Tag: DNA

The Case of John Whitney’s Wife

On By NancyLeave a comment

Back in 2018 I wrote about finding my second great-grandmother, Nancy J. Whitney, in the 1850 census and the immediate question that followed:

Who was her mother?

At the time, the census seemed to offer a straightforward answer. With the addition of DNA and Ancestry’s ThruLines®, I expected that question to finally be settled.

It wasn’t.

Instead, the combination of census records, a single marriage record, and a series of land transactions has created one of the most instructive conflicts in my research—and a perfect example of why no single source should ever stand alone.

What ThruLines Does — and Does Not — Tell Me

ThruLines confirms my descent from John Whitney.

It does not identify a wife for him.
It does not suggest a mother for Nancy.
It does not offer a second pathway through another marriage or through a different set of descendants.

In this case, ThruLines is doing exactly what it is designed to do—it is confirming a line. It is not resolving a documentary conflict.

And that silence is important.

The 1850 Census: A Household with Two Adult Women

The 1850 census for Wayne County, Ohio, shows the household of John Whitney as:

  • John Whitney, 28
  • Hannah, 24
  • Nancy, 7
  • Mary Belle, 5
  • Lucretia, 3
  • Susannah Robison, 26¹

The census does not state relationships in 1850. Any identification of a spouse is based on the common pattern of enumeration, not on an explicit statement.

What is clear is that Hannah and Susannah are two separate individuals. They have different given names, different ages, and Susannah is listed with the surname Robison rather than Whitney.

Whatever their roles in the household, they are not the same person.

The Marriage Record That Complicates Everything

There is one—and only one—marriage record for John Whitney in Wayne County:

John Whitney to Susannah Robison, 18 August 1842.²

Nancy’s 1843 birth fits this marriage perfectly.

If this were the only record, the conclusion would be simple.

But it isn’t.

The Deeds: A Legally Identified Wife Named Hannah

In a deed, a wife is not named casually. She appears because she must relinquish her right of dower, and she is often examined separately to confirm that she is acting of her own free will.

John appears with Hannah as his wife in multiple land transactions:

On 4 September 1844 (recorded 13 June 1845), John Whitney and Hannah his wife sold land in Wayne County.³

On 13 September 1853, John P. Whitney and Hannah his wife conveyed land to Cornelius Paugh.⁴

On 18 February 1854, John P. Whitney and Hannah his wife conveyed land to Israel Layton.⁵

These are not isolated references. They establish a legally recognized wife named Hannah over a period of at least ten years.

By 17 December 1862, when John sold land again in Wayne County, no wife was named.⁶

Hannah was no longer living—or no longer his legal spouse—by that date.

Establishing That This Is the Correct John Whitney

John’s father, Charles Whitney, died in 1836. His mother, Tamer (Pierce) Whitney, remarried Phillip Yarnell on 31 March 1840 in Wooster, Wayne County, Ohio.⁷

So when John P. Whitney appears in the June Term 1851 partition case with the Yarnell heirs, it confirms that these land and court records belong to the correct man.⁸

In the October Term 1851 case of Rinear Beall vs. John Whitney, the summons was served by leaving a copy at John’s residence “with his wife,” again placing him in a marital relationship at that time.⁹

The Negative Search

If the answer were in the usual places, this would not be a problem.

I have searched for:

  • a divorce record for John Whitney
  • a death record for Hannah Whitney
  • a death record for Susannah Robison or Susannah Whitney
  • any additional marriage for John Whitney

I have also looked for records that might name Nancy’s mother:

  • guardianships for John’s children
  • deeds involving his children
  • death records for Nancy and her sisters

None of them identify a mother.

Could the Marriage Record Be Wrong?

One possible explanation is that the 1842 marriage record misidentifies the bride as Susannah rather than Hannah.

However, the record clearly names Susannah, there is a separate woman of that name in the 1850 household, and there is currently no record connecting Hannah to the Robison family.

That makes this a hypothesis—not a conclusion.

One Conflict, One Conclusion

Taken together, the records establish five things:

John Whitney is Nancy’s father.
He married Susannah Robison in 1842.
He had a legally identified wife named Hannah from at least 1844 to 1854.
Hannah and Susannah were two different women in the 1850 household.
The land and court records all belong to the same John Whitney.

What they do not establish is which woman was the mother of Nancy, Mary Belle, and Lucretia.

ThruLines does not resolve that conflict. The census does not resolve that conflict. The marriage record does not resolve that conflict.

So the only evidence-based conclusion is the same one I reached years ago—now with far better documentation:

The identity of Nancy J. Whitney’s mother remains unproven.

