23 – So Many Descendants

Two years ago I was working on my Brewer line, trying to see how far back others had taken it, when I came upon an Elizabeth Rice, who died in 1693, and who would have been my 8th great-grandmother. Her father was Henry Rice, and his father was Edmund Rice. But I recognized that name: Edmund Rice was in my wife Patti’s family tree. We had visited his Massachusetts grave in 2015 on a one day genealogy expedition outside of Boston exploring cemeteries where our ancestors are buried: Patti's King's and Rice's, and my Brewer's and Allen's, who had all lived and died in this commonwealth.

Patti by Edmund Rice's grave marker in 2015

Patti's paternal ancestry is well-covered in the book "The Kings of the Kingdom" written by a second cousin of hers, Larry R. King. This takes Patti's ancestry back to England in the 1600s, where Patti's 8th great grandfather Edmund Rice was born and married Thomasine Frost in 1618 before emigrating to the British colony of Massachusetts in 1638. Since a number of Edmund's descendants found their way to the LDS church this line is well documented. 

While checking out Edmund's grave we ran into another descendant who was also visiting the cemetery that day, and that coincidence caused me to google Edmund and I found out that Edmund descendants are abundant. From the Wikipedia article on Edmund Rice:

By 2017, the ERA electronic database of known Edmund Rice descendants into the 14th and 15th generations had exceeded 260,000 individuals.[108] Using data from the ERA electronic database, a total of 2.7 million of Edmund's descendants has been estimated to be in the 12th generation, with a total estimated 4.4 million descendants cumulatively in the first twelve generations.

This extrapolation of the size of Edmund's present-day family comes from an article by John F. Chandler in the Edmund Rice Association newsletter here. I don't know any other of my ancients who warrant their own newsletter!

If Edmund Rice is generation 1, Patti is in generation 11, and I am in generation 13, so we are two of the estimated millions of Edmund's descendants mentioned in the article above. Patti is a 9th cousin of my paternal grandfather: we are two generation levels different, so she's my 9th cousin twice removed. Over the last few hundred years her ancestors were spread out a bit more than mine in time - there are more older children and younger marriages in my ancestry by chance, so that accounts for the two generation difference even though Patti and I were both born about the same time. 

I used to use Patti as an example of how random unrelated people still share small bits of DNA in GedMatch: setting the match criteria to 3cM (the lowest setting), we show 11 shared segments, the largest 4.7, 5.6, and 6.0. But now that I know we are related, all bets are off; these may be Edmund Rice and Thomasine Frost bits!

Starting with Edmund Rice in the Family Search Family Tree I can follow the two paths down to Patti and me. The Brewer line is less well-documented, so I have a bit more work to do there reviewing sources. But it has become a bit of a family story now that I ended up marrying a cousin! 

Sources

Chandler, John F., "Extrapolating the size of Edmund's present-day family," in Edmund Rice (1638) Association Newsletter, Vol. 87, No. 4, Fall 2013, accessed online 23 Jun 2023 at http://www.edmund-rice.org/newsletters/vol_87_4_2013_fall.pdf. 

“Edmund Rice (Colonist).” 2023. In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Edmund_Rice_(colonist)&oldid=1156364230.

King, Larry. 2008. The Kings of the Kingdom: The Life of Thomas Rice King and His Family. Second. Orem, Utah: Larry R. King.

22 – At the Cemetery

My wife Patti’s maternal ancestry is all Irish. Her father's is a mix of English and Scottish. Her Irish ancestry estimate on Ancestry.com is 49%. 23AndMe just says she is 100% British and Irish. Her father was born in Utah, and his ancestry has been well-researched by other relatives, but her Irish was not. 

Both of her maternal grandparents emigrated from Ireland to San Francisco in the early years of the 20th century, in time to witness the big San Francisco earthquake of 1906. They had emigrated as singles, Mary Frances Kennedy from County Limerick and Patrick Clifford from County Kerry, and met each other some time after the big quake.

After Patti and I married in 1983, we took our first trip together to Ireland, Patti's first trip abroad. On our last full day in the country, we managed to look up her relatives in Limerick – her mother still had first cousins alive there. We knew there was a priest named Joseph Kennedy who lived in a certain town, and priests being fairly easy to track down, we just showed up at the church there and surprised him. He was gracious enough to show us around, and we got to meet a couple of his brothers, one still living on the family farm and the other running a pub in the town.

