Searching Gordon with DNA

One of the most difficult lines to trace in our family history has been the Gordon line and the parents of John C Gordon who was born about 1830 in New Jersey, and died in 1886 in Brooklyn, New York.  John was the subject of my last blog post where I shared pretty much everything that we know about him – and the fact that we know nothing about his parents or early family.  

John first shows up in the 1855 Census, married to Mary Elizabeth Snedeker Gordon and with their first child.  He was a machinist, they lived in Brooklyn, and the census records show that he was born in New Jersey.  There is no mention of John’s siblings or parents in any of the family notes or research documentation that has so far been found.

The Gordon families in New Jersey seem to descend from two early immigrants who settled in the Monmouth, New Jersey area from Scotland in the late 1600’s and early 1700’s.  Most appear to descend from either Charles Gordon (1669 – 1740) or Peter Gordon (1687 – 1725).  It is suspected, but not proven, that Charles and Peter could have even been brothers or were related in some way.  And interestingly enough, our verbal family history claims that we are related to “a Peter Gordon” and that the family roots go back to Scotland.  The Charles Gordon (1669 – 1740) noted above also had a son (his eldest son) that was named Peter, so that could also confuse things for us when looking for an early Peter Gordon.

My cousin, Lynn, and I have for many years researched various Gordon family lines in New Jersey searching birth records and church records for a possible family connection to our John C Gordon.  We did find one John Gordon born in Monmouth, New Jersey in 1829 and the son of William C Gordon & Catherine Quackenbush, however he died in 1906  –  thus, he wasn’t our John [see the Notes at the end of the last blog post, Lived In Brooklyn but from New Jersey, for documentation].

Autosomal DNA

In recent years, we hoped that maybe DNA tests would open up some new Gordon possibilities to research and we both completed the Ancestry DNA test.  When looking at ThruLines, a DNA match feature on Ancestry, I find that there are 10 of my matches that show up as probable Gordon links.  Of those ThruLine matches, all but 1 are distant cousins that I know descend from my John C Gordon – so a DNA match to them is to be expected and doesn’t provide any new information.

Keep in mind that the ThruLines feature at Ancestry looks at the family trees that have been input by the match owners, thus the results that project the ThruLines common ancestors are totally dependent on the accuracy of the research that was used to build the family trees associated with the match owner.

The problem is that several of the Ancestry trees belonging to my known cousins that are fellow descendants of my John C Gordon incorrectly show William Crawford Gordon & Catharine Quackenbush as the parents of our John C Gordon.  Consequently, the ThruLines program erroneously projects that we all connect through William Crawford & Catharine directly to earlier generations of Gordons and Quackenbushes – a flawed assumption.  Thus the majority of the early ancestors shown in Ancestry’s ThruLines cannot be proven as our direct ancestors.

However, there is 1 of my identified Gordon DNA ThruLine matches that is not a descendant of our John C Gordon.  The link shown in the family tree for this ThruLine match is a Quackenbush link through an uncle of Catharine Quackenbush.  This is relevant because it could indicate that there “might” be a Quackenbush-Gordon connection for us that is earlier than William Crawford Gordon & Catharine Quackenbush.  Thus our John C Gordon “possibly” could have been related to either William or Catherine as a remote cousin, though not as their son.

In early times the communities were small and local families often intermarried.  It is possible that there is a common Quackenbush ancestor, a Gordon ancestor or even both that we share with this DNA match and is yet to be identified.

The bottom line is that with the autosomal DNA test through Ancestry we got little or no real information on the lineage of our John C Gordon that could help us break down our brick wall, and lots of questionable ThruLine suggestions.

Y-DNA

More recently, my cousin Lynn decided that a Y-DNA test might be more helpful to our Gordon search.  An autosomal DNA test looks at connections among all of the DNA segments, both paternal and maternal.  However, Y-DNA is inherited only in the male line, thus we were hoping to find a Gordon line that might be easier to identify if a Gordon male from among our Gordon cousins took the Y-DNA test.  There is even a Gordon DNA Project with over 1,000 participants who have taken the Y-DNA test and compared results to assist with making Gordon connections worldwide.