Footnotes

  1. 1850 U.S. census, Wayne County, Ohio, population schedule, John Whitney household.
  2. Wayne County, Ohio, marriage record, John Whitney and Susannah Robison, 18 August 1842.
  3. Wayne County, Ohio, Deed Book, John Whitney and Hannah his wife to Youngs & Augustus Case, 4 September 1844 (recorded 13 June 1845).
  4. Wayne County, Ohio, Deed Book, John P. Whitney and Hannah his wife to Cornelius Paugh, 13 September 1853.
  5. Wayne County, Ohio, Deed Book, John P. Whitney and Hannah his wife to Israel Layton, 18 February 1854.
  6. Wayne County, Ohio, Deed Book, John P. Whitney to Jonathan Potts, 17 December 1862.
  7. Wayne County, Ohio, marriage record, Phillip Yarnell and Tamer Whitney, 31 March 1840.
  8. Wayne County, Ohio, Court of Common Pleas, partition case, June Term 1851, naming John P. Whitney and Yarnell heirs.
  9. Wayne County, Ohio, Court of Common Pleas, Rinear Beall vs. John Whitney, October Term 1851.

Finding Jeremiah Ballard: How Census Records, Land, and DNA Solved a 200-Year-Old Puzzle

On By NancyLeave a comment

For years, one of my most frustrating family mysteries was a simple question:

Who was Jeremiah Ballard?

Jeremiah was born about 1765 in New York and was the father of Horace Ballard, my 4× great-grandfather. But when I went looking for Jeremiah in the 1790 census, he was nowhere to be found. Worse, there were multiple men named Peleg Ballard, and genealogists had tangled their families together.

What follows is how I finally proved that:

  • Jeremiah Ballard was the son of Peleg Ballard (born 1728), and
  • Horace Ballard (born 1799) was Jeremiah’s son

— even without a will, baptism, or birth record.

The Ballard Family in Frederickstown, New York

In 1790, the town of Frederickstown, Dutchess County, New York contained a remarkable cluster of Ballards.

The census lists the following heads of household¹:

  • Peleg Ballard
  • Peleg Ballard, Jr.
  • John Ballard
  • Tracy Ballard
  • Caleb Ballard
  • William Ballard

This isn’t random. This is exactly what a father and his adult sons look like when they have divided up family land.

Excerpts of 1790 US Federal Census for Frederickstown, New York showing the Ballard households.
1790 US Federal Census for Frederickstown, New York

Where Was Jeremiah in 1790?

Jeremiah Ballard was born about 1765, so he was 25 years old in 1790. That means he should appear as a head of household.

But he doesn’t.

Looking closely at the census columns, something important emerges:
Every Ballard household has exactly one adult male (16+).

That means Jeremiah is not hiding in any Ballard home.
He must have been living with a non-Ballard household — common for young unmarried men who had not yet received land.

So Jeremiah didn’t vanish.
He just wasn’t a landholder yet.

Jeremiah Appears — Right Where He Belongs

By 1799, Jeremiah begins appearing in the Frederickstown tax lists, and he continues through 1803².

Then the 1800 census reveals the truth.

On the 1800 Frederickstown census page, we see³:

Caleb Ballard
Jeremiah Ballard

listed next to each other.

Census takers walked farm to farm. Neighbors on the page are neighbors in real life. And in rural New York, neighbors are usually family.

Caleb Ballard is a known son of Peleg Ballard.
Jeremiah living next door proves he belongs to the same family.

Excerpt of the 1800 US Federal Census for Frederickstown, New York. Caleb and Jeremiah Ballard are next to each other.
Excerpt of the 1800 US Federal Census for Frederickstown, New York. Caleb and Jeremiah Ballard are next to each other.

Which Peleg Was Their Father?

There were multiple Peleg Ballards — so which one was the father?

The 1800 census answers that.

Peleg Ballard’s 1800 household shows⁴:

  • One male over 45
  • No younger adult males
1800 Census for Peleg Ballard in Frederickstown, New York.
1800 Census for Peleg Ballard in Frederickstown, New York.

That fits Peleg born 1728 (age 72 in 1800).
It does not fit Peleg Jr., who would be about 40 and would have sons of his own.

By 1810, Peleg is gone. Only Caleb and Jeremiah remain in Frederickstown⁵.

That is exactly what happens when a father dies and only two sons remain on the land.

Jeremiah’s Household Includes Horace

Jeremiah’s 1800 census household shows³:

  • One adult male (Jeremiah)
  • One adult female (his wife)
  • One male under 10
  • One female under 10

That small boy is the right age to be Horace Ballard, born in 1799.

By 1810, Jeremiah’s household contains multiple sons, including one aged 10–16 — exactly where Horace belongs⁶.

