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Be Still my H(e)art…

Roberta Estes

You’re not going to believe this.  I’m not sure I believe it.

Remember, I closed my article on the Younger family yesterday by saying that I was hopeful that I might solve the mystery of who Marcus Younger’s wife, Susanna, was?  Well, I said that, but I had no real expectation that it would really happen, not after one already huge breakthrough.  I began working through cousin Larry’s matches, sending e-mails, and within six hours or so, I had several replies, one of which was this:

“Hello my name is Andrea. Thank you for sending me this email. I am new to genealogy and have a large interest in my family history. Younger is not a known surname for me, although Hart is. My oldest known Hart ancestor is Anthony Hart born in Oct 1755 in King and Queen, Virginia. He was my 5th great grandfather. He lived in Halifax Virginia in 1840 with his children and grandchildren. How is the surname Hart related to Younger?”

Oh Andrea, let me tell you.  You have made my day, my decade, my 30 years, and yes, indeed, this is the second jackpot hit in two days in the same family line.  I shoulda bought a lottery ticket but I think I’d rather have this:)

It has always been speculated that Marcus Younger’s wife, Susanna, was a Hart.  In fact, it was speculated that she was the possible sister of that one and the same Anthony Hart in Halifax County, Virginia, based on this tax record from King and Queen County, Va. just before Marcus Younger moved to Halifax County.  Robert Hart is believed to be Anthony’s father, but that is unproven.

1785

Alterations of land in King and Queen County

Proprietor’s Name                     QT Land                     of whom had

Anthony Hart                               190a                         Robert Hart

Anthony Hart                                94a                          Marcus Younger

There are a couple of other records in which they appear together too.

Unfortunately, King and Queen County is a burned county.

Now, we have a couple of pretzel twists that need to be considered.  In Larry’s line, Marcus’s son John married Lucy Hart who is mentioned in Anthony Hart’s Revolutionary War pension application in 1832.  So Larry could be expected to match Andrea regardless of who Marcus’s wife was.

However, I don’t descend from the same line as Larry and Andrea matches me as well.  I descend from Marcus through his daughter, Mary, sister to John who married Lucy Hart.  So, I should NOT match Andrea unless I too carry some Hart DNA.  But I do, in two distinct places where I also match Larry.  On the chromosome browser below, Andrea is orange, I am blue and we are being compared to Larry.  You can see that we all 3 match on the same segments on chromosomes 1 and 8.

Additionally, Andrea matches other cousins descended from my Younger line.

Furthermore, Andrea and David (from the previous article whose pedigree proved that Marcus and Thomas Younger are related) both match Lawson, but they don’t match each other.  This makes perfect sense.  David descends from Thomas Younger, who has no known Hart connection.  So David matches Larry because of the Younger line and Andrea matches Larry because of the Hart line.

You can see in the chromosome browser view below that indeed, both Andrea, orange, and David, blue match Larry, but in no location do they match each other in addition to matching Larry.  No place does their DNA show one under the other, overlapping, when compared to Larry.

Turning now to the spreadsheet where I can see all of the people who match both Larry and David together, I want to know who else Andrea matches.

First, I confirmed that Andrea does not match anyone else from the Alexander Younger line through sons Thomas and James, and she does not.  If she had, that would put a very big fly in the ointment and would prevent any conclusion about Marcus’s wife.  But since she doesn’t, that obstacle is removed.

Andrea does match the following people on several segments:

We are all four descended from the Marcus line and she doesn’t match anyone who descends from the Thomas or Alexander lines, which makes perfect sense since Anthony Hart looks to be the probable brother of Marcus Younger’s wife, Susannah, based on the historical records and some relationship is now confirmed by the DNA.

Am I ready to call this a positive match yet and Susannah a Hart?  Technically, I probably could, but I’m rather conservative and I’m just not quite ready to give an unconditional thumbs up.  To make myself feel entirely warm and fuzzy, I’d love to see another Hart match for me or my cousins not descended through John’s line. I’d also love to be able to reconstruct the Hart family back in Queen and King and Essex Counties and have some additional paper document to go along with the results.  That would certainly be easier to accomplish were the Queen and King records not burned.  This family lived on the border between the two and had records in both counties.

Truly, I’m left speechless about my good fortune this weekend.  I’m happy dancing a hole in the floor.

But I’m also left wondering how many other answers are really there, in the DNA of the people we match and I just haven’t worked with the matches effectively.  Maybe those walls are just waiting to fall….waiting for me to notice them.  Maybe yours are too.

Update: Please note that as of August 2019, this connection is still not proven. Still hoping!

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