My Old Ohio Home - Hamilton

My Paternal Old Ohio Home

2019-04-06T00:00:00-04:00

My father told me that when he moved to Cleveland in the 1930's he first lived in a boarding house run by Fred and Dorothy Goodsmith. All the boarders gambled and bet on horses. My father said that when they played gin rummy and Fred was about to go gin he would always give it away by starting to whistle the same tune every time.

One day my father went for an eye examination, but the rest of the boarders thought he went to the track. When he came home he said, "Great news! I had 20-20 vision!" Someone looked up and said, "Oh yeah, so what did he pay?"

In 1930 Fred and Dorothy were at 2310 Selzer Ave, but this didn't ring a bell with me. However in the 1939 to 1943 city directories, their address was 1917 E. 75th. This was the area of town that I associated with my father's early years in Cleveland. So it was with some satisfaction that I found that address in the 1940 Census and saw that the whole crew was living there: my father, Fred, Dorothy, and an old racetrack friend of my father named Bill Middaugh.

The Goodsmiths

Fred Goodsmith was born in Newburgh on Oct 9, 1884, the son of F.J. and Catherine (Delfing) Goodsmith. Dorothy Jacobs was born October 25, 1893, in Dayton, Ohio, the daughter of August Jacobs and Susan Taylor. Fred had two children by his first marriage to Gertrude Egert. They appear to be separated by 1918 and were divorced in February 1921. Fred and Dorothy were married that June. They had no children.

By 1918 Fred was in the restaurant business, working as a proprietor for an Anthony Cartwright at 12814 St Clair. He apparently remained in this line of work until his death–all records call him an employer, proprietor, etc., and list his places of business as lunch rooms or restaurants. Occasionally on the records he or Dorothy gave their employment address as their residence.

Fred was still at 1917 East 75th in 1942 when he registered for the World War Two Draft, but died in Georgia on 8 Oct 1944. His obituary in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on October 11 reads:

Goodsmith, Fred, of 1917 E. 75th St., beloved husband of Dorothy, father of Evelyn and Virginia, brother of Mrs Charlotte Freeman, passed away suddenly. Funeral Thursday, October 12, at S.J. Kubu & Son Funeral Home, 3271 East 55th., at 2 p.m.

Dorothy Goodsmith died "suddenly in Florida," on December 11, 1952. A death notice appearing in the Cleveland Press on Dec 17, 1952, named her late husband Fred, her brother Hershel Jacobs, and her sisters Nellie Staugler, Mary Dixon, Gertrude Dixon, and Florence Tharp. Most of the family was "of Datyton, O." Graveside services had been held at Hillcrest Cemetery, Bedford Heights, on the 16th.

There was also an obituary for Dorothy in the Dayton Daily News, December 15, 1952. It reads:

Mrs Dorothy Goodsmith
Services for Mrs Dorothy Goodsmith, 59, former Dayton resident, will be held at 1:30 p.m. Monday at the Meyer and Boehmer funeral home, 1733 Brown St. Burial will be in Cleveland, Ohio.
Mrs Goodsmith died Thursday at her home in Hollywood, Fla.
Survivors include four sisters Mrs Nellie Staugler, Mrs Gertrude Dixon, Mrs Mary Dixon, all of Dayton, and Mrs Florence Thrper of Tharp, S.D., and a brother Hershel Jacobs of Dayton.

Fred and Dorothy Goodsmith are both buried in Hillcrest Cemetery, Bedford Heights, Ohio.

Credits

My thanks to the maintainer of the garym28 database at rootsweb, for pointing me toward Fred's death date.

The horse racing drawing is courtesy of debspoons at freedigitalphoto.net.

The Hamilton Family and the 1889 Johnstown Flood

2018-10-09T00:00:00-04:00

In 1889 my great grandparents Joseph and Eckie Hamilton were living in and managing a boarding house at 136 Jackson Street, Johnstown, Pennsylvania. On May 31 of that year the Johnstown Flood hit the city taking 2208 lives.

Two accounts of our family's survival through the flood have been passed down:

My father told us that his father James (Joseph's oldest son) worked in a livery stable in Johnstown and jumped on a horse and rode up the hills to home when the dam burst. We have a picture said to be of the horse that he rode.

My second cousin's account goes like this, quoting a letter from her father:

"Now let me explain where our family lived in 1887. They owned, or operated the opera house near the east end of Washington street, which ran parallel to the little conemaugh river. The flood wave came down the conemaugh valley and hit the east end of Washington and devastated the city in 10 minutes. I think they had living quarters and a barn behind the theater."

She also states:

"We have an interesting story passed down to us from Grandpa Tom, about their escape from the Johnstown flood that you may have not heard. They fled with the help of the big white family horse. Tom, age 4, was seated on the horse, when either Joseph or older brother Jim, (we are not sure) led the horse to the hillside through 3 feet of water with Had (Henry) hanging onto the horse's tail."