Lynn identified a direct-line male Gordon descendant cousin in our extended family who agreed to take the Y-DNA test, and he generously agreed to share his results with us, as well as to add them to the Gordon DNA project database.  We were so excited at the prospect of finally getting somewhere and possibly breaking down our Gordon brick wall!

Sometimes when you do research hoping to find answers, you end up with surprises and even more questions.  That is certainly what happened with our Gordon Y-DNA effort.  We ended up with about 25 Y-DNA matches, though less than half of those, or about 10, were strong enough matches to be considered relevant.

Now you would expect that the Y-DNA matches would mostly be with individuals with a Gordon surname because Y-DNA only transfers from father to sons (i.e. Gordon to Gordon to Gordon, etc) along the male line, and thus you would expect to find matches with mostly Gordon surnames.  But among the 10 strongest matches in our Gordon Y-DNA test there were only 2 Gordons – and there were 7 matches with the last name of Middleton!

A change of a surname is always a possibility in any generation.  Such exceptions are defined as “non-paternal events” and would be the likely result of an adoption, intentional name change, or the result of a liaison between a Gordon and a Middleton resulting in the child being raised with the mother’s surname.

First of all, our 2 Gordon Y-DNA matches link with the Gordons from New Jersey and confirm that we fit in with that group.  However, once again we didn’t find any Gordon lines that we could tie directly to our John C Gordon.

Several of our Middleton Y-DNA matches have worked extensively on their genealogy and documented their family trees back to the 1600’s in Scotland, likely the Aberdeenshire area, where there were both Gordons and Middletons.  However, there is no historical evidence that will document that there was a male Gordon fathered by a Middleton, or documentation that a Middleton changed his name to Gordon.  A result of the Gordon Y-DNA Project is that there is an academic consensus that our Gordon line definitely connects back to a Middleton line, probably in Scotland. 

There is some speculation that possibly Charles, the youngest son of Alexander Middleton (1610 – 1686) of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, could be the same person as Charles Gordon (1669 – 1740), who immigrated to New Jersey.  The wife of Alexander Middleton was a Gordon, and that would assume that Charles changed his surname to Gordon, his mother's maiden name, prior to his arrival in America.

This comprehensive Gordon family website https://history.wdgordon.com/gedcom/p16.htm#i480 claims that Charles Gordon (b.1664) was the son of Alexander Middleton, however no documents have been found to verify that claim.  Others believe that the event resulting in the name change could have been generations earlier.

The Gordon-Middleton link is proven by the Y-DNA results.  And, it looks like the “non-paternal event” was very likely prior to the arrivals of Peter Gordon and Charles Gordon in New Jersey in the late 1600’s.  Of course, we will probably never have answers about the “Middleton to Gordon event” – but it stands as one of the most intriguing mysteries on our family tree.

I feel that our Gordon Y-DNA results once again prove that our Gordon line connects with the New Jersey Gordon’s.  And that our earlier ancestors were indeed from Scotland, and that we likely descend from either Charles Gordon (1669 – 1740) or Peter Gordon (1687 – 1725) both of whom immigrated to the Monmouth area of New Jersey sometime around the late 1600’s. 

We are still searching for the direct line of descent for our John C Gordon.

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Key Individuals:

        John C Gordon  (~1830 – 1886)

        Mary Elizabeth Snedeker Gordon  (1832 – 1912)

- Jane Scribner McCrary

Lived in Brooklyn, but from New Jersey

John C Gordon, my 2^nd great grandfather, was born in New Jersey around 1830.  We know that he was born in New Jersey because most of the censuses that he shows up in record New Jersey as his birthplace; also family verbal history notes that he was born in New Jersey. 

The earliest record that I have for John C Gordon is the 1855 New York Census which shows him living in Brooklyn.  By that time John was married to Mary Elizabeth Snedeker Gordon with a child, Ellen, who is eight months old.  John is noted in the census as a “market man” and I believe that indicates that he was employed in retail business.  By 1860, the couple had another daughter, and the census shows John’s occupation to be a machinist.  Subsequent censuses, and also city directories for the next 25 years, show John’s occupation as a machinist or engine builder.

