I’ve groused about the uncritical use of DNA evidence before. And I’ve muttered about how without careful thought and supporting documentary evidence DNA really can’t answer many genealogical questions. So let me take this out of the hypothetical and into the concrete and complex .
I have an ancestral couple – James McLeland and Jane Rulon. They are well documented in a substantial part of their lives – early land purchases, court records and tax payments in Kentucky and then their migration to Indiana (with a possible quick stop in Ohio but no actual evidence aside from family stories) where they again, bought land, joined a church, raised and married off their children, provided information to the Census taker and then died after arranging for gravestones that carefully record some vital dates for each of them. (or did they? – it is entirely possible that those gravestones are later additions commissioned by pious descendants – we don’t have any record of who bought the stones or when they were installed.) But there is nothing except some family stories that even remotely suggests an origin for James McLeland. His gravestone does not give a place of birth although it gives his age at death which allows us to calculate a birth date of 1772. He died before the 1850 census, although several of his children lived to record his place of birth as North Carolina on the 1880. There is a family story that he was orphaned at a very early age, perhaps his father was killed by a rattlesnake bite and that he was raised by a “Scott” uncle. (There is apparently another story that James was orphaned in North Carolina as a baby and “sent back to Pennsylvania to be raised by a McLeland aunt.” Given the difficulties of travel especially with an infant and the strong possibility that there were kin available in North Carolina to raise an orphaned child this story seems apocryphal at best.) And there are even vaguer stories of a sister, some say older, some say younger also raised by a “Scott” uncle. Even assuming that is a surname and not an ethnic designation there isn’t a lot of substance there. And given the 45+ possible spellings for McLeland/McLelland/McLelan/McLellan…… there is no reasonable way to do a search through N.C. records. But…..
Among their F.A.N. group in Kentucky is a man named Richard Wharton who also moved to Wayne County Indiana. Although the two families don’t appear to have interacted much in Indiana, James and Jane moved on to Rush and then Henry Counties fairly quickly which Richard remained in Wayne County. Among several other children, Richard had a daughter named Mary McLeland Wharton! And a wife named Mary! And he apparently married her while in Kentucky during the time when he was closely interacting with James and Jane McLeland. Mary Wharton is buried in Franklin Cemetery in Wayne County and she has a gravestone that gives her place of birth – Guildford, North Carolina. Now the stone appears much newer than 1842 and it may not have been erected by her husband. It might have been erected much later. But it might be a clue. And amazingly – there is a story among the Wharton descendants that Mary McLeland was orphaned at a young age and raised by her uncle “William Scott.” And the family of Richard and Mary Wharton are blessed with an excellent Family Bible that covers births, marriages and deaths for 3 generations starting with Richard and Mary and their children and then following the families of Samuel, Rice and Polly in some level of completeness through another 1 and sometimes 2 generations. And that Bible gives Mary McLeland Wharton’s birth date as 1770. And Mary’s first child is named Sarah Scott Wharton! So we have some additional evidence.
And then a digital image of a Scott Family bible appears on the internet – actually on Ancestry as part of a user’s family tree “gallery.” It isn’t sourced – we don’t know whose bible is is, who owns it now or where the image came from. It has clearly been enhanced or “photoshopped” – quite possibly for readability since one side of the page is much less legible. And that bible records the deaths of Robert McLeland in 1772 and “Vilet” McLelan in 1772 or 1773 (this date is part of the really difficult part.) It also records the death of a Matthew Scott in 1772 and the much later deaths of Samuel Scott 1820 and Martha McCorkle Scott 186?. So a possible family group for the Scott ancestors of James and Mary. But – is it? how would you test this? Can DNA help? Stay tuned.