Related facts

Joseph Hamilton was listed as a teamster in the 1887 City Directory of Johnstown while living at 136 Jackson Street. They were at the same address in May 1889. If he was still a teamster then he had access to horses. Perhaps he kept his horses in the barn behind the Opera House. His son James, age 17, would likely have known how to handle horses.
The horse in our picture is a big, white one. On the other hand, it is attached to a small carriage ridden by a man who is not a Hamilton. The photo is a stock photo taken by George Statler, Washington St, Johnstown.

Why were they were able to leave in time?

The Johnstown City Directory of 1889 says that the rivers and creeks had overflowed their banks from the heavy rain and there was 1 to 3 feet of water in the streets in the 3rd Ward during the day of May 31. It then says:

"The first intimation the doomed citizens had of the approaching demon of destruction was the ringing of bells and blowing of whistles. This was done by those in East Conemaugh and Woodvale, when they saw the danger, to warn those in its path below."

David McCullough's book, The Johnstown Flood, page 145, adds

"it was later reported that a freight engineer named Hugh Clifford had raced his train from above the depot across the stone bridge, his whistle going the whole way, and a man named Charles Horner blew the whistle over at Harry Swank's machine shop."

What happened to some other people?

Joseph's sister and brother in law, Emma and Thomas McClelland, were at 42 Market Street, Johnstown. They and their son James, born in February 1889, survived and remained in Johnstown.

Joseph's sister Annie Hamilton had not yet married. I don't know if she was in Johnstown on the day of the flood, but if so she survived. She married David Lavely in Johnstown in 1898 and died in 1916.

Joseph's sister Maria had married David Edwards about 1868 and was living in Altoona at the time of the flood.

There were three men living at the boarding house in 1889. One of them, Ed Bartholomew, is listed as "unaccounted for" in the City Directory. Josiah Kauffman evidently survived, married Juniata Kniepper, and was living in Johnstown in 1900. The third, Isaiah J Bosler, may be the man of the same name living in Elyria, Ohio, in 1910. That man had been born in PA about 1865 and had married a woman from Pennsylvania in 1895.

What happened to the Union Hall or "opera house?"

The section of the 1889 City Directory that was written before the flood says this on page 153:

"Johnstown has but one theater building. It is situated at the corner of Franklin and Washington streets, and Messrs. Weaver & Jordan are managers. It is a frame structure, but two stories in height, and does not impress one as being either large or beautiful, but inside it is fitted up very nicely."

A wood frame building on Washington Street didn't stand much of a chance, so it is no surprise that Annie (Hamilton) Lavely's obituary states:

"Mrs. Lavely's father was in charge of the old Union Hall, corner of Washington and Franklin streets, Second Ward, which was washed away in the Johnstown Flood."

A Positive View of Our Hamilton DNA Research

2018-10-08T00:00:00-04:00

Continued from Some Conclusions on the Hamilton DNA Research.

In the last two articles, I looked at the shortcomings of the DNA research into our Hamilton line. In this article, I will take a look at the positive side. What have we gained?

Regarding Preston Fields

• Our family's y-DNA matches on 37 markers with that of a descendant of Preston Fields, of Pike County, Kentucky. For the background see the series of articles starting with Preston Fields, of Pike County, Kentucky.

FamilyTreeDNA estimates that for a 37 out of 37 match, there is a 90% chance of having a common ancestor within 5 generations, and a 95% chance within 7 generations.¹

There are 5 steps back to our earliest known Hamilton ancestor, born in 1818, and at least that many steps back to Preston Fields (1795). Both were born in the United States. So it is ~~very likely~~ possible that we have a common ancestor on the American side of the Atlantic.

• Looking at the Fields family and a few Hamilton families of the mid-Atlantic and Appalachia has taught me to study migration routes. Although Preston Fields lived most of his adult life in Kentucky, his family and the Hamiltons arrived there from Virginia, by way of North Carolina and Tennessee. Before that, two of the Hamilton families were known to be in Maryland.

Since my earliest known ancestor is James D. Hamilton, who was born in Cape May, New Jersey, the migration paths might intersect in Baltimore as a port of entry, or possibly Philadelphia. I haven't got that far back yet, but that looks like where we are headed, if the lines merge in America. On the other hand, Cape May was a port of entry at the time. James D's parents could have arrived and settled there, or James could have been born while they were just passing through. And his 1880 census (informant unknown) said both of his parents were born in Ireland.

• It is reassuring to know that you are who you say you are, although I think I could have dealt with the alternatives. None of the Hamilton wives were fooling around with the mailman unless he was her brother-in-law. If so, we might never know.

