Creepy October - Past Hollingshead Connection to the Present

 

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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!