Category: Lentz/Nicholson

A lot of what I do is look at Ancestry ThruLines and try to figure out if they make sense by genealogy. If they do, I put them into a DNA tree. I was using these DNA Trees before Anestry came up with the ThruLines, so I am very familiar with the concept.

An Ellis ThruLIne

Here is one I saw just recently with my sister Heidi:

Diane has a pretty good Ancestry Tree:

Diane has traced her maternal line back to Ellis and Roebuck.

In 2023, I see that I had this Ellis DNA Tree:

When I check my later mother’s ThruLines, I see Diane there also:

Then there is Russell who is not in my Ellis DNA Tree. I may look into him later.

I have started a floating tree for Diane. Here is Charlotte Ellis, her grandmother:

Charlotte’s father is listed as Henry. Here is the family in 1901:

Charlotte’s father’s occupation had something to do with the spring knife:

This looks to be Henry’s marriage record:

At this point, it would make sense to connect Henry to the James I have in my tree. This will merge Diane into my tree.

Next, I need to update my Ellis DNA Tree:

Rusell

I am surprised that I have not looked into Russell before. Russell’s Tree leads back to James Ellis:

However, his James was born in 1801 and married to Jane instead of Caroline. The James that Russell has as his ancestor was a scissors manufacturer born in Eccleshall and living in Hollis Croft in 1851:

The James in my DNA Tree does not show that he had a daughter named Elizabeth in 1851:

I can build a floating tree for Russell to try to figure out what is going on. Perhaps the connection goes further back.

Looking more closely into Russell’s Tree, I see that he has two Ellis lines:

I saw from shared matches between my Mom and Russell that the Lockwood name was coming up, so I looked further down the Russell’s Lockwood Line and found Charles Ellis. This must be the connection.

A Floating Tree for Russell

I will build a floating tree for Russell that most likely will be connected to my tree. Russell’s father makes it onto this 1939 Sheffield Register:

Here is the marriage record for Russell’s paternal grandparents:

Russell’s great-grandfather William Henry was a night watchman in 1911 at a silver hardware manufacturer:

Notice that the eldest son is Frederick.

Here is the family in 1891:

It seems our line of Ellises were pen and pocket blade grinders. I have Frederick’s mother in my Tree – Emma. I just need to add the Emma in my tree to the Frederick in my floating tree and that should connect the two trees.

According to my Ellis DNA Tree, the right candidate is the one born in 1831. It looks like I never added the right Thomas Lockwood to my tree.

This record closes the loop:

Here is the middle of Meadow Street, Sheffield on a modern map:

Emma Ellis lived there in 1851. For comparison, here is Morpeth Street:

Earlier in the Blog, I had Harry or Henry Ellis and his daughter Charlotte living there in 1901.

Adding Russell to the Ellis DNA Tree

Before I do that, I will look at the 1881 Census:

This shows that Emily was a year older than Fred.

All this makes me wish I knew who the father was for Charles Ellis. I checked the Sheffield Indexers Website and didn’t see any baptisms for a Charles ellis around 1795. I believe that he was from Thorne. Also they may have been non-comformists which complicatetes matters. This seems like a possibility from 14 June 1795:

The other option appears to be in Snaith;

So Charles could have been the son of a farmer from Snaith or the son of a cutler from Sheffield. In the Ellis DNA Tree above, it appears that Thorne refers to Charles’ wife. So I would go with the cutler parents from Sheffield.

I probably have not added a new ancestor in quite a while.

This would make sense for the parents:

Here is Rotherham:

I’ll take a guess at this baptism for Sarah:

Here, I have built out a family for Charles and Sarah Ellis:

The Banns for the marriage indicate that Charles was also from Rotherham:

Summary and Conclusions

• Both Ellis matches from Thrulines worked out as far as the genealogy
• I added both matches to my Ellis DNA Tree
• I was able to add two likely parents to my oldest known Ellis ancestor.
• I was also able to add two parents to the mother of my previoiusly oldest known Ellis ancestor. These were John and Sarah Wainwright of Rotherham

In my previous post, I had good luck at looking at one of my sister Heidi’s DNA matches with a proposed common ancestor at Ancestry. Heidi and Sonja went back to Nicholson ancestry. Sonja’s Nicholson ancestor moved to Hartford while my her ancestor’s brother, my ancestor moved to Philadelphia.