1810 US Census for Frederickstown, New York - Jeremiah Ballard's household.
1810 US Census for Frederickstown, New York – Jeremiah Ballard’s household.

DNA Confirms What the Records Suggest

Paper records tell us Jeremiah was Peleg’s son and Horace was Jeremiah’s son.
DNA confirms it.

Multiple descendants of Horace Ballard match descendants of Caleb Ballard and John Ballard (Jeremiah’s brothers), all triangulating back to the Frederickstown Ballard family.

That means Horace does not belong to some other Ballard line.
He belongs here.

Ancestry's ThruLines Suggested Relationships
Ancestry’s ThruLines Suggested Relationships

Why This Matters

There is:

  • No will naming Jeremiah
  • No baptism for Horace
  • No deed saying “my son Jeremiah”

But in early New York, that is normal.

What we do have is something better:

  • Census clusters
  • Tax rolls
  • Land continuity
  • Family geography
  • And DNA

Together they form a solid proof.

Conclusion

Even without a single “smoking gun” document, the evidence shows:

Peleg Ballard (born 1728)
→ Jeremiah Ballard (born 1765)
→ Horace Ballard (born 1799)

Sometimes history whispers instead of shouting. You just have to listen long enough.

Sources

  1. 1790 U.S. Census, Frederickstown, Dutchess County, New York
  2. New York Tax Assessment Rolls, Frederickstown, Dutchess County, 1799–1803
  3. 1800 U.S. Census, Frederickstown, Dutchess County, New York
  4. Ibid., Peleg Ballard household
  5. 1810 U.S. Census, Frederickstown, Dutchess County, New York
  6. Ibid., Jeremiah Ballard household
  7. Autosomal DNA triangulation between descendants of Horace Ballard and descendants of Caleb and John Ballard (private test data)

How DNA Almost Lied to Me

On By NancyLeave a comment

For most of the twentieth century, the question of who Frances “Fanny” Tolles really belonged to was a paper problem. In the twenty-first century, it became a DNA problem.

Like many genealogists, I had hoped DNA would provide the missing proof. If Fanny was truly the daughter of Elnathan and Lydia Tolles, then I should eventually match people who descend from their other children. And one day, I did.

An Ancestry DNA match appeared who traced their lineage back to another child of Elnathan Tolles — not through Fanny, but through a different branch of the Tolles family. According to Ancestry’s tools, we shared 9 centimorgans on one segment, a tiny match, but one that the Shared cM Project says can fall within the range of sixth cousins. That just happens to be exactly the relationship I would have if Fanny were Elnathan’s daughter.

For a moment, it felt like a breakthrough.

But genealogy is never that simple.

As I began building out that match’s family tree — generation by generation — another surname kept appearing: Mix. It was a name I recognized immediately. I already had Mix ancestors in my own tree. So I followed that line back.

And there it was.

The DNA match and I were not connected by just one line. We were connected by two — one through Tolles, and one through Mix. The Mix connection was older and more robust. That meant the small 9 cM segment could easily come from that shared ancestry instead of from Elnathan Tolles.

In other words, the DNA match did not prove what I wanted it to prove.

This is one of the hardest lessons in genetic genealogy: a match can be real, but still be misleading. Small segments, especially those under 10 cM, are easily inherited from distant ancestors and can survive for many generations. When multiple lines connect two people, DNA alone cannot tell you which ancestor supplied the shared segment.

So DNA did not solve the Tolles–Munson question. It simply told me that the two families were tangled together in more than one way.

And that meant I had to go back to something far older — something far more reliable.

I had to go back to the law.

In the next post, I’ll show how a thick, tedious, 66-page probate file did what DNA could not: it quietly but definitively tied Frances “Fanny” Tolles to the parents who raised her.

Sources

  1. AncestryDNA, shared DNA match between the author and a descendant of another child of Elnathan Tolles, showing 9 cM across one segment (author’s private test results).
  2. Shared cM Project 4.0, The DNA Painter, relationship probability tool for centimorgan values, indicating that 9 cM can be consistent with sixth-cousin relationships.
  3. Blaine T. Bettinger, “The Shared cM Project,” The Genetic Genealogist (https://thegeneticgenealogist.com), methodology for interpreting small DNA matches.
  4. International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG), guidelines on triangulation and multiple ancestral paths affecting DNA interpretation.
  5. Author’s compiled family tree and research notes on the Mix and Tolles families, showing multiple shared ancestral lines.

DNA and Unknown Family Rumor aka Those blasted Jones!

