The Adams Family

My husband read my most recent post and commented that it was just as likely that our kids had his eyes as they did my grandmother's.  True, I acknowledged, but that really didn't match the narrative I aiming for last week, hence today's post to celebrate the Y-chromosome!  Similar to the way that mtDNA is passed down from mothers to all their children, Y-DNA is passed down the male line from father to son.  Y-DNA is less stable than mtDNA, mutating more frequently, often within a handful of generations rather than over thousands of years, so can be a more useful scientific tool for genealogical purposes as often a connection can be found within a recent enough period that documentary evidence will exist to support what's found in the genes.

Obviously I don't have any, and I've already covered my father's line of McKenzies, so instead I'll talk about my husbands line of Adamses.  His grandfather was one of a close-knit group of siblings - four boys, one girl - whose descendants remain in equally close contact and good terms.  I never met my husband's paternal grandfather, nor his great-aunts and great-uncles, so this post is going to involve other people's stories.

My husband's great-uncle, William Frederick but known as Wilfred, had a portable printing press which he would use to make small books to entertain his children, nieces and nephews.  One of these was his Little Book of the Bounty, a history of the famous mutiny with some added family history.  Wilfred wrote that his great-great-grandfather, Robert Adams of County Londonderry, Ireland, was the brother of one John Adams who sailed with Captain Bligh under the assumed name of Alexander Smith and eventually ended his days in Tahiti, the last surviving mutineer.

I don't doubt that Robert Adams had a brother named John; it was, after all, a fairly common name.  That the John Adams of the Bounty was born in St John Hackney, Middlesex, has been discussed extensively elsewhere (here's one example), not least of which was the start of Adams' own autobiography:

'I was Born at Stanford Hill in the parrish of St. John Hackney, Middellsex oef poor but honast parrents My farther Was Drouned in the Thames therefore he lft Me and 3 More poore Orfing.'

My husband wants to know why the family story developed that this John Adams was a distant relative: was it Wilfred's idea to engage his young readers in history or was it something of longer standing?  John Adams is a common name: why would one family claim the Bounty's John Adams and not, say, a US President of that name?  (I was about to ask if they'd claim any of this lot when I realised that one of these John Adams actually was a family member - mathematician John Frank Adams was Wilfred's son.  Once again the facts are interrupting my narrative.)

I honestly can't answer the story of the Bounty connection, only to agree that it's hardly uncommon to hear of someone with your surname in connection to some event and muse about whether or not you are related.  Unfortunately, the earliest known generations of Adamses are little more than names: James, who married Nannie Smith (presumably a nickname for Anne or Nancy) and their sons Robert and John (supposedly of the Bounty).  Robert married Betty Culton and at some point after their marriage they lived at Ardnaguniog in Faughanvale Parish, Londonderry.

Since there are also stories in various branches of the Adams family that the family originally came to Ireland from southwest Scotland, where they had been horse traders, perhaps the fact that the location of Robert and Betty's residence after their marriage has been remembered is because it was where they first settled in Ireland.

Robert and Betty had two known children: James, born around 1796, their eldest, and Mary, born around 1814, probably their youngest.  James married Martha (Matty) Millar and farmed at Tully in Faughanvale; James and Martha are buried in Eglinton Churchyard, the first generation of the family whose burial location is known.  Mary married William "Orange Bill" McConnell and they, with their three children, sailed on the Sarah G. Hyde from Ireland to New York, arriving on 18 November 1851 and travelling overland to Wakefield, Canada East (Québec), where Mary died before the end of the year.  Two of Mary's nieces, children of her brother James, would leave Ireland for Québec in 1873, and their Canadian descendants are numerous.

The youngest son of James and Martha Adams of Tully was Robert, born around 1834.  He married Sarah McConnell of Enoch, Glendermott at the Waterside Reformed Presbyterian Meeting House in Londonderry in 1859 and they had a family of eleven.  Five of their children -- James, John McConnell, Matilda (Maud) Miller, Robert Jr and Elizabeth (Lizzie) -- joined the civil service and moved to England; James' employment with HM Revenue and Customs allowed him to return to Ireland as a customs supervisor in County Donegal.  Another two children -- Jane Robinson and Alexander Miller -- also went to England: Jane married an umbrella salesman and Alexander divided his time between Belfast and Liverpool, as a manager in the linen trade.  Frederick Walter died in South Africa in 1896, aged only 21.  Why he was there I do not know, but the day he died, 8 April 1896, was during the Siege of Bulawayo.

John McConnell Adams, the second son of Robert and Sarah, worked for Inland Revenue as a Customs and Excise Supervisor.  He married Alice Mabella Jones in Llanshog, Caernarvonshire and they went to live in Edmonton, Middlesex for several years, then his work brought them to Barton House on Priory Street in Cardigan (the genealogist in me loves the fact that it's adjacent to the current Registry for Births, Deaths and Marriages).  John was 40 at the time of his marriage, his wife 26.  By the time he retired at 65, the family had returned to Middlesex where they lived at 40 Long Lane, Finchley (the one with the builders' stuff out front).  His children were still fairly young -- the youngest, Arthur Roland, known as Pat, was only 14 -- so perhaps John entertained them with stories of their Irish antecedents.  And if one of his stories happened to involve a mutineer, perhaps it was then a legend was born.

There is an Adams family grave in Eglinton Churchyard.  Cousins have visited and say it needs some restoration.  My husband regularly muses about how to go about it, and when we will get around to seeing it for ourselves.  I think a trip to Ireland is in order.