Merry Christmas from the Hadley Society. We encourage you to discuss your family tree with your relatives during holiday. Uncovering long lost family bibles, stories, photos and other information can help us bridge the gaps in connecting our shared history. Ask about your earliest known relative and let us help connect you to the larger Hadley family. Share your holiday finds with us!
The Hadley Y-DNA project members in the United States and abroad who have spent many years, some even decades, researching the ancestral origins of our Hadley ancestors Simon, John, George and others Our efforts to connect them to their ancestral families and places of origin has basically gone as far as it can using paper records and testing among ourselves in the United States.
The most recently developed Y-DNA test, the Big Y-700 at FTDNA presents all of us with a chance to link our ancestral lines to a family in England within a relevant historical time frame. We’ve spent a large part of the last year trying to find willing Hadleys in England to test and compare with our existing DNA signatures. Given the current flash sale for the Big Y 700 at FTDNA lasting through this weekend (3/31/19), I am hoping that we can raise funds to purchase a few Big Y 700 kits at the discounted price of $449 each. My hope is that we can purchase several kits that can be used to test Hadleys in England that have good regional ties and ancestral links to area where our ancestral origins are likely to have existed.
We hope the results of this effort will allow us to gain further insight into our family origins and provide sufficient clues to move forward to in our research. Anything you can give will be held for the long term as we find people to test. Click here to contribute – Thank you.
Dear Hadley cousins,
After a year in which we’ve worked hard to rejuvenate the Hadley Y-DNA project, I wanted to give everyone in our subgroup an end of year update on where we stand. Now that we’ve received Big Y results for everyone in this group that chose to upgrade, I wanted to give everyone a sense of some of the conclusions that we can draw with some degree of certainty:
1. All Hadley men sharing our lineage derive from the PH137 branch of the R1b Haplogroup. This section of the R1b seems to share about 25-30 equivalent SNPs, meaning that the estimated origin of this block could have been as long as 4,000 years ago. One of our goals for the coming year is to try to find a tester from a demographic likely to break up this block into a genealogically relevant time frame that will help us identify our origins back into the Middle Ages.
2. Our Big Y results suggest that all descendants of Simon Hadley Jr. share a mutation at marker BY31340, a child branch of PH137. Given that all our participants descend from Simon Jr.’s son, Joshua, we can expect that any additional Hadley men showing this mutation also descend from the Simon Hadley Jr. line. Based on the number of unnamed variants (individual-specific mutations) occurring within each of our members in this group, DNA confirms that the estimated age of the common ancestor of this group is roughly 225 years ago. Give or take a generation or two, this roughly corresponds with one of Joshua Hadley’s sons, who were all born between 1740 and 1760.
3. The Big Y results for the descendants of my line descending from John Hadley (d. 1734 MD) share a mutation at marker BY194812, another child branch of PH137. Both participants descending from this line tested negative for the mutation associated with the Simon Hadley line and have a common ancestor born about the same time as Simon Hadley Jr, meaning that this is definitively proven to be a line related to, but not descending from Simon Hadley. So far, remaining individual-specific mutations for these two testers suggest a common ancestor living about 250-300 years ago, fitting the timeline of their common ancestor James Hadley, b. c1750.
4. The Big Y results of our only Hadley participant (Thomas Alvin Hadley) whose line has been connected back to England confirmed that all three of these lineages share a common origin. Interestingly, Thomas Alvin Hadley did not share the mutations at either the BY31340 or BY194812 markers distinguishing the Simon and John descendants. This leaves open the possibility that this Hadley line represents yet another child branch of PH137. We would need an additional participant from this line to confirm this and result in the identification of this branch by FTDNA.
These results suggest that our working hypothesis that the Simon and John lineages descend from the Hadley family living in Quatt, Shropshire at the end of the 16th century remains a distinct possibility. Our goal for the coming year is to try to find Hadley men from the Shropshire area to participate in our project either through taking a Big Y or through testing whether or not they match the individual SNPs representing our Hadley lines. We will continue working with YSeq to develop a SNP panel we can use as a cheaper alternative or precursor to having new participants take the Big Y going forward.