Joseph Hamilton of Ayrshire, Scotland

His descendant submitted a 25 marker test of his y-DNA and it matches ours on all 25.

• If the research stands up to examination, then a match with Joseph Hamilton confirms our Hamilton tradition that the family is Scots-Irish. If we can learn where Joseph Hamilton was born, it could tell us what part of Ulster we are from.

• If Joseph moved back to and died in Ayrshire because that is where his family's roots were, that might point us to our Hamilton family's origins in Scotland.

The Haplogroup

Our DNA falls into Haplogroup R1b1a2 or R-M269. FamilyTreeDNA calls it Celtic-Iberian. So our "way back" Hamiltons apparently came up the Atlantic coast on their way to Scotland. A lot of native Irish are in this group also, so just remember the story that "the Irish came from Spain."

Some of the Hamiltons in the Hamilton Surname DNA study are of a Haplogroup that is Scandinavian. I believe their migration route ran through Central Europe into Scandinavia, before turning southwest into Scotland. As in the Vikings.

The Hamilton Surname DNA Project has the results of the DNA samples covered in this series of articles. The matches discussed in this series are all in the same group, which that site calls R1b-9. Look for our participant code number, H-255, in the R-Groups spreadsheet. Earliest ancestors for each code number are at Earliest Ancestors. The site coordinator's comments on the matches are here. Scroll down a bit to where he discusses Group R1b-9.

Footnote

1.Understanding Your Y-DNA37 Results, at FamilyTreeDna.com.

Credits

The image of a DNA strand comes from Wikipedia:File:DNA orbit animated static thumb.png.

Done and To Do in Cape May for James D. Hamilton

2018-10-08T00:00:00-04:00

James D Hamilton was not found in any of the following:

Done

Calendar of New Jersey wills, administrations, etc, Volume 30 By New Jersey Historical Society, William Nelson, et. al.

Cape May, New Jersey, Marriage Records - at NEHGS

Collections of the New Jersey Historical Society, Volume 8

Early church records of Atlantic & Cape May Counties, New Jersey, edited by Barbara Epler Wright. - Lookup from Worcester Public Library on Aug 21, 2009

Genealogy of the Duke-Shepherd-Van Metre family: from civil, military ... By Samuel Gordon Smyth, images at Google books, Aug 21, 2009, looked for Cape May genealogy 'Cape May' hamilton genealogy

Historic homes and places and genealogical and personal memoirs ..., Volume 4, by William Richard Cutter

History of Cape May County, New Jersey: from the aboriginal times to the ... By Lewis Townsend Stevens

Hughes family of Cape May County, New Jersey, 1650-1950

New England historical and genealogical register, Volume 52

New Jersey coast in three centuries: history of the New Jersey ..., Volume 2 By Peter Ross, Fenwick Y. Hedley

Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, Volume 1,2, and 6

Publications of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, Volume 6, By Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania

Scannell's New Jersey's first citizens and state guide By William Edgar Sacket

Semi-centennial celebration of the founding of the New Jersey Historical ...By New Jersey Historical Society

Session Book of the Presbyterian Church of Cape May, NJ, in The Mayflower Descendant Vol VIII (1906).
Sketch of the early history of Cape May county, to accompany the geological ... By Maurice Beesley

This is New Jersey By John T. Cunningham

Nov 30, 2006, at the Gale Group, 19th century newspapers online.

Search for apprentice records

Searched for available Philadelphia papers:

Mechanics' Free Press
Aurora and Franklin Gazette
North American
Pennsylvania Inquirer

for:
1 Jan 1838 to 31 Dec 1839
+James + Hamilton + apprentice
and 1 Jan 1837 to 31 Dec 1838
and 1 Jan 1836 to 31 Dec 1837
and 1 Jan 1834 to 31 Dec 1835

Nothing found.

Available, but not yet done

microfilms from Family History Library of Quaker meetings:

Great Egg Harbor, Atlantic Co., N.J. ^and Cape May, Cape May Co., N.J. Monthly Meeting : births & deaths 1681-1841, marriages 1809-1837, minute 1726-1843

Marriages performed by Rev. David Jenkins at Washington (now South River) & Cape May in New Jersey, 1805-1826 and Great Valley, Pennsylvania, 1745-1799

Monthly meeting records, 1693-1837

Records from the Great Egg Harbor, Atlantic County, and the Maurice River, Cumberland County monthly meeting of Friends

Records of Great Egg Harbor & Cape May Monthly Meeting of Friends (Gloucester County, New Jersey), 1681-1817

But there is no reason to think he was a Quaker.

John and Jane (Hazlett) Hamilton

2018-10-08T00:00:00-04:00

Continued from Joseph and Agnes (Rennie), Hamilton of Ayrshire, Scotland.

In the last article we learned that the parents of Joseph Hamilton of Kilbirnie, Ayrshire, Scotland, were John Hamilton and Jane Hazlett. What can we say about this couple?