Heidi and Thelma

Going down the list of Heidi’s unviewed distant relatives with proposed common ancestors at Ancestry, I see:

Here is the proposal:

Based on a new theory, I have suggested that my ancestor Robert Hartley could have been an Ann. This has turned up some Halstead genealogy. Here is Thelma’s tree:

Thelma has Alice Halstead from Didsbury:

I think that this is the place:

Another tree has this:

Heidi and Mike

This connection also leads to a possible Halstead connection:

This connection leads to two Halstead families on Mike’s tree:

There seems to be something going on with this Halstead connection. However, I would prefer to look at this in a separate Blog.

Heidi and Mr

MR has a private tree with 4 people in it. Shared matches between MR and Heidi are inconclusive. However, MR’s mother is in the shared match list. MR’s mother has a shared match with Carolyn who is a known relative on the Nicholson side:

Further, it appears that the proposed John Nicholson in Ancestry’s common ancestor tree was living right next to his sister in 1860 Hartford. I talked about her in my previous Blog:

John and his brother-in-law Thomas were both hardware dealers at the time. Sarah A is likely Sarah Ann Nicholson Hield. Interesting. That means that the Mary shown above could be the Mary in the Ancestry Common Ancestor Tree. However, if this is right, then my tree may be inaccurate:

I have John marrying Margaret Reaney.

Ancestry suggests this for the 1851 Census in Sheffield:

Mary was born outside Yorkshire. It appears that this is the correct marriage record:

Here is my corrected tree:

It appears that the elder John Nicholson died young in 1863:

I won’t go through all the genealogy, but I expect that this connection should work out. Here is a Social Security extract:

Heidi and Robert

Here is another potential Halstead connection:

My Nicholson DNA Tree

I’ll just update this tree:

This is a large tree and above is only part of it. Actually, I need to go up a generation:

This Matthew Nicholson had a lot of children and died at the age of 41:

My DNA Tree above only represents three of these children.

Here are my sister Heidi’s ThruLines:

That means I need to add the John and Sarah Lines. Here is the John Line:

MR’s great-grandmother was Ruah which is an interesting name. Apparently her son moved to Little Rock, Arkansas:

The Sarah Ann Line

Sonja was the subject of my previous Blog. Here the two Connecticut Nicholson Lines are added:

I was previously unaware of these two Lines coming forward. I probably would have otherwise assumed that these families remained in England.

Summary and Conclusions

• I found a few of my sister Heidi’s DNA matches with proposed common ancestors
• Those ancestors were Nicholson and Halstead
• Halstead is more problematic as this is based on a new theory. I decided to wait on those matches.
• The Nicholson match was interesting as two siblings of my Nicholson 2nd great-grandfather were living next door to each other in Hartford, CT in the 1860 Census
• I added the two lines descending from the two siblings of my Nicholson 2nd great-grandfather to my Nicholson DNA Tree

 

 

 

 

Right now I am looking at my sister Heidi’s DNA matches with Common Ancestors.

These 7 matches could keep me busy for a while. Three maternal. Three paternal and one unassigned. These are all listed under distant relatives.

Heidi and Sonja:

Sonja has her Hield ancestor as being from Connecticut, so no obvious connection there. I need to know if Sarah married a HIeld and moved to Connecticut. I do know that Sarah was living in Sheffiled in 1851:

Sarah’s father had died young and her mother was a beerhouse keeper to make ends meet. Here is Sarah Hield in Hartford, Connecticut in 1860:

We can see that Sarah’s daughter Sarah was born in Connecticut, so that puts the move from England between 1855 and 1858. Sonja has that Esther was born in 1861 so that explains why she does not appear on the 1860 Census.