Of potential interest, we have a new project participant from Greece who seems to share a deeper common heritage with us. His family is from a part of Greece that was historically invaded by Normans c1100. His Big Y results are due later this month, and depending on the results and his degree of affinity with us, this will hopefully help us to both split up the 25-30 equivalent SNPs in the PH137 block as well as potentially confirm the Norman origins of our Hadley ancestors around the time of the Conquest and Domesday Book in the 11th century.
Please reach out with any questions or your thoughts on how to move forward in the new year. Looking forward to making further strides in 2019!
Regards,
Ross Hadley
Hadley Y-DNA project co-admin
(Photo of the DAR plaque for Simon Hadley)
Terry McLean has sent us the back up data from the original Hadley Society Website and we will be able to upload more content soon!
Several new members have joined the Hadley surname DNA project at FTDNA and others have upgraded giving us new data to assist in making a connection to England. This has been in the works for over a decade and with the price of testing coming down and more people looking to DNA for ancestry research it is exciting times! The Hadley family can claim the Haplogroup R-Z275 as our subclade (A segment of the overall tree).
There is a donate now button if you would like to contribute to the cause and donations can be made in memory of a relative, to honor a birthday or out of kindness! This is a perfect way for those families who are related on the female Hadley side to join the project and help find our ties to England.
If you are a male Hadley and have not yet taken a test with FTDNA please consider doing so and register your families line in the project.
Over $10,000.00 has been contributed and used over the last 10 ears and many hours of research and correspondence. Several of the key members who started the project have passed so we need our help to continue. With $2000.00 in donations we will be able to screen English/Irish Hadley’s and determine our genetic distance – please help o make this happen!
This is a great article mentioning furniture owned by our family and documenting the close family ties to Cane Creek: Furniture of the Cane Creek settlement
According to some notes made by Chalmers Hadley in preparation for some of his books almost a hundred years ago, he states that some of these English arms carried a motto “Deo auxilium mihi est”. I’m not a Latin expert but I believe this means “God is my Help”. A few of the Irish Hadley arms carried the motto of “victorious fidelity in authority”. He also states that the Hadley arms were entered in the notebook of one Sir Richard Carney, Ulster King of Arms, from 1683 to 1692 and were of the Hadley family of Somerset and Ireland. At that time they had been used in Ireland considerably for over a century for identification, seals, etc.
The only problem with these shields is that other than George Hadley (b-1625) I have not been able to identify any specific individual with any one shield. Maybe some other members of the family can add information that I have been unable to locate. Interesting, Huh. Any feedback. Send it my way. Always glad to reply.
| Shield: gu. Two chevronels between three falcons ar. Beaked, legged and bellied or. Above the shield and helmet is the crest which is described as: A falcon ar. beaked, legged and bellied or., holding in the mouth a buckle of the last. |
gu. Three round buckles, tongues fesseways ar.
An early edition of Burke states that this coat of arms was recorded in both England and Ireland. The possibility exists that whichever Hadley belongs to this shield is the one that transplanted the family into Ireland. Alas, if we only knew what that name was.
In 1746, Joshua Hadley (I) bought 400 acres of land in Augusta County, Virginia. Later, he bought additional tracts in Virginia. Then, in 1756, Joshua Hadley (I) with Patience and his family moved to Cane Creek, North Carolina, where other members of the family and Quaker community were living. The North Carolina Governor John Archdale of the previous decades was a Quaker. These movements of families were nearly certainly down the Great Philadelphia Wagon Route, which was not more than ruts passing over the Appalachian mountains and through the endless forests, down through Virginia to the Carolinas, as shown in the map below. Cane Creek in Chatham County, North Carolina is not far from this wagon route.