The records say very little about them. Jane Hazlett was born about 1795 in Ireland. In 1841 she was living in Kilbirnie with her son Joseph (born 1818 in Ireland) and with a Mary Hamilton (born 1826 in Ireland).¹ And John Hamilton was a gardener by trade.²

I didn't find a death record for either John or Jane (Hazlett) Hamilton. From what I read at ScotlandsPpeople.gov.uk, the chances of finding one before 1855 are few and far between. The chances of learning anything except the person's name and place of death from the record, even if you do find it, are even less.

Some Guesses and Speculation

John Hamilton and Jane Hazlett probably met and married in Ireland. On Griffith's Valuation, taken in the 1860's, the surnames Hamilton and Hazlett occur together almost everywhere in Ulster, so that doesn't narrow things down much.

In 1851 there is a Jane Hamilton living with a James and Sarah Bain family in Kilbirnie. Jane, James, Sarah (age 43), and the three Bain children were all born in Ireland, the youngest in 1846. If this is the right Jane, and if Sarah is her daughter, then Jane Hazlett was born about 1790 instead of 1795.³ But Jane Hamilton is a common name, and the Bain couple have four other lodgers, so this Jane Hamilton easily could be someone else.

When we add the name Bain into the search on Griffith's Valuation, we find that the three names only occur together in County Armagh and in Belfast. I guess there weren't too many Bains in Ireland.

If all these guesses are true, then the timeline would look like this:

John Hamilton and Jane Hazlett may have been born in Ireland by at least 1790. They marry in Ireland by 1807 and raise at least three children, Sarah, Joseph, and Mary. Their oldest daughter Sarah marries James Bain by 1836 in Ireland and has three children of her own from 1836 to 1846. After Sarah Hamilton leaves the household, John, Jane, and their two other children move to Ayrshire. John dies there before 1841. Sometime after 1846, Sarah and James Bain and family also move to Ayrshire and Jane moves into their home.

I can see all this showing up on Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org as gospel truth. It isn't, we're just guessing.

Conclusion

If you have read this article and the one preceding it, Joseph and Agnes (Rennie), Hamilton of Ayrshire, Scotland, you might also want to read the series of articles beginning with Preston Fields, of Pike County, Kentucky. Our Hamilton DNA matched a descendant of his on 37 of 37 markers. And see also the two articles beginning with Some Conclusions on the Hamilton DNA Research.

Footnotes

1841 Census of Jane Hamilton household, Kilbirnie, Scotland, transcription only at ancestry.com
Joseph's death record, see preceding article for source details.
1851 Census of James Bain household, Kilbirnie, Scotland, transcription only at ancestry.com:

James Bain 44, head, Ireland, labourer
Sarah Bain 43, wife, Ireland
Mary Bain 15, dau, Ireland
Joseph Bain 13, son, Ireland
John Bain 5, son, Ireland
Cathrine Cullen 46, lodger, Ireland
John Cullen 43, lodger, Ireland
Jane Hamilton 61, lodger, Ireland
Jane Berry 44, lodger, Ireland
William Berry 9, lodger, born Glasgow, Lanarkshire

Credits

The image of a DNA strand comes from Wikipedia:File:DNA orbit animated static thumb.png.

Joseph and Agnes (Rennie) Hamilton, Ayrshire, Scotland

2018-10-08T00:00:00-04:00

In 1841 Joseph Hamilton, age 20, was living in his mother Jean (Hazlett) Hamilton's household on Donny Holm Street in Kilbirnie. He had been born in Ireland and was working as a coal miner. Jean was 45 and had also been born in Ireland. Also in the household was a Mary Hamilton, age 15, born in Ireland, working as a flax spinner. If Mary is Joseph's sister, then the family was in Ireland until at least 1826.¹

Soon thereafter Joseph married Agnes Rennie, since their first known child, Franny, was 9 years old on the 1851 Census. Franny was born in Lochwinnoch, Renfrew, but the next three children in the household-- Ellen, William, and John--were born in Kilbirnie. The youngest, Joseph, was born in Kilmarnock.¹ All these locations are close to each other.

Other children in the family were Jane, Janet, David, and a daughter whose name was recorded just as "Wm" on the 1861 Census.²

Joseph Hamilton died in Kilbirnie on June 20,1863, of chronic bronchitis. The informant was his son William. The record includes the information that Joseph was married to Ann Rainey. Joseph's father was John Hamilton, a gardener, and his mother was Jane Hamilton, maiden name Hazlet.³

a DNA Match

My cousin recently submitted our Hamilton y-DNA for testing and the results showed that we matched on 25 markers of 25 with a descendant of Joseph Hamilton. According to familyTreeDNA.com, this means that we have a 95% probability of sharing a common ancestor in the last 13 generations with that family.

