I consider myself more of a researcher than a genealogist. But like most of you, I have an interest in my family history – a defective gene I inherited from my mother. Family tradition says that we are descended from an Edward Hatfield, who arrived in Baltimore in 1775 and was in the Maryland Line during the Revolution. Soon after the war he had three sons named William, Samuel, and Edward and soon after that, he died., as did his wife. By 1790, we have three young orphans. Now family tradition is nice and sometimes it even contains an element of truth. But evidence is lacking and so at this point I have to call Edward the ‘alleged Edward’. Nonetheless the Hatfield family has been in the United States for a while so it is quite easy to track back to 1850 using census records. Before 1850 it is not so easy…
In 1850, I find my ancestor Samuel Hatfield living in Kosciusko County, Indiana. According to this census, Samuel is a 66 year old farmer. His wife Arian is 60 and both were born in ‘Ma’. They have four children at home – John is 20, Jacob is 18, Sarah is 14 and Henry is 12. All of the children were born in Ohio. So that puts the Hatfield family in Ohio from at least the 1830 to 1838 time period. Exactly where in Ohio is a good question. Now might be a good time to mention that census takers write down the information that they are given. I do not know if it was Samuel or Arian who gave the census taker the pertinent information but neither one could read or write and they might not have had the facts 100% correct. Or maybe the census taker did not hear 100% correct. Samuel died a year later and according to his headstone, he was 74. When his wife died in 1856, she was 72 according to her headstone. So the census says Samuel was born in 1784 and Arian was born in 1790 while headstones say Samuel was born in 1777 and Arian was born in 1784. It’s great when things fit together so nicely.
There is a land record showing that Samuel bought his farm in Kosciusko County in 1847. This record states that Samuel is from Elkhart, Indiana, which is one county north of Kosciusko County. This puts the Hatfield tribe in Indiana in 1847 but so far my search for Samuel in land records in Elkhart County has been fruitless. Maybe Samuel was a tenant farmer or maybe I just haven’t found the records yet. I guess I’ll keep prodding and poking, but it looks like a search of census records would be my better bet. As a result of this obstacle, I have started calling Samuel the ‘elusive Samuel’.
One ace in the hole I do have is the fact that Samuel did leave a Last Will and Testament. This document lists all of the children listed above plus an additional five more who were still alive when Samuel died in 1851. I have managed to find out a bit about these four sons and one daughter and it turns out that Richard was born in Virginia in 1816, Elizabeth and William were born in Pennsylvania in 1820 and 1822 respectively, and Martin and Samuel were born in Ohio in 1827 and 1828. This adds a little credence to family tradition because if you draw a line from Baltimore to Kosciusko County you would find all of these places pretty close to that line. If you recall, there was no West Virginia in 1816, Virginia went right up to the Pennsylvania border.
While I have not entirely given up on the landowner links, the census records seem to be the most likely route to take even though they are only a snapshot once every ten years. Not knowing quite where the traveling Hatfields would be I decided to do the shotgun approach. I went on-line and pulled out every census record I could find for a Samuel Hatfield for 1840, 1830, and 1820. I found 38 records and weeded out any that were not on the Kosciusko – Baltimore axis and reduced that number to eight. I reduced it further by checking Samuel’s age and even farther by looking at the age and number of his offspring – keeping in mind that there may be children who did not survive very long. After all of this I found one census that looks like a good potential – the 1820 census taken in Preston County, Virginia. Preston County is currently in West Virginia, just a bit east of Morgantown and just south of the Pennsylvania line. This one has potential, it could be where Samuel’s son Richard was born. But where were the Hatfields in 1830 and 1840? Were they traveling in a covered wagon when the census taker came around? Did they forget how old they were and maybe count some neighbor kids in the house when the census taker came around? The elusive Samuel indeed!
All of this is great but as we know the pre-1850 censuses only list the head of the family, so if you find a good prospect it seems like an educated guess. Then one day while searching for a morsel of a clue I ran across the ‘Hatfield Y-DNA Project’. It seems as though STR markers in the Y-DNA are passed relatively unchanged for several generations through the males, which includes me. Further review shows that enough Hatfield males have tested to show that there are several main branches of Hatfields here in the United States and that my Samuel is listed for some reason in the ‘Pennsylvania Hatfields’ section. As a bonus a Hatfield from Australia has tested and he has many of the same markers as some descendants of Samuel, and this Australian knows his tree back to Merrie Olde England. Possibly his ancestor and mine were brothers, with his getting transported to Australia when mine got transported to America.
I think I will do the test. It’s great being a guy because only males can take this test because only males carry the Y-DNA. Typically I think it is a waste of time to try to tie your known ancestors to someone in the remote past – like “alleged Edward”, because you just might not be related to that person from the remote past at all. But if my DNA results can be reasonably linked to a known person in the remote past then maybe I can work both ends against the middle.
