Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Genealogical Convergence

So if you've been reading this here little blog for any length of time you know that my mom was from the South and my dad was from the North.


Mom's people have been in America with a few exceptions since the early 1600's...by and large all of them coming here through the Virginia Colony and a large preponderance of these immigrants remaining in Virginia for many generations.  In fact I am the first person in my maternal direct line who has left Virginia to settle in another US state.  Neither of my siblings ever left Virginia either.

Dad's people have only been in America since the last 100 years mostly, with all of them settling in the North-New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. With the exception of John Redfern and three of his sons(my 4th great Uncles)who all ended up in Montana.

So I never dreamed that I'd find any connections between my paternal lines and my maternal lines in my family tree.
Until last week.

Grave marker of my 7 x Great Uncle, Benjamin Sublett, brother to my 6 x Great Granfather, William Abraham Sublett.

I was researching my 6 x great grands on my Sublett lines-William Abraham Sublett and Susannah Allen Sublett.
Their daughter, Martha Sublett, is my 5 x great grand.
Her brother, my 6th great uncle, is Phillip Allen Sublett who married Isabella Whitley.
Isabella' sister, Ann Lewis Whitley, married William D Harper from Kentucky.

Since my maternal grandfather was born a Harper I started meandering up William D's Harper line to see if this branch of Harpers were related to my Virginia Harpers and had gone to KY from my part of VA.
William's father, Adam Harper was born in Virginia(now West Virginia)but I hit a brick wall beyond Adam's father, Jacob Harper.

So I headed up the line from Adam's wife, Barbara Conrad.
Her parents are Hans Jacob Conrad(born in Switzerland)and Hannah Bogard(born in Minisink, Orange Co, NY).

Orange County NY is were my Bowman/Redfern line immigrated to.

Hannah Bogard Conrad's parents were Sarah Hoogteeling(born Ulster Co. NY) and her first husband Johannes Bogard or Bogardus(born in Dutchess Co. NY).
That surname Hoogteeling sounded very familiar to me.......but not in connection to my maternal lines.

So I traced that Hoogteeling line up 3 more generations to a Mathys Coenraddtsen Hoogteeling or Houghtaling.(The surname Hoogteeling was anglicized to Houghtaling at some point and you see it spelled both ways back in the 1700's.)

And a light bulb moment happened!

My 2nd great Uncle, Richard Bowman, obviously on my paternal Bowman line, married a woman named Blanche A Houghtaling.
Blanche's 6 x great grandfather is Mathys Coenraddtsen Hoogteeling or Houghtaling.
So one of my maternal lines married into lines that lead back to the common shared ancestor that's the 6 x GG of my 2 x great uncle on my paternal side.

It's just so strange and I never thought I'd find crossovers from my maternal and my paternal lines.

As a general rule, up until the last 150 years or so, people and families didn't move around much.
Yes, there was a migration out west from both the Southern and Northern states in the East, but people didn't really remove from the South to the North much, and vice versa.
Especially my Virginia ancestors who are mostly still in Virginia to this day!

There may be an individual now and again in your line that bucked the system, moved away from family to do their own thing, the folks that march to a different drummer type.....people like my paternal grandfather.   But they are infrequent and far between.

I found the place in my family story which placed a family from NY(connected to my paternal line)in close proximity to my maternal lines in VA.

Sarah Hoogteeling Bogard's husband died in Augusta VA, in 1747, leaving her with a 3 year old daughter, Hannah Bogard.  In late 1746 Sarah is buying land in Augusta Co., VA and then marrying Henry Thorn, a Scotch-Irish settler to the mountains of Western Virginia.  Sarah dies in 1828 in what would become Pendleton Co., WV.  That move to VA put her daughter, Hannah, and later her granddaughter, Barbara Conrad, in proximity to Adam Harper of Pendleton Co.  Barbara and Adam would remove to Kentucky and put their offspring in the vicinity of the Whitley family and the branch of the Sublett line that would move out of VA into KY, MO, and across the West.

The question though is why did Johannes and Sarah Bogard move from upstate NY to western VA before 1747?
So I looked around her family and found that one of Sarah's uncles died in western VA as did one of her sisters.  This indicates that a family group removed together to VA.  No family stories were left behind so we'll never know the exact reasons that triggered that move.

Sluggy


1 comment:

  1. Ssso, your family tree goes straight up? lol I am always amazed how parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles with a dozen children between them all just pick up and move, unlike the one person who will move far away today. I suppose the numbers made for safer travel, more ease in building dwellings besides running a farm.

    Interesting stuff you have.

    ReplyDelete

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