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Alleghany: Colon Williams, England, Cornwall , DNA December 7, 2018 Colon Williams of Alleghany Co, NC DNA testing is a wonderful
thing. That’s how I feel right
now. If you like mysteries and the
challenge of solving them, this is a good time to be in the business. Whether your taste tends toward Sherlock
Holmes, Perry Mason, Jessica Fletcher, or Scully and Mulder, we can each
include ourselves among those who are trying to solve life’s greatest
mysteries. Always remember, the truth
is out there! It was about 25 years ago in
the 1990s that I learned my great great great grandfather Colon Williams came
to Alleghany Co, NC, from England. As
I started building my family tree in those early days as a beginning
genealogist, I realized that he was my most recent immigrant ancestor. I wanted to know where he came from, who he
was, and what brought him to the mountains of North Carolina. An article in the “Alleghany County
Heritage” book stated that he was born on 3/11/1820 and that he taught mining
engineering at Oxford University. (I
later learned that he probably didn’t teach at Oxford, but he was in the mining
business.) In 1998 I visited the Ashe
Co courthouse and found his marriage record.
He married Patsy Irwin on 9/25/1858.
For the next 15 years, that’s the earliest record I found of him. Below is his picture. In 2014 I decided to give it
another try and see what I could find.
I searched online for records of a Colon Williams in England and was
amazed at how many there were. That
was a much more common name that I expected. I had heard from close cousins that my
ancestor supposedly had another family in England, and that his children’s
names in North Carolina were the same as his children in England. That sounds strange, but perhaps it was a
clue. Skipping through the hours
and days of searching through records, I eventually found a Colan Williams
who boarded a ship in Liverpool and traveled to New York in 1857. I found census records for what appeared to
be the same man in Cornwall, England, who was the right age and had a family
there in the 1851 census. Earlier, in
the 1841 census, he was a teenager in the house of his parents, Colan and
Mary Williams. His brother was Emanuel
and his sister was Mary. That was
interesting because my ancestor Colon Williams named a son Emanuel and a
daughter Mary. Coincidence? If this Colan Williams in Cornwall was my
ancestor, then he came from a long line of men by the same name who had lived
there since at least the early 1700s.
In fact, he was the fifth generation in a row to have the name Colan
Williams! That’s all I could find
until last week when the DNA test for my cousin showed a close match with a
man named Andrew Bell in England. His
mother was a Williams, and he had traced his tree back to his great great
grandfather who was named – you guessed it, Colan Williams from
Cornwall. But there was a
problem. His ancestor was born in
1858. My ancestor had already left
England and was in America at that time. After trading a few emails
with Andrew, we’ve been able to piece together quite a story. It’s fascinating that both of us had part
of the story, but without the missing pieces, we only had questions. Now, after sharing information and DNA
tests, we both know more about our Williams ancestors. As it turns out, Colan
Williams was married three times. It
appears that he first married Joanna Oats in 1846 and they had three
children: William J. (1849), Samuel
(1851), and Joanna (1853). Perhaps
wife Joanna died, because Colan remarried to Ann Ellis in 1856. This is where Andrew’s line comes
from. He always knew that his great
great grandfather Colan Williams (1858) was the son of Ann Ellis. Now we’ve not only found an 1856 marriage
record between Colan and Ann, but we have the DNA evidence showing that Andrew
is related to my Williams line.
Together, the DNA and the marriage record present a convincing
argument that we both descend from Colon Williams (1821) who came to America. But there’s more. In the 1980s, Andrew’s grandmother wrote
notes about her father-in-law. She
wrote that Colan Williams (1858) went to America in 1876 in search of his
father who was also named Colan. The
son was angry at his unknown father for leaving his mother, and he was
determined to find him. He never
did. In fact, the elder Colon likely
never knew he had a son with wife Ann.
The ship sailed on 8/25/1857, and the younger Colan was born the
spring of 1858, in the month of April, May, or June. The elder Colon might have already been in
America before his wife back in England knew she had a baby on the way. Would he have stayed if he had known? This is one of those pivotal forks in the
path of history. If he had stayed, I
wouldn’t be here to write this article.
So, yeah, I’m biased in favor of him leaving, and so are several other
people in Alleghany Co and around the country! I still don’t know the
circumstances of his leaving. From
what I’ve read, mining became more difficult and less profitable in the mid
1800s in Cornwall, so maybe Colon Williams left temporarily to find work in
America. Perhaps his wife expected him
to return, and so she named her son after him. Another fact lends credibility to the fact
that he had planned to return.
Traveling with Colon on the ship was a 20 year old man named Robert
Ellis. After doing some research, it
appears that he was the younger brother of Colon’s wife. Colon traveled to America with his
brother-in-law who was also in the mining profession! Again, all of these pieces are lining up
nicely. Colon and Robert arrived in
New York on 9/12/1857. Robert is
listed in the 1860 census living in Michigan, and it appears that he later
moved to Australia. Colon stayed in
America, but he seems to have quickly moved south. Twelve months after his arrival in New
York, he was married to Patsy Irwin in 1858 in Ashe Co. They are my great great great grandparents,
and I descend from their youngest son John M. Williams who was born in
1868. I wonder what he knew about his
father’s past in England. How much did
Colon tell his American family about his family back in England? Some of those personal notes might remain a
mystery, but thanks to DNA testing, both me and my cousin in England have
been able to expand our family trees and learn more about our Williams
ancestry. Comments? jason@webjmd.com |