Here is the possible marriage:

Unfortunately, the father’s name were “dead” which is not very helpful. However, I do know that ‘my’ Sarah’s father was dead. Here is PIttlsmoor:

Sonja’s DNA Connection: Shared Matches

Here are some of Sonja and Heidi’s shared matches:

Melinda is my maternal 1st cousin’s daughter. Carolyn is my mother’s second cousin on the Nicholson side. The other matches seem to be related on the Nicholson side or Clayton side. The DNA indicates that the Common Ancestor clue from Ancestry is probably right. This gives encouragement to continue along the lines of the Common Ancestor match.

Nicholson ThruLines

Here are Heidi’s ThruLines:

Back to the Genealogy

The Hield family seem to move around a bit. The first son, John William, was born in the Wicker, Sheffleld:

The name John Willam also gives circumstantial evidence to relation to the Nicholson family:

William was Sarah’s younger brother. John was her grandfather. We are not sure of Thomas Hield’s ancestry, but Sarah’s second son was named Thomas. As a guess, Esther could have been Thomas’ mother:

Let’s look at the proposed timing.

• Sarah Ann marries Thomas Hield in 1852
• They have children and move to Hartford, CT around 1856 or 1857
• Sarah’s younger brother William arrives in the US about 1868 with his family and settles in Philadelphia.

I’ll add Sonja to my tree as floating tree and likely connect her later.

Sonja’s great-grandfather was an interior decorator in 1920 in West Hartford, CT.

Here is the family in 1900. There were a lot of Russels:

This Russel was a stock broker. However, at this point, it is Esther that I am interested in. From the Census, it appears that Esther married about 1880.

Here is ab obituary from August 11, 1928:

Recall above that Esther had a brother named Thomas. Circumstantial evidence again. This leads us back to Brooklyn:

Sarah A HIeld is 39 in 1870 which means she was born about 1861.

Here is the Sarah Ann in my tree:

I’ll say that is close enough for a match. I just need to merge the two trees. Here is part of my new tree:

My ancestor William Nicholson was about 5 years younger than Sarah Ann. I wonder if William and Sarah Ann ever connected in the US.

Summary and Conclusions

• I started at looking at my sister Heidi’s unviewed Common Ancestors at Ancestry
• Heidi’s first match with possible common ancestors was Sonja
• Sonja’s tree went back to Connecticut with her ancestor Esther Hield
• Ancestry suggested that Esther Hield’s mother was Sarah Ann Nicholson, the sister of one of my Nicholson ancestors
• Based on Shared DNA matches between Heidi and Sonja, as well as genealogical clues, the match appeared to be right
• It would still be nice to find the smoking gun genealogical clear evidence, but the inferred evidence from the DNA and genealogy was enough for me to agree that Ancestry’s proposed common ancestors were correct.
• That leaves 6 other proposed comon ancestors that Heidi has at Ancestry to investigate

 

 

 

 

 

In my previous Blog, I set out to look at my mother’s Nicholson Shared Matches, but ended up looking at both Lentz and Nicholson from her maternal match list. That Blog was successful, so I want to continue down her maternal match list.

Here are the next three on my mother’s maternal match list:

Hannah

Hannah has no tree and is more difficult to place.

Justin is Hannah’s first cousin or half uncle:

As Justin is on the bottom of the Chart, my first guess would be 1st cousin. Judy is her grandmother or Aunt:

I’m guessing grandmother.

Paige is her half sister or Aunt:

I’ll say Aunt. That narrows it down:

This should be the likely connection.

Michele

Michele shows a Nicholson in her tree, but I have never heard of this person:

I do show this tree in my records:

Perhaps I had started investigating this line before. This seems worth pursuing.

In 1871, Frances was a servant in Sheffield:

She was born in Darnall. according to the 1871 Census:

Here is the family in 1861:

I think I see the family now:

However, the dates don’t quite match up between the Henrys in my tree and Michelle’s Henry.

