The case of The Three John's - a genetic & genealogical detective story (Part 1)

[TreeDigger]

In the quest to unravel my Haycock descent I am now 99,99% certain I have found the origins of my 2x great-grandfather John Haycock of Wolverhampton, father of George Haycock. Two men that have been the subject of a nearly 20 year search and much debate on this forum.

It took science, statistical analysis and a lot of so-called 'data crunching' to find John.

I had 30+ DNA matches on several sites ranging from 9 to 50cM who all traced their roots back to Thomas Haycock & Mary Lyth(e) in Hordley, Shropshire. This obviously completely annihilated earlier assumptions that my roots are anchored in Wheaton Aston, Staffordshire. Starting (again!) without any information wrt John's parents, I fleshed out the family tree of nearly every match, ensuring their descent was double or even triple sourced. I then entered that huge amount of data in DNA Painter's WATO (What Are The Odds) tool, added what I thought was my most likely line of descent up to & including my father, posed the question 'where do I belong in this tree', crossed my fingers and hit enter.

After several minutes, WATO reluctantly spewed out 133 hypotheses!

The next step was eliminating all the hypotheses which I knew were 100% impossible. After all, DNA has proven my descent up to & including blacksmith John, as I have (close) matches with descendants from both of his relationships. So no doubts there. I hit enter again and was now left with 90+ hypotheses. And at the very top of those, ranking as #1, was my own hypothetical line of descent!

However, despite my elation I soon found the confusion was far from over.

It was near certain that blacksmith John Haycock of Wolverhampton, born ca. 1816 in Oswestry, was identical to the youngest son of John Haycock & Margaret Jones baptized 1810 in Oswestry. A couple not to be confused with the John Haycock & Margaret Jones of Shrewsbury who baptized children in exactly the same time period. The Shrewsbury couple married in 1796, the Oswestry couple in 1797. Both in Shrewsbury. Having found John by no means meant I now knew who my ancestors were, because the genealogical Gordian Knot was huge! So large, in fact, that scores of family trees on ancestry sites happily mixed both the couples and their children. Worse yet, Ancestry itself doggedly kept trying to persuade me to do the same. Which meant I had to start taking a closer look at original documents, resulting in hours and hours of sifting through source material.

Enter the puzzle of The Three John's.

My John was baptized in 1810 in Oswestry, with the parents' abode registered as Willow Street in Oswestry. The same abode is registered with baptisms of earlier children. This helped in finding who John's father was, as Willow Street in Oswestry also happened to be the address of The Butchers Arms, an inn owned by Thomas Haycock of Hordley. Thomas pulled up stakes and moved to Castle Caereinion in Montgomeryshire, Wales somewhere between the baptisms of son George (1809, Oswestry) and daughter Mary Ann (1811, Castle Caereinion) where he became the proprietor of The Three Tuns. The move coincided with the death of William Haycock in 1810 in Castle Caereinion (who may have been the inn's previous owner). All three were now easily identified as being identical to three of the sons of Thomas Haycock & Mary Lyth from Hordley: Thomas (1770), William (1780) and the father of 'my John', John (1774). I haven't found out yet where John (1774) and wife Margaret ended up after 1810, but their three sons - James (1803), William (1805) and John (1810) - all at some point moved from Shropshire to the Wolverhampton area, James moving in next door to brother William's widow in Bilston after his own wife died.

Ancestry, however, kept trying to identify my John (1810-1876) with a John born 1810/1816/1818 who died in New Zealand in 1872. This John supposedly was the son of inn keeper Thomas Haycock from Castle Caereinion and had married an Elizabeth Burls in 1842 in Essex before boarding a ship to New Zealand that same year, together with his brother James (1803-1865) & wife Ann Owen. The longer I looked at that info, the more something felt 'off' to me. However, seeing how much time and effort so many people had invested in setting up family trees dedicated to their ancestor, chances were very likely I was simply wrong, because I also had matches with those descendants.

Until I decided to give in to that nagging feeling and ordered New Zealand John's marriage certificate from Essex. (continued in Part 2)

[TreeDigger]

(continued)

On the certificate - so hard to read that a frustrated transcriber decided to 'key smash' the name and turned it into Housties  - John's father was registered as James Haycock, carpenter. Dad even was present at the wedding and signed as a witness. That was not even close to 'Thomas Haycock, inn keeper'. Intriguing.. because if New Zealand John was not the inn keeper's son, who was he?!

I then searched for a possible marriage and certificate for the John who was the inn keeper's son, John born 1816 Hydan-Dol, baptized 02 June 1816 at Castle Caereinion. And found he married Elizabeth Humphries in 1843 in Montgomeryshire. Listed as father on the certificate? Thomas Haycock, inn keeper. That meant there were three John's who were continuously confused with each other:

John #1 born 1810 Oswestry, died 1876 Wolverhampton - son of John Haycock & Margaret Jones.
John #2 born 1816 Castle Caereinion, died 1863 Monmouthshire - son of inn keeper Thomas Haycock & Mary Stansfield.
John #3 born 1818/1819, died 1872 Marlborough New Zealand - son of James Haycock, carpenter.