He also showed us the family grave. There were only two headstones, one from 1791 and the other, more modern, from 1920. Father Joe explained to us that lots of other members of the Kennedy family were buried there as well, presumably on top of one another, but only these two could really afford stones.  

Our life turned to family, we had three children, did the family things, and this Irish ancestry investigation lay dormant until our children were off on their own, and my interest in genealogy and family history really began. In October of 2009 we made a day trip to San Francisco to the city hall and found the marriage record for Patti's grandparents: Patrick Clifford, aged 29 years, and Mary Frances Kennedy, aged 26 years, 28 April 1912.

We knew both of them were buried in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, California, a town known for extensive graveyards covering its hills, a place to move to when you die. We had never visited their graves, so on the way home we stopped there at the cemetery office and got directions to their gravesite.

We easily found the location, but there was no marker in the spot between Hermina Asher d Aug 6, 1940 and James F. Ward d 1940, rest in peace. So we went back to the office and asked if there might be some mistake in the location. They said no, and sent us back to the spot to meet a groundskeeper who came with a shovel. I don't know, but there is something a bit strange about digging in graveyards, and so when he stuck in the shovel it was visceral.

The groundskeeper stuck the shovel in and scooped out a big bite of sod. Sure enough, he soon hit stone, and unearthed a small cement cross inscriber “Clifford.” Apparently this was the default marker option, for those with no money or perhaps no inclination to spend more.  

Adding a grave marker here takes a bit of paperwork, agreement of surviving descendants, deciding what words to use. We’ll figure that out, and leave a better memorial for future visitors.

21 – Brick Wall

Intro

My Kenyon line runs into more of a fog bank than a brick wall; there are unsourced claims, DNA clues, records that jump generations, but no clear road back. I hope for the fog to clear up over time as more data emerges. I'll detail one hypothesis here, plausible as any, for linking my great-great-grandfather Austin Kenyon up to early Kenyons from England.

Austin Pardon Kenyon 1820-1909, with wife Harriet Brewer

My surname comes from this line and that makes it a bit special to me. It's also one line of only a few that I haven't been able to trace back to Europe, and one that came to America early, before the Revolutionary War and the United States became a country. My Kenyons married other English settlers with surnames including Brewer, Jones, Tifft, Hall, Allen, Morse, and Russell, and many of these other lines do connect clearly back to England. 

It is well-documented that Austin Kenyon is my great-great-grandfather; it is also well-documented that his father was a Pardon Kenyon who married a step-sister Hannah Jones in Vermont. A couple sources indicate that Pardon Kenyon was a junior, and only one source gives his birth date, 1791, in Rhode Island. Then I run into a bit of fog.

 

My grandfather Harry Jesse Kenyon back to Pardon Kenyon and into the fog...

Pardon Jr. appears in an 1820 census record in New York as "Pardon Kinon," and his marriage to Hannah Jones is documented in a Vermont marriage record. In "The History of the Town of Marlborough," Pardon "Sr." gets a mention in Hannah's father Simeon Jones' short bio: "he m. (2) a widow, by the name of Kinyan, from the west side of the Green Mountains," giving us a clue about where he lived and died. 

Other sources that offer clues include "The Palmer Family Lineage" by Hettie Palmer Hyde, a small booklet published 1917; "American Kenyons" by Capt. Howard N. Kenyon, published 1935, which covers many of the early Kenyons out of Rhode Island;  some family history notes written by my uncle Harry Kenyon about 1940; and y-DNA and autosomal DNA match evidence. 

The Palmer Family Lineage

This family history was written by a granddaughter of Pardon Kenyon, and I wrote about this in my blog on the theme "DNA." In addition to a fairly detailed listing of the descendants of Pardon Kenyon as of the early 1900s, it provides a few unsourced clues about Pardon Jr. himself, who married Hannah, the daughter of Simeon Jones of Vermont:

"Simon Jones married a widow of Pardon Kinyon, Sr., for his second wife who had one child named Pardon Kenyon, Jr."

"Pardon Kenyon, Sr., also had a son by his first wife who was called Thomas Afrigate Acmoody Munford."

"Pardon Kenyon, Jr., was born March 1, 1791, at Rhode Island."

