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Beginners => Family History Beginners Board => Topic started by: Silvercup on Thursday 26 January 23 16:18 GMT (UK)
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I’m trying to work out how my gt gt grandparents would have ever come into contact for my gt grandfather to have been conceived.
Backstory: my Ancestry DNA matches include a group of shared matches who don’t fit into my family tree, so obviously there has been a non paternal event in the past. It seemed strange because they are all American descended from Mormons and I’m English.
The most recent male that they are all descended from is a Joshua Albert MCCOURT, 1857 – 1937.
I have come to the conclusion that he was my gt gt grandfather who fathered my gt grandfather in 1893 (based on looking at the amount of DNA I share with my matches and what our probable relationships would be; eliminating all the other lines in my tree where my DNA matches confirm what I know on paper; the fact that I have no DNA matches going back on the supposed line)
So here’s what I know…Joshua McCourt was born in Armagh, Northern Ireland in 1857. In 1872 he emigrated to Canada and married his first wife in 1875. They had 7 children together, their last being born in 1888. At some point afterwards he moved to the USA and married his second wife in 1896 and they went on to have 11 children. Anecdotally, one of my DNA matches (Joshua’s grandson) told me that Joshua’s first wife gave birth to a baby who wasn’t white, so he left her and moved to the USA thereafter.
My gt grandfather was George William Teagle SMITH, born in London 1893. His mother was Jane SIMPSON, born 1858. The story around my gt grandfather’s parentage is already pretty confusing – Jane’s husband Edwin SMITH was named on the birth certificate as father, but the death records have him as dying in 1891. My gt grandfather was adopted by a George Thomas TEAGLE. I made a thread about this years ago which covers this more if that helps!
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=784608.0
Soooo….my gt grandfather was born between Joshua’s two marriages, but what I really can’t figure out is how he and Jane would have ever met and why. What might be significant is that Jane’s father William Henry SIMPSON was born in Charlemont, Armagh and Joshua McCourt was born in Lurgan, Armargh which are just 18 miles apart. Could they both have been in Ireland at the time I wonder? I’ve tried looking at passenger lists but not sure if I’ve looked at the right thing. Could he have come to London as a Mormon missionary or something?
Any theories would be welcomed!
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Forgive me, because I'm not great at understanding DNA matches.
How confident are you that Joshua Albert McCourt is your GG Grandfather, and not for example, the brother of your GG Grandfather?
My only suggestion would be to look at newspaper reports around Mormonism and London and the locations you mentioned in Ireland, for the time period around 1893. I'm not sure how widely they were reported on, but there could be something that might give you a clue.
Also, what profession did Joshua A McCourt have? That might give us a clue.
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The Mormons arrived in England in 1837 and Ireland about 1840.
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Here are a few people mentioned in articles about Mormons, in London, published in the year 1892. Perhaps some of them are associates or relatives of your man?
Globe - Saturday 23 July 1892
Mr Sidney B Clawson, American mormon preacher. Working around Finsbury Park.
Evening News (London) - Monday 22 August 1892
Mr Bringham Young is described as being in charge of Mormons in England. This article also notes that there was a Mormon hall in Peston Street. (Although I would take this article with a pinch of salt as it's extremely anti-Mormon)
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I'm as confident as I can be that I'm descended from Joshua as opposed to a brother, as I have several of these matches who are all directly descended from him only.
Occupation wise, Canada 1881 he was a trackman; 1900 onwards in the USA he was variously an engineer, coal mine machinist and farmer.
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I'm as confident as I can be that I'm descended from Joshua as opposed to a brother, as I have several of these matches who are all directly descended from him only.
I don't think that those matches mean that Joshua has to be your direct line ancestor - it could well be that the shared ancestors were Joshua's parents.
I have a large number of matches who are all Mormons, in the USA. They all descend from William Orton, who emigrated to the USA from Leicestershire in the mid 1800s.
Now one of my direct line ancestors was Jane Orton, who was from the same village as William, and of the same generation (precensuses). I've never found Jane's baptism; either she wasn't baptised, or the vicar forgot to write it in the register, or her parents were temporarily away and she appears as a "stray" somewhere else in the country. But I'm sure, from my matches, that she must have been either William's sister or possibly his 1st cousin.
This seems to reflect your situation and if so, you maybe need to look sideways from Joshua and explore his siblings and first cousins.
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Thank you. I'm wondering now if I've really messed up in my assumption.
It's just that I have about 30 matches in this group and every one that has a tree, they are descended from Joshua.
However something else has occurred to me. They are all descended from his second marriage to Rhoda Evelyn Brundage, none from his first which also resulted in many children.
What if Joshua is a red herring and I am descended from a relative of hers? Her brothers would be too young but her father is a possibility.
I've tied myself up in knots with this.
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Yes,that’s a possibility too. What do you know about Rhoda Evelyn Brundage? I can’t see anything for that name on FreeBMD - was she born in the US?
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What do you know about Rhoda Evelyn Brundage? I can’t see anything for that name on FreeBMD - was she born in the US?
Taking a quick look around, everything I see on Rhoda is that she was born in Utah, USA, although the exact town varies.
It would appear that she remarried after Joshua died; lots of info on her find-a-grave (and a picture of Joshua!)
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/51191617/rhoda-evelyn-delamater
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Thank you.
Interestingly if I search for the surname Brundage in the trees of all my DNA matches, there are a few other matches that are not in this cluster, but show some Brundages much further back (1600s/1700s) from the NY state area. Could just be a coincidence.
Rhoda Brundage's father Joseph Sutton Brundage was a pioneer from New Jersey. His age could fit as a potential candidate, 1842 - 1903. But he was a farmer and what would he be doing in London either!
On Ancestry it says that my most common maternal ommunities include Delaware Valley, Chesapeake & Midwest settlers, and West Virginia, Kentucky & Tennessee settlers. This would fit in with the Brundage line but I guess it could just be that I'm seeing that through Joshua's marriage.
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I've found another match descended from Joshua McCourt, but they are descended from his first marriage, so back to my initial thinking that it's the McCourt side rather than the Brundages!
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I think you need to stop jumping about and approach this logically.
I'd look at building a tree backwards for2-3 generations from Joshua, then branch out into siblings of those earlier generations and try to follow those lines forwards. I'd do the same for Rhoda's side.
I'd largely ignore other people's trees for this, and rely on your own eyes and evidence that you can collect and confirm. I'd definitely ignore those Ancestry "communities" - one of my "common sommunities" is "Early Connecticut & New York Settlers" and I can't see any of my matches there, and I know for sure that that side of my tree is rooted in central England! These "communities" seem to be anew thing on Ancestry and I suspect need rather a lot of tweaking before they're ever going to be useful.
BTW, for reference and so that you can compare, my distant Mormon cousins and I share between 14 - 62cM of DNA, placing us (according to Ancestry) at anything between 4th and 8th cousins. (The discrepancy is because each person will inherit different bits of DNA from each parent, so not all descendants will carry the same amount of DNA from each shared ancestor). Our Orton ancestors were born in the first 12 - 15 years of the 1800s.