Category: Hartley

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My Father’s Cousins’ Ancestry Thru-Lines: Part 2 – Bradford

I would like to look at my father’s cousin Joyce’s Bradford Thrulines. Our most recent Bradford ancestor was Hannah T Snell:

Hannah was born in Wareham in 1838 and married Isaiah Snell. This family lived in Rochester, MA where I grew up. The DNA that Joyce shares with these people is half Snell and half Bradford.

Harvey Bradford ThruLines

Harvey was born about 1808 in Plymouth, MA:

Harvey only had two children. Patricia is my second cousin on another line. These relationships are fairly close, so no evealuation is needed.

Samuel Bradford 1755

By the third set of Bradford ThruLines, we are already back to 1755. Harvey was the youngest son of Samuel. Samuel is important as the link between him and Harvey is weak. There is no known birth record for Harvey. Harvey is linked to Samuel through land records.

Robert and Joyce have a 9 cM match. In the expanded view, Ancestry is suggesting I evaluate Robert’s mother and grandfather:

The link between Barbara and her son would be a little difficult to prove. I assume he knew who his mother was. He and his brother are mentioned in an obituary. Barbara is listed as 11 months old in the 1920 Worcester, MA Census:

That is a little at odds with her posted birth of 1917. Here is her birth record:

This also shows that her father was born in Boston:

Oscar Bradford

Someone helped me out by saving this record:

This shows Oscar’s father as Alexander O Bradford. Here is the family on Washington Street, Boston in 1900:

I like how someone did a great job researching this family:

Here is Alexander the father in 1870 in Cambridge:

Too bad all my research isn’t this easy:

Now we have a middle initial and are getting back to Stephen Bradford and Hannah as parents to Alexander.

Here is Alexander W in 1850 in Duxbury:

Stephen Bradford was a cooper. I believe that Stephen’s father Samuel took over his father-in-law Stephen Churchill’s cooper business. So then he likely passed it down to his son Stephen. Here is a record I transcribed:

So easy with all the research others have done. As I mentioned above, Stephen is very important as being the brother of my ancestor Harvey Bradford. Here is some information I already had for Stephen on my own tree:

That confirms the ThruLInes between Joyce and Robert. The genealogy holds together. The DNA adds evidence that nothing got messed up along the way.

I should note that my cousin has a competing ThruLine that traces the lineage up through Harvey Stetson Bradford. I will probably look at that at some time.

Heading Up a Level to Josiah Bradford Born 1724

This is interesting:

Joyce shows 2 DNA matches through William Bradford and 10 DNA matches through an additional Samuel Bradford. That sounds confusing. That implies to me that 10 people got their genealogy wrong or that Joyce matches 10 people that descend from a different Samuel and Ancestry connected the trees in the wrong way (or perhaps a combination of the two).

Starting with William Bradford Born 1749

This looks like the easy part:

This shows that Liz is and Michael are 2nd cousins to each other and that they both match Joyce. Liz and Michael share a common ancestor of Josiah Bradford with Joyce. Ancestry would like me to evaluate these two lines. I’ll start with Liz and create my own tree for her:

Above is the family in Colleton, South Carolina. I’ve got to get them back to Bradford in Massachusetts. Richard’s mom above is supposed to be a Bradford. Here they are in 1880:

According to this Census, both of Amanda’s parents were born in South Carolina. That’s OK, it is still a while to get back to 1724. Here Richard is transcribed as Harven. I suppose for his middle initial.

Amanda’s death certificate is important as it gets us back to Bradford and Plymouth, MA:

That means that the 1880 Census was probably not correct.

Here is the 1850 Census – still in Colleton, S.C.:

So apparently Jesse was the one making the jump from Massachusetts to South Carolina. I wonder where that put the children during the Civil War?

Here is a flowery obituary for Jesse:

Jesse Bradford Born 1790 and Maria

The tree that Liz created has Maria as a Thornton. An Ancestry suggestion has her as Lovell:

I think that I would tend to go with this record, but it doesn’t really matter as I’m trying to find out more about Jesse.

Here is where I have Jesse on my Ancestry Tree:

This is the information for William Bradford born 1749 in Plymouth. William was the brother of Samuel Bradford, my ancestor. The bad news is that there is not a lot of information out there about Jesse. The good news is that the DNA matches give supporting evidence for the trees that we do have.

Michael’s ThruLines

Michael’s tree is not as extensive as Liz’s tree:

The 1910 Census joins Frampton with the Liz’s Wichman family above:

Now, the Other Samuel Descendants on the ThruLines

It turns out that the other descendants, I already know about. They descend either from my great-grandmother Annie Snell Hartley or one generation back. The Mayflower Families, which is one of the best resources for Bradford genealogy, has no birth date for Samuel Bradford. So differences in his birth date would be expected. In either case, he is still the son of Josiah Bradford and Hannah Rider.

ThruLines to William Bradford Born 1686

Now this is going out a ways. But let’s try it:

This shows as two matches for Joyce, but really amounts to one. CH is related more closely through Hannah Bradford. It is just spelled differently in his tree. I’ll try PK’s tree. PK’s tree goes up to Mary Bradford:

I’m not sure if the DNA test goes with the daughter or granddaughter of Prescott. From the ThruLines, it looks like the daughter. This Thru-Line would also support that my line goes up through Harvey to Samuel to Josiah to William Bradford. The ThruLines shows PK as a half 6th cousin. Ancestry doesn’t always get the half relations right, so I’ll check that out also.

I get a bit stuck before 1860 with my own tree:

Here is Charles and his mother in Boston. The father is presumed dead by this time. One tree had this reference:

That same tree has reference to an Averill Family Genealogy Book:

Here is more from the same book:

Here is some more on Daniel Averill from that book:

The section on Daniel mentions no Mary Gardner and no Charles Averill born in Boston. In fact all these children of Daniel are born in New Hampshire. PK’s tree has Charles born in 1845 to a Daniel who was born 1762. That would make Daniel quite old at Charles’ birth. 83? I’ll pull the plug on this ThruLine. There may be a connection, but I don’t see it right now. Another way to look at it is from the top down. William Bradford born 1686 had a son William born 1726, but he died the same year according to the Mayflower Families Through Five Generations.

My Father’s Cousin’s Harvey Stetson Bradford ThruLines

I had mentioned above that my second cousin shows different ThruLines for the same ancestors. I would like to look at this. There are only two Harvey Bradford’s that could be our ancestors. I have one and she has the other. I think mine is right, so I would like to disprove hers.

Here Holly has her line going up through her father Maury to Harvey to Charles Bradford. In the ThruLines I looked at earlier in the Blog, I had this:

That means that they can’t both be right.

My guess in the match between Maury and David is that David’s tree may be right but Holly’s may be wrong. Here is David’s tree in more detail:

For some reason, both trees go through Harvey S Bradford. David’s actual tree stops at Anna Maria Bradford:

Ancestry put the rest together.

A Tale of Two Harvey Bradford’s

Findagrave.com has this information for Harvey Stetson Bradford:

Here is some more on Harvey Stetson Bradford:

Another cousin took this photo:

This is from the Sherman Cemetery in Rochester, MA:

It appears that both these Harvey Bradford’s were born in 1809. Hence the confusion. However, one was buried in Illinois and the other in Rochester, MA.

So I have proven that Harvey Stetson Bradford was not my ancestor. I still don’t know if David above descends from either Harvey. However, as my ancestor only had two children (Henry Clay and Hannah Thomas), I would say that David did not descend from my ancestor Harvey Bradford:

Summary and Conclusions

  • The most important ThruLine I looked at was between Joyce and Robert. They show a DNA match and a common ancestor with Samuel Bradford (born about 1755) who was the father of Stephen on Robert’s side and Harvey on Joyce’s side.
  • It was easy to show the connection from Robert up to Stephen and Samuel based on research that had already been done.
  • I tried to connect Joyce to PK who showed a potential common ancestor in William Bradford born 1686. However, I found too many problems with PK’s tree to make that connection.
  • Finally I looked at Thrulines connecting another of my father’s cousins Maury to David. This showed ancestry to Harvey Stetson Bradford. But I showed that that Harvey Stetson Bradford was not my anctestor. There were two Harvey’s born in 1809. Harvey Stetson Bradford was born in Maine and died in Illinois. My ancestor Harvey (not Stetson) Bradford was Born in Wareham, MA and buried in Rochester, MA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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My Father’s Cousin Maury’s Hartley Ancestry Thru-Lines – Emmet and Howorth

In my previous Blog, I evaluated a Baldwin Thruline that my father’s cousin Joyce had. Turns out it wasn’t right, but lead to some interesting refinements in our shared Shackleton Line. My father’s first cousin Maury has this suggested person in his ThruLines:

A 3rd great-grandmother doesn’t seem that far back, so let’s take a look. Here is my great-grandfather’s tree:

I have that Edmund Emmet was married to a Sarah, but I don’t have the last name. Here is Isaac’s baptismal record:

I wonder where Soo Clough is. A clough is apparently a ravine:

(Northern England, US) A narrow valley; a cleft in a hillside; a ravine, glen, or gorge

Apparently I had previously identified this in a Blog:

In the 1851 Census, Isaac gives his birthplace as Sou or Sow Clough:

I did find this Padiham marriage of Edmund to Sarah Collins, but this would have been after the children were married:

Padiham is near Burnley, so the date and place is off. Edmund Emmot is from Newchurch in Rossendale. Here is Newchurch in relation to Sowclough Road:

The above marriage is likely reflected the last birth below:

Habergham Eaves is South of Burnley.

Here is a tree with Sarah Broughton:

There are some problems with these dates. I have that Edmund Emmot was born 1759. I don’t know when Sarah was born, but I made a guess at 1765. If George Broughton died in 1692, it would have been difficult for him to have a daughter anytime in the 1700’s.

I did find this burial record from May 30, 1801:

This appears to be Lane Head above Bacup:

 

If I have this right, then the family moved and had a death of a young child. Actually, this area may be the better choice:

Next Victim: Mary Bridge

This is a new name to me. Here is Maury’s ThruLIne:

Maury matches Diana by a small amount of DNA and they show as potential 4th cousins. I’ve never heard of the name of Mary Bridge. In my tree, I have a Mary as the wife of James Howorth born 1768. I do have that James and Mary Howorth had a son named Abram born in 1814.

