptized fairly soon after birth unless there were extenuating circumstances. In this scenario, John Hartley from Waterside moves to the Manchester area where he marries in 1802.

I get these other hints from Ancestry:

This appears to be Elizabeth Crossley Hartley livign in Salford in 1851 with her unmarried daughter and grandson. This Elizabeth was born in Rochdale:

This baptismal date is the same as the birth date for Elizabeth given in the Tomkinson Genealogy above.

Ancestry also gives this hint for the 1841 Census in Manchester:

It appears that these two trees cannot both be right going back to Robert Hartley and John Hartley. Here is the proposed one for this Blog:

Here is the Tree for my previous Blog:

Note here I have John born 1796 based on the 1841 Census, but based on an Ancestry Tree, I decided that he could have been born in 1779.

It appears that there are pro’s and con’s for each of these trees:

• The dates matched better with Nora’s tree, but not the location. It was unclear why John Hartley would move from Colne to Manchester or it was unclear that he did so
• The locations matched better on Karen’s tree, but the dates seemed off.

Further, as I look at Joyce’s ThruLines, I no longer see my friend Elaine on her list:

These ThruLines are definitely in a state of flux. My solution for now is to give a tint to Elaine’s and Karen’s lines:

I don’t know what to do with Nora’s line for now as that would show a different wife for John Hartley. I do note that Nora matches my siblings Jon, Lori and Sharon. I haven’t tested one brother at Ancestry and one sister did not match Nora. The interesting thing is that these two ThruLines appear that conflict with each other. One is from my family and one is from my father’s 1st cousin.

Here is Nora’s Line shaded in green:

Here is the whole tree:

This completes for now the series on John Hartley/Anne Bracewell ThruLines.

Summary and Conclusions

• It can be confusing trying to sort out Hartley Genealogy in the area of Colne, Lancashire. DNA matches should help to direct this genealogy in certain directions
• In 2019, I started looking at DNA matches from two people who appeaered to be descendants of John Hartley and Anne Bracewell. Because of this connection I added John Hartley and Anne Bracewell to my Ancestry Tree
• Ancestry then looked for and found other DNA matches with possible connections to Anne Bracewell and John Hartley using ThruLines
• When I checked the ThruLines, most lines seemed to connect to John Hartley and Anne Bracewell.
• However, near the end of the series, most questions arose on at least a few of the Lines. One problem was that there were two possible ways one of the Lines could have gone and didn’t seem that both could be true.
• Next, ThruLines for my father’s first cousin Joyce goes back a further generation. I would like to look at those connections.

From my previous Blog, here is my Hartley DNA/Genealogy Tree:

These are people that match either me by DNA or my father’s 1st cousin Joyce. Except for Paul. I can’t remember where he came from. All these people also have a possible connection to John Hartley and Anne Bracewell who are my possible 5th great-grandparents.

In this Blog, I will look a little more into the Line of Robert Hartley born 1758. I have mentioned Elaine in a few of my previous Blogs on Hartley ThruLines. She helped me with some local geography in the area around Colne. I connected with one of her genealogy trees which helped me on the Mary Lee born 1801 Line above. She is a friend also. And she also appears on my father’s cousin Joyce’s ThruLines:

Karen also shows up there. I have a Paul on my DNA/Genealogy tree also, but don’ t recall who matched him.

Elaine and Joyce

Unfortunately, Elaine’s tree does not show the same connection as the ThruLine:

At the point where ThruLines goes Thomas > Robert > John, Elaine’s tree goes from Thomas > James > Thomas. I’ll take a look to see how these two trees differ.

Here are Albert and family in 1891:

Here is Robert with his family in 1871:

Here is my simple reconstructed tree so far:

In 1861, Thomas Hartley was living at Laneshaw Bridge in Colne:

Here is some more information on Thomas Hartley:

Here is some more information:

This is interesting as the 1841 Census took place before this time. Elaine shows this as the 1841 Census for the family:

Here father Thomas is shown as a weaver rather than a farmer. Back to a weaver at son Thomas’ birth:

Who was the Father of Thomas Hartley?

I have a feeling that Elaine’s answer will be better than Ancestry on this one. Both the ThruLines and Elaine’s tree have a Thomas Hartley born 1788. When I check for the evidence of Thomas Hartley in the ThruLines, I get this:

There is one member tree, but when I look at clive’s tree, it is the same as Elaine’s. Here are some baptisms for Thomas in 1788:

Is this the same person?