In 1863, John C Gordon is in included in the Civil War Draft Register as a machinist, born in New Jersey, married and living in Brooklyn at 148 Park Avenue. Given that John was in his early 30’s at this time, it’s reasonable to wonder if he might have enlisted or been drafted to fight in the Civil War.  But we found no records that indicate that John was ever in the military.  The 1863 address for the family is very near the Brooklyn Navy Yard, making it reasonable to assume that maybe John’s machinist skills were needed at the Brooklyn Naval Yard for the Union effort.

The Gordon family grew to five children including Ella, Theresa, John Calvin, Catharine known as Katie, and Harry – all of whom lived to adulthood.  Over the next 20 years the Gordon family lived at a couple of different Brooklyn addresses, though they were all still relatively close to the same area.  Later, and not long before John’s death in 1886, John & Mary Elizabeth moved a bit further away to 23 Moffat Street, a home that they owned, also in Brooklyn.  

John’s death certificate shows him to have been a carpenter, not a machinist.  However, I suspect that in his later years, John probably did carpentry, construction or odd jobs for his son, John Calvin Gordon, who was a Brooklyn builder.  Mary Elizabeth outlived John by another 25 years.

Information in John’s obituary mentioned that he had belonged to a masonic organization.  I checked with the New York Masonic Library, and verified that he joined the Joppa No. 201 Lodge as a machinist in 1858, and was a lifetime member, likely a Master Mason.

John C Gordon, who was born about 1830 and died in 1886, is one of my most frustrating genealogy brick walls in that I have never been able to determine who his parents were or even if he had any siblings.

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Key individuals:

     John C Gordon  (~1830 – 1886)

     Mary Elizabeth Snedeker Gordon  (1832 – 1912)

              Ella F Gordon  (1854 – 1895)

              Theresa J Gordon  (1858 – 1884)

              John Calvin Gordon  (1860 – 1945)

              Catharine/Katie L Gordon  (1863 – aft. 1942)

              Harry Gordon  (1873 – 1914)

 

Notes:

1)  You may have noticed that the eldest son of John C Gordon and Mary Elizabeth is John Calvin Gordon.  That makes one think that possibly John Calvin Gordon is a Jr and maybe Calvin is also the father’s middle name.  But unfortunately, we have only seen the initial C, and never Calvin, associated with the father’s name on documents.  And also along those lines, we have never seen John Calvin Gordon referred to as a Jr on any documents.

2)  Verbal family history about our Gordon ancestors are that we are related to “a Peter Gordon” and that the family roots “go back to Scotland”.

3)  There are problems with some online family trees that show the parents of our John C Gordon as William Crawford Gordon & Catharine Quackenbush of Monmouth County, New Jersey.  That assertion comes from finding an 1850 Census showing John Gordon at 18 years with parents of William C & Catharine Gordon in Monmouth County.  The assumption is then made that he is the same as our John C Gordon found 5 years later in Brooklyn at 23 years in the 1855 Census – but he isn’t.  The John Gordon found in the 1850 census with his parents, William C & Catharine Gordon, actually died in 1906 https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/5164/images/41381_2421406274_0781-02510?treeid=&personid=&hintid=&usePUB=true&usePUBJs=true&_ga=2.86089116.563974912.1636489847-1507448262.1587330499&pId=2220671  and he is buried in the Old Tennant Churchyard in Monmouth where is parents are also buried.  He could not possibly have been our John C Gordon.

I suspect that we might be related to this line of the Gordon family – just not directly through William Crawford Gordon & Catharine Quackenbush.

4)  My cousin, Lynn, and I have worked together on our common genealogy for many years, mostly via email as we don’t live near each other.  Our John C Gordon has always been a major mystery for us and after many years, and countless hours of research, we are still unable to find any information on his birth family in New Jersey. More recently, we attempted to find some answers to our questions using DNA.  I’ll share that journey with you in my next blog post.

 – Jane Scribner McCrary