I’ll try to re-create Diana’s tree and see if I come up on the same place. Pretty soon on Diana’s side I am back to her maternal grandfather:

I have him born in 1869, but Diana has him born in 1878 in Stacksteads:

Here is Fred and family in 1871 in Bacup:

Here is Diana’s tree:

I’m trying to work towards Abraham Howarth on Diana’s tree. Here is an important marriage record:

I find this interesting because Elizabeth was living at Underbank, Bacup at the time of her marriage in 1859. My 2nd great-grandfather was living at Underbank when he married Ann Emmet in 1851. Ann’s mother was Esther Howorth. Small World. This makes me think I am on the right track or that there are a lot of coincidences.

So in 1859, Elizabeth was 21, so born about 1838. Diana has Abraham marrying Lavinia Clegg in 1844, so that is not right. However, Lavinia was Abraham’s second wife:

Parting Ways At Abraham

Here what I have for Abraham in my tree:

Abram was born in 1798 in Hogshead, South of Bacup. This appears to be him in 1851:

For some reason, his children only get initials this year. After a little searching, here he is in 1841 at Greens:

 

Next page:

Betty above is 4. She is hte one we were looking for. Fast forward to 1861. Here is Elizabeth saying she was born in Greens:

Drawing Out the Relationships

At this point I put all the people into a chart. But first, I have to fix my old chart:

Unfortunately, I have to send Lavinia back to Manchester. For some reason, I had two Abram’s in my tree. One was 1798 and one was 1814. Above, I was looking at the 1798 Abram. It seems like I remember writing to someone about Fred Taylor. I guess I’ll have to get back in touch. I created the above chart when I wrote this Blog.

Here is the correction:

I have Diana in yellow to distinguish from the green testers who have uploaded their results to Gedmatch for analysis. At least I don’t think she has.

Next, I’ll put the tree in chronological order:

I see I never looked into Mary Bridge. Maybe some other time.

Summary and Conclusions

  • This Blog went fairly well. I was unable to prove the first suggestion of Sarah Broughton in my line.
  • In the second part, I never got to Mary Bridge, but I did straighten out the Abram/Abraham Howorth Line.
  • The Taylor and Hartley branches had somewhat of a parallel history except that the Taylor branch went to Australia and the Hartley branch went to Australia.
  • I would still like to assess Mary Bridge. Also the Abraham line needs a last name for his wife Ann.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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My Father’s Cousin Joyce’s Hartley Ancestry Thru-Lines: Part 1 – A Baldwin Leads to a Shackleton

I have been looking recently at Ancestry’s Thru-Lines. These include ancestral connections suggested by family trees and DNA matches. My father’s cousin is Joyce and she matches me on her maternal side:

So that is the side I am most interested in right now. Then I am more interested in Joyce’s maternal grandfather James Hartley’s side as that side is less defined than the Snell side.

Here are the ancestors of James Hartley born 1862 in Bacup, Lancashire, England:

Joyce’s Thru-Line suggestions start at her fourth great-grandparent level which is represented by the last column on the right above. However, I am not convinced of all the people that are already in that column – especially John Hartley, Anne Bracewell, Nathaniel Baldwin and Margreatt Baldwin. Part of the reason I’m not convinced of them is that I’m not totally convinced I have their children right: James Hartley and Betty Baldwin. They were just my best guesses.

James Hartley 1763 Thru-Lines

Ancestry shows the Thru-Lines for James Hartley incorrectly:

Joyce does match Ruth by DNA but John Pilling was likely not the father of John Pilling. John’s father was Mary Pilling who later married Robert Hartley. That would make Joyce and Ruth 1/2 3rd cousins once removed. The Thru-Lines for Mary Pilling is half right:

Richard is shown as a half relative which is right, but Ruth is shown as a full relative which is wrong.

Baldwin Thru-Lines

It would be interesting to look at the Baldwin Thru-Lines as Betty  Baldwin was a best guess that I made years ago for an ancestor. If I have the right ancestor, she was born in Bradley:

This appears the same Betty Baldwin that I picked to be Robert Hartley’s mother. She was born in Bradley. Here is Bradley at the orange circle below. Turns out that Nelson which didn’t used to exist grew up around it:

My thinking is, that if we can show a DNA match to the right Baldwin family, that would lend credence to my guess that I descend from Betty Baldwin.

Here are the Nathaniel Baldwin ThruLines:

My 2nd cousin Holly should be in the first column with Joyce. Let’s look at the two DNA matches on the right. It will be important to evaluate them:

Marilyn and Steve both match Joyce. Let’s look to see if their genealogy matches with what I think mine could be. When I click on the child of Nathaniel Baldwin, it goes to a site that has many trees managed by Helen. The first tree has over 50,000 people in it. I’ll look at that one. Here is part of her big tree:

Unfortunately, her daughter of Nathaniel is listed as private. Nathaniel’s wife is Margaret, so that matches with the birth record I had for my Betty Baldwin. Next, I have to look for a marriage for James Farrar. Here is one:

Here we have some competition for Betty. If this was the same Betty born in 1771, then she would have been 21 at the time of her wedding to James Farrar.  How do we reconcile that marriage with this one?

This is 9 years later, so if this was the same Betty Baldwin, she would be 30. There seems to be a few possibilities:

  • This Betty married twice, but wouldn’t she then be a widow rather than a spinster the second time?
  • These were two different Betty’s

My guess was that this could have been James and Betty living in a section of Trawden called Hole in 1841:

Now, I don’t know if this James and Betty are the parents of my Robert, or if they are another James and Betty. Dates for the 1841 were rounded up to the nearest 5 years. So if this is the same couple that got married in 1801, they would have been at the oldest 39 and 29. If this was a 70 year old Betty Baldwin in Hole in 1841, then that could fit in with her birth in 1771. That would mean that James Hartley would be between 76 and 80 at the time of the 1841 Census and would hae been born between about 1761 and 1765.

There were about four James Hartley’s baptized in the Parish of Colne between 1761 and 1765:

Ollin Hall is interesting because the family did live in the Hollin Hall area of Trawden. However, this was an Inghamite baptism. As far as I know, my Hartley ancestors were baptized at the Church of England.

A Few Maps

Here is a map showing Hole (near the bottom of the map), where a James and Betty Hartley lived in 1841:

In 1837, it appears that Mary Pilling (now Hartley) was living in Slack Booth:

 

If I read Mary’s baptismal record correctly, her Pilling parents were from Seghole:

The James Hartley from the 1841 Census is probably this James:

That would have this James born around 1863, which would most likely be the son of John and Anne Hartley born 1863. Here is a more original version of the burial record:

This is Little Lathe, which I take to be also Laith. Here is Little Laith:

Here is a confusing burial from 1840, a year before the 1841 Census:

This has Betty Hartley from a Hole House dying in that year. If she died in 1840, how is it that she appears to be living in 1841? Perhaps after she died, another Hartley relative named Betty came to live at the house to help out? At any rate, this Betty Hartley, if this was correct age, would have been born about 1775.

Next, I check out Little Laithe in 1841. It turns out that there was a different James Hartley living there:

Hartley’s, Hartley’s everywhere. This James was a little younger than the one at Hole.

Back to the ThruLines

I tried going from the top of the tree down – which is usually a bad idea. I’ll try the other way. I’ll try building a tree for Marilyn and Nellie Farrer. Nellie’s dad was Ernest. When he came to Ellis Island, the ship record listed his home as Accrington. Here he is in Accrington in 1901 at age 16:

Of interest here, Ernest’s mother was born in Colne.

She was a Foulds which I recognize as a Colne name. Here is the marriage record from Accrington:

I’m already back to the 1840’s:

Here is Alice in 1851 in what looks like Call in Great Marsden:

Alice’s mother was Alice Kippax:

One tree at Ancestry suggests that Alice’s grandmother was a Shackleton:

That is a name that is in my ancestry:

Henry Farrer Born 1847

The 1901 Census had Henry born in Brierfield. It turns out that this is not too far from Colne:

This appears to be Henry in 1861:

His widowed mother Christiana is heading the household. Henry is shown born in Marsden. His older brother is a railway porter. In 1901 Henry worked on the railway. In 1871, Henry was a railway engine fireman living in Colne:

Now I am starting to get stuck, because the tree suggestions for Henry give his mother as Sarah Greenwood – not Christiana:

If Sarah was the mother of Henry, she would have been about 51 when he was born. Here is some more information:

This clearly gives Henry’s father as Joseph. This must be Joseph’s marriage record:

This branch does not appear to bring me to Colne right now. Here is Deane and Over Hulton in relationship to Manchester:

This is likely Richard Farrar’s marriage record:

So my tree seems to go against the suggested trees at Ancestry. Here is Marilyn’s maternal side:

My guess so far, is that Joyce could be related to Marilyn on the Foulds branch. Hopefully the connection is not non Marilyn’s paternal side or on her maternal grandmother Bentley’s side.

Back to James Foulds

One of the trees above had John Foulds and Mary Shackleton for James’ parents:

Here we even have a Hartley as a witness. Here is the entry for James:

James was born in August of 1796 and baptized 22 January 1897. This is possibly Mary Shackleton:

Notice that there was a death of a Mary Shackleton less than a year before this baptism. Here is what I have so far:

Here is my tree for comparison:

There is a potential that Mary Shackelton born 1764 could be the sister of Nancy Shackleton born 1781. It looks like my tree could use some work:

I have Elizabeth born after both her parents died, so that can’t be right.

I also have that she was born in Hey Thorn. I don’t know where that is, but Hey is likely in Foulridge:

Bsaed on this exercise, I’ll take Elizabeth Shackelton out of my tree.

Also there was more than one John and Mary Shackleton, so that was confusing. On my Shackleton web site I have:

Very little is known about this family other than the father was a weaver. This family is not to be confused with the John and Mary Shackleton of Pasture. This John was a gentleman. He had 2 daughters that died fairly young with no children. According to Dennis Cairns, “Pasture House which is situated between Barrowford and the village of Roughlee. Our Shackletons lived at Pasture Meadow which is to the South of Trawden and Southweast of Hollin Hall.

Here is Pasture House:

Barrowford is to the West of Colne. Here is Pasture Springs:

I have that my John Shackleton died at Stone Edge, but that appears to be near Barrowford, so I may have the wrong person. Here is Pasture House in relation to Stone Edge:

Here is the 7 September 1788 will for this Gentleman John:

Will of John Shackleton of Pasture House, gent. — messuages called Stone Edge, Upper Lands or Burnt House and New House, and cottages called New Houses, all in Barrowford, with other specified properties there, to Trustees for daughter Jennet. To daughter Mary messuage called Fidling Clough in Thornton, co.York; also £1000. Pasture House, Whitticroft and other specifeid properties in Barrowford and Colne, to trustees for wife Mary for life, then to daughter Jennet, subject to annuity to mother-in-law Margaret Cowgill. To wife messuage in Thornton called Windle Field, and messuage in Kildwick, co. York, for life, then to daughter Mary. Etc. (Copy-)

Here is Jennet:

This must be daughter Mary:

Here is an excerpt from a book, Man’s Estate: Landed Gentry Masculinities, 1660-1900:

This book mentions John’s father and second wife, but not his two daughters. Here is John, son of Christopher:

All this shows, that the John I have in my tree is wrong:

 

Perhaps this marriage has a hint:

I don’t know if this helps or makes things more confusing. I had that Richard Farrar was the father of Joseph Farrar above, but that was on a different line. This could be the John of Pasture House:

The John may be the John of the marriage above, but that would make him only about 19 at the time of marriage.

