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He's as far back as I've been able to reliably track. "Enoree Robert" so named because there were many Robert Hanna's around at the time. Furthest back I can reliably find him was him having 300 acres in Enoree, SC surveyed in 1768.
How did he get to SC? Did he immigrate directly here from Ireland? Had he immigrated to Pennsylvania (As many did) and then moved to SC? I know further back that all Hannas in the US come from Scotland via Ireland (We were thrown out of Scotland.. Clan Hannay - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_Hannay)
So, I know the origins.. I know the 'ending'.. But there's a section in the middle that I'm missing.
Maybe we're related!
Robert Hanna, born in 1710 in County Monaghan, Ireland and who died in May 1777 in Lower Smithfield Township, Pennsylvania, was my 6th Great-grandfather. All of my Hanna's were in NEPA (Northeastern PA), what is now the Poconos.
My 4th Great-grandfather, Benjamin Hanna Jr. (1787-1864) married someone named Hannah Tock (1783-1848), so her married name was Hannah Hanna, which I always got a chuckle out of!
I solved my question little over a year ago when finally got a DNA match on 23andme to paternal grandfather's side of family.
Always had a little unsureness whether my grandfather and I were DNA connected even though he was my favorite relative.
Why unsure? My grandmother had a very longterm boyfriend that most of her family knew about and I was introduced to him one time but don't think my grandfather knew how often she saw him (weekly). Great to email 3rd cousin linked to grandfathers DNA and trace relatives to Hudson Valley Huguenots.
The first is where my g-grandfather is buried. Virtually everything is known about him. Have his death cert, pictures of him, picture of his wife my g-grandmother, where she and the rest of his family are buried, where his farm was, the name of the farm, his parents, his siblings, his children, etc etc.
He was a CW veteran, there are two cemeteries in town that have Civil War sections. Perhaps he's there, I'm in the process of contacting the Park Service to see if they have records of who is buried in those sections. Fingers crossed.
The second involves the very existence of the ancestor who came to the colonies 1650s from London. He came, according to the family story, with his two older brothers. They were Quakers/Friends.
In the 1960s a genealogist wrote an article in an influential genealogy publication questioning this youngest brother's existence and calling him a myth. He is who our family always thought we came from.
The reason the writer gave for saying he was a myth is because his baptismal records have never been found at their parish church in London while the two older brother's have been found. This article was very widely read and now his identity is in limbo.
The parish records are online, I looked from 1600-1650 and didn't find him either. Doesn't mean he wasn't baptized though. Records can be lost. The church website said none of their records were destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 but some were bound to be. The family lived within the City in Holborn area and the fire was particularly devastating there. The church claims their records were moved before the fire spread to that area but in the move things could have been lost.
This is a mystery that will never be solved. Too many people have tried to find him and been unsuccessful.
The other possibility is my ancestor was a son and not a brother of the other two. And was born in the colonies not London.
My opinion is that basing a person's life on finding or not finding baptism records in another country so long ago is too limited. There could be all sorts of reasons why the records are not there today.
When I did my family genealogy, and lucky for me many other family members had come before me with great research, I found our oral history remarkably accurate. Hard to believe generations of family would include this man if he were a "myth." And until someone comes up with absolute proof I continue to think he did indeed live. Although I'm willing to consider that he might have been a son and not a brother of our crossing ancestors.
Two here in the same family. My gt gt grandfather died young at age 26 leaving a wife and three young boys. I have a handwritten note by a lawyer stating the exact times and dates of her oldest and youngest sons, leaving out the middle son. On the day her young husband was buried, she had all three kids baptized.
The rule at the time was to get babies baptized within a certain number of days after birth. The baptismal records show my gt gt grandfather as their father but the middle son's father is someone else. So did the father never know that the middle child was not his? Is that the reason she never had them baptized until the day he died? What excuse could she have used on her husband? People followed the rules of the church of England back then.
Second mystery involves the oldest boy when he grew up. One of his sons died age 20, next year another son died, and the next year his wife died. He must have been heartbroken. Some witchy woman apparently wanted to marry him and he agreed but changed his mind (all confusing as to why.) The nasty woman sued him for breach of contract to marry and took him for all he had. But then she took him back to court saying he had kept some of the furniture.
Furniture? Why the furniture and which furniture? I'd love to know because in 1935 my grandmother went back to England to retrieve a grandfather's clock. To make matters more mysterious, it turns out that gt grandfather's wife's family were clock makers. My intuition tells me (and that's all I have to go on) is that gt grandfather only had one decent thing left from his wife: her family grandfather clock. Did he allow himself to be dragged back into court, creating a big scandal, becoming a "pauper" so that he could keep that clock and pass it down? When my grandmother went back to get the clock it had been in the house of the middle brother, the one who had a different father. Did they hide it there for all those years? Whaaaaaaat?
Figuring out my paternal great-great grandfather. I can confirm everything in his 1880s county history biography other than his FREAKING PARENTS. Not a thing in Nash County, or Edgecombe/Pitt where I'm getting autosomal DNA hits on that line. No Taylor/Weaver marriage. Nada.
Also, a quick google search says there were about 196 vehicles per 1,000 people in the US in 1927 (19.6%) - that's from the Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy: https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles...-world-regions
The US population in 1927 was about 119 million, and 19.6% of that is a little over 23 million, so there were about 23 million cars in the US in 1927.
My mystery is much more recent than most of those here but still unlikely to be solved.
The spelling of my last name was drastically changed sometime in the early 1900’s to appear French. To his grave, my grandfather swore it was changed by his father before he was born. After my grandfather died I found a census record that listed him at 8 years old with the original Armenian spelling. My aunt said that she had found that record years prior and my grandfather explained it away as an aunt of his answering the door when the census people had come. According to him, she gave the original spelling because she never changed it for herself.
This all sounds settled but my father and another uncle swear that my grandfather told them that he changed it when he enlisted in the Navy during WWII. My father claims to clearly recall my grandfather saying that it was easy to do then because they needed sailors and going forward after the war he just used the new name. My grandfather was a tough man and a genius in an immigrant family that he may have been embarrassed by. He went on to become a very successful attorney, so my father’s recollection has some merit for sure.
Awhile back I was committed to changing it back to the original spelling, but between the fact that my last name derives from 1/8th of my bloodline and my children being born by that point, I let it go. It would still be nice to known the truth once and for all.
I solved mine. It was the age old question "Who's your daddy?" Now I know not only my bio-dad's identity, but I met my 2 half sisters I didn't know I had. In the process I received access to the family tree going back to Europe long before my relatives (whom I didn't know I had) came over on the Mayflower. Thank you DNA.
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