“…In 1756, at the age of 53 and within a few months after his father’s death, he [Joshua senior] joined his sisters Ruth and Hannah and their families at Cane Creek, North Carolina. Patience applied for a certificate for her family to transfer to Cane Creek [Friends Meeting] with the New Garden, Pennsylvania Meeting which was granted her and her children 8 mo 28, 1756…”
“…Joshua lived only about four years after going to North Carolina. He accumulated several tracts of land and built a mill in Alamance County. He apparently established a reputation as an earlier founder of that area, because in 1931 the South Alamance Pioneer Association erected a memorial monument to him and his wife Patience at Spring Meeting…”
This section discusses the various existing theories regarding the ancestry of Simon Hadley I. It should be clearly understood that all of this information is unproven, and are only theories about Simon’s predecessors. There are numerous versions claiming the parents of Simon to be James and Lady Jane Roswell Hadley. Another theory is that Simon’s father was named Jeremiah. No evidence has been presented that these people even existed, or any proof of their parentage.
The following article from the Quaker Yeoman clearly debunks the Somerset Hadley line that has been erroneously represented for so many years. This article, plus the DeBrett report should leave no doubts.
Note from John Hadley:
Most of this piece from 1991 is accurate, as far as I know. There has been more information uncovered since this writing, but the main point is to debunk the previous theories of Simon Hadley’s parents. Let’s get these erroneous lines out of the GEDCOMs and other internet programs…so this misinformation will not continue to be circulated as gospel! The last James Hadley of the Somerset line died over 100 years before our Simon was supposedly born. This is an impossible lineage.
We now know that Simon was living in Dublin in 1665, 1668, 1672, and 1685 from the various documents discovered by Fiona FitzSimons of Eneclann, Dublin, Ireland. (See Irish Reports) We’ve also found further descendants of Benjamin Hadley in Ireland, not listed below. In defense of the earlier researchers, it was reasonable to assume that Simon came from the gentry class, as his petition of 1680 describes him as a Gentleman. This had great significance in those times, as the gentry were only 1-2% of society, and upward mobility was the exception. It is very likely that the parents and grand parents of Simon were gentry, so that is a significant clue.
I think it is likely that the birth date of Simon as 1640 was an estimate by earlier researchers. I have never seen any evidence of his birth date, or those of his children.(The exception being Sollomon, who was christened at St Michans in 1672) The first proven birth dates I have seen are for the children of Simon and Ruth. As we find earlier and yet earlier references for Simon Hadley in Dublin, my suspicion increases that Simon was probably born earlier than 1640. Perhaps we’ll someday find positive proof of all this, but in the meantime I think it’s important to document our sources, and to be conservative and honest in our reporting.
“The Quaker Yeomen – Volume 18 Number 3 – October 1991 – Page Seven
THE IMMIGRANT QUAKER HADLEY FAMILY: Compiled By James E. Bellarts.
“Hardly a month passes that I do not receive a document attempting to trace the ancestry of Simon Hadley I to illustrious ancestry naming as his ancestor either Jeremiah Hadley of Northumberland and his wife who was a supposed daughter of Lady Jane Russell of Perth Scotland; or more frequently, stating as reference “Notes of The Quaker Family of Hadley,”published by Chalmers Hadley in 1916: Philipa Audley, daughter of Sir Humphrey Audley, who was descended from Sir Hugh Courtenay:
1.) Sir Hugh Courtenay; d. 1377-05-02; m. Margaret de Bohun, who had 8 (or 4) sons and 8 daughters:
2.) An unnamed son. Some say Hugh de Courtenay who m. Elizabeth, daughter of Lord Tobrian, while others skip this generation, or state that their son
3.) Sir Philip Courtenay; d. 1406-Jul-29; who m. Ann Wake, and were the parents of:
4.) Some say John de Courtenay, father of: (while others say Elizabeth Courtenay, 6 below, skipping this and the next generation).
