Daniel Hollingshead and a Connection to My Eastern European Relatives

 

Chester City Hall, Photo by Lori Samuelson

Last week I blogged about how I had first discovered my 7th great grandfather, Daniel Hollingshead and the strange migration that both he and one of my adult children had followed. The story continues...

Daniel was born in 1686 in Saxelby, Leicestershire, England. On my recent visit to Great Britain I made a stop in Chester. Daniel's grandfather Francis was born in Chester in 1622 but emigrated to Saxelby by age 18. Court records show that he returned to farm in Chester but after a contagion, returned to live in Saxelby. There he became a collector of hearthmoney. Unfortunately, Francis became ill and sub contracted his hearthmoney collection job to two other men. Those men absconded with the money. Francis died at age 53 in 1675.

Francis's wife, Marie, was left with four children to support, a large debt to the crown, and not a lot of options. Court records show that she provided her dowry as partial repayment and one Frances's brothers, Ralph Hollingshead, provided the remainder of the funds as he was receiver of securities for Chester.

From court records it appears that whoever in the treasury accepted the money also absconded with it. Ralph then joined the military and shipped out to Barbados. Marie's son, Francis Jr., at age 25, was able to convince the courts that the money had been repaid to the crown but stolen internally. He was then given the job as collector of hearthmoney.

Francis Jr. was Daniel's father. Although these troubling events occurred before Daniel was born it no doubt had an effect on him. Daniel was the third surviving son in the family and knew his fortunes lay outside of Saxelby. Likely that is why he joined the military like his great uncle Ralph. Daniel, following in Ralph's footsteps, ended up in Barbados.

While in Chester I stopped at the public library to see if I could find anything on the Hollingshead. The collection is small and the only finds were about a distant relative, Raphael Hollingshead who was famous for writing a history of England. Disappointed, I traveled onward.

Perhaps my interest stirred the spirit world or perhaps what followed was a simple synchronocity. I don't know - you be the judge.

When I returned home I received an Ancestry.com message from a Hollingshead relative. I have NEVER before had anyone from this line write to me so I was delighted, especially since I had just visited the old family stomping ground.

I was surprised to learn that this "new" cousin lived in the next county from me when I lived in Florida for 50 years. We often visited the beach where he lives a mere 4 miles from. But it gets weirder...

In our typing back and forth he mentioned that his ethnicity is also part Austria-Hungarian. I share that on my maternal line as he does. Then things got really strange.

I asked if he was Croatian but his response stunned me. No, he was Magyar. Unbeknownst to him, I was going to present at the 36th International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences in Boston the following week on the plementi ljudi (pl) nobility. The original pls were of Magyar ethnicity. After King Louis II of Hungary died, the area was acquired by the Austrian Hapsburgs who increased the number of pls in defense of cities since this was the time of the Ottoman War. My Croatian Kos and Grdenic family became pls during this time. What a weird connection to my new distant cousin - a Great Britain ancestor and a nobility title from Eastern Europe!

Typically in October I blog about the wonderfully odd happenings I experience throughout the year. This week, I will be heading to Germany and France to walk in my husband and my ancestral steps. No blog next week due to my travels. One more synchronicity will be published the last weekend in October.

Creepy October - Past Hollingshead Connection to the Present

 

AI Image

It's October when I typically blog about the creepy coincidences that happen to me over the past year when I am doing genealogy.

I started a bit early, mentioning how I met some Irish and Scotts relatives through my recent travels to Great Britain.

I have another story to share but there's a back story to it so this will be a two part blog.

I've blogged and researched extensively on my Hollingshead family originally from Saxelby, England. Some of the findings were just down right strange! You can read about past blogs I've written about Daniel here, here, and here.

I've never before shared a personal story about why I am so interested in the Hollingshead family but I think it's time to do so.

In 2006, after spending time with a college friend who had transferred from the U.S. to Cambridge University in England, one of my adult kids informed my husband and I that they were going to apply to medical school out of the U.S. We questioned the decision but they were adamant with no reasons other than they felt they had to do that. After several acceptances, the decision was to accept the offer to St. George's Medical School in Grenada, West Indies. To be honest, I wasn't wild about this decision but once I visited I felt at home. After two years of study there, students transfer to either Great Britain, Canada, or various locations in the U.S. Our adult child decided to move to New Jersey.

I am not trying to be rude New Jerseyans but I just couldn't understand why someone would relocate from a beautiful tropical island to a snowy cold location. Really, I told my kid, no one does that. Child was insistent that this was the right place but couldn't explain why.

The adult child finished up their degree by living in Morristown, New Jersey. We visited several times and enjoyed the small town atmosphere. On one of our visits I happened to park next to a church cemetery. I looked up and was faced with a stone for the Byrd family. I had a brick wall Byrd family from somewhere in New Jersey. I decided I would contact the church but I always found it closed and got no response to emails. If you had asked me then, I would have told you we had no connection to Morristown; I thought the Byrd family was from Trenton.

Our last trip to Morristown was in the spring as our child was graduating and would soon leave for internship in another state. We drove one of our vehicles from Florida to New Jersey so that we could have two vehicles (ours and theirs) packed with belonging while my husband drove a small U-Haul to the new location.

On the way, we experienced a major traffic jam in Tampa which delayed us. Bored, I checked my email. There was a new email from someone I didn't know, Edgar Duer Whitley. The gentleman had found my online public tree on Ancestry.com and was excited that I was providing him info on my Duer line that he had been unable to research. I was spelling Duer as Dure - the original family spelling, so had not connected to his research. He attached his genealogical research which connected to Daniel Hollingshead. I had never heard of Daniel.