Ancestry thinks her parents are Benjamin and Rebecca.

The family was in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1900:

They probably married about the year 1880.

Henry Nicholson

Father Henry is also in Worcester in 1900. Good news:

Unfortunately, his death record does not shine a lot of light on the situation:

My assumption is that he lived alone as there was no informant listed. Henry was in Sheffield with his young wife in 1851:

The transcriber says that Ann was born in Walkley, Yorkshire:

I am guessing that Henry and Ann married in 1850 or 1851.

The death record for Ann is more helpful:

Here I would like to thank Henry for putting down his wife’s parents’ information. There were two Henry Nicholsons in the 1841 Sheffield Census, so the information on the above death certificate could be important.

Here is Ann in Nether Hallam, Sheffield in 1841:

The family was living at Walkley Bank. I wonder if the town of Walkley was wrong. Nether Hallam sounds familiar from my Nicholson research, so I may be on to something here. Here is the wedding:

This is from the Sheffield Indexers site, but I had to use Firefox to get it to work. Here is some more information:

Now I have another problem as I have not been tracking a Joseph Nicholson. However, I do have this Joseph on my Nicholson Web Page:

He would have been quite old in 1830 – about 63. Here is a baptism of a Henry:

Assuming the baptism was not at an independent church, this could be the Henry I am looking for. That means that this could be the right Census record:

But who is John Nicholson, head of household? This is likely Sarah and Joseph:

Next, who was this Joseph? The marriage record gives no father. My web page manetions a Joseph born in 1767. If this is the Joseph, he would have been 46 at marriage. This would be unusual for a bachelor. Here is a record from Sheffield:

This Joseph would 34 when he married. Also the baptism took place at Wortley. This is North of Sheffield and this Joseph is a labourer rather than a cutler. I’m ready to stop researching this line. I feel like the connection is quite old.

Robert

Robert’s connection to my mother is much closer than Michele’s.

We already have one child of Joan on the chart:

Karen is Robert’s likely Aunt:

To confirm, Joshua is Robert’s 1st cousin:

Next 5 of My Mom’s Maternal Matches

I added Justin earlier in the Blog.

Jason is the son of Carolyn:

I’ll add him to my chart next to Heidi:

For some reason I had not entered Barbara. Here she is on lower left below:

The Nicholson family tree is rapidly expanding.

Sue

Doris is Sue’s mother:

In my previous Blog, I had Doris in the 1st cousin range to Barry from the English Branch of Nicholsons:

Elise

Elise shows as 1st cousin to Joshua and Robert and niece to Karen, so I put her as shown above.

Summary and Conclusions

• Most matches that I looked at on my mother’s maternal side at this level were easy to place or figure out on my Nicholson DNA/Genealogy Chart
• One match was difficult to place. I did a lot of genealogy, but was still unable to find Michelle’s Nicholson connection.
• The Nicholson DNA/Genealogy Chart is expanding
• It would be worth my while to further look at my mother’s maternal matches.

 

My DNA evidence for my Lentz ancestry has seemed scant. Here is one ThruLine worth looking at:

This depiction shows that I match the descendants of two children of Anna Eliza Glenn. Anna is shown as the daughter of Eliza Lentz, the daughter of our proposed Common Ancestor John A Lentz.

My Mother’s Lentz ThruLines

Before I check the Ancestry, I’ll look at some other ThruLines. It would make sense to look at my mother’s first:

She has better ThruLines from Eliza plus she shows a William Andrew Lentz Line.

Glenn Genealogy

Three Glenn matches support the genealogy of this Thruline through Eliza Lentz. I doubt that the DNA test taken was really for the daughter of Lydia King about as that person died in 2011. This was before Ancestry was doing DNA tests:

Usually, I start from the present and work back. In this case, I’ll start with my tree and work down to the present. This is because the DNA matches look good and the genealogy looks likely. Right now, I don’t have a spouse for Eliza Lentz:

This hint at Ancestry appears to be correct:

The marriage took place 16 February 1840 in Kensington, PA. Here is Eliza in Kensington in 1850 with her boat builder husband:

Here is Eliza’s burial information:

She died three years after my ancestor Jacob Lentz. Here is his marker – also at the Palmer Burying Ground:

This record shows where Eliza was living at the time of her death:

I believe that her brother lived on Frankford Ave.