Our "paper trail" only goes back to 1818 and the documentation for Joseph's family goes back to about 1795, if his father was the same age as his mother. So it isn't possible at present to locate our common ancestor. But it does confirm our family's story that they were Scots-Irish, and it does put our family's roots most likely in the Ayrshire area of Scotland.

Perhaps someone in the Joseph Hamilton–Agnes Rennie line knows more about the preceding Hamilton generations and will post the information. If my cousin or I locate any earlier ancestors on our side, they will likely be posted here or on a tree at ancestry.com.

Continued in John and Jane (Hazlett) Hamilton.

The image of a DNA strand comes from Wikipedia:File:DNA orbit animated static thumb.png.

Footnotes

1. 1841 and 1851 Scotland Census. Transcriptions only. at ancestry.com
2. 1861 Scotland Census, images at https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/
3. 1863 Deaths in the Parish of Kilbirnie in the District of Ayr, page 15 #43. From Images of the National Records of Scotland at https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/.

Our y-DNA Mutation Rates

2018-10-08T00:00:00-04:00

Introduction

Continued from The O'Rourke y-DNA -- an update, November 2015.

Reading Kerry Scott's article, Why Your DNA Test Results Are Wrong, got me to put down in writing what I had been thinking about for a while. When you put my family's paternal Hamilton y-DNA results and our maternal O'Rourke y-DNA results side by side, something doesn't really make much sense.

By Googling "y-dna average mutation rate" I found a few articles, which I don't pretend to have read thoroughly, let alone understand. However after skimming them I think our family's results seem to bear out the conclusions these people reached.

The articles are:

An Overview and Discussion of Various DNA Mutation Rates and DNA Haplotype Mutation Rates. Do the YSTR Haplotypes in some Y Chromosome Male Lines Mutate Faster Than in Other Male Lines?, By: Charles F. Kerchner, Jr., P.E. (Retired), Written: 7 Jan 2005, Last Edit/Upauthor: Ed Hamilton

[Y-DNA-projects] True Mutation Rates, by Tom Crago, in the Y-DNA-PROJECTS-L Archives,

a PDF file, Mutation Rates -- Who's Got the Right Values?, by Whit Athey, in Journal of Genetic Genealogy 3(2)i-iii, 2007,

Re: [Y-DNA-projects] True Mutation Rates, Clovis LaFleur, also in the Y-DNA-PROJECTS-L Archives,

and a post by Mr Kerchner in the Y-DNA-PROJECTS-L Archives, Male Line Specific Y-STR Average Mutation Rates -- the one size shoe/(haplotypemutation rate) fits all approach is not valid.

The Hamiltons

On my father's side our y-DNA matches on 37 of 37 markers with a descendant of Preston Fields, who was born about 1795 in the northeast corner of Tennessee. Preston's descendants were always told that either Preston or a male ancestor of his was actually a Hamilton, but had been brought up by a Fields family. For some background see the article Preston Fields of Pike County, Kentucky.

Our most distant paternal ancestor is James D Hamilton, who was born in 1818 in Cape May, New Jersey, a generation after Preston.

Let's assume a generation of father to son is 30 years. It was about that on my father's side, down to my cousin's son whose DNA was submitted. However on my mother's side, the generations were longer.

Remembering that Baltimore was a port of entry for the Scots-Irish, let's say that Preston Fields' father ___ Hamilton, was born about 1765 in Baltimore and migrated to western North Carolina/Eastern Tennessee by 1795, where he met Preston's mother.

Now suppose our James D Hamilton's family was also from Baltimore, with his father being born there about 1788 and his grandfather about 1758. Now we are back to the same generation as Preston Fields' father.

But it is very unlikely that James' grandfather and Preston's father are the same person. He would have to have fathered a child and almost immediately left for the frontier leaving a family behind. Of course the Hamilton track record might actually suggest this as a probability, come to think of it.

Dismisisng that possibility for now though, the common Hamilton-Fields ancestor might not have been for yet another generation, born in about 1728-1735. We would have to go back at least eight generations to find our common ancestor with the Fields family, thusly:

his grandfather
..his father
....James D Hamilton
......Joseph
........James M
..........Lou
............George
..............his son.

Add to that this interesting fact that I just had to throw in: There is a distance of about 600 miles between Knoxville TN and Baltimore MD, according to the "As The Crow Flies" Distance Calculator at http://tjpeiffer.com/crowflies.html.

The O'Rourkes

For some background, see The O'Rourke y-DNA -- an update, November 2015.

On our O'Rourke side, we match on 35 of 37 markers, generally accepted as a pretty close match, with a family who share the same surname, used many of the same given names as our family from one generation to the next, and is known to have lived within 200 yards of our family in Ballintur Townland, County Down, for 150 years.