This appears to represent three different branches of Shackelton:

Here is Park Hill:

I have noted Salter Syke above. Wicoller is part of Trawden, so more likely related to my branch of Shackleton. Also note the spelling is a bit different.

Just to confuse things further, a John Shackleton from Heptonstall married someone from Great Marsden. Let’s hope he moved back to Heptonstall:

Summary So Far

First, I showed that my connection to Marilyn’s ThruLines was not through my supposed Baldwin ancestor. Instead, it could be that the connection could be on my Shackleton side. Along the way, I ruled out the birth and death of my ancestor John Shackelton as that pair of birth and death dates belonged to another John Shackelton. That means that means that Christopher should also not be on my tree:

So that makes it interesting that Nicholas and Joyce show a ThruLine based in Christopher Shackelton:

Here is Nicholas’ tree:

Again, Ancestry wants me to evaluate Nicholas’ tree. Nicholas has his ancestor from Kirkby, Malham near Skipton, Yorkshire:

I think I’ll skip Nicholas for now as I don’t think my Christopher is right.

Summary and Conclusions

  • I went through an exhausting review of Marilyn’s tree to see if her supposed Baldwin line matched with my supposed Baldwin Line
  • I was unable to get Marilyn back to Baldwin
  • I was able to find a Shackleton in Marilyn’s line who lived in the area where my Shackleton ancestor lived.
  • I also was able to refine my Shackleton Line. Through additional research, I was able to separate a different more famous Shackleton Line from mine.
  • I found an additional ThruLine for Joyce with an erroneous Shackleton ancestor I had in my tree and decided not to follow that up.
  • ThruLines were helpful in correcting errors in my tree in this case.
  • There may still be a connection between Marilyn and Joyce on the Shackleton Line.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Some More A11132 Hartley Genealogy

In a previous Blog, I looked at some A11132 Hartley Genealogy. That Blog was prompted by an email from Michelle whose husband had tested positive for the YDNA SNP of A11132. As far as I know, all A11132 men have male Hartley ancestry. I didn’t include Michelle’s husband’s genealogy in my previous Blog as his YDNA testing had been minimal as far as STRs, so it would be difficult to tell which Hartley genealogy he would be closest to. Also Michelle’s husband’s genealogy goes back, so far, only to the US. However, in this Blog, I decided to take a shot at looking at this branch’s genealogy.

This is the tree Michelle sent:

Here is a close-up of William Hartley:

All we need to do is to connection William Hartley in Kentucky with the other A11132 Hartley’s in the area of Lancashire, England:

 

We know that is where William’s ancestors belong, but how do we get them back there? Another question we may ask is, “Why did William’s ancestors want to leave in the first place?” A typical answer could be for religious or economic reasons.

The A11132 Hartley Genealogy Summary to Date

Here I have given the Hartley’s in the Hartley YDNA Project numbers. Michelle’s husband is 4.11. 4.11 shows an earliest Hartley ancestor Richard Hartley born 1720. My understanding is that there could be some questions on the genealogy between William of 1814 and Richard of 1720. I’m no expert on genealogy, but I can offer a second set of eyes. Plus, it’s fun doing Hartley genealogy that is not my own.

William Burton Hartley Born 1857

I found William at findagrave.com:

It looks like he got around a bit from a birth in Missouri to a death in Nebraska. According to findagrave.com, William had quite a few children:

William B married in Iowa. This Iowa marriage record gives a lot of information:

William was a farmer living in Kansas. He was born in Missouri to Willam Hartley and Margaret Muse (according to the transcription).

Here is young William B in 1860 in Kansas Territory:

William Hartley Born 1814 Kentucky

Back to findagrave.com:

In 1840, there was a William Hartley in Nicholas, Kentucky:

This could not have been the same William as the above William would have been 26 in 1840:

The ages in this house go from the 40’s down to the teens. Perhaps a relative?

Here is William in 1850:

I don’t see Eliza and John. They were in the 1860 Census above. Here is William’s 1839 Fleming County, Kentucky marriage record:

In 1837 or 1839, William Hartley purchased some sheep and hogs from the estate of William Kirk:

Who Was the Father of William Hartley Born 1814?

So far the only name for William’s father is from findagrave.com. That name is Benjamin John Wesley Hartley born 1781. There were 10 trees for William Hartley. 7 gave Benjamin John Wesley Hartley as the father, one gave Benjamin Hartley as the father and the remaining two had no father. Assuming the name is right, I would take this family to be Wesleyan Methodist.

According to findagrave, this stone is in the Hartley Cemetery:

Looks like a peaceful place:

Here is the stone for Mary Hartley:

According to findagrave.com, the Cemetery is:

Located abt 1 Mile off Ky 32 on Routt Rd in Goddard, Ky. Across from Goddard Covered Bridge.

Here is Goddard:

Remember William Hartley married Margaret Muse, so Muses Mills could be a good hint. Here is the covered bridge:

There is a Church to the right and cemetery. Here is Routt Road. One mile from Route 32 would be near “Our Tiny Nut House”:

Assuming this was a family cemetery, this could be the location of the old Hartley homestead. However, going through the Cemetery list, the only Hartley’s listed are Benjamin and Mary:

A lot of Gardner’s and Hurst’s are listed, so perhaps they married into the family, or bought the farm?

Finally, some Kirk’s are buried here:

Recall above that William Hartley (assumed son of Benjamin Hartley) bought some livestock from the estate of William Kirk in 1837 or 1839. So we have circumstantial evidence of a connection between a William Hartley and a Benjamin Hartley.

Here is the marriage transcription:

Married by a Holmes:

Here is a Benjamin Hartley in Elizaville in 1820:

If Benjamin was born in 1781, he would have been about 39 in 1820. This could have been Benjamin, his wife and five children at the time.

This is likely the family in 1830:

I don’t know where the Eastern Division was:

I think that Goddard was around the word Plains above.

Benjamin Hartley – Making the Leap (Backwards) From Kentucky

Good research goes from the known to the unknown or from the more recent to the less recent. The overall goal is to get this Hartley family back to England, but before that we need to get Benjamin out of Kentucky. The prevailing Ancestry hints have Benjamin back in North Carolina, so let’s look at that.

Benjamin in 1810 North Carolina

In 1810, Benjamin would be 29. This household has 3 Males 16-25. However, I got Benjamin’s birth date from findagrave.com. They list him there as born in 1781. However, his grave stone shows that he died in 1838 at age 59. That would put his birth at about 1779 and would mean that he would have been 21 in 1810. This house had 3 males of the age of 16 thru 25. I’ll just change Benjamin’s birth year to 1779 until a better date comes along.

However, I see a fly in the ointment. If Benjamin was part of the Hartley household and not the head, he would not have been listed in 1810 in Rowan County. The Benjamin mentioned in that Census was likely 45 or older. Possibly Benjamin’s Uncle if we have the right location?

Here is Rowan County:

We can walk there in about 112 hours. Of course, it probably took a lot longer back then. Based on this scenario, Benjamin was 21 on August 6, 1810 when the Census was taken. He makes his way to Kentucky. Say it took a month to get there. He finds Mary Gilbert and marries her on Septermber 11, 1811.

Was Benjamin’s Father Thomas (1762-1842)?

I get a hint at Ancestry that Benjamin’s father should be Thomas Hartley. Having nothing better to go on right now, I’ll try that:

It turns out Thomas has an impressive stone:

I like the Heartley spelling. This stone is from Davidson, North Carolina, not far from Rowan County. findagrave.com narrows this down to Tyro, NC:

According to findagrave, this is Sandy Creek or St Luke’s Lutheran Cemetery. There are other early Hartley’s buried at this Cemetery.

Here is a transcript of the marriage bond for Thomas in Rowan County, NC:

Moore was the bondsman and Macay the witness.

So far, I feel pretty good about Benjamin being the father of William Hartley. I suppose one argument against this is that William didn’t appear to name any of his children after his father. However, now I am looking for more proof that Benjamin was the son of Thomas from North Carolina.

Thomas H(e)artley Will and Probate

There is a lot of paperwork involving Zilpha H(e)artley wife of Thomas. She felt she didn’t get her fair share after Thomas died on the 10th of October 1842. In one document, she mentions the following:

However, I see no mention of Benjamin Hartley. However, that makes sense as Benjamin died before his father.

Ancestry Trees for Thomas Hartley

I found 10 Ancestry Trees for Thomas Hartley. Eight of those trees included Benjamin. Seven of those trees gave a second wife of Zilpha or equivalent. All of the trees had Jefferson and Richmond as sons. Most of them had a John as a son and most of those John’s were listed as John Wesley. Here is the first tree listed:

This tree doesn’t have Benjamin, but has an extra wife:

I’m not sure about this Emilie.

Here is Zilpha or Zelpha:

Thomas to Benjamin – the Weak Link

Right now I see the Thomas to Benjamin Hartley as the weak link. I have not yet seen strong evidence to support it. This is where DNA testing could come in handy. Here is the tree so far:

 

We know from legal proceedings that John, Jefferson and Richmond are sons of the Thomas of Tyro, North Carolina. By finding male descendants of these sons, and testing for YDNA we could show if this tree is possible. Another possibility is testing for autosomal DNA. We could add in the descendants of Jane Hartley for this test.

Note that in the tree above, Benjamin would have been born when Thomas was 17.

Another option is to look to see if any other Hartley’s went to Kentucky with Benjamin. And if so, were they siblings of Benjamin?

The Other Benjamin Hartley

I had mentioned another Benjamin Hartley above in the 1810 Census. I find this at WikiTree:

Benjamin Heartley, b c1760 in MD d 1829 in Davidson Co. He married Joannah (?). A planter, he amassed 850 acres before his death. By 1820 two of his sons moved to Ind and IL. By 1837 the widow and the remainder of the family moved to Pike Co IN, excepting one son. Laban, who stayed in NC.

Benjamin had a rather large plantation in the Jersey Settlement in Davidson County, North Carolina in an area now called Tyro.

