17 – DNA

Hettie Lollahvene Palmer was born in 1863, the youngest child of Mary Philinda Kenyon and Isaac Palmer, Jr., and was raised on a farm near Baraboo, Wisconsin. A handful of years before she died, widowed from a John S. Hyde, she published "The Palmer Family Lineage," a small family history booklet on the Palmer family which contained a few pages on our common Kenyon line.  

When we were children my father showed my siblings and me the copy of this booklet that he must have gotten from his parents – Hettie would have been his first cousin two times removed. It seemed authoritative, and it was my first example of genealogy; the Kenyon family and Jones family came from the Isle of Man it said, which sounded like a good place to ground your past. And we had a Revolutionary War soldier in our heritage, namely a G4 grandfather Simon Jones, Sr. 

 There are no sources in the booklet, but much of it can be corroborated with existing records: e.g., a marriage record showing that a Pardon Kenyon married a Hannah Jones in Marlborough, Vermont on March 20, 1817. There are census records, and other evidence that Pardon and Hannah did have three children: Mary, Austin, and Russel.  

I didn't explore this part of my ancestry for a few years. When DNA became a thing, I started looking at my thousands of matches on Ancestry.com. I discovered a number of matches where I share DNA with what appeared to be a different Simeon Jones from Vermont. Now I trust the DNA and that I am related to these other people, but did they have better records, and was Hettie right or were they?

So DNA gave me a clue that more research was needed, and I started looking into this Vermont Simeon. Luckily there were some Vermont vital records, some references in old history books, some land records, and a probate record for his father. These basically corroborate that my Hannah Jones was the daughter of this Simeon Jones of Windham County Vermont, who was the son of a Bazeleel Jones who was born in Massachusetts, but ended up in Dover, Vermont, also in Windham County.

My sister and I share a couple dozen Ancestry DNA matches to descendants of other children of Simeon Jones from both his marriages, in the 15cM-25cM range for Mary A., and Russell, and 10cM-15cM range for Cynthia and John (see sources below). Although not completely definitive, this does add evidence for the Simeon Jones from Vermont hypothesis, assuming these other trees have it right - which, according to the additional records, appears to be the case.

So how did Hettie get this wrong? Of course she had no access to DNA - it wouldn't be discovered for decades yet - and access to records back then would have been difficult. The Marlboro history wasn't written yet. She may have been motivated to show a connection to a Revolutionary War veteran like Simeon Jones, Sr. from Pembroke: e.g., to get into the Daughters of the American Revolution. I checked, and she was a member, but gave her lineage to Thomas Kinney Palmer, not Simeon Jones, Sr. Maybe that was a surer connection.

So DNA raised some doubts, and provided some facts that had to be reconciled with the various paper records, including Hettie's genealogy; but the resulting family history should be more complete and accurate. Unfortunately, that lost me a revolutionary war veteran in my ancestry, but I can accept that! And I have yet to find any connection to the Isle of Man...

Simeon Jones 1769-1846, St. James Cemetery, Arlington, Vermont

More Detail

The WikiTree and Family Search Family Tree have the Vermont and Massachusetts Simeon's, but both are a work in progress. In WikiTree the Massachusetts Simeon Jones  is Simeon Jones Sr., wife unknown, with three children including Simeon Jones, Jr. Simeon Jr. first marries Betsey Baker, and after she dies in 1802 marries Susanna Washburn (after having 3 children, none a Hannah), which is where the genealogy diverges: he marries Susanna Washburn and has 8 more children (also none a Hannah). The Vermont Simeon Jones is Simeon Jones, who first marries a Hannah Morse, and has 5 children, and then marries a Hannah Riggs, widow of a Pardon Kenyon. 

Hettie Palmer Hyde has Simeon Jr.'s second wife as the widow of a Pardon Kenyon, Sr. who had a son Pardon Kenyon, Jr. No name is given for the widow, and Hyde also states that Simeon Jr. and Betsey Baker had a daughter Hannah Jones, as well as a Russel, Simon, and Cynthia.  

Hettie does seem to have gotten a lot right: the names of Simeon's children by his first marriage (just the wrong wife); that Pardon Kenyon, Jr., married his step-sister Hannah Jones in Marlborough, Vermont on March 20, 1817; and that they had three children: Mary Philinda born 1818 in Stockbridge, N.Y.; Austin Pardon born 1820 in Munsville, N.Y.; and Russel Jones born 1822. 

My guess: when Hettie went looking for the Simon Jones who fathered Hannah Jones (and siblings Russel, Simon, and Cynthia), she found the Massachusetts Simeon Sr., who having served in the Revolutionary War, had more records that the Simeon in Vermont, and had a son Simeon Jr.  She then missed Simeon Jr.'s second marriage to Susanna Washburn, assuming he instead moved to Vermont and married Hannah Kenyon, widow of Pardon Kenyon.

On Using DNA

The use of DNA for ancestry research is amazing, and incredibly useful. Shared DNA is evidence that you are related, and to what extent, but not how, and this is a great complement to the written records we use to uncover our ancestry.

I've been an early user of DNA services, have my Y-chromosome and mitochondrial (MtDNA) DNA fully decoded at MyFamilyTree, and have done autosomal tests there, at Ancestry, 23AndMe, and a few other sites to see how consistent they are.  I use this DNA to add evidence for relationships I've established using traditional means (and discover problems like I've described here), but I've also used it to help some adopted matches figure out their parentage, to help me with some brick walls, and simply to connect with other distant relatives interested in genealogy. 

Sources

"The Palmer Family Lineage." self-published in 1917 by Hettie Palmer Hyde. Here are the somewhat tortured paragraphs where Hettie connected us to the wrong Simeon Jones:

Newton, The Reverend Ephraim H. 1930. The History of the Town of Marlborough, Windham County, Vermont. Montpelier: Vermont Historical Society. Published 13 years after Hettie's family history booklet), this provides a short bio of Simeon as well as one for his brother Aaron. "Hannah-Russell" here might be "Hannah; Russell" as there is a birth record for a Russel Jones born in Marlboro on 9 Dec 1802, to a Simeon Jones, and there is a descendant of Russel who shares 26 cM of DNA with me.