On only 35 of 37 markers? If their DNA mutated at the same rate as the Hamilton's did, we should match on 38 of 37 markers. I mean the families lived side by side for probably 200 years or so. Can we possibly be less closely related to them than to the Fields?

We know that our O'Rourke family goes back 5 generations without being related to the other O'Rourkes:

James O'Rourke
..John
....William
......William
........my cousin,

and I think there were the same number of generations involved in the other O'Rourke family tested.

Comparing the two

The Hamilton DNA did not change at all in 7 generations. If the rate were the same for the O'Rourke DNA, how far back would we have to go to get 2 mutations? Actually, an infinite number of generations, correct?

But let's say the Hamilton DNA mutated at a rate of 1 every 8 generations. In our case the mutation would have occurred just before the Fields line split from ours. Apply that to the O'Rourkes. We would go back 3 more generations before the first mutation occurred, then 8 more to arrive at the second.

Were the O'Rourke families living side by side in Ballintur for 330 more years? Since 1450? I doubt it. And don't forget 30 years per generation is on the short side for the O'Rourkes. We could be talking about the year 1400 here.

Next, suppose we found out that one of the O'Rourke mutations occurred between my uncle and my cousin? Then my uncle's y-DNA would have matched on all but one marker with the other O'Rourke family. Is he suddenly more closely related to them than we thought? Obviously not.

Conclusions

The first conclusion is short and sweet: the Hamilton and O'Rourke DNA must have mutated at different rates. Or as one of the articles said, they mutated at the same rate, but the rate of repair for the Hamilton DNA is faster. Same difference as far as I, a humble layman, can see.

Secondary conclusion: take estimates of kinship based on y-DNA and autosomal DNA for what they are, estimates.

Finally, and most practially: we could be more closely related to the other O'Rourke families in Ballintur than the DNA results seem to indicate, and more like what the paper records themselves indicate.

Credits

The image of a DNA strand comes from Wikipedia:File:DNA orbit animated static thumb.png.

Preston Fields of Pike County, Kentucky

2018-10-08T00:00:00-04:00

I have become interested in the family of Preston Fields who was born about 1795 probably in Tennessee, and if so, then likely in Hawkins County. According to a descendant, ‘Preston was raised by a couple, Hiram Fields and Fanny Mays but the oral tradition in the family is that Preston's biological father was a Hamilton, possibly James or William Hamilton.'¹

Recently my cousin's daughter submitted our Hamilton y-DNA from a family member and the results show that our Hamilton DNA matches that of a Preston Fields' descendant on 37 of 37 markers.

This series of articles will discuss 1) Preston Fields family, 2) his adoptive parents Hiram and Fanny (Mays) Fields, and 3) possible biological fathers for Preston. None of the research is original--I'm just putting it all in one place for my own benefit and that of my family.

Preston and Elizabeth (Rutherford) Fields

The earliest record I have found for Preston is a transcription of marriage consent papers for his marriage to Elizabeth Rutherford. The papers are dated December 15, 1817, in Floyd County.² They were married on December 24, 1817.³

Preston and his family are found on the 1820 Census of Floyd County, then on the 1840 and 1850 Censuses of Pike County, which was formed from Floyd on 19 Dec 1821. Then in 1860 they are living in Wise Court House, Wise County, Virginia.⁴ Preston and Elizabeth may have died in Wise County, Virginia. (Further research: Why did they go to Wise County?)

Based only on the census information, the children of Preston and Elizabeth Fields were:

Robert Fields, born about 1822
William Fields, born about 1822
Jason Fields, born about 1825
Joseph Fields, born about 1830
John Fields, born about 1834
Reuben Fields, born about 1836
Harrison Fields, born about 1840
Matilda Fields, born about 1841
Elijah Fields, born about 1842.

I was only trying to get an "outline" of Preston's family. There were daughters besides Matilda, based on other trees on rootsweb and ancestry.com, and which could be verified by marriage records, etc. Also the first two sons must have been born before 1820, since Preston's census for that year said he had two sons in the household.

Continued in Hiram Lansford Fields, of Hawkins County, Tennessee.

Footnotes

Message posted by Diana Fields, July 24, 2009 at the Genforum Fields Family Genealogy Forum.
Transcribed Floyd County Kentucky Marriages Consent Papers 1808 -- 1851
These are evidently transcribed from: Skeens, Joe R., Floyd County, Kentucky consent papers, 1808-1851, (Prestonsburg, KY, J.R. Skeens, c1993). According to J. Mark Lowe, "Using Kentucky Marriage Records," (October 10, 2013), at archives.com, consent papers meant that either the bride or groom was under 21.
Kentucky Marriages, 1802-1850, ancestry.com.
1820 Census, Prestonburg, Floyd, Kentucky. Series M33 Roll: 22 Page: 47
1840 household of Preston Fields found at familysearch.org.
1850 household of Preston Fields, Pike County, Kentucky, dwelling 459, NARA film M432, roll 217.
1860 household of Preston Fields, Wise Court House, Wise, Virginia; Roll: M653_1384; Page: 285.

