Saturday, June 29, 2013

Update on the update for Solomon Hartley and Mary Gwinnup

Since my last update I was contacted by a researcher who was researching for descendants of Mary Gwynap's son Joseph Onetto.  This proved fruitful.

Joseph "Joe" Onetto Jr (1797-1851), my 3rd great grand uncle, married Martha Lame.  Her father was Caleb Lame/Lane, a blacksmith.  Analysis of the Philadelphia directories revealed something interesting--Caleb Lame was living with George Hartley, rigger/mariner, in 1802 at Noble above Front.  

I believe this significantly bolsters my theory that George Hartley was a brother (or relation of some sort) to Solomon Hartley.  Joe Onetto was Solomon's stepson, and likely the only father he would have known, so that would make George Hartley an uncle for Joe.  It seems Caleb was a friend of the family, and Joe likely met his future wife through this connection, possibly also as an apprentice to Caleb??   

Joe appeared to have been a blacksmith associated with rivers/water (Phladelphia, Columbia (in Lancaster, PA), Harrisburg, and Jersey County, IL).  He had also done a Seaman's Protection Certificate in 1823.  It seems he his profession was an amalgam of his family--shipwrights (Gwinnup), mariners (Hartley), and blacksmiths (Lame/Lane).


In addition to the Caleb Lane/Lame connection, the researcher also pointed me to the 1800 Philadelphia Catholic baptism record for Joseph and John Onetto, sons of "Anthony Onetto and Mary Dea, his wife, Catholics".  I am unsure about the Dea part, as right below there is a record for a Mary Dea, daughter of "Andrew Dea and his wife Bridget Collins", and I can't help but wonder if this is an error original to the record (I only have the transcribed info, not the original info) or an error in transcription.  Or maybe there is no error and I am totally missing something in Mary's past?  I worked on Andrew Dea and Bridget Collins and found no obvious connection to Mary Gwinnup/Gwynap.

But Dea confusion aside, this record revealed that Mary had had another son, John Onetto (b abt 1799), who most certainly died before 1810 (no indication of a boy that age in the household).  It is interesting that Joe's first son was named John.  I had hitherto not been able to figure out where the John name came from, now I suspect it was for Joe's little brother.  The record also seems to point to Mary's daughter Elizabeth not being born yet.

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Ancestry has released more tax records for Pennsylvania and I found more info on William Guinop (and variant spellings), a shipwright and I believe Mary Gwynap/Gwinnup's father (but that still remains speculation, so please note that as such).

SPECULATION!  Mary Gwinnup MAY be the daughter of William and Elizabet (Orner/Oner) Guinop.  There is a William Guinop who marries Elizabeth Orner at St. Michael's and Zion Church (Mary marries Onetto at this same church in 1796).  William is found in tax records in Northern Liberties from 1779 to 1789, and is also in the 1790 Census.  He appeared to be a shipwright.  In 1786 he lived next to Michael Orner ("old"), who I believe is likely father to Williams wife Elizabeth.

I find no further record of him beyond 1790, and it seems quite likely he went across the river to Camden, New Jersey to live, as the family story is that Mary's parents lived there.  The loss of the New Jersey federal census records before 1830 is disastrous for my research at this point, and are also why I consider association between Mary Gwinnup and William to speculative, because I do not know what I am missing.  It is truly a loss.

I feel much more confident about the following info:

Mary had 2 sisters, Ann and Elizabeth.

One sister, Ann Gwinnup (??-??), married an English Hartley, first name unknown, who was a widower with 2 sons.  It is not known to me what Ann did or if she ever had children of her own.   I believe she was supposed to live in Philadelphia.  It is quite likely that one of her stepsons (or possibly natural sons) had contact with her nephew Joseph Kelting (see sister Eliabeth's son below), as Joseph Kelting had correspondence with a Joseph Hartley in Washington DC, who had been born in Wilmington, DE.  Kelting referred to Hartley as his nephew??   This Hartley was the son a Milton Hartley, born abt 1815 in Pennsylvania and found in 1830 in Wilmington, DE (Milton's wife Elizabeth later lived back in Philadelphia).

Another sister, Elizabeth Gwinnup (1786-1874) appeared to have had quite a full life.  She must have had boundless energy.  Her first husband was Simon (or Simeon) Johnson (1781-abt 1817), a mariner.  Family story is that she owned and ran privateers during the War of 1812, and that Simon died from complications of imprisonment by the British.  I have yet been unable to substantiate any of this.  Many of the War of 1812 records are still being scanned on Fold3, so I hope at some point to be able verify all of this.  I sure hope it is true, it is so interesting!!

Elizabeth had one son with Simon, Joseph Almon Kelting (1811-1904)(supposedly his name was changed to inherit land in Germany/Europe, I don't quite understand the story as yet).  Like his his mother, I believe he must have had boundless energy.  He was schooled in Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Wilmington, Delaware (see Ann Gwinnup above for a Hartley connection in Wilmington).  He became a sailor as a young man and sailed in the Mediterranean.  I believe he rejoined his widowed mother, living the Columbus, Ohio area, by 1830 (where he learned the carpenter trade), and in 1832 married Elizabeth Martin in Cincinnati.  He had Hartley relations in the Cincinnati area already (1st cousin George Washington Hartley was out in Cincinnati by 1829).  It is interesting to note that both Joseph Kelting and George Washington Hartley lived out in Missouri in 1833 (I think Independence), but both went back East by the following year, with Kelting back in Cincinnati and GW Hartley in Jersey County, IL (just north across the river from St Louis, Missouri).