Anna Eliza Glenn

ThruLines indicates that Anna Eliza Glenn was in the ancestry of my mother’s three DNA matches. Anna Eliza shows as plain Eliza in the 1850 Census above. Here is Ann E Glenn in 1870:

It appears that the census taker missed a lot of information. Also Frances hasn’t married at age 30 at this time.

Here is Elizabeth Glenn Williams’ Death Certificate:

This gets us one step further down the tree.

Starting Back with the King Family Tree

Really, the right way is to start in the present and work back. Here is the tree I am looking at:

I just have to verify that Dolores goes beack to Eliza Lentz. First I am looking at Lydia M (Lottie) King. Here she is in the 1900 Census in Philadelphia:

She is a waitress and her father is a carpenter. That gets my tree looking like this:

The name Liza King is from the Census – though that was not her maiden name of course. Here is a death record from Clara Gavin that names her parents as Sidney King and Anna E Glenn:

Here is some information from the findagrave website:

The next step is connecting Ann Eliza Glenn to her mother who we expect is Eliza Lentz. I believe that I already made the connection with the marriage record I mentioned at the top of the Blog. This record gives no parents for the bride or groom, but I assume that they have the right Eliza Lentz. The location of where she lived compared to her Lentz family as well as to her age at time at marriage seem to say we have the right Eliza Lentz.

Ella, Clara and Lydia

The ThruLines mention Ella, Clara and Lydia:

Lydia was the line I looked at above.

I mentioned Clara in a death certificate above (Clara Virginia Gavin).

Ella is seen on the 1880 Census for Philadelphia:

Ella’s father is on the previous page of the Census.

The William Lentz Connection

Here are my mother’s small DNA matches to descendants of William Lentz:

I will look at Debbie’s connection as she is a fourth cousin. The other matches are fourth cousins once removed. Here is Debbie’s tree:

The tree is small, but goes back to Lentz. I don’t have much information on Harriet Lentz on my Ancestry Tree:

It turns out that I made a tree for Debbie years ago:

This was made before Ancestry had ThruLines. At the time, they were using a concept called ‘Circles’. All I need to do is to add to my Ancestry Tree. Here are Emma and Harriet from my Ancestry Tree information:

Mary and William Davenport

The two William ThruLine Lines above are for William and Mary Davenport. Here they are in the 1900 Census for Philadelphia:

Harriet’s husband Claudius was a saw maker. These children were born in New York according to the Census.

Comparing Lentz ThruLines to Nicholson ThruLines

My mom is part Lentz and part Nicholson on her maternal side. Here is a comparible Nicholson Thruline with a match in the 4th cousin range:

I never doubted my mom’s NIcholson heritage, yet there is only one match going to her comparible 3rd great-grandfather on that Line. It shows that my feeling of not enough Lentz DNA matches was irrational.

Summary and Conclusions

• All my mother’s ThruLines under John A Lentz born 1792 appear to check out
• This is satisfying as I thought that there were very few Lentz DNA matches
• Altogether my mother has 7 DNA matches descending from the John A Lentz Line
• It appears that the ThruLines are effective at the 3rd great-grandfather level which compares to a match of a 4th cousin.
• It would be interesting to see how many 3rd great-grandparents even have ThruLines

I checked recently for unviewed DNA matches at Ancestry with a common ancestor and came up with Derek. He matches me at 15 cM:

Derek has a tree with 49 people, but shows no Ellis ancestry:

However, Derek’s tree shows that his parents were from Sheffield which is where my Ellis ancestors lived. Here is the connection that Ancestry shows:

Derek shows as a 4th cousin once removed to me.

