DNA Match Leads to Fourth-Great-Grandfather: 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “DNA”

Confirmation Through a Distant Cousin: Isaac White is My Fourth-Great-Grandfather

Isaac White: 1742-1819 (Maternal 4^th Great-Grandfather)
Sarah White: 1795-1880 (Maternal Third Great-Grandmother)
Jacob White: 1791-? (3^rd Great Granduncle)
John Clement White: 1828-1903 (Maternal First Cousin 4x Removed)
Margaret Estella White: 1860-1944 (Maternal Second Cousin 3x Removed)
Mary Irene Farrell: 1892-1979 (Maternal Third Cousin 2x Removed)
MLR: 1928-2022 (Maternal Fourth Cousin 1x Removed and DNA Match)

 

When I get a DNA match notice from Ancestry, I try to connect the match to my family tree. Often that can be a challenge, particularly if the match has no family tree on Ancestry. So I’m always excited to see a match with a tree, and even more excited when Ancestry has identified a possible common ancestor. My  DNA connection to a fourth cousin I will call MLR (she passed away recently so out of courtesy to her family I will use only initials) was just such a match. And MLR’s DNA and tree helped me confirm the identity of my fourth-great-grandfather, Isaac White.

My great-great-grandmother Nancy Ann Herniman was the daughter of James Herniman and his wife Sarah White. The records I uncovered for my third-great-grandmother Sarah White indicated she was the daughter of Isaac White of Somerset, England. However, I was mostly relying on other people’s trees to make that connection. I had limited records to work with. I had found the parish birth and baptism record for Sarah, seen below, so I was reasonably sure I had the right parents for Sarah. Still, I wanted more positive confirmation.

Sarah's 1796 Birth Record in Somerset.

MLR’s family tree led straight back to Isaac White through Sarah White’s brother Jacob. Jacob was born July 24, 1791. His birth record appears below. 

Jacob White's 1791 birth record, between the lines in the middle.

Sarah and Jacob had similar life trajectories. Both married in Somerset in the early nineteenth century. Sarah married James Herniman on March 28, 1819 in Taunton St. Mary. She was twenty-four and James was two or three years younger. I have been unable to find the marriage record for Jacob and his wife Ann Clement, but they seem to have married at least two years earlier than Sarah, for their first child, Mary, was born September 24, 1817. Both couples had several children over the next few years.

Both Jacob and Sarah’s families appeared on the 1841 England Census, residing in Somerset. John Herniman was working as a carpenter, while Jacob White worked as an ostler (worker employed to care for horses, often at inns). At some point following this census, both families decided to emigrate to the United States. Jacob and Sarah’s father, Isaac White, had died August 15, 1819, and their mother, Betty Cox White, had died February 27, 1841. Perhaps these losses freed the siblings from parental obligations, enabling them to consider moving abroad.

Jacob and Ann White and two children appear on the 1850 United States Census living in Dane County, Wisconsin. By the time of the 1860 census, they had moved north to the town of Fountain in Juneau County, Wisconsin. Jacob died there the same year.

James and Sarah Herniman were more difficult to trace. They appeared on an 1855 New York State census living in Grand Island, Erie County, New York. James was farming. None of their children were living with them although Nancy Ann and husband Charles Macbeth were in the same town and a couple other of their children were in Erie County. By the time of the 1860 census, Sarah and James were living in Lawanee, Michigan. James was working as a laborer and had shaved a few years off his age on the census form. They were living next door to their son John Herniman and his family. In addition, their youngest daughter Mary Redick, now the married mother of two, was living with them. By the 1880 census they had relocated to Juneau County, Wisconsin to live with son William and his wife. Sarah died there in 1880, and James died in 1882.

My cousin MLR was descended from Jacob and Ann’s son John Clement White, who remained in Juneau County for much of his life, serving as the chairman of the county board of supervisors thirteen times. He had a daughter named Margaret Estella White, who married a man named Daniel Farrell.

Fountain, Minnesota to Fountain, Wisconsin.

The Farrells relocated to Minnesota. In a strange coincidence, they also settled in a town named Fountain, about 120 miles away from Fountain, Wisconsin where Margaret’s family lived.  Among the Farrells’ children was a daughter named Mary Irene Farrell, born October 3, 1892 in Fountain, Fillmore County, Minnesota. She married Gordon Rowley, and moved to first to Walla Walla, Washington and then to Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Mary and Gordon had two daughters, and one of those daughters was my DNA match.

Thanks to this DNA match, I have confirmation that Isaac White is my fourth-great-grandfather, and I have been able to add another branch to my family tree. DNA matches are proving to be a big help in my research.

Sources:

Census records accessed on Ancestry.com.

Birth records accessed on Ancestry.com.