I had previously looked at Josiah Bradford in a Blog in 2019. At that time, my father’s cousin Joyce’s ThruLines for Josiah Bradford looked like this:
Now, in addition to the two matches on the Jesse Bradford Line, Joyce shows two additional matches:
I like to draw trees for the people that I believe are true DNA matches and match by genealogy, but my Bradford tree is quite out of date:
I had previously looked at this connection with Joyce in 2019:
My Bradford DNA/Genealogy Chart is starting to shape up.
My Match with Rollie
If I could confirm Rollie’s genealogy, that would firm up the Stephen Bradford connection. Rollie has a nice tree which I have no reason to doubt:
Rollie has Stephen, son of Stephen moving to Illinois at some point:
This 1870 Census seems to confirm that:
1850:
1860:
That means that Stephen went from Engraver in New Hampshire to a farmer in Illinois around the age of 50. I feel like the rest of the line should fall into place – I’m a bit lazy today.
Here is the connection I come up with:
Note that brothers Stepen and Alexander were born 1815 and 1838. They are first and last born in the family.
Back to Josiah
From the review of my 2019 Blog, I think that I thought that the Jesse Line would be OK. Here is the William to Jesse Bradford Line added:
New Matches on the William to Josiah Line
I had this image earlier in the Blog for my father’s cousin Joyce’s ThruLines:
This is interesting as I also match Joe. Unfortunately, Joe’s tree does not support this ThruLine:
The other match in pink shows a Bradford connection:
I’ll start with this Howard connection and build out a tree. Here is Glenn Deforest’s birth’s record from Waltham, MA:
It looks like Glenn’s father was a machinist. I get his parents names also from Social Security. Here is Everett’s aka Everard’s marriage record:
Looks like I need the second page:
The good news is that Evererett’s father had an unusual name. The bad news is that people messed up the name in the records. Here are two Maltiah’s in the 1860 Plymouth Census:
Unfortunately, the child I saw on the Census as Josiah, got transcribed as Jonah. I take him to be named for Josiah Bradford.
Here is the marriage record:
This is the tree so far:
According to North America, Family HIstories:
I note here that the name Josiah is correct. Josiah Bradford apparently married a Polly Robbins in 1803:
FindaGrave appears to confirm that Josiah’s father was William Bradford:
I take Polley to be the same as Mary Bradford, but I may be wrong. I see the trees at Ancestry have her as the same person. Molly is a derivative of Mary and Polly is a derivative of Molly.
This matches up with my own tree:
William’s wife was Ruth Dunham.
The ancestors with large families such as William Bradford’s above born in 1749 were more likely to pass down DNA to subsequent generations.
My Brother Jon and the Matilda Bradford Line
My brother Jon has these three matches:
None of these trees lead to Bradfords. I can make my own tree for Joe to try to see if his tree is wrong or if Ancestry is wrong.
Here is Joe and mother Doris in 1940:
Interestingly, Doris’ mother was the head of the household and not the husband. Here is Doris’ birth record:
Doris’ dad was an embalmer born in Plymouth. Based on this record, I accepted the Ancestry hints for Doris’ parents.
Arthur was born in Plymouth, though his parents were living in New Bedford at the time:
I think I see the problem. Joe’s tree does go back to our common ancestor who was Josiah Bradford:
However, Ancestry seems to be missing Weston Vaughan and Ella May Stephens in the tree. Based on the above birth record, I will accept Ancestry’s clue for Arthur’s parents and follow on Weston Vaughan:
Weston’s marriage record has his mother as Matilda. She is the one I’d like to follow:
Unfortunately, Arthur’s birth record does not give his mother’s maiden name either. Here is the family in 1870 in Plymouth:
We see Matilda’s maiden name on her marriage record:
I have set out to prove either Ancestry’s tree wrong or Joe’s tree wrong. It looks like Joe’s tree is right and Ancestry’s tree is partially wrong. The key is that Matilda married young and had her son Weston at a young age. Her marriage record says she was 18 when she married. The 1870 Census suggests she could have been 17 when Weston Jr. was born. That is what Ancestry did not have for some reason.
Here is Matilda’s death record:
Matilda’s father was a clergyman based on the 1850 Census in Plymouth:
Matilda is mentioned in FindAGrave:
This should bring me back to my own tree and close the loop:
Here is some more information from Ancestry:
The Ruth here would be Ruth Dunham from my tree.
I’ll add Joe into my Bradford DNA/Genealogy Tree:
Joseph is 5th cousin twice removed to Joyce and 6th cousin once removed to my family.
Bradford ThruLine to Barbara
Oddly, when I check my brother’s ThruLines now, they no longer have Joe. Perhaps the ThruLines were recalculated:
However, it doesn’t matter as I have what I believe to be right on my Bradford DNA/Genealogy Chart.
It shouldbe easy to check Barbara’s tree as I just need to get up to Matilda Bradford. Barbara has a small tree:
The other interesting thing is that this tree apparently goes through the Ransom side and not the Vaughan side. I found Etta’s birth record, so accepted the hint for her parents:
The hint for George Ransom’s mother is Rev Mary S Faunce. Here is the marriage record for George and Ida:
Here is George’s birth record:
I am skeptical that Mary was a Reverend. Here she is in Pembroke in 1880 keeping house:
I guess I was wrong. Here is her obituary:
This gets us back to Matilda Bradford born 1813. So I see the Ancestry ThruLine was correct this time.
Summary and Conclusions
- I was able to show genealogical connections and probale DNA connections between my family and many other Bradford families going back to Josiah Bradford born 1724 and his wife Hannah Rider.
- There was one generation missing on the ThruLines for Joe Vaughan, but I was able to find that and add it in.
- These ThruLines change often. The one for Joe was changing as I was writing this Blog.
- My Bradford DNA/Genealogy Tree was quite out of date and I was able to add two generations to it going back from Harvey Bradford on my family’s side.
- The DNA matches appear to confirm the previous genealogy work that I have done.