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Mary (Ward) Harrison was my 4th Great Grandmother. She was the mother of Sarah Harrison, mother of Emma Butson, mother of George Henry Johnston - my great-grandfather (who truly was great). Mary was born about 1802 in the Loyalist area of Ernestown Township and lived her entire life in Canada. She and her husband Robert Harrison moved west to Reach Township (Ontario County) by the 1840's. And in the 1850's, they moved a bit east to Ops Township (Victoria County) in the 1850's, where her husband died in 1865. I have not found her death record, but she did survive her husband. The Victoria County online death records begin in 1869, but no record of her birth there or anywhere else has been found. So, it is presumed that she died 1866-1868. Specifically, the Mary Harrisons in Simcoe County and Toronto in the 1871 Census are NOT her. Records indirectly connected her daughter Sarah (Harrison) Butson back to her, even though an early 1900's family historian had not included Sarah since Sarah died in about 1855-1865 and had been lost to family memory 40-50 years later. So my connection to both Sarah and Mary had only indirect evidence -- very strong evidence but still not definitive. Then in January 2013, Ancestry notified me of a 96% confidence autosomal DNA match with a known descendant of Mormon pioneer James Lake, Jr. Mary was not his descendant, but it seemed highly likely she was closely related. Now we know that Mary's mother Sarah Lake was the first cousin (through their fathers, brothers Christopher Lake and James Lake, Sr.) of James Lake, Jr. There was initially a belief that because Mary had said on multiple occasions, according to family tradition, that she was a Lake that she had meant her maiden name was Lake. We now know that she was referring to her mother Sarah Lake. Since there are no documents that definitively prove Mary's connection to her parents and since numerous DNA matches provide extensive evidence that she is their child, this web page brings together all that we have found.
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What is known about the Lake Family? There is an extraordinary amount of erroneous published information on the various Lake families, both in print and on web sites and on Ancestry trees. The main source of the errors was the 1956 book (which contains much valid information but also much erroneous information) "A History of My People and Yours" by Claud Nelson McMillan. Janet Jeffery has published a well-researched and well-documented history of her branch ("History of the James Lake, Jr. Family") that includes some of the earlier generations and some about the brothers and the family in Canada and before that in New York and New Jersey. See also my own Wesley Johnston's Loyalist Lake Family History Main Page. What is known about the James Ward and Sarah Lake Family? One fact that recurs in many records that include religion is that the family almost always appear as "E Meth" = Episcopal Methodist. When a record is found somewhere that shows someone of the same name and age but a different religion, that record should be considered to probably NOT be the correct person who is a member of this family. You can see Sarah Lake in my tree on Ancestry if you have an Ancestry account. Otherwise, you can see her in my frozen occasional snapshot tree where direct links do not survive updates. You can find her by searching at the top right on Sarah Lake and then clicking on the one born in Little White Creek, New York. McMillan has these refrences to the family.
What is known about the other children of Sarah Lake and James Ward? Mary is not included in most online and published trees of the children of Sarah Lake and James Ward. Those trees show her brother William Lake as the oldest child. Here are documented references that link her siblings to their parents. Note the significant gaps between births, which may indicate children not yet known, who may have died young.
What is known about Mary (Ward) Harrison? During her lifetime, Mary (Ward) Harrison appeared in only one document: the 1861 census of Ops Township in Victoria County. Since the family lived in Reach Township in Ontario County at the time of the 1851/2 census and that population census has been lost, the only record of the family in that census is her husband Robert Harrison in the agricultural census. Thus the 1861 census page is the closest there is to a single document with most of her family on one page. Only her daughters Mary Jane Harrison and Amarilla Harrison are missing from that page, although daughters Harriet (Harrison) Nugent and Sarah (Harrison) Butson are there but married and in separate households. The fact that Sarah (Harrison) Butson died within a few years after the census, while the others survived to old age, has led to no documented connection of Sarah to Mary and Robert. But there is very strong circumstantial evidence connecting Sarah (Harrison) Butson to the family both in Reach Township and in Ops Township. And the many autosomal DNA matches between Sarah and other descendants of Mary (Ward) Harrison and Robert Harrison confirm that Sarah was indeed the daughter of Mary. |
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Direct and Indirect Documentation of Mary and her relationships
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In 2012, the indirect documentary evidence that Sarah, wife of Henry Butson, was in fact the daughter of Robert and Mary Harrison had grown very strong. But the family records begun by Mary Jane (Harrison) Lamb's descendants in the first decade of the 1900's -- 40 years after Sarah's death -- had no such daughter for Robert and Mary. I have a lock of the hair of Sarah's daughter Emma (Butson) Johnston and had begun looking into DNA testing of the hair when in Jan 2013, Ancestry's new autosomal DNA product solved that problem. Not only did I match with descendants of Mary (Ward) Harrison, but I also matched with descendants of the Loyalist Lake Family that had moved from Long Island to New Jersey to upstate New York to the area of Ernestown Township in Lennox County in what is now Ontario, Canada. And this introduced a new problem, the same as the old problem but a generation further back. Mary, wife of Robert Harrison, did not fit into any known Loyalist Lake Family, even though family tradition is that Mary herself often spoke of being a member of the Lake Family and that she was born in the area of Ernestown. Years have gone by since then, and a great many more people have done DNA tests for genetic genealogy. And the ones who are serious about getting their money's worth for their DNA test have uploaded their DNA results to the free GEDmatch web site. GEDmatch allows comparison of results, no matter which company did the test. The GEDmatch analytical tools far surpass the tools on any of the testing company web sites. GEDmatch allowed us to create a core analysis tag group of more than 60 Lake descendants, so that we could analyze the combined findings of all of them together. This has allowed extraordinary success in providing strong evidence for relationships for which documents either were never created or do not survive. But the DNA does survive, and the power of so many descendants coming together with their DNA results is far greater than individual DNA tests alone. In particular, the misguided common "wisdom" about autosomal DNA is that it is not of any use further back than the 1800's. This arises from the halving of inherited DNA from any particular ancestor with each generation. So, if your 5th great grandmother was Hannah Harris, then about 1.6% of your DNA came from Hannah. And every one of Hannah's descendants living today has about 1.6% of their DNA from Hannah. But it may not be the same DNA that you inherited from Hannah. So comparing you and any one of your cousins may show that you have no shared DNA from Hannah. But when you bring together 7 or 8 kits of Hannah's descendants along different lines, there is a critical mass where the whole becomes more than the sum of the parts. You start finding shared DNA that you can trace back (if you have good enough trees) to Hannah. Cousin 1 and cousin 7 might share one piece of Hannah's DNA, while cousins 2 and 4 share another piece of Hannah's DNA. And you know exactly how cousins 1 and 2 are related, so that even though they inherited different DNA from Hannah, you know that one of their ancestors in the generations between them and Hannah inherited both of those pieces of Hannah's DNA. And once you identify these pieces of DNA, GEDmatch lets you search out other kits that have this same DNA, and your group grows from 7 or 8 to 22 and then 36 and then 47 and keeps growing. And that is what has happened with our Loyalist Lake Family, and it has allowed us to identify DNA from ancestors born in the mid and early 1700's, as well as verify relationships among their descendants and even identify maiden names of wives.
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