Credits

The image of a DNA strand comes from Wikipedia:File:DNA orbit animated static thumb.png.

Some Conclusions on the Hamilton DNA Research

2018-10-08T00:00:00-04:00

Continued from Thomas Hamilton of Bedford County, Virginia, and Some DNA Results.

You have probably arrived at this article by reading through the series of articles that began with Preston Fields, of Pike County, Kentucky, or the series that began with Joseph and Agnes (Rennie), Hamilton of Ayrshire, Scotland. If not, you might want to go back to the beginning of either or both of those series and read them as well.

While I was working on this DNA project, I realized two things:

If your DNA matches someone else, it means you are related to them. DNA doesn't lie.
If someone submits their DNA to a project and says that their earliest known ancestor is John Doe Hamilton, it doesn't mean a thing. Their statement is only as good as their research.

Now, I trust my own research because I knew I was looking for a great-great grandfather who had something to do with the theater in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. My father would have heard about him from his grandmother (my great-grandmother). She seems to have lived with her father-in-law's family for a while and would have told her grandchildren about him. So when the paper work led me to James D. Hamilton, born in 1818 in Cape May, New Jersey, who became the caretaker for the Union Hall in Johnstown, I knew I had my man.

And I trust the research of the descendants of Preston Fields for the same reason. They started with a family story that said Preston's father was a Hamilton. Now they have a 37-marker y-DNA match with our Hamilton DNA and a 25-marker match with a Hamilton who was born in 1818 in Ireland and who died in Ayrshire, Scotland.

But what about someone else's research? Should I trust it?

Applying the Principles

With this in mind, let's look back at the Hamiltons living in Hawkins and Sullivan counties, Tennessee, about 1795.

There were two men on the list about whom I know nothing else: Joseph Hamilton, the attorney, and James Hamilton, the cornet in the cavalry. Suppose someone submits their DNA and says that one of these men is their earliest known ancestor. Suppose the DNA doesn't match mine. Does that mean that Joseph or James Hamilton aren't close relatives to myself and Preston Fields' family?

No. It only means that the person whose DNA was submitted is not my close relative.

There must be thousands of family trees on line at various sites. Rootsweb alone once said they had 640 million names on file. By now, ancestry.com probably has many more. Add in Familysearch, wikitree, etc, and what do you have? Millions of erroneous conclusions which have been reached regarding whose ancestor is whose.

Why should I conclude that the research of John Doe Hamilton's descendant is any better?

Another problem

Next, let's look at the group of Hamilton men on the 1796 Tax List of Sullivan County, Tennessee.

All of those men–and others who didn't make it as far as Sullivan County–are said to be sons of Thomas Hamilton and Esther Sampson of Bedford County, Virginia. The only problem is that there are more males in the family than fit the time span in which they were born: Robert (b 1754), Richard (1756), James (1757), Thomas (1757), Joshua (1759), Benjamin (1761), Samuel (1765). And that doesn't include daughters.¹

In this case three descendants of Benjamin Hamilton, third and fourth cousins of each other, have had their DNA tested and they are not a match for Preston Fields or my own family. I'll trust that provisionally, since three people probably didn't make the same researching mistakes, unless they all relied on the same mistaken information.

Even so, does that mean that all the other men on the Sullivan County Tax List are eliminated? Not at all, since there is no way to be sure they are brothers. Or if there is, I didn't find it.

So where did we get?

Somewhere and nowhere.

Somewhere, because we have narrowed down the search to a small locality and a short time frame Hawkins County, Tennessee, and Stokes County, North Carolina, where the Fields lived before moving to Hawkins County.

Nowhere, because we really can't eliminate anyone, except maybe Benjamin Hamilton's descendants.

March 2024, edited to add: I think we can eliminate two men who were in Stokes County in the 1790's: Horatio Hamilton and Robert Sharp Hamilton. There are y-DNA samples from both those families on the hamiltonDNA.com project, and they don't match the descendant of Preston Fields or the my family.

So until:
1) someone else submits y-DNA that matches Preston Fields' and our Hamilton family, and
2) they name a Hamilton who lived near Preston's adoptive father, Hiram Lansford Fields, as their ancestor, and
3) their research leading back to that ancestor stands the test,

we can just wait and guess.

Continued in A Positive View of our Hamilton DNA Research.

Credits

The image of a DNA strand comes from Wikipedia:File:DNA orbit animated static thumb.png.