Elizabeth Gwinnup lived in Columbus, Ohio for an undetermined amount of time.  I wish I knew why she was there.  The family story is that she went out to Indian Territory/Utah in 1832/1833 (possibly had gone out with her son and the Hartleys to Missouri about that time??), but by 1838 she was back in Philadelphia, married to widower James Hunt (1770-1850).  They were married for 12 years, until his death.  I cannot find her between the years 1850 and 1863, but in 1863 she moved out to San Bernardino, California, to live with her son.  He had become a businessman and Mormon sometime after 1833, and eventually became a judge and legislator in Utah, before he grew tired of the rigors of that life and went to California with his family to retire.  Elizabeth died there in 1874.

Mary Gwinnup went through quite a bit herself.  Likely born about 1775, she first married a man with the last name Clegg.  Nothing else is known about him except that he died soon after.  I can only guess when she married but it is possible that it was around 1793-1794.  In 1794 the Philadelphia city directory did mention a yellow fever epidemic, so it is entirely possible that he died of this, but ultimately it is unknown.

Mary married Antonio "Anthony" Joseph Oneto/Onetto on May 4, 1796, in the St. Michael's and Zion Church in Philadelphia (where her putative parents married decades previous).  She had Joseph Onetto (1797-1851) and John Onetto (b 1799), who were both baptized in July 1800 in a Catholic Church in Philadelphia.  Since Mary's daughter Elizabeth "Betsey" Onetto (1800-1885) was born that year in Deerfield Township, Cumberland County, New Jersey (according to her death record), it is not clear to me if Mary and Anthony lived in New Jersey or Philadelphia at that time.  I find it interesting that they married in a Protestant church but baptized their children in the Catholic faith.  Mary's son George Hartley's obit indicated that he was brought up by a Quaker lady.  Certainly he was apprenticed to a Quaker shoemaker to learn his trade.   He became a Methodist and did some preaching but ultimately became digusted by organized religion in general.

Beside the marriage and baptism records I find no other record of husband Anthony.  I have speculated that he was born in Genoa, Italy, as his son's daughter, Mazaretta, had her father Joseph "Joe" Onetto born in Genoa (that may have been a conflation of the two men, although it is also possible that Mary and Anthony went to Itay in the late 1790's).  A cursory Google search shows that Oneto's were in that general vicinity.  Anthony died some time before 1803 (after at least 5 years of marriage), when Mary married her 3rd husband, and son John likely died before the 1810 Census.

Widowed Mary Onetto married Solomon Joseph Hartley (1775-1815), according to family story in Jersey City, New Jersey about 1803-1804.  This would be across the river from New York city.  Why this place is beyond me.  Perhaps one or the other spouses had family there?  Mary was said to have come from Scottish ancestry and had early New York ancestors, so possibly on her side.  She brought to the marriage at least 2 children (it is unknown if John had died by then).  It is unknown if he had any previous wives or children.  About that same time he got a Seaman's Protection Certificate, indicating that he was born in the area that is now Pittsburgh, about 1775.

This brings me to the curious story of the Polish Hartleys.

I have come to the conclusion that Solomon Joseph Hartley was born (abt 1775) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,  to George Hartley (probably born about 1740), a laborer from Danzig/Gdansk, Poland.  Unless they were ultimately of English origin, I think it unlikely that Hartley was their original name.  I suspect they Anglicized their name, whatever it was.  How frustrating.  I am unsure how to proceed from such a blank slate!  Although, I'll explain in a minute a direction I can take.

George Hartley, a rigger/mariner who worked in Philadelphia around the same time as Solomon was most certainly a brother, most likely the "William" Hartley that Tibbetts genealogist May Tibbetts Jarvis referred to as being the brother in the area about 1815.  This George was born abt 1763 in Danzig/Gdansk, to George Hartley (per Seaman's Protection Certificate).  I would not have connected George and Solomon at all but two of Solomon's sons, George W and Abner, both said their father was either from Germany or Poland in the 1880 Census(Gdansk has been in both countries over its history).  I think it likely he was born to newly emigrated George Hartley and his unknown wife in Pittsborough, with 12 year old brother George and possibly other siblings around.  The fate of the elder George Hartley and his unidentified wife are completely unknown.

Apparently Poland was going through a period of being partitioned off between Austria, Prussia, and Russia.  It seems to me that it is likely that George Hartley elder and family migrated to the colonies to escape the political problems in Prussia/Poland, so I can narrow down their journey somewhere between 1763 and 1775.  If they came over with their Polish name that would be helpful, as Polish immigrants were few and far between up to that point, although if they had Germanic names I still have a lot of sorting to go through.  Still I know to look for a younger and older George, or possibly Georg, Jerzy, or Jurek.  One thing the son George Hartley said on his Seaman's Protection Certificate was that he was from Danzig but had come from Amsterdam (I am assuming he took a ship from Danzig to Amsterdam, and from Amsterdam to the colonies, although it is unclear if this was when he was a child or in 1794 when he had the certificate done).  It is possible the family went back and forth from Europe to the colonies and back, although I would think they would just stay in America.


I am unsure if the George Hartley, brother of Solomon, is the same one who dies in Philadelphia in 1824.   If he did then he is most likely the George Hartley who married Ann Bates, who died a few years later.  If these are indeed the same guys then I might have a breakthrough on other descendants on that Hartley line, as that George Hartley had a son Samuel Hartley who was a silversmith and moved to Rappahannock County, VA, and is well documented from the 1840's onward.

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