5.) Some say Philip Courtenay who m. Elizabeth (Hingeston?) (Hungerford?), showing as their daughter:
6.) Elizabeth Courtenay who supposedly m. Sir Humphry Audley who was beheaded in 1461, whose daughter:
7.) Philipa Audley supposedly married Richard Hadley, son of John Hadley, grandson of Alexander Hadley who held the manors of Williton-Hadley; Withycombe-Hadley, Watchet, Heathfield, and other lands and who m. Alice Durborough daughter of Sir Ralph Durborough a supposed descendant of Sir Reginald Fitzurse. Richard Hadley and Philipa Audley were the supposed parents of:
8.) James Hadley, who had brothers Sir Henry, George, Sir John of Bruyton, Sir William of Barlinche, and sisters Anne and Jane Hadley; and who m(l) Friedeswith Matthew, daughter of Christopher Matthew of Glamorganshire, Wales; m(2) Elizabeth (- -), and was supposedly the father of:
9.) Simon Hadley I, who was born 1640.
If the above appears vague or somewhat far-fetched to the reader it should! The children of James and Friedeswith (Matthew) Hadley were Christopher, John, James, Thomas, Anne and Rachel. There is no record of James Hadley and his second wife, Elizabeth (- -) having children.
In any event, no record has been located in Ireland or England tracing the ancestry of Simon Hadley I. Any attempt to make such a connection with existing data is pure fakelore! “
Web Site: to contribute articles, stories, or photos for our website, contact Ross W. Hadley.
Database: We REALLY want to include your family – we just ask that you appreciate the volume of work we are dealing with, and give us all the help you can by following the guidelines as much as possible. Thanks!
Any material pertaining to descendants of Simon HADLEY and major allied families is welcome. The database is available for access by all researchers. Inclusion of any materials in the database is solely at the discretion of the officers of the Society, as to pertinence and/or suitability for our purposes. It is our policy to refrain from publishing information on living persons in our on-line database. Our current cut-off date is 1905. However the database does contain information on persons born after that time, and may be included on any CD-rom or printed versions of the material. Please be certain you do not send us information on members of your family who may not wish to be included. The volume of material we receive makes it impossible for us to manually select who to include and who to leave out in the varying forms of distribution of this information. Please try to use the following format when submitting information for the database:
Name (surname in all caps – if you use genealogy software, the program should do that for you automatically). Always use the wife’s maiden name, when it is known.
Enter places in this format: city, county, state, country. If using a genealogy software program that provides different fields for each level of locality, maintain the same format. In other words, if there is no city, leave field #1 blank, and just enter the county in field #2. If there is no city or county, enter the state in field #3, and so forth.
Please try to provide the name of counties when possible. If you know a city, and leave the county blank, then I have to stop and look it up. I generally do not have the time to do that, considering the volume of information I am trying to input.
We endeavor to observe copyright and privacy issues at all times. The Society, and/or the individual officers of the Society are not responsible for any problems that may arise from material we publish.
PROCEDURES: Whenever possible, submit family data in gedcom format.
Due to the high volume of mail and e-mail received by the Society, our policy is to acknowledge receipt of information within a few days. Any inclusion of the material you submit may take several months to show up in the database, depending upon the format in which it was received and the volume of backlogged material.
Any corrections or additions should be handled in the same manner as original submissions.
All materials, once entered into the society records, will be used and/or disposed of at the discretion of the Society. All materials deemed suitable for permanent preservation will be submitted to the permanent repository.[site still under consideration – we are currently approaching a few institutions to see which will provide the best site as a permanent repository, ie, libraries, colleges, etc.]
DOCUMENTING SOURCES:
The best guideline we have ever seen is to document your source so anyone reading it at any time can go right to the same source. Include full titles, publication information and dates, and where the document resides (ie is it in the Allen County library, or on Aunt Sophie’s bookshelf?) Include certificate numbers, and the state that issued them. Is it a family bible? Where does it reside? Microfilm? Film and roll number should be included. There are a lot of good resources available about documenting sources – it pays to check them out. You will find yourself going back to something you entered 3 or 4 years ago, and wondering where you got the information – just ask anyone who has been doing this for more than 5 years!