If our Benjamin was the son of Thomas, then the Benjamin above could be Thomas’ brother.

An Ancestry Message Board Post

I found this 2011 message at Ancestry:

My husband is Benjamin and Mary Hartley’s great great grandson thru their son, Reuben and his son, Joseph and his daughter, Gladys Hartley Raider. From my records, I have Benjamin’s parents as Thomas Hartley 1762-1842 and Mildred “Milly” Burgess Hartley 1764-1838. I have Thomas Hartley’s parents as John Richard Hartley 1730 – 1781 and Mary E Beckett Hartley 1735-1837. Then John Richard Harley’s parents are Waighstill Hartley 1709 – 1765 and Mary Margaret Hodges with no dates. Mary Beckett’s parents are John Beckett 1709 – 1760 and Ann Jones – b 1710. Hope this helps!

My daughter and I go genealogy together. We can connect the dots but we also like to know WHERE they are so this has started us looking for burial sites. We have found stones that are unreadable, broken or just not there anymore. We take pics of the stones and mark where in the cemetery they are buried so that future generations will know. We feel that we are not only perserving our heritage but we spend quality time together. Would you happen to know where Benjamin and Mary are buried?

Any help that you might be able to give would be greatly appreciated. Also, if you have any photos that you would like to share would be terrific!

I think that Michelle mentioned someone who brought her husband’s genealogy back to Waightstill Hartley.

Waightstill Hartley and YDNA

Waightstill Hartley opens up a can of worms. Apparently more than one line claims this ancestor. This is where the Hartley YDNA Project at FTDNA comes in handy. Here is someone in the I1 Haplogroup that claims Waightstill as an ancestor:

Keep in mind that I1 is separated by R1b (where A11132 is) by tens of thousands of years.

Scroll down to Hartley 7.1

I assume that these two testers are both referring to the Waightstill Hartley born in 1709. At least they have the power of numbers here. Here is R-PH165 according to YFull’s YTree:

I find Hartley 7.1 to be confusing as the people on YFull’s YTree are from Turkey, Bahrain and Albania. It would help if Hartley’s from the 7.1 Group uploaded their results to YFull. At any rate, according to YFull, R-PH155 formed a little over 20,000 years ago. We are talking old again. That means that there are people who claim the ancestor of Waightstill Hartley that are in YDNA groups that are both tens of thousands of years separated from A11132. If I were to accept that Waightstill is the ancestor of Hartley 4.11 also, that would make it a three-way tie. YDNA cannot always prove a common ancestor. However, it is very good at disproving common ancestors. There is no way that Hartley 1.2, 4.1 and 7.2 can have common ancestors any later than cave man times. All this to say that it is possible that Waightstill is the ancestor of Hartley 4.11, but not likely. The only thing that is sure is that Waightstill  Hartley cannot be in more than one Hartley YDNA group. Another way to look at it is that if the Waightstill ancestry was to be disproved for the other three YDNA testers, then the Waightstill ancestry would be more likely for Hartley 4.11.

Any Other Leads?

At this point I’m not doing a lot of my own genealogy. I’m looking at work that has already been done and seeing if it makes sense. My feeling is that a lot of rocks have already been turned over looking at the genealogy. It makes more sense to me to track down male Hartley descendants and have them take a YDNA test. These are the new stones that have not yet been turned over.

Richard Hartley From WikiTree

This appears to be the Richard mentioned on Michelle’s husband’s test at the Hartley YDNA Project Site:

Here Richard is the father of Benjamin Hartley. That would be the Benjamin in the 1810 Census, not the later Benjamin. It would make sense if he was also the father of Thomas Hartley.

I get this hint at Ancestry for the father of Thomas Hartley:

It appears that there is a lot of unravelling that is needed. Here is a land record hint from Ancestry:

This is apparently a summary. It is vague on details though I assume N.C. is North Carolina. This appears to indicate that John Hartley fought in the Revolutionary War and received a War Bounty Land Grant. According to the information above, John Richard died in 1783, so the land went to his heir Thomas Hartley. Now the second record is confusing as the land amount is the same and the John Hartley is the same, but this time the land is going to heirs. The WikiTree biography above mentions Richard willing land to sons Laban and Benjamin. Assuming that there was one John Hartley, then both could be true. Again, YDNA testing of descendants could help.

That leaves me wondering if John and Richard are the same person reconciled as John Richard above.

John Richard Hartley 1721-1784

I’m just plugging on, because my feeling is that this Hartley Tree should be resolved with YDNA. One source says that Richard was born in 1721 in Worchester Maryland and one says he was born in 1735 in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. That is quite a difference. I see Michelle has Richard as possibly from England.

This brings up a few questions:

  • If Richard was from England, how long after coming to the Colonies did he fight against the British?
  • Was this normal for recent British arrivals to fight against the British?
  • What was his reason for coming to the Colonies?

Summary and Conclusions

Well, my review of this line of genealogy has somewhat petered out. The hope was to try to get back to England with the genealogy. However, that has proved to be difficult.

  • I hadn’t realized that there are YDNA testers in two different YDNA groups claiming Waitlstill Hartley as an ancestor. The 4.11 Hartley, the subject of this Blog, had also considered Waitstill as an ancestor in the past. The YDNA does not disprove that Hartley 4.11 does not descend from Waitstill Hartley. The YDNA does prove that all three groups cannot descend from Waitstill. One group is likely right and the other two wrong. I’m not sure if any group has a solid genealogical link to Waitstill Hartley.
  • The genealogy for Hartley back to John or John Richard Hartley born 1835 seems to be as about as good as it can get. It could be strengthened (or perhaps disproved) by targeted testing of the YDNA of descendents of known children of Thomas or John Richard Hartley.
  • I thought I might find clues as to this Hartley Line’s religious background as that may have been a reason for leaving England. I found one ancestor that seemed to favor the name John Wesley and another that was buried in a Lutheran Cemetery. So, I see no clear indication in my limited look at this family as to religious affiliation.

 

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Hartley R-A11132 YDNA and Genealogy

I was contacted recently by the wife of a distant Hartley relative. There are many different tribes of Hartley’s as identified by their YDNA types. This Hartley is from my tribe. My previous update on Hartley YDNA is here. She was interested in my Hartley genealogy and I in hers. My thought was to look at the Hartley’s that are in our particular group as tested by YDNA and check out their genealogy. Then I can compare the genealogy to see where the oldest group of Hartleys in our YDNA group came from.

My Hartley YDNA – R-A11132

I have tested my YDNA using the BIg Y test which is now a bit outdated. The old test I took is now called the Big Y-500 and the new test is the Big Y-700. My testing in conjunction with one other Big Y Hartley tester has put my branch at R-A111132.

Most Hartley’s are R1b:

However, that only gets us to about 25,000 years ago, so not as helpful as you might think. In the past 25,000 years, there has been a lot of branching of the family tree. From R1b, I can trace the highlights down to A11132.

R-M269

R-M269 is the next big group to look at. According to Wikipedia:

Haplogroup R-M269, also known as R1b1a1a2, is a sub-clade of human Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b. It is of particular interest for the genetic history of Western Europe. It is defined by the presence of SNP marker M269. R-M269 has been the subject of intensive research; it was previously also known as R1b1a2 (2003 to 2005), R1b1c (2005 to 2008), and R1b1b2 (2008 to 2011)[3]

R-M269 is the most common European haplogroup, greatly increasing in frequency on an east to west gradient (its prevalence in Poland estimated at 22.7%, compared to Wales at 92.3%). It is carried by approximately 110 million European men (2010 estimate).[4] The age of the mutation M269 is estimated at roughly 4,000 to 10,000 years ago, and its sub-clades can be used to trace the Neolithic expansion into Europe as well founder-effects within European populations due to later (Bronze Age and Iron Age) migrations.[4]

R-L21

L21 is the next step down on  my Hartley YDNQ tree. I like to associate L21 with the Celtic Regions of Ireland, Scotland and Britain. It really includes more than that, but a lot of the people in these regions are L21. Here is how things proceeded from R-M269. R-P312 is the next main juncture, then the three main choices after that include R-L21:

R-L513

After L21, the next main group in my Hartley family is in is L513. This is also a group project at FTDNA. Here is a chart from about a year and a half ago:

My Hartley group is in the middle:

So far, I have found that this Hartley branch is quite old. From the Chart above, you can also see that some family branches have gone a lot further with their testing. The further down in the Chart you go, the more recent the connections. In order to get Hartley unstuck from the middle ages, we need more Big Y testers to refine more Hartley YDNA branches.

In the above chart, it looks like Hartley descends from Smith. However, that is not right. The block tree at FTDNA is more accurate:

In the above chart, Hartley is on the left and Smith is on the right.

A11132 Testing

So far as I know, three Hartley’s have tested positive for A11132. One other Hartley and I took the Big Y test. The person I will be calling Hartley 4.11 did not do the Big Y test, but did test positive for A11132. There is a problem in identifying these three people while maintaining privacy. Here is the Hartley YDNA Project at FTDNA:

I’ll identify the Hartley testers by number. So the first person in Group 4.0 will be Hartley 4.01. The last person on the entire list will be 4.15. The Hartley administrator has put 12 Hartley’s into a green A11132 Group. The first 7 are suspected A11132. The next five Hartley’s in Group 4.1 appear to have tested positive for A11132, but only two show that they have tested for A11132. My test (4.12) has Robert Hartley for an ancestor. The other Big Y tested A11132 (4.15) has the ancestor of Samuel Edward Hartley from 1666. Hartley 4.11 has the ancestor Richard Hartley. He tested for the single SNP A11132, but because the testing was not with FTDNA, the results do not show up on the Chart above.

Genealogical Triangulation

Assuming that the 4.0 and 4.1 Groups above are all A11132, it should be possible to look at their genealogy and triangulate a likely Hartley place of origin. My Hartley genealogy goes back to Trawden, Lancashire, England around 1803 and then gets stuck. This is due to too many Hartley’s in the area with the same names and I can on;ly guess which one is my ancestor based on location and occupation if that information is even available.

My Genealogy Back to Trawden

I can get back to Trawden, Lancashire. This was a little village that didn’t even have it’s own Anglican Church outside of Colne.

After my family moved out of Trawden, they moved to Bacup which was to the lower right of Newchurch on the map above. From there, they moved to Massachusetts.

The earliest Hartley I can trace for sure is Robert Hartley. He was a weaver in Trawden. His son, my ancestor, Greenwood was born in 1831:

Unfortunately, Robert was a common name and there were many Robert’s from the time when my ancestor Robert would have been born. Also a weaver was a common profession. Weavers were not tied to the land, so they may have moved around.