At any rate, none of these Thomases are the son of a Robert Hartley. Here are the only Thomases, sons of Roberts I could find:

If there was a connection, it would have to be with the second entry, as I have that Robert married Peggy, a nickname for Margaret. Having said that, I see that the Mary I have on my tree is here:

This was the match with Paul that I cannot remember entering:

For now I’ll leave Elaine off my DNA/Genealogy Chart. I have only showed that she could fit into that chart. It occurs to me that there are many other ways in which we may be related. However, I have shown, at least in a quick overview, that it is possible that her genealogy could connect with John Hartley and Anne Bracewell. As I review this line further, more information may come to light.

Joyce and Karen

On Karen’s tree, she has traced her ancestry back to a Robert Hartley:

Assuming that Karen’s tree is correct, it appears that the Robert in her tree could be the one from the ThruLines. That is, based on the date of hte birth of John Hartley in 1796. However, on closer inspection, I see that Hannah Hartley was from Rawtenstall:

Rawtenstall is several miles from Colne and closer to my Emmet ancestors who lived in Bacup:

Time to check out Karen’s tree. Here is a young Charles Harvey and his family:

Charles’ father Richard was a quarry man. Here is my specific tree in progress:

However, it is Betsy that we are intrerested in. According to the 1911 Census above, the whole family was born in Rossendale. This appears to be a general area including Rawtenstall:

This appears to be the marriage registration index for Betsy Terry:

Here are Betsy’s family in the 1871 Census for Rawtenstarll. Betsy is on the next page:

Hannah Hartley Terry

It appears that Hannah Terry was born in Rutt Lee? The 1881 Census shows that Hannah has passed away:

So Hannah should be born around 1826. According to the 1861 Census, Thomas either had a different wife, or Hannah also went by Nancy:

Here is an interesting entry for a Hannah Hartley:

I should note that I have Howorth in my ancestry. However, Ancestry has this hint:

I see that as a good choice due to this bapstismal entry:

The problem (or good news) is that this brings the family back to Colne. The reason that I like Rough Lee is that it sounds like Rutt Lee from the 1871 Census. It looks like this was a large family. Here they are in Mill Gate, Lower Booths, Rawtenstall:

Actually, this looks like two families. I can’t make out the name of the second family. Lower Booths is to the North of Rawtenstall:

These two additional baptsims from Colne further tie this Rossendale family back to Colne:

I was despairing of finding a connection to Colne, but this appears to be the connection. From the 1841 Census, my guess is that the 28 year old Mary Hartley could be the child of Jane as she is older than John.

Was John Hartley the Son of Robert Hartley?

Assuming the ThruLines from Ancestry, John Hartley the son of Robert Hartley should have been born in 1779. This John Hartley was 45 or older at the time of 1841 Census. That means that he could have been born between and about 1792 and 1796. That means that he would not be a very good match if his age was reported accurately in the 1841 Census.

I do note that John named a potential eldest son Robert. That means that he could have been named for John’s father. Assuming that John’s father was a Robert, I come up with these potential parents for John:

Karen’s ThruLine Hints for John Hartley

The ThruLines hints for Karen and Joyce were more straightforward than the hint for Joyce and Elaine:

Here, I chose the Schofield Family Tree with 24 records on John Hartley:

Here we see Robert and Peggy as John’s parents. Here are some more details from the tree:

Of interest is that he shows John’s father Robert Hartley dying in Haslingden in 1845. Under this scenario, the Robert Hartley who was 80 in 1841 in the house of John Hartley in Rawtenstall must be his father Robert.

Here is more of the Schofield Tree:

Updating the Hartley/Bracewell DNA/Genealogy Tree

As I mention above, it seems possible that Elaine and Karen could be added to the Tree. I’ll put them in to see how it looks. If Elaine and Karen match each other by DNA, then that would also help to solidify the tree. Here I have added Karen:

I still hope that I can figure out who Paul is. Here is Elaine added in:

I checked at least one tree at Ancestry and it showed that Robert above born 1758 did have twins.