My Shared Matches with Derek

If we have an Ellis shared ancestor, then we should have shared DNA matches with others who descend from the Ellis family. When I check that, there are about 4 people that I know descend from the Ellis family:

Checking Derek’s Genealogy

Derek’s tree does not show a link to the Ellis family. However, I would be interested in checking out Ancestry’s ThruLines:

Derek is the only one showing descending from James Ellis on my ThruLines.

I’ll check out Derek’s genealogy by creating my own tree for him:

This gets me out to about the level that Derek had. Here is William H Pullen in the 1871 Census for Sheffield:

They are living in Nether Hallam and William’s father is listed as a saw grinder. Unfortunately, Ancestry has the surname transcribed as “Gullen’. William’s mother is listed as Emma. She is born about 1839 in Sheffield.

It would be nice to have a marriage record for father William Pullen. Here is a record but it is to a Tattershall:

One Ancestry tree I have shows Emma’s mother as a Tattershall:

That is confusing. Here is another tree:

This tree has the wedding date for Emma and William. I might assume that Emma was previously married. However, this Emma appears to have been a spinster:

Here is where I believe that St Philips Church was based on a current map:

The 1881 Census

The 1881 Census appears to be the key for Emma being an Ellis:

Here we have William Pullings which I take to be the same as Pullen. He is married to Emma. Living with them is father-in-law James Ellis and brother-in-law Harry Ellis.  That should connect Emma to her father James Ellis and Emma to her brother Harry Ellis. That means that this is likely Emma in the 1851 Census:

Here is the 1861 Census showing Emma still single:

The census was taken on 7 April 1861. So, if Emma Ellis is the same as Emma Tattershall, then she could have married later in the year at the end of July.

Conflicting Evidence?

It appears that there is some conflicting evidence. One possibility is that there were two William Pullens. Although, it does not seem that Pullen is a common name, that is possible:

Here are two different people by the name of William Pullen. One is in Sheffield and one is in Ecclesfield. Ecclesfield is 4 miles to the North of Sheffield:

However, for this to work out, I suppose that the two Williams would have had to have married two Emmas. Also possible, but less likely. [Note: Based on conclusions below, the correct William was from Sheffield son of William based on the marriage record between William and Emma Tattershall.]

Are Emma Ellis and Emma Tattershall the Same Person?

Here is a record for the wedding of James Ellis and Caroline Tattershall. Here is an entry from a Sheffield area Newspaper published on 21 May 1842:

This gives a wedding record for James and Caroline. Also we see that James’ wife was a Tattershall. It appears that Emma could have taken on her mother’s maiden name. Here is a timeline for Caroline Tattershall:

If I have things right, this is showing that Emma was born about three years before James Ellis and Caroline Tattershall were married. This brings up the possibility that James Ellis may not have been the father of Emma. That brings up the question of why there would be a DNA match then.

Here is an interesting record:

This baptismal record gives Emma’s full name as Emma Ellis Tattershall. Could this suggest that James Ellis was the father of Emma? I think that this is about all that the records will reveal to me at this time. The rest must be based on speculation. I would guess that connection that Ancestry has would be correct, but it would be nice to see connections through some of the other siblings of Emma. The fact that Emma’s middle name was Ellis in addition to the DNA match suggest that James Ellis was likely her father.

Here is my best guess for the connection between Derek and myself:

Summary and Conclusions

• Derek and I match by DNA. Ancestry traces that DNA match to possible common ancestors of Charles Ellis and Ann Roebuck
• Derek and I have shared DNA matches with other Ellis descendants
• Derek’s genealogy was confusing as his ancestor married an Emma Tattershall not Emma Ellis
• The record shows that Emma was baptized Emma Ellis Tattershall about three years before her mother Caroline Tattershall and James Ellis married
• My guess is that James and Caroline had Emma before they were married and married later and had more children. This guess is based on DNA matches and Emma’s middle name of Ellis.
• I created a tree showing how the two lines got to be about a generation apart over the years.