All that was left now was to find out where the New Zealand John & James tied in with the Shropshire/Wales Haycocks, as I did have the previously mentioned DNA matches.

Trying to find carpenter James Haycock in the 1841 census didn't get me any results, so I decided to use the immigration info from several family trees and managed to find a transcription of the 1842 passenger list. That's when things started clicking into place. Because right above the entry for John (23yo) and wife Elizabeth Haycock was that of James (35yo) and wife Ann Haycock. And James' profession was listed as 'carpenter/joiner'. Which meant inn keeper's son James (1803) wasn't John's brother but his father! The close family relationship between John and James was further confirmed by the baptism of James' youngest child in England, Elizabeth Ann on 9 January 1842, months before they headed off to New Zealand. She was baptized in Ingrave, Essex. The exact same place where John married Elizabeth Burls a few months later.

In the end, the picture is very clear.

Aside from John possibly being an illegitimate child by inn keeper Thomas himself, it's most likely that James actually fathered John when he was very young, around 15 or so. Stranger things have happened in locales where alcohol is plied and common sense flies out the window. So far I haven't found John's mother, but it's highly likely James kept very close contact with his (presumed) eldest son, and at one point decided they all deserved a new start. This also allowed them to 'fiddle' with their ages a bit, James suddenly being several years younger on the ship's manifest, and maybe John was made to be a little older. Whatever the case, they stepped on New Zealand soil as brothers.

I do realize the presented facts completely upset all the stories surrounding 'John Haycock, son of inn keeper Thomas Haycock from Wales'. And for that I do apologize. Personally, however, I find this story to be much more exiting & inspiring, as it speaks of the loyalty of a father to his son, and of the extremes he was willing to go through to erase his son's status of a 'base born bastard' and help him write a new future.

For me, this has hit very close to home.

TD

[Biggles50]

A great outcome and one you need not offer any apologies for.

I’ve followed your trials and tribulations and pleased that you have got to what appears to be the most logical conclusion.

Far too many people compound errors by simply copying trees or accepting Ancestry hints without doing due diligence.

I have a new DNA match and her Grandfather was named John and all 38 trees I looked at had his father as a John, but things did not look right so I ordered the Marriage Certificate and yes I was right Charles was his Father and five minutes later I had the match firmly linked into my tree.  So on one person alone 38 Ancestry Family Tree are wrong.

[TreeDigger]

It has, indeed, been quite a long & arduous journey. And I'm still very grateful to all those who spent so much time & effort trying to find answers. If not for DNA, chances are I'd still be lost.

And if you did follow my story, then you'll likely know that the 'bastard's story' - that of 'New Zealand John' - really hit hard. But I now know of at least two members of the Haycock family, James the carpenter and my own 2x great-grandfather John, who did do right with their illegitimate offspring. I guess my own father was an outlier

As for the errors being perpetuated by copying info from family trees: I call it Lazy Genealogy. Sure, not everybody is adept at sourcing records, or deciphering old handwriting. But I think sites like i.e. Ancestry should at least demand a certain number of sources for every family tree before it is published, or else develop an algorithm to compare family trees and maybe append a warning label to those that appear, well.. way out there.

But I did feel it necessary to apologize, if only for the fact this information probably upends a lot of what people thought was 'fact', and because there's a good chance they did put time & effort into their tree.

In the end though, I reached what I thought was an unobtainable goal: finding my roots. And truth be told, I do love solving those genealogical puzzles 

[brigidmac]

I think congratulations are in order
It took a lot of persistence to unravel and make sense of that

[TreeDigger]

Thank you!

And 'dogged determination' - or 'pit bull mentality' as those who know me call it - is indeed one of my character traits. Or curses, depending on circumstances 

[Murrell]

Yes l too agree congratulations are in order.

[Rena]

... and a big congratulations to all concerned from me too.

Coincidentally this last week I received a memo from family search giving me some "exciting" news that they have discovered new information.

What a load of codswallop!  That branch of my family are firmly stuck in the UK and not scattered all over the USA.   I'm assuming the mix up is due to the fact that some American towns have the same names as UK towns.

[Talacharn]

I use Family Search and looked for trees for my family. There was one that claimed my great-grandmother married a Thomas Williams in Llandewi Brefi, Cardiganshire, then moved to the USA where they died. My great-grandmother married a different Thomas Williams, in Laugharne Carmarthenshire where they lived and died. I know she is in the church graveyard. There is 43 miles between the two. I tried to contact the tree author and left a note flagging an issue and have heard nothing, but the incorrect information remains. With Family Tree, it seems to be their volunteers who put together basic trees, hoping others will continue to add information.