Finding Paul

I finally found Paul in this Blog from 2019. I built his tree out from a tree that only had five people in it (but two parents):

His parents were from New Bedford which is where my Hartley ancestors ended up. I found Paul in an interesting way. He was a shared DNA match betwen my father’s cousin Joyce and Kristin:

Because Paul was a shared match with Kritin and Joyce, that meant that his connection went back to 1861 or earlier. When I did the genealogy, it appeared that the connection went back to John Hartley from 1730. Another connection with Sheryl along the Susy Hartley Line of 1755 seemed to confirm the tree. Sheryl was another shared DNA match between Kristin and Joyce. As a result, I put John Hartley and Anne Bracwell into my Ancestry Tree. Fast forward more than four years later and now there are many more DNA connections with possible genealogical connections as shown in Ancestry ThruLines.

I just need to add in Kristin and Joyce, and I should be done with this Blog:

And the tree is not yet finished. I will continue in a later Blog.

Summary and Conclusions

• In this Blog, I looked at ThruLines between my father’s cousin Joyce and Elaine and Karen
• Both Elaine and Karen had possible links to Robert Hartley born 1758 who married Peggy Sellers. Robert appears to be the son of John Hartley and Anne Bracewell.
• I hesitated adding Elaine to the tree as she has her own differing tree. Also I had trouble figuring out from the Ancestry evidence how Elaine was added to the ThruLines.
• The mounting evidence seems to be that these many DNA matches support the theory that John Hartley and Ann Bracewell are my ancestors. This is good news, because going on the genealogy alone, it was too difficult to narrow down my Hartley ancestors.
• I then reviewed match Paul who is not on the ThruLines. I had found him in 2019 and also traced his line back to Robert Hartley born 1758 and John Hartley born 1730.
• Because Paul was a shared match between Joyce and Kristen, that meant that he was more likely to have an older Hartley connection.

I have been having good results in my previous Blogs. In my previous Blog, I looked at ThruLines from John Hartley and Anne Bracewell through their daughter Nancy. She had 10 children, so potentially, a lot of descendants. In this Blog, I will look at more Nancy Hartley ThruLines through my father’s cousin, Joyce.

Joyce is a good choice because she is a generation earlier than me and should have twice as much Hartley DNA compared to me:

Here is the Hartley/Bracewell DNA/Genealogy Tree I have so far:

Here are Joyce’s ThruLines through Nancy Hartley:

Laura’s tree ends in Jesse Howorth:

It turns out that I already have a tree for Laura:

However, I had stopped the tree at Eliza Lee. This tree was made back in 2018 before I knew about Joyce’s ThruLines apparently.

Joyce and Laura

This line should be easy as I already mentioned Eliza in my previous Blog. She identifies her father-in-law in the 1851 Census:

I’m feeling good about Nancy’s 11 children, so I added them to my Ancestry Tree:

So here, John has Eliza who has Jesse. It appears that Laura’s tree checks out.

Adding Laura to My Hartley Tree

Laura adds another piece to the puzzle. Obviously, a lot is riding on the fact that Thomas Lee’s wife Nancy was Nancy Hartley the daughter of John Hartley and Anne Bracewell.

Joyce and Robin

Here Ann Lee shows in white on Robin’s side. This is probably because I just added Ann to my tree. I get this hint in my tree for Ann:

Robin has an extensive tree which I will assume to be accurate at this point. Here is her maternal side:

I will add Robin to my Hartley/Bracewell Tree:

Unfortunately, I don’t show Joyce on this tree, but she would be in the same generation as my father. So Joyce is 5th cousin once removed to Laura and Robin.

Joyce and Shaz

All the ThruLines seem to be working out so far:

Interestingly, shaz shows to be descended from Mary who Nancy Hartley Lee had when she was almost 47 years old. Shaz’ tree stops at James Wilkinson:

If I can show that James Wilkinson was the son of Mary Lee, that may be good enough. It turns out that Mary is in the tree of my genealogy friend, Elaine:

Elaine has saved me some time in connecting Mary Lee to James Wilkinson. This connection is good enough for me:

Here the tree is getting wider, reflecting the large family that Nancy Hartley Lee had.

Summary and Conclusions

• My father’s first cousin Joyce showed three ThruLines from the Nancy Hartley Line. These all appear to check out.
• Evidence is mounting that we have many connections to Nancy Lee who appears to be Nancy Hartley and the daughter of John Hartley and Anne Bracewell.
• I previously had not documented these Nancy Hartley descendants and now show 6 DNA matches between myself and my father’s cousin Joyce.
• I will continue working on Hartley/Bracewell Thrulines in subsequent Blogs.

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:

1. 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.
2. This Nancy would have been 19 at the time of her marriage.
3. This Nancy would have been 18 at the time of her marriage
4. 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.