On By Nancy1 Comment

I remember one time when I went with my parents to put flowers on gravestones at the cemetery and asking my mom who these people were. She would tell me how each person was related – and how she knew that so-and-so was related, but wasn’t exactly sure how. I also remember seeing a couple of gravestones (Orrin Jones and another for William Jones) that we were not putting flowers on and I asked why not since they had the same surname as my grandmother’s maiden name. Her response was she didn’t think they were related, but somehow I had the feeling they were. Little did I know then that my feeling would turn out to be true, although I wouldn’t find that out for about 30 years. It was also probably my first experience with a feeling which I get when researching or visiting areas that ancestors lived in and that would become more pronounced as I worked on my family history years later. But more on that in another post.

I also remember when I had been digging into the family history for a few years and talking to my mom about what information I had finally found on her Hickmott ancestors. She was thrilled with the information that I had found and then started asking me about specific people. One of them was her grandfather – Aaron Jones. I told her that I hadn’t found anything other than his dad was Thomas and frankly I wasn’t gonna look. She gave me a bewildered look and asked why. My response was that it was too common of a name and I really didn’t have anything to go on other than their names. I told her that if something fell into my lap, then I would of course pursue it, but otherwise it’s way too hard to figure out one Jones from another.

Of course every so often I had tried to find more information – but really had not made much progress. Then suddenly one day, when looking at my DNA results on ancestry.com guess what happened. Something fell into my lap.

AncestryDNA has a feature called “New Ancestor Discoveries” where they suggest someone who might be your ancestor. A name appeared there – Sarah Thursa Hibner. The name meant nothing to me, and a quick look didn’t reveal any interesting connections. So, I dismissed it. Then I looked in another area that AncestryDNA developed called “DNA Circles”. The premise of this feature is to look at the public family trees of your DNA matches and propose a possible ancestor based on the DNA connection. Well, guess what, Sarah Thursa Hibner showed up again. Ok, this is getting serious – I really need to check this lady out. So, I started looking at the family trees of those DNA matches. I see that she is the daughter of George Hibner and Emma Groff and her first husband was John Jones and her second husband was Henry Lester. To say that bells started going off in my head was an understatement. Both Groff and Jones are in my family tree. I start digging.

Well, after about a year of researching this connection, I am no closer to proving that her mother Emma Groff is related to my great-great-grandmother Emeline Groff. However, that has to be the connection. See, all of the descendants that I have a DNA connection to Sarah are her grandchildren (some great, some great-great) from her second husband Henry Lester. This is why I believe the connection is actually in the Groff line. But in stumbling about to find the actual connection, her first husband John Jones jumped out at me. And of course, because he was jumping out at me, I had to pursue it.

It turns out that John Jones was born in 1838 and died in 1873. He was the son of Orrin Jones and his wife Dorothy Cates. His siblings were Royal (1826-1893), George (1829-?), Thomas J (1830-1893), William (1834 – 1903) who had a wife Harriet and Stephen (1845-1918) who had a wife Nancy. Orrin and William both have headstones in Taymouth Township Cemetery. Now bells are really going off in my head along with a few fireworks.

I’ve known for a while that Aaron’s father, Thomas was born about 1830 and had probably died in 1893 (although I still have to actually prove this). I also knew that  in 1880, when Aaron was about 20 years old, he was living with a Stephen Jones and his family. Aaron was listed as a border – but I had wondered if there was a family connection. Also, I knew that Aaron’s father-in-law, George Lawhead, had hooked up with Harriet Jones – the wife of William Jones (a subject for a different blog post). In addition, in George Lawhead’s civil war pension file, there was an affidavit from Nancy Jones saying she was Harriet’s sister. Nancy Jones is the wife of Stephen Jones. Nancy’s maiden name was Savage – just like Harriet.

See why bells and fireworks were going off? My great-great-grandfather, Thomas belongs to that Jones family. Now, I know that my great-great-great grandfather is Orrin Jones (and his father is Thomas). I know that Aaron was living with his uncle in 1880.

Oh, and that part in my title about “unknown family rumor”? I say unknown because until I started down this rabbit hole, I didn’t know it. I traced the descendants of Sarah Thursa Hibner more into the present and found one Hazel Almarria Morse being her grand-daughter. Sarah had a daughter, Elizabeth with John Jones, and that Elizabeth is Hazel’s mother. Hazel first marries William Judge Hunter. At this point, I wonder if this is the same Hazel Hunter that married my grandpa after grandma died. So I keep checking and sure enough her second marriage was to Raymond Hickmott (my grandfather). So, grandpa, after grandma dies, marries her third cousin, Hazel. I relate this to my sister who said, yeah, she knew that and then goes on to say “I knew grandpa married grandma’s cousin, but didn’t know how they were related.” You see, I only knew that grandpa married Hazel Hunter – I never knew that part about Hazel Hunter and Marie Jones being cousins before. Needless to say, my response to that was “What other family rumors have you not told me?”

You can’t hide things from a genealogist….