When Robert married Mary, he was already a widower:

When Mary married, she was already a single mother and had a son named John Pilling. To further complicate matters, Robert died, probably in 1835:

Hartley 4.05 – Congregational Ancestry

I looked at the genealogy of this Hartley in a previous Blog:

He is the one highlighted with William Shepherd as an ancestor. I’m calling him 4.05 because he is the fifth Hartley in group 4.0.  Through non-conformist Congregational records, I was able to get him further back to Wray near Hornby on the map below around 1750 or before:

Hartley 4.07 – Over the Yorkshire Line

This is the Hartley with the Thomas Hartley ancestor:

He is also mentioned in my 2017 Blog as he is the other Hartley who tested to 111 STRs. I have that his ancestors were in Thornton near Bradford as per the red marker in the image above. Going by the 111 STR markers, it appeared that Hartley 4.05 and 4.07 were more closely related to each other than to me (Hartley 4.12).

Hartley 4.15 – Quaker Ancestry

This match is interesting to me for a few reasons. One is that he is the only other A11132 Hartley to have taken the Big Y test. Secondly, by the less accurate STRs, he seems to be more closely related to me than all of the other Hartley’s except Sanchez:

Assuming I got lucky and was right with my tree above, our Quaker Hartley would have the most important genealogy to me other than Sanchez’s genealogy right now.

4.15 sent me this tree:

This goes back beyond his 1666 Samuel Edward Hartley ancestor, based on FamilySearch apparently. However, I need to get from 4.15 back to Samuel Edward. That could take a bit:

I found a Quaker record for Thomas C Hartley that made me think I was on the right track:

I’m not sure why the heading is for North Carolina Marriage Records if this was for an Ohio Quaker meeting.

Now I’m back to Pennsylvania in the early 1700’s:

At this point, five Ancestry Trees that have a parent or two for Roger, have Roger’s father as Samuel and four have Edward.

Geni has this information:

WikiTree matches what Hartley 4.15 has:

Here is a 1577 map of a portion of Lancashire:

Marshden Chap: must be the general area of Marsden. Trawden is NE of Marshden on the map. Pendle Hill is famous among Quakers. According to georgefox.edu:

Historians mark 1652 as the beginning of the Quaker movement. One day George Fox climbed up desolate Pendle Hill (believed to be a haunt of demons) and saw “a people in white raiment, coming to the Lord.” The vision signified that proclaiming Christ’s power over sin would gather people to the kingdom. And it did. By 1660, there were 50,000 followers. Zealous young men and women (“the valiant sixty”) joined Fox in preaching at fairs, marketplaces, in the fields, in the jails, in the courts, and through the printing press.

What I Gather from My A11132 Hartley Relative with Quaker Ancestry

Based just on my genealogy and the above Quaker genealogy, I take it that I am looking for my Hartley ancestors in the right general area. I would not be able to say if our common ancestor was in Marsden and my branch moved to Trawden or that our common ancestor was in the Trawden area and the Quaker Branch moved to Marsden. These two places border each other. However, the fact that the DNA points to an early common ancestor from around 1500 or so, makes finding that common ancestor difficult. The other aspect of my Quaker connection is that Samuel (or Edward or Samuel Edward) Hartley who was born in 1666 left for Pennsylvania. I don’t know if Samuel Edward left any children in Lancashire, England. According to WikiTree, Samuel’s father was Rodger John Hartley born 1628 in Little Marsden, Lancashire. The point is, that by genealogy and geography, he would be the latest possible common ancestor between myself and Hartley 4.15.

Hartley 4.04 Genealogy

This Hartley shows as Sanchez on the STR Tree that I drew and showed as my closest DNA match. If my analysis is right, then 4.04’s genealogy will be the closest and most important for my Hartley Branch.  4,04’s genealogy should also give a locational triangulation between my ancestors and Hartley 4.15’s ancestors. Here is the paternal side of 4.04’s Tree at Ancestry:

This tree begins with 4.04’s grandfather. When 4.04 originally contacted me, he did not know who his grandfather was, but apparently he has figured it out since then. 4.04 has his genealogy ending up in Todmorden, Yorkshire or Lancashire (I assume the County boundaries changed):

Here is part of a Wikipedia entry on Todmorden:

The historic boundary between Yorkshire and Lancashire is the River Calder and its tributary, the Walsden Water, which run through the town. The administrative border was altered by the Local Government Act 1888 placing the whole of the town within the West Riding.

So the answer is that Todmorden was historically in both Yorkshire and Lancashire, but since 1888, it has been in Yorkshire. I assume that I will end up in Todmorden also when I create my tree for Hartley 4.04. John Edward Hartley was the immigrant, so it would be nice to find Naturalization papers for him. John Hartley was a common name, so it would be good to double check the genealogy.

I did find a Naturalization for John’s daughter in law Agnes Hartley. Here we have some tight timeframes:

I was suspicious of this record as William and Agnes are shown marrying in 25 May 1940. However, when I check the 1940 Census for Harrison, NJ, it shows that William was single. That is because the Census was taken 25 April 1940.

I think I found John Hartley in the 1915 New Jersey Census:

He is living, widowed, at 617 John Street, Kearney, NJ. He is a Color mixer which fits in with his 1940 occupation as a color chemist at DuPont.

A Curious Marriage

This is a critical record for John Hartley:

The question is why John from Newark, NJ would have married in Boston, MA in 1913. Also Sarah’s address is given as the SS Laconia. It seems to tie together strangely when we see that John arrived in Boston on 13 May 1913 on the SS Laconia:

So the story holds together. The marriage record is important as it gives the names of John’s parents:

The ship record confirms Thomas as John’s father:

Unfortunately, I can’t figure out where 28 Union St, Castleton is. Google Maps wants to send me to Cartaret, NJ. [See later in the Blog for the answer.]

John’s Draft Registration Cards link hin to Todmorden:

The above card is from 1917.

Here is Todmorden:

I drew in where Marsden used to be. I included a one mile scale.

Here are a few more geographical tidbits:

My ancestors moved from Trawden to Bacup to find work in the textile mills around 1851 or before.  Joseph Edward Hartley married in Heptonstall in 1693.

Here is John Edward’s baptismal record from 1883:

Here is the family in 1891 in Rochdale:

Searching for Thomas and Mary

This Thomas was born about 1858 and Mary should have been born about 1857. This must be the marriage in Burnley in 1882:

That means that Thomas would have been single in 1881:

Note that the birthplace is given as Lancashire, Todmorden. This appears to be a transcription of Thomas’ birth record:

Walsden is the village South of Todmorden. Here is Thomas’ death record. I mention Castleton above:

Edward and Hannah Hartley

That gets us back to Thomas’ parents. Here is the family in 1841 in Walsden:

Here is where a map comes in handy:

I couldn’t read Knowl Wood on the Census, but it is plain on the map above (highlighted).

Of further interest in the 1841 Census above, is that David the father was not born in the same County and his wife was not born in the same Country.

David and Betty Hartley

From another record, I see that David was from Stansfield. Here is the Stansfield section of Todmorden:

I get this Ancestry suggestion for a baptism at Holmfirth Wesleyan for David:

This is supposed to give his Township and Parish, but I am having trouble making them out. This could explain why there were not many Church of England records for this family. Concerning the date, that would make David only 16 when he married in 1817, assuming his birth was near his baptism. The 1841 Census says that he was 40, but those ages were rounded down, so he may have been as old as 44 at the time. Based on the 1841 Census, David was not born in Lancashire, so a Holmfirth, Yorkshire baptism would agree with that Census.

Abraham or Thomas Hartley?

Other trees have David’s father as Thomas Hartley:

This would make sense as it would have been a tradition for David to name his first son Thomas (which he did) after his father. One problem is that David was born in 1797 in the above tree and this tree has Thomas Hartley and Betty Barker marrying in 1801.

A11132 Hartley Places

Here is my summary, so far:

Now I just need all these places on a map.

Here I circled three, because based on YDNA STRs, it seemed that these three were more closely related to each other and the other top two blue markers seemed to be related to each other. I also added in Holmfirth as a possible birthplace for David Hartley mentioned above. This map could represent several hundred years of time in which Hartley descendants moved around the area.

Here I added the Hartley names and dates:

The genealogy of Samuel Edward Hartley is important as it is the earliest. My guess based on previous STR analysis is that Samuel is more closely related to Robert and David Hartley though 150 years separate their genealogies. I suspect that Samuel, Christopher and Thomas also descend from an earlier Hartley and that Christopher and Thomas are more closely related to each other than to Samuel, Robert and David. However, further Big Y testing my support or refute that theory.

Due to the age of Samuel Edward’s genealogy and the founder’s effect, I would place the origin for all these Hartley’s in the area to the South of Colne. The founder’s effect says that you will see a lot of Hartley’s, for example, in the area where they originally started out. The area of Colne has had the largest concentration of Hartley’s in the World that I know of.

Summary and Conclusions

  • YDNA testing for STRs and SNPs have shown that there is one certain group of Hartley’s presently identified by the SNP A11132 that separates themselves from all other Hartley’s.
  • According to the Hartley YDNA Project, there are 12 Hartley’s who have tested that appear to be in this A11132 group
  • Many of the 12 in the group have listed the oldest Hartley ancestor that they can find.
  • By further testing of Big Y, we should be able to get more YDNA branching of SNPs. This will refine which Hartleys within A11132 are related more closely to each other and suggest where each branch lived and when. This will further help in directing where to research for these ancestors.
  • I have looked at the genealogy of 5 of the 12 in this group. It would be a good idea to continue on with this work at some time.
  • I never did look at the genealogy of the husband of the woman who got in touch with me. His genealogy goes back to Virginia. He would benefit by a Big Y test in that could tell him which Hartley Branch is DNA is aligning with. This would also point to an English place of origin for his Branch of Hartley’s. However, even withouth that testing, it seems like all roads for A11132 Hartley’s lead to the Parish of Colne.

 

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23andMe Your Family Tree Beta

23andMe has a new feature. It tries to predict your family tree based on DNA alone. Here is mine:

This tree looks like it could have been designed by Dr. Seuss. It turns out that this is at least potentially helpful as I have had trouble figuring out who is who at 23andMe.

My guess is that the left hand side is to represent my mother’s side. My right hand side is my paternal side. However, a closer inspection of the tree shows that to not be the case. 23andMe gives you the opportunity to add some known ancestors in:

Iain to the lower left of me (JH) is right. He descends from my mother’s Uncle Leo from Latvia. However, other of my mother’s relatives are listed on my father’s side.