Footnotes

1. For an article that discussed the problems with the sons in Thomas Hamilton's family see Hamiltons of Bedford County, VA, posted by Larry Wood, June 19, 2001, in the Genforum Hamilton Family Genealogy Forum.

Some Hamiltons in Hawkins and Sullivan Counties, Tennessee, 1784 to 1796

2018-10-08T00:00:00-04:00

Continued from Hiram Lansford Fields, of Hawkins County, Tennessee.

In the first two articles we placed Preston Fields and Hiram Lansford Fields in Hawkins County, Tennessee, in 1796 and afterward. That was the easy part.

The next questions are: 1) Were there any Hamiltons in the area at the time? and 2) Which of them is the father of Preston? The short answers are 1) Yes, plenty, and 2) I have no idea.

The ones I found:

Joseph Hamilton, about whom Ancestry.com says: "A native of Virginia, where he was admitted to the bar; moved to Hawkins County, 1784, and subsequently became a prominent lawyer in Tennessee (Caldwell, Bench and Bar, Tennessee., pp. 77-82)." and "He was licensed to practise as [an Attorney] in the several courts of Law and Equity, 1 Nov 1790."¹ and: "He was appointed Attorney and County Solicitor for Hawkins County, 26 Feb 1791."²

James Hamilton, about whom Ancestry.com says: He was appointed a Cornet in the Cavalry for the District of Washington, 3 Nov 1790.³

I noticed that the family numbers in the sources are not the same for these two men. Maybe Joseph was mentioned with another family, that is understandable. But do the different family numbers mean that James was not related to Joseph? I don't know. You would probably have to find Ancestry.com's original source to learn the answer.

From the tax records for Sullivan County for 1796:⁴

Abram Hamilton, acres: 131
Joshua Hamilton, acres: 590
John Hamilton, acres: none

Thomas Hamilton, acres: none
Thomas Hamilton, acres: none

The two men above were bracketed together and with the same information

Rich'd Hamilton, acres: none
Benj'm Hamilton, acres: none

I grouped these men together if they were immediately after each other on the list. The list itself was grouped only by the first letter of the surname, but not strictly alphabetically after that. So are Abram, Joshua and John one family; Thomas and Thomas another; and Richard and Benjamin still another?

[edited March 2024 to add the following:]

I don't remember why I included Sullivan County, since Hawkins County was set off from it in 1786, years before Hiram Lansford Fields arrived. But since I did, here are some families with connections to Sullivan County that can be eliminated as possible candidates for the natural Hamilton father of Preston Fields.

All the information comes from the hamiltonDNA.com website. All three families are in Group A or I1-1. Preston's father is in Group R1b-9.

Participant number, followed by familytreedna kit number, followed by the information.

H-101 40320
Thomas Hamilton, b abt 1719 in Northern Ireland, emigrated to Baltimore, MD in 1738, served a 5 year indenture, d 1772 Bedford Co, VA, m 1753 in Hartford Co, MD Esther Sampson, b 1730 Baltimore Co, MD, d after 1772 Bedford Co, VA.
Son Benjamin S Hamilton, b 1761 Bedford Co, VA, d 1849 Morgan Co, KY, m 1792 in Sullivan Co, TN to Susannah Moonglow Hurst, b abt 1770, d 1846 in Moon, Morgan Co, KY. Descendants lived in Johnson Co, KY. H-101 is a gggg grandson of Benjamin, and a fourth cousin once removed of both H-083 and H-244.

H-278 121827
Isaac Hamilton, b about 1791 in TN, d before 1858 when his estate was sold in Washington Co, TN.
Son, Abraham Hamilton, b about 1827 probably in Washington Co, TN, d 1863 in Sullivan Co, TN. H-228, H-277 and H-278 are thus all related, being derived from 3 different sons of Isaac.

H-252 99315
James Hamilton, b 1720 in VA or PA, d 1786 in Sullivan Co, TN. His son William Hamilton, b 1750 in VA, d 1828 in Union Co, TN. His son Alexander Hamilton, b 1779 in Sullivan Co, TN (formerly Washington Co, VA & NC), d 1852 in Union Co, TN, m 1797 in Grainger Co, TN to Susannah Addamson, b 1791 in NC, d after 1860 in Union Co, TN.

Continued in Thomas Hamilton of Bedford County, Virginia, and Some DNA results.

Footnotes

Ancestry.com's source: Territorial Papers of the US; Volume Number: Vol 4; Page Number: 436; Family Number: 19
Ancestry.com's source: Territorial Papers of the US; Volume Number: Vol 4; Page Number: 443; Family Number: 1
Ancestry.com's source: Territorial Papers of the US; Volume Number: Vol 4; Page Number: 438; Family Number: 17.
Tennessee, Early Tax List Records, 1783-1895, at ancestry.com

Credits

The image of a DNA strand comes from Wikipedia:File:DNA orbit animated static thumb.png.