Some Family History Notes

I inherited a sheet of scribbled notes about our family history that must have been written about 1940 by my uncle, Harry Kenyon, Jr. – it is unsigned, but the handwriting is distinctly Harry's. He probably got this information from talking to his grandfather Louis Kenyon who died in 1941, and who was the grandson of Pardon Kenyon, Jr. The clues:

Pardon Kenyon lived 1790-1830, and died of smallpox

He descended from a Mumford Kenyon; an Amos Pardon married a sister of this Mumford Kenyon

So, he makes no mention of a Pardon Sr. I'm not sure if Harry was aware of the Palmer Family Lineage booklet or not, but the information there is not included here, so perhaps not. I like the sentence about a step-grandmother of his grandfather smuggling supplies through British Lines as a 7-year-old...

American Kenyons

I found the 285-page American Kenyon's book fascinating. Published in 1935 after 15 years of work by a Capt. Howard Kenyon, my line doesn't appear in its pages, but it does cover my more ancient Kenyons as evidenced by my many DNA matches with Kenyons who do claim to descend from those Rhode Island Kenyons. If taken at face value, it covers my genealogy on the other side of the fog bank entered with Pardon Kenyon. It contains such tidbits as : 

"The early spelling was 'Kinyon,' 'Kinion' and occasionally 'Kynion'; generally 'Kenyon' after 1800." [Page 9]

"The name 'KENYON' was that of an estate in Lancashire, England... The family name came from this point of origin. The etymology of the name Kenyon is quite unknown... The earliest forms are Kenien, Kenian. As there is but one estate in England of this name, it is most likely that all Kenyons had the same and common origin." [Page 13]

The book details the case that the Kenyons of Rhode Island are descended from two brothers, John and James, both born in Oldham, Lancashire, England. The Kenyons book author did extensive research, and no one, to my knowledge, has duplicated this: possibly because the effort would be daunting, and because some of the original records may no longer exist (at least one mention of records being lost in a fire is made). He uses the Henry System of descending numbering to order the descendants of a James Kenyon born in England in 1633. Two of his sons, James and John, emigrated to Rhode Island in the last half of the 17th century. There are four possible Mumford Kenyons whose lineage is documented, and this is maybe the most plausible:

On page 59 is the entry for Enoch Kenyon (13), son of John Kenyon (1) and Anna Mumford, marrying as a second wife Ann Auckmudy 24 Nov 1747. They have 4 sons, Mumford (13), Christopher, Lodowick, and John. On page 77 the entry for his son Mumford (133) states "He may have had other children but no record remains." 

Given a birth of 1791 for Pardon Kenyon Jr., it's possible that 133 Mumford had another son Pardon. This is the flimsiest of evidence, but is a possibility. 

Y-DNA Evidence

Since my Y-DNA has been passed down along this line, there is one more tool to work with in trying to figure out this line of mine. Testing at FamilyTreeDNA I have a couple dozen matches to others with the Kenyon surname; those with trees posted that go back far enough, all end on a Kenyon documented in the American Kenyons' book. I haven't been able to make any of those connections on paper.

Autosomal-DNA Evidence

There is also autosomal DNA. Since matches at the 113 Mumford Kenyon level would be 7th cousins, the signal is pretty faint here. My sister, a first cousin, and I all have a couple dozen matches to people who have a Kenyon in their tree, and of a couple dozen where the tree goes back to an American Kenyon ancestor, the overwhelming majority point to John Kenyon b 1655, and not his brother James b 1657, as their direct ancestor.

Putting These Together

So, there really are two questions: my exact lineage back to the earliest Kenyons in Rhode Island, and how that lineage connects back to England. Using y-DNA matches as evidence, it is likely that I descend from the John Kenyon, born 26 Apr 1655 in England (probably Oldham, Lancashire), and died 26 Apr 1732 in Westerly, Rhode Island, who married Anna Mumford in England. But he had 6 sons. Based on family names, I may descend from his son Enoch's son Mumford.

Waiting for the Fog to Clear

So I wait for more records to come on line, for more people to test Y-DNA, etc. To test the hypothesis put forth above, there are a few things on my "to do" list:

"American Kenyons" mentions Enoch Kenyon’s will, proved 1781. See if this has any other information besides listing his children.

Look for descendants of Enoch Kenyon’s other children: (131) Enoch Jr, (132) Joseph Kenyon, (135) Lodowick, and (136) John. Any should have the closest matches with my DNA. Conversely, anyone who most closely matches my y-DNA should also descend from Enoch.

Look for any more modern information on Enoch Kenyon, died 1781.

Some brick walls just need more time, and you never know when you might be surprised. Recently a person contacted me on Ancestry who was married into a related Kenyon line that I didn't know existed, so getting one of them to do a y-DNA test is also on my agenda. 

My father, and youngest siblings, visiting Kenyon, R.I., abt. 1971