My Hartley/Snell Great Grandparents

Probably a good strategy for determining a paternal or maternal side is to go with the largest group. My Hartley/Snell grandparents had 13 children and most of them had children. So I picked that group to be the paternal side. This happened to be on the right-hand side of my 23andMe DNA Tree:

Daniel and Harold are rightly placed on the same level as me as second cousins. I suppose that it would be fun to try to fill this part in a bit. I’m familiar with this family on the right:

Mary Hartley was my great Aunt Mary and lived close by when I was growing up.

Fixing Mistakes in the Tree

It looks that it may be possible to fix mistakes in the future:

It’s not as much fun building out the tree when you know it is wrong. Here is my second cousin Judy:

She descends from my mother’s grandparents Lentz and Nicholson. Here she shows as descending from my father’s great-grandparents Snell and Bradford.

Even though Judith is shown on my paternal side, this relationship appears relatively correct:

Will and Judith’s ancestos would be my mother’s grandparents Lentz and Nicholson. However, as 23andMe does not show that couple as my direct ancestors, they do not give me the opportunity to enter both ancestors.

Gail On My Family Tree

Even though Gail should be on my maternal side, I figured out who she was by looking through my messages:

Gail actually descends from the Nicholsons. In fact, I already had her on the right hand side of a Nicholson chart I created:

As Joan, Linda, and Gail are sisters, it would be possible to perform visual phasing on their DNA results. I added to my chart that Gail was on 23andMe, so I would remember.

I’ll add Gail’s ancestry to the 23andMe tree:

My guess is that Alexander, Amelia and John descend from Nellie Nicholson. Nellie was the daughter of William Nicholson of Sheffield, England, not Isaiah Snell of Rochester, Massachusetts.

Sorting Out the Hartley Branch of the 23andMe Tree

I think I have figured out who Charles is:

Charles should be my second cousin twice removed. The DNA Tree shows Charles as my 3rd cousin once removed. Here is the DNA that Charles and I share:

Here is Charles added on to my own chart:

Charles represents a seventh child of James Hartley and Annie Snell. The only person who I can’t identify in my Hartley 2nd cousin group is DL. DL must come either from one of the children not shown above or perhaps come more distantly from the Snell family. My great-grandparents had 15 children over a 25 year period. Two died in infancy and two didn’t have children. That leaves 11 children with offspring. I show 7 above, so DL may come from one of the lines not represented above (or from a line that only tested at AncestryDNA).

Pro’s and Con’s of 23andMe’s ‘Your Family Tree’

I’ll start with the negatives:

Con’s

  • The tree mixes up maternal and paternal relatives. This would be solved if I had my mother tested at 23andMe. My suspicious side says that this is a scheme to get more people to test at 23andMe.
  • There are only two relatives shown on the tree that are on my maternal side. One is right and one is wrong. There appear to be 6 relatives that should be on the my mother’s side that show on my father’s side. That means that my mother’s side mathces are placed mostly wrong.
  • There is currently no way to correct the tree. Apparently this is in the works and would be quite helpful.

Pro’s

  • The tree prioritizes cousins to look at and contact
  • The tree gives potential lines based apparently on common matches.
  • Even though groups may be on the wrong paternal/maternal side, the common ancestors for those groups may be correct. This can help identify common ancestors for others in the group when one common ancestors is known.
  • Hopefully 23andMe will use the information added by me and others to correct their algorithms and improve their trees.
  • The tree gives a possible way that your tree could have been based just on DNA matches and helps put your 23andMe DNA matches into a context.

 

 

 

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Update On My Hartley YDNA

There are many Hartleys in the world. Not all of them are related which shows up in the YDNA testing. This is my first update in over 2 years on my Hartley YDNA.

My Hartley Branch is R-A11132

This branch may be shown many different ways. This view is from the Big Tree:

My Hartley overall group is R1b and further L21. R1b is mostly European and L21 can be loosely associated what is called Celtic background. In my case this could be considered perhaps early British as opposed to the later arriving Anglo Saxons. This designation is based on SNP testing.

From the chart above, our branch of Hartleys are associated with the Z17911 Branch of Bennett, Phillips, Merrick, Thomas and Smith and more distantly associated with the Z16854 Branch of Pillsbury, Hayes and Hays.

Why Is My Hartley Branch R-A11138 at YFull?

Here I am under A11138 at YFull’s YTree:

Under R-A1138, there are two people. It is difficult to tell who they are due to only id’s being used. I had assumed that these two were me and the other Hartley BigY tester. But, based on the the A11138 designation, I think that the other person in this group must be Smith:

So now I hope that my BigY Hartley match uploads his results to YFull.

Dating Hartley YDNA

YDNA can be dated by SNPs or by STRs

I recently posted information on a Facebook page noting that I had 9 BIgY matches and only one 111 STR match. One informed responder noted that:

It’s pretty unusual to have one Y111 match and 9 Big Y matches certainly! Actually though that would normally mean the STRs have mutated faster than usual and the SNPs have mutated more slowly than usual, so that enough STRs have changed that only one match is left within the STR matching threshold (10 at Y11) while fewer than 30 SNPs have changed between yourself and the 9 matches so they show up on the Big Y matching report. 

Unless there is some other reporting error at work, I highly suspect that 8 of those Big Y matches are off on their own branch where their common ancestors had a lot of STR mutations and pulled them all out of reach of your STR matching threshold!

The person above, David Vance also produced a STR Mutation History for the group I am in. Here is the Hartley/Smith portion:

This shows that the common ancestor between Smith and Hartley is around 900 AD. The common ancestor between my Hartley match is 1400 AD. David further notes:

The age estimates in green are based on the STRs, not the SNPs; but are overall pretty consistent with the Big Tree estimates although note they align with the END of each block, not the start (since they refer to when the branching underneath each node first started).

This dating is helpful as it is the only one that I have right now. However, it is possible to roughly date the FTDNA Block tree by using 144 years times the average private variants under A11132. As there are an average of three private variants, that comes out to 432 years. I could add another 63 years for my age to get roughly 500 years or about 1500 AD. So if this is right, I find it pretty amazing that my match and I have both kept the Hartley surname for between 500 and 600 years!

Summary and Conclusion

  • By comparing my FTDNA Block Tree with the YFull YTree, I saw that YTree was missing some information. That missing information was my other Hartley Big Y Hartley match
  • David Vance performed a STR Mutation History for me. This gave a Hartley common ancestor date of about 1400 AD.
  • I did a rough estimate based on SNPs. The two Hartley’s have an average of three private variants. This would put our common ancestors at roughly 1500 AD.

 

 

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My Brother’s MyHeritage Theory of Family Relativity Leads to Lancashire

I am finding MyHeritage’s Theory of Family Relativity interesting. I looked at a few of “Theories” in a previous Blog, and will now look at my brother Jim’s. My brother JIm has six matches under MyHeritage’s (MH’s) Theory program. Three are ones that I have. Of those three two are mother and daughter. The three matches that Jim has that I don’t have all appear to be related to each other also.

Jim and Marcus at MH

Here is how MH shows Jim and Marcus’ merged trees:

Unfortunately, these two trees don’t seem to match well. How could Mary Pilling and Betty Wilkinson be sisters? When I look at MH’s full Theory, I see this:

Marcus shows Mary Pilling in his tree, but I don’t know how she is connected and I see no parents listed for Mary in Marcus’ tree.

Jim and Marcus: the DNA

I’ll look at Jim and Marcus’ DNA and then get back to the genealogy. Jim’s best match with Marcus is on Chromosome 1 shown in yellow below and circled:

Jim and Marcus also triangulate with Stanley who is from Great Britain and shows as the red match. Marcus is from Australia.

This Chromosome map below shows that Jim has Hartley DNA in the part of Chromosome 1 where he matches Marcus:

When I look at Jim’s match spreadsheet, I find that Marcus also appears at Ancestry, FTDNA and Gedmatch. I have been in touch with Marcus at Ancestry, though it is difficult to retrieve old messages there. Marcus wrote me in 2017:

I have a James Moorhouse born Bacup c1830, son of John Moorehouse and Betty Wilkinson. While the names are shared, I can’t make the connection fit correctly. I would love to identify this MRCA. cheers Marcus

Building a Tree for Stanley

Stanley, Marcus and Jim triangulate meaning that those three should have a common ancestor somewhere. So I’ll try building out Stanley’s tree to see if there is a connection. Here is Stanley’s tree:

Here is my version:

Ancestry has a lot of hints, but I am wary of Ancestry’s hints. Here is the family in 1939:

The family was living with a daughter, but I didn’t include her for possible privacy reasons. The family was in Stainforth. That leads me to the 1901 Census:

Here is Thomas as part of a large family in Stainforth, living on a farm. Here is Stainforth:

I am trying to make a connection to my Lancashire ancestors from Colne or Bacup. Muriel was born further North in Westmoreland, so I’ll stick to the Towler side for now. As I build out Stanley’s paternal side, I get this:

Somehow Nancy Berry pops up from all the Yorkshire ancestors as being from Colne. I also see a Wilkonson, but she is living in Yorkshire. I’m not too excited about the Wilkinson name as I don’t descend from the Wilkinson family. My Pilling ancestor married a Hartley, then a Wilkinson, so Wilkinsons were half siblings to my Hartley ancestors.

I don’t think Nancy died in 1825, because I see this entry in Giggleswick, Yorkshire:

Let’s not bury her yet.

Here is Nancy in 1841 when her husband was still alive:

The 1841 Census taker has Nancy born in Yorkshire which is apparently wrong.

Two Nancy Berry’s at Colne Parish

Noyna End is to the East of Foulridge. Great Marsden is to the West of Trawden.

Now that I’ve shown that Stanley’s tree goes back to Colne, can I show the same for Marcus’ tree?

Looking at Marcus’ Tree

I followed Marcus’ tree out to where it appeared the match with my family should be. There was a sticky point at Walter Humphreys. Ancestry wanted me to add a different father named Snook. However, I went with Marcus’ tree:

Here is information from one of the Ancestry Snook trees:

There must be some sort of Snook/Moorehouse debate going on somewhere.

James Moorehouse (1830-1886)

I’m still getting Snook suggestions for the parents of James Moorehouse, so I’ll take a look at James on my own.  Marcus has him born in Bacap, which I believe should be Bacup as that is where some of my ancestors came from.  Using the Lancashire OnLine Parish Clerks, I find this:

The only difference is in the Moorehouse/Moorhouse spelling. This appears to be James’ parents’ marriage record:

Here is the family in 1841 living at ‘Lower Crossrow’:

Lower Crossrow appears to be a location in Bacup.

Betty Wilkinson

I have Ancestry hints for the parents of Marcus’ Betty Wilson:

and:

I’m not sure about the Moses Wilkinson from Tynemouth. This would be quite far from Trawden.