I responded I would look at the information when we returned from our trip and would get back with. It was three weeks later when I downloaded the information and I was astounded.

Our child had been residing on land that had once been owned by their 8th great grandfather. Even more astounding was that Daniel Hollingshead had relocated to New Jersey from the West Indies. So I stood corrected, others in our family beside my kid have relocated from the West Indies to New Jersey.

But there's more...when I shared this with my child I got a laugh. Our kid had traveled around the area of Cambridge and had visited Saxelby, where Daniel Hollingshead migrated from. It was there that they got the idea to go to a medical school that was international. Was this a channeling of a long dead ancestor?

One of Daniel's sons had become a noted physician in New Jersey. The location where our child had attended undergrad, Boston, was the same area where one of Daniel's grandson had migrated to, Boston. My line went on to Ohio via a stop in the wilds of Virginia, now known as West Virginia. Our adult child was leaving New Jersey for West Virginia. Creepy!

We joked with our child that they would probably end up in Ohio one day since they seemed to keep following that family line's migration route. That hasn't happened yet, however, they live about 10 miles from the Ohio border and work as a physician in Ohio. It's just two counties away from where the Duers, who married the Hollingshead, settled.

As for Edgar, as soon as I reviewed the information he had sent and realized the migration path I wrote to him. I never got a response. Evidently, Edgar had died in the few short weeks after he sent me his life's work. I can't explain how this all happened. It's wonderfully weird and unbelievable. I may have eventually broke through my brick wall without Edgar's research but the timing was perfect as we had a family member in the areas that I could stay with while confirming the information. I guess a side moral of this story is contact those folks you find online and share your research widely.

Next time, I'll tell you another strange connection regarding Daniel and I that occurred while I was in Great Britain.

Duer Dilemmas

My long-time readers know my obsession with the Duer family. I've been good, though, and haven't blogged about them in almost two years. Honestly, I have not researched their lines since the pandemic was full throttle. Last month I watched a Legacy Family Tree presentation by Elizabeth Shown Mills who is, lucky for us, back from retirement. The lecture gave numerous ideas on how to problem-solve using "trivial details." A comment she made resonated with me; there are going to be times that we will NEVER find a document that clearly establishes a relationship. I'm one of those genealogists that believe that somewhere, somehow, that long-sought record will unveil itself and leave me with a happy ending. Too many Disney movies, I guess! The lecture made me come to my senses. It was time for me to resurrect, review, and re-analyze all of my Duer findings and move toward a conclusion. Briefly, my 5th great grandfather, John Duer (1748-1831), died after my 4th great grandfather, Thomas Duer (1775-1829) so Thomas and his family were omitted from John's will. Another daughter of John's who had died early was also omitted, however, her only son was named in John's will. None of Thomas' children were named. Thomas had died intestate (of course). The family originated in New Jersey; only one document there ties John and Thomas together but doesn't state a relationship. That document was both men witnessing a will for a neighbor. John is found in a deed in what is now West Virginia. He made the purchase in 1792 but didn't move until about 1797. By 1805 he was in Trumbull County, Ohio. As was Thomas. There is no deed for either John or Thomas in the early years in Ohio but they are on tax lists, next to each other. Property maps show them residing next to one another. And that is all I have. Not! Using what Mills discussed, I pulled out every document I had for both men and created a different timeline than I had previously done. This time I made 5 headings - Date, Event, Place, Source(s), and Name. I began with the earliest records I had for John. Some of the sources, I'll admit, are stinky like this for birth - http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/b/e/a/Scott-C-Beal/GENE4-0004.html (no source) - though I recorded each as together, clues are provided. In the Name column, I recorded who was named in the record. The few that showed John and Thomas together I highlighted in pale green. I then went through Thomas's records and fit them into the same timeline in chronological order. This is where I realized there were many more connections between the two men - guardianship of Thomas' children, land sales among the surviving family members, and religious affiliation. I highlighted those in pale orange. Yes, it is an ugly color scheme but it does stand out. I then wrote 9 pages of relationship proof. It also includes DNA. My plan is to share this with colleagues over the next few weeks for their insight. Possibly, I'll be publishing it, too. I may even approach a lineage society and complete an application. My husband remarked, "So, you're now done with the Duers." I thought, "Is one ever done with a line?" You know the answer. No, in analyzing the John-Thomas information I noticed some very interesting (to me!) nuances. I decided to take on a major Duer surname study of the New York, Antigua, and possibly Connecticut lines in the hope of identifying their shared relative. Clearly, they all had a shared relationship both in the Caribbean and in the Colonies. It also involves John Duer's maternal grandfather, Daniel Hollingshead, who I have written extensively about. During the pandemic, I was able to find how Daniel, a Presbyterian, was related to the Quaker line. I was unable to understand his relationships with the New York Duers who married into the Alexander family, as Daniel did, but those Alexander families don't seem to connect, either. It is a convoluted mess! As you can see by the tree shown at the top of the page, every generation of every line has a John, Thomas, William, and Daniel. And, they intermarry. And, they don't leave a lot of records. And researchers confuse them, particularly the Ohio and Pennsylvania John's Revolutionary War Service. It's going to be fun to sort this all out so look forward to more blogs about my Duer Dilemma!