Any kind of breakthrough on my Hartley side is always exciting because my earliest known Hartley ancestor (4th great grandfather Solomon Hartley 1775-1815) has proven to be especially difficult to figure out.
For a long time I have speculatively linked George Hartley (1763-1824, rigger in Philadelphia and likely brother of my Solomon Hartley) to George's possible son Samuel, whose descendants lived in Rappahannock/Page counties in Virginia and later in West Virginia.
Today I checked for DNA matches for Hartleys in Virginia and West Virginia. My dad has 2 DNA matches to Samuel Hartley's descendants, who also share/match known or suspected Hartley matches on AncestryDNA. I consulted the shared cM chart and the amounts shared was reasonable given the relationships--respectively, 5th cousin (20 cM shared) and 5th 1x removed cousin (10.9 cM shared).
Will this help me figure out Solomon and George's ancestry? I don't know. But how cool that I was able to expand the Hartley clan through autosomal DNA and move the relationship from speculative to likely.
© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.
Samuel Hartley is my 2nd GG and George Hartley is my 3rd GG. Would my sharing my DNA from ancestry help??
ReplyDelete