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Hello Rootschatters


So it appears there are no living direct male descendants of John Harrison. There may be some from William's granddaughter Elizabeth Barton or his son John's daughter Charlotte but no living descendants called Harrison can exist. There maybe descendants from John Harrison's siblings especially his brother James. When John 1761 - 1842 left a specific time-piece to his son John in his Will he mentions that James was involved in the construction of it.


Venelow
Canada

If what you write is true then there may be no direct male descendants, however I have found unverified suggestions of additional male descendants not included in the information you list from wills. However  until proven they are merely interesting rumours ...

Nevertheless THE Johh H with his wife Elizabeth Scott had a son William who in turn gave him granddaughters  Anne and Elizabeth and a grandson John. The speculation is of them having two other bothers: One called William Harrison would be THE John Harrison's grandson and he supposedly produced more generations of Williams and Johns until ending up with another Anne Harrison born in 1807. Then there is the suggestion that William (1728-1815) had more than one son called John Harrison and that this additional John in turn had a son by the name of Charles.

If you spend  long enough on the inter-net you can find people claiming almost anything, however without a clearly laid out trail of evidence you have to question how much faith you place in things that strangers post on the inter-net... However it would appear that William Harrison (1728-1815) may have an extensive list of descendants.

Plus there is also the separate line of enquiry following descendants of THE John Harrisons younger brother James who is known to have worked extensively with John on the early clocks. I've found accounts in a nineteenth century astronomical societies papers questioning if it were James that was actually the more gifted of the two but that John Harrison gets the credit on account of being both the older brother and the more socially forward in terms of promoting their work? James' family seems to progress forward through several generations of bell founders and clock makers in and around Hull.

Pursuing genealogical connections can oh so easily become and addictive pastime!

Hello Rootschatters

After finding 500+ Trees on Ancestry for John "Longitude" Harrison I decided to research this family for myself.


Venelow
Canada

Thanks very much for all this information. I may have to take a look at ancestry and pay whatever subscription they charge to read though what others have found out.

Cheers

The software issue is to do with the fact my mother recorded all her notes in an old package that is now  obsolete...

Although somewhat of a tangent my mother began programming computers way back when they were still mechanical rather than being based on silicon micro chips, and later, when enough people started thinking of the term "computer" as a piece of technical equipment rather than a job title for a type of mathematician, she went on to become an IT instructor.

When I queried with her why the data was saved as a basic .txt file full she implied it was to do with this software.  So I can open the file in something as simple as MS notepad where it delivers a huge "data-dump" However all the information that sorts the data into any meaningful structure is lost among a mass of additional characters and numbers dotted through this long single file. I can pick out lots of names and dates and locations, but it isn't clear which link to which. This data dump should, however, prove a mine of relevant information should I have to effectively start from scratch researching our family tree, which is unlikely.

So the issue isn't "accessing" the file but reconstructing it. It is comparable to being given a dictionary and told the story is all in there, you just need to sort the words into the right order.

As I say once I've got time to pursue this properly I need to head back to my parents and sit down with my mother to work through all her notes.... She has told me her "holy-grail" that she eventually gave up on trying to track down is a story of an old family bible containing our family tree traced back to 1066 and coming to the UK with William the Conqueror. Sadly that bible is said to have gone the USA in the mid 1800's... Her family name is Watmough (of the Lincolnshire biscuit manufacturers) where we think the connection to the Norman conquest may lie in a branch of the family with connections to Lancashire going by the names of LeScholes, more laterly just Scholes.

Cheers

Rena,

Thanks for the  link as I wasn't aware of this site

It seems, like so much to do with genealogy, that 19th/20th century records are plentiful but as you start pushing back into the 18th and 17th centuries things soon get "sketchy".

It may be the reason I can't find any clear link between THE John Harrison and my family is simply that there isn't one. However for the time being there's lots of superficial similarities and circumstantial  hints pointing towards this and not enough clear information to conclusively show there is no link;- All for the simple reason that we don't know enough about our own family tree in the early-mid 18th century.

Cheers

Monopoli is a town in southern Italy, near Bari.

Thanks I was aware of this, but my language skills are such that I didn't want to jump to conclusions and assume the name Monopoli must be referring to that town. I didn't know if it might simply be a word that meant something like "library" or "museum" or some other generic civic building.

Cheers