Here is what I have at my Willkinson web page:

The biggest problem with merging these two trees is that I show Betty marrying Robert Stansfield. Here is the marriage of Betty Wilkinson and Robert:

Here is a marriage for Moses Wilkinson and Jane Shaw:

This could be Jane’s baptism:

If this is the right person, she would have been baptized at a rather obscure Inghamite Church in Winewall which was part of Trawden. This is where my Hartley ancestors were from. So, nobody sneeze as this is quite the house of cards!

This is probably John and Jane:

More on Marcus’ Betty Wilkinson

There is one record that would indicate that Marcus’ Betty was from Bacup and not Trawden. The marriage record from St. Nicholas, Newchurch in Rossendale states that both bride and groom were “…in this Chapelry”.

The 1851 Census would have been helpful, but it appears that Betty had died by this time. John Moorhouse, said to be born in Burnley is a widow at this time. Although there is a connection between Trawden and Bacup for my Hartley ancestors and their half sibling Wilkinson not too long before the 1851 Census, there is no reason to believe that Betty Wilkinson would have moved from Trawden to Bacup before her supposed marriage to Moorehouse in 1820.

Assuming that Betty was from the Newchurch Chapelry, this could be her birth record:

It would have been customary for Betty to name her second son after her father. That could have been the case with her second son George:

According to Google Maps, here is Heap Clough to the West of Bacup and Haslingden:

Here is an older map:

I have also circled Goodshaw where another of my ancestors (Emmet) was born:

I note that my ancestors Edmund/Emmot and Mary Omerod married at St. James. This is the same place as I have the probable baptism of Betty Wilkinson about 45 years later.

Following Up On Betty Wilkinson of Haslingden

Here is a candidate for Marcus’ potential ancestors:

This could be the same George:

That would put George at just under 20 at the time he married. I think that Grain is Haslingden Grane. Grane looks to be across the street from Heap Clough:

Here is my guess for Mary Duckworth:

However, there was another Mary Duckworth born less than a year before this in the same Church. I’m guessing Heap Clough is right. Here are the likely parents:

I’m starting to get a tree for Betty Wilkinson:

I have two choices for Jonathan Duckworth:

Grane sounds familiar.

Here is the marriage for George and Betty Haworth:

A Haworth/Howorth Connection?

I have Howorth ancestors from the Bacup area.

I’ve already mentioned Edmund Emmet. James Howorth is shown above also. Another interesting thing is that Ancestry is suggesting this mother for George Wilkinson:

This is just about outside the reach of DNA matches. The Ancestry hint could correspond with this birth:

And this marriage:

 

So Where Am I?

  1. My brother Jim, Marcus and Stanley triangulate with their DNA matches. That means that they likely have a common ancestor. However, it may go back quite a way.
  2. I took Stanley’s tree back to a Nancy Berry. There were two Nancy Berry’s baptized in the Colne Parish Church around the time of Stanley’s Nancy in the 1770’s.
  3. I looked at Marcus’ genealogy tree and see that he had a Betty Wilkinson who could be the Betty Wilkinson I have at my Wilkinson website. However, this Betty would not be my direct descendant. My direct descendant married Betty’s brother Robert after my male direct descendant died.
  4. I decided that Marcus’ Betty Wilkinson was more likely a native of the Bacup area. I found a Betty Wilkinson from Heap Clough to the West of Haslingden.
  5. I traced Betty’s lineage back as well as I could. Heap Clough is not too far where some of my Emmet ancestors were from. I also found a Haworth and Howorth. I descend from Howorth in Bacup. I have not found where they lived before Bacup.
  6. So while I favor a Bacup area connection between Marcus’s family and mine, that doesn’t account for how Stanley ties in. As I guessed, it is likely far back – as in the late 1600’s or early 1700’s.

Summary and Conclusions

  • MH’s new Theory of Family Relativity resulted in my taking a fresh look at a DNA match who had a good tree.
  • It is still a bit unclear to me how MH’s Theory made Mary Pilling and Betty Wilkinson look like sisters given the trees I have seen.
  • As with many other genetic genealogy problems, I feel I am getting closer to a breakthrough, but I don’t quite get there.
  • I would say that the new information is that I have brought in a third person whose DNA triangulates with mine and Marcus’. His name is Stanley. Our three genealogical lines appeared to converge on Colne Parish in the mid- 1700’s, but as always, there are uncertainties.
  • A more likely candidate for Marcus’ Betty is Betty Wilkinson of Heap Clough, Haslingden of the St. James Parish. If I brought her ancestry back correctly, she has Haworth and Howorth ancestry. It is possible that one or both of these families are related to my Howorth ancestors.

 

 

 

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MyHeritage and the Theory of Family Relativity

First, MyHeritage gets credit for a catchy name for their new utility. That reminds me of this cartoon:

MyHeritage is doing what AncestryDNA does in matching up family history trees and DNA. In this Blog, I’ll look at my top three matches at MyHeritage that use this utility.

Melanie

I have blogged about this connection previously through Melanie’s mother Emily. Actually, it looks like I have written three Blogs on this connection. I was quite happy to come across Melanie and Emily. Here is Melanie and my shared tree at MyHeritage:

As a result of our connection, I shared a photo I had of Melanie’s great-grandmother Violet Frazer which appears on her tree. Melanie says this would have been taken on her wedding day. This was a very clear and clean match. Melanie and I share 19.9 cM of DNA.

Celeste: Theory of Family Relativity #2

I don’t recall Celeste. So this is a new find for me.

Celeste and I share 12.7 cM of DNA on Chromosome 9:

I have a web page on the Snell family and what I have matches what Celeste has. In fact, Norman was born in the same Town that I was. Here are our common ancestors:

Mary Ann was from Nantucket. Her father had a business repairing ships. Otis was on an early whaling voyage from New Bedford to Hawaii. He jumped ship, made his way to Nantucket and married Mary Ann in 1828.

Celeste and Snell/Parker at DNA Painter

I can paint Celeste’s DNA onto my chromosome map:

This takes up a small segment in dark blue on the top part of Chromosome 9 (the paternal part) that was already taken up by my great-grandparents’ DNA. However, this DNA goes further back in time and is more specific.

Here is the expanded view of the paternal side of my Chromosome 9:

The dark blue overlaps with Beth and Jim, so that means that Beth and Jim should have Snell/Parker DNA in that area of their Chromosome 9 also.

Marilee: Family #3

My match with Melanie was known and accurate. My match with Celeste was unknown and accurate. My match with Marilee is known, but I had a different connection shown than MyHeritage shows. This is what MyHeritage shows:

Here is how I had Marilee’s connection:

I show Marilee in a separate John Line in pink. MyHeritage shows us both in the Richard Frazer Line. I circled myself in the Philip Line, but I am also in the Richard line above. I left my family out of the yellow line to save room.

So how do I reconcile these trees? MyHeritage (MH) shows an expanded view that seems convincing:

There is a connection shown and percentage that I had not noticed before. When I click on the green percentage, it gives a comparison between my tree and a third tree. The same with Marilee’s comparison. It compares Mariee’s John Frazer with a John James Frazer in another tree and gives the match a 100% probability.

There is another thing that I didn’t notice. There is a tab called Path 2:

This path compares to another tree, which I recognize as Joanna’s – a Frazer researcher.

So, Who Is Right?

We may both be right. All I have to do is show two lines of Frazer descent for Marilee and that will reconcile the two trees.

Marilee and the Richard Line

If Marilee is from the Richard Line, it would support the earlier birth dates for Richard and his siblings. So, that in itself is interesting. Here is what I have now for the Richard Line:

I’m not sure about David on the left. Jane was added in. She has many matches and appears to belong in this line. Here is a detailed comparison between John James Frazer and John Frazer:

Marilee’s Tree

Next, I compare this with Marilee’s tree:

Here is the disconnect. Both trees cannot be right. MyHeritage ignored Marilee’s tree in favor of two other trees. Interesting.

Based On the Above, Marilee Cannot Descend from John and Richard Frazer

That means that there is more work to be done to figure out which tree is right. One might argue that John Frazer born 1825 was named for his father’s father John born 1755. It may be that DNA analysis could shed light on which line Marilee would most likely be in. There is a program called What Are the Odds? (WATO). However, I have not used this yet. It takes two scenarios and looks at the odds of one scenario being more likely than the other based on DNA matching. This could be the subject of a future Blog in addition to more genealogical analysis.

Match #4: Warwick from New Zealand

I’m having fun, so why stop at three? Warwick is my third Irish connection out of my top four Relativily Matches:

According to MH, Warwick is my 4th cousin, once removed and we share 17.8 cM on Chromosome 12:

For a reality check, I make sure that I have Frazer grandparent DNA in that part of my Chromosome 12:

I do. I expect that my siblings Sharon, Jon and Lori will also match Warwick. They do. In fact Emily, Paul and Stephen who are known McMaster descendants are shared DNA matches between Warwick and me.

Checking Warwick’s Tree

Warwick’s tree matches with what I have on my McMaster Web Page – at least down to Samuel:

Let’s Paint Warwick

Warwick represents some very old DNA:

The darker colored DNA next to Warwick’s is my 2nd cousin Paul:

I now know that Paul’s Chromosome match with me goes back to his McMaster side. MH shows it like this:

Paul, Warwick and I are in a Triangulation Group (TG). This TG goes back to Abraham McMaster or his wife Margery.

Summary and Conclusions

  • I took my first look at MyHeritage’s Theory of Family Relativity to see how it worked
  • Match #1 was no surprise
  • Match #2 was a surprise as I didn’t know about it. I’m sure this match was buried deep in my match list and the program nicely pulled it out. The matching trees were easily verifiable.
  • Match #3 , Marilee, was on my radar. However, the MH utility brought into question Marilee’s tree. The utility disregarded Marilee’s tree in favor of two other trees. Now I am not sure of either tree and will need to do some more analysis of the Marilee’s DNA matches.
  • I ended the Blog with Match #4. This match easily mapped new DNA and a new common ancestor onto my DNA Painter Chromosome Map.
  • Overall, I like the program and now see how it works. MH has an advantage over the AncestryDNA programs in that they show where on the chromosome the matches take place.
  • The down-side to the MH Relativity is that I only have 6 matches in the program. The two that I didn’t look at are related to the ones that I did look at.
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A DNA Match With Kristin Who Has Hartley Ancestry and a Possible Hartley Genealogical Breakthrough

I recently noticed that my daughter had a Shared Ancestor Hint with Kristin. Not long ago,  had my daughter Heather’s DNA tested. Kristin is Heather’s first Shared Ancestor Hint (SAH). An SAH means that two people have a DNA match and have a common ancestor or ancestors. Here is what that looks like for Heather:

This shows that Heather and Kristen are 4th cousins. Here is the amount of DNA that Heather and Kristen share:

AncestryDNA predicted that Heather and Kristen would be 4th cousins and they guessed right.

The Hartley Branch of Fall River

Many of my closer Hartley relatives are perhaps not aware of the Fall River branch of the Hartley family. They know that the Hartley family lived in Rochester, Massachusetts. Many know that Greenwood Hartley and Ann Emmet lived in New Bedford before that. However, not many know that Greenwood and Ann were first in Fall River for a short time. Here is the Hartley Family in 1870:

This Census record is very difficult to find in that the last names are all written wrong. Here is how Ancestry sees the name:

I’m glad the Hortcliffe name didn’t stick. Soon after this time, the Hartley family moved to New Bedford. They lived in Fall River for only one or two years.

Abel Burrows

Mary Ann Hartley married Abel Burrows on 12 February 1874- probably in New Bedford.

Abel was later to be a jeweller in Fall River, but at this time he was a weaver. Perhaps Abel and Mary Ann met while she lived in Fall River.

Here is the Burrows family in 1880 at 63 Pleasant Street, Fall River:

This appears to be Mary Ann Hartley Burrows at a Hartley family gathering in Rochester, MA around 1921:

Looking at the photo, my grandmother is to her right.

Connecting the DNA and the Family Tree

Here is the tree that I have so far:

The people in green have had their DNA tested and uploaded to Gedmatch where the DNA can be compared. Emily in yellow has tested at Ancestry, but has not uploaded her results to Gedmatch which is now Gedmatch Genesis. Mary Pilling at the top of the chart is Mary Wilkinson in the 1870 Census. I mentioned Emily here in a Blog on AutoClustering Joyce’s AncestryDNA results.

It looks like Kristin is a close relative to Emily:

Adding a Pilllng Line

Mary Pilling was a single mother before she married Robert Hartley and had Greenwood. Robert then died ans she married Robert Wilkinson:

Ruth is a Shared Match with Kristin and my father’s cousin Joyce.

Shared Matches Between Kristin and Joyce

Kristin may be the key to unlocking clues on my Hartley genealogy. Here are Kristin’s shared matches at AncestryDNA with Joyce, my father’s 1st cousin.

  • Jennifer – I messaged her. She has Williams ancestry and is checking on possible connections
  • Emily and Ruth – They are in the chart in yellow above.
  • Paul – shows two parents in his tree. This could be built out.
  • Luke – He has a private tree. I have sent him a message.
  • Sheryl – She has an ancestor from Colne

Colne is next door to Trawden where my ancestors lived. My ancestors were born, married and buried at the Colne Church.

Bracewell came up in another tree of a shared match of a shared match if that makes sense.

Building Out Paul’s Tree

At the risk of making this a long Blog, I’ll try and build out Paul’s tree. Paul’s parent’s were both from New Bedford, so that is interesting already. My guess is that my match with Paul is on his mother’s side. I wasn’t able to easily fill in all the names, but did make it back to a Hartley and a Bracewell. The Bracewell name is new to me but apparently common to some of these shared matches:

Robert Hartley is an ancestral name, so that is hopeful also. Robert Hartley in the tree above would be Paul’s 5th great-grandfather if I have the tree right. However, having said that, there still are many gaps in the tree and the connection is quite a ways back.

Sheryl’s Tree

This is the one with the Bracewell born 1778 from Colne:

This is as far as I got with the Ancestry suggestions. It seems like the father of Susy Hartley should be John Hartley like in Paul’s tree:

Combining Paul and Sheryl’s Trees

When I combine the two trees, it looks like this:

 

This means that, on paper, Sheryl and Paul are potentially 6th cousins with each other. I also see that Sheryl has potentially two Bracewell lines. All this gives me a lead to check into.

A Third Bracewell Tree?

I had mentioned above that I had seen a third Bracewell tree. This was from a Shared Match of a Shared Match. My father’s cousin Joyce and Kristin have a shared match with Luke. I mentioned him above, but his tree is locked. So I looked at Shared Matches between Between Luke and Joyce and came up with an additional Shared Match. This shared match is Mark and he is on a list of Shared Matches with Kristin, Paul and Sheryl, so he is in good company, so to speak.

Mark’s Bracewell Ancestors

Here are Mark’s Bracewell Ancestors:

This looks like Ellin Bracewell married John Hackin and they had a child named Margaret Hakin. Mark’s ancestral location map shows his ancestors in orange:

Margaret Hakin is Mark’s ancestor who was born in the area that I am interested in. Does it make sense that Margaret’s mother Ellin was born in New York?

This appears to be the marriage record for John and Ellin:

Here are a few choices for Ellin’s birth record. I’ll go with the more recent one as it has George as the father and it seems more reasonable:

Here is a hint for Ellin’s mother’s name:

Here is a guess for George’s birth:

Here is what I get:

This tree is more confusing as Reuben Speak is shown as the father of Susannah Cronshaw. There is no father’s name given on Susannah’s birth record. It is possible that this is right and that there is another link in Mark’s ancestry to Hartley/Bracewell. However, this route does not easily match with the same Hartley/Bracewell family as the other two DNA matches. The other possibility is that this DNA match is on the Bracewell side only and that Mark matches further back in his ancestrry.

Building Down from Hartley/Bracewell

The next logical step would be to build down from John Hartley born 1730 and his wife Anne Bracewell to see if I can link up my tree to this line.

Here is a tree from Ancestry with John Hartley born 1733 and Anna Bracewell:

This tree has two John’s as sons. A previous tree I looked at had three sons named John.

It looks like John and Anne were married on 23 September 1752 and they both lived in Trawden:

Trawden is good in that my known Hartley ancestors came from there. At this point, I assume that the family stayed in Trawden. I then looked for children born to John Hartley in Trawden:

If Anne lived long enough, she could have had children for 25 years or more. So, until about 1777. Here is the start of my tree:

Then I ran into a snag:

Here is another Robert. Also the mother is called Nanny now which could be a nickname for Anne.

Next is another John:

The mother’s name is back to Anne. If the first John died, then it would make sense if they have another John.

Finally, in 1772, we are back to Nanny:

I’ll add in the extra John above, just in case. I’m looking for a Hartley connection, so I’m more interested in the male Hartley’s.

James Hartley and Betty Baldwin

One of my top guesses for the parents of my ancestor Robert Hartley (father of Greenwood Hartley) is James Hartley and Better Baldwin. What if the James above born 1763 married Betty Baldwin?

One Holgate Tree I see at Ancestry has Elizabeth Southgate as the wife of James Hartley:

I don’t know if the creator had special knowledge of this marriage or if they were guessing.  I searched for this marriage at the Lancashire OnLine Parish Clerks Website and coud not find it.  I would follow up on the tree, but when I search for Elizabeth in trees, I find this:

Perhaps Elizabeth got attached to James above by mistake. It appears that the tree intended to have her married to John Hartley.

Did James the Son of John Hartley and Anne Bracewell Marry Betty Baldwin?

My best guess when I was researching Hartley genealogy was that James Hartley and Betty Baldwin were the most likely parents for Robert Hartley born about 1803. Now shared DNA matches with a good Hartley DNA matches Kristin and Joyce show a common ancestor of John Hartley and Anne Bracewell. This couple has a son named James. I’ll combine these lines and see how it looks:

  • Kristin and Joyce have a Shared Ancestor hint with Greenwood Hartley and Anne Emmet. This genealogical and DNA connection is quite certain.
  • Kristin and Joyce also have shared DNA matches with Sheryl and Paul
  • This shared DNA could be on the Hartley side (Trawden) or the Emmet side (Bacup). Sheryl and Paul have ancestors in the Colne/Trawden area.
  • Sheryl and Paul appear to have the shared ancestors of John Hartley and Anne Bracewell.
  • John Hartley and Anne Bracewell had a son James who could be the father of Robert who was the father of Greenwood Hartley.
  • This would combine my genealogical research with DNA evidence. There may be other explanations, but this one looks good right now – at least good enough to flesh out.

Fleshing Out the New James Hartley (Born 1763) Connection

One other item I see for James in Ancestry trees is his death:

This seems a bit sketchy to me. I have found no marriage record in Ancestry Trees for this James. Why would James be born in Trawden and die in Lancaster?

Lancaster is quite a ways from Colne. Unless, the record means to say that Lancaster represents the County of Lancashire.

Here is the record:

This does show that a James Hartley, son of John Hartley was buried in Lancaster. However, I’m not convinced that this is the same person.

Here is a James Hartley who was buried in Trawden in 1769:

and:

There are many other James Hartley burials in the Colne Parish. Here is another possibility:

This James was 82 in 1845, so he was born about 1763. Here is the same person in 1841:

Little Lather in the Burial record is better rendered on page 2 of the 1841 Census as Little Laith.

Another Elderly James Hartley Farmer South of Trawden Village

Just to confuse things, there is another elderly James Hartley South of Trawden Village:

 

Little Laithe is listed in the Census as near New Laithe and Hole is listed as near Naze End on Page 11 of the 1841 Trawden Census. These places would be a short walk from each other. I like the second James for a few reasons. One reason is that he is married to Betty, The second is that he lives near Seghole. Mary Pillng who married Robert Hartley was born in Seghole in 1802. I haven’t found death records for this James and Betty Hartley. Perhaps they moved to be with relatives after this time.

Summary and Conclusions

  • Kristin’s DNA match with the Hartley family and especially with Joyce has been helpful
  • Kristin descends from Ann Hartley born 1855, so shared matches with her would be more likely to represent Hartley ancestors from England.
  • I looked at the Hartley’s of Fall River
  • I looked at shared matches between Joyce and Kristin. They had two shared matches that both had the same ancestors: John Hartley born 1730 and Anne Bracewell.
  • I started to build a case that John Hartley had as his son, James Hartley who married Betty Baldwin. They had Robert Hartley who was my 3rd great-grandfather born 1803 in Trawden.
  • I looked at two elderly James Hartley’s in the 1841 Trawden Census. I favored the elder one as a potential 4th great-grandfather because he was married to a Betty and because he lived very close to the birth home of Mary Pilling who was my 3rd great-grandmother.
  • Before I had this match with Kristin, I had no known DNA connection to my Hartley ancestors in Trawden, Lancashire. Kristin’s DNA results appears to have provided that DNA connection and given good evidence and direction for genealogical research.
  • This is a potential break in my genealogical brick wall that I have had for around 25 years. I will do some more work to see if this theory makes sense.