More on the widely sown seed of Benjamin Cleveland

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This is an update to my previous research on Benjamin Cleveland (1783-1853). He had eleven children with his wife Lydia nee Cooper, between 1805 and 1830; all but two survived to adulthood. However the DNA evidence fairly clearly indicates that he was also the biological father of my great-great-grandmother Sarah Smith, who was born in 1815; her legal father is recorded as a mysterious and largely absent Scot, embroiled in the misleadingly named War of 1812.

Through Benjamin Cleveland, I am related to my sixth cousin three times removed President Grover Cleveland, to my ninth cousin, sf writer Fritz Leiber, to Leiber’s third cousin, also my ninth cousin, Shirley Temple, and to my Worldcon colleague and seventh cousin twice removed Jesi Lipp. (NB there was a military Benjamin Cleveland, also born in 1783, who lived to 1858, five years longer than mine; but mine is a Yankee and the general was from Georgia.)

Poring through Ancestry.com on an insomniac night recently, I came across an interesting cluster of eight DNA connections who were linked to me and to other known descendants of Benjamin Cleveland. I found a family connection for all of them to Glens Falls, New York, and for seven of the eight I found a clear genealogical line of descent from a couple who I will identify here as John and Ophelia. Ophelia was born in 1840; John was born either in 1817 or 1820 – the documentation is unclear. One of my eight connections, F.W., is their great-granddaughter; five of them are great-great-grandchildren of John and Ophelia, including two daughters of F.W.; and one is the son of one of the great-great-grandchildren, making him the 3x great-grandson of John and Ophelia.

The eighth, C.P., caused me some head-scratching. He has researched a beautifully detailed family tree going back generations. However it seemed to me pretty clear that his mother was F.W.’s half-sister, born to a 17-year-old girl who then married her first husband (who is the person C.P. has in his tree as his grandfather) ten months later, but fathered by a grandson of John and Ophelia who later became F.W.’s father as well. C.P.’s DNA link to F.W. is that of half-nephew to half-aunt, which matches this theory exactly. His DNA links to F.W.’s daughters, N.K. and K.K., are also consistent with this hypothesis (half first cousins).

So the full family tree as I have reconstructed it is as follows:

(Click to embiggen; those on Ancestry.com are indicated with thicker box outlines, along with the strength of their DNA link to me)

The descendants of John and Ophelia listed here are:

  • C.P., provided that we believe my theory about his mother being the biological daughter of John and Olivia’s grandson C
  • F.W., definitely the great-granddaughter of John and Olivia, half-aunt to C.P.
  • N.K., daughter of F.W., half first cousin to C.P.
  • K.K., daughter of F.W. but with a different biological father so half-sister to N.K., also half-first cousin to C.P.
  • C.H., descended like the above four from the John and Olivia’s Son A, whose mother was F.W.’s first cousin and he is himself second cousin to C.P., N.K. and K.K.
  • D.W., descended from John and Olivia’s son B, second cousin once removed to F.W. and third cousin to C.P., N.K., K.K and C.H.
  • J.U., D.W.’s first cousin who therefore has the same relationships to the others mentioned above
  • G.T., J.U.’s son who is therefore first cousin once removed to D.W., second cousin twice removed to F.W. and third cousin once removed to all the rest.

If I am also descended from one of the parents of John or Ophelia, then F.W. is my half-third cousin once removed, G.T. is my half-fourth cousin once removed, and the other six are all my half-fourth cousins, ie we share a single 3x great-grandparent. My DNA connection to all of them is around 20 centimorgans, which is consistent with a relationship of around third/fourth cousin-ish. Significantly, we all also share connections with other descendants of Benjamin Cleveland.

I know that I am not descended from John or Ophelia, because all my recorded ancestors in America at that date are accounted for, and I have other DNA connections through all of them. (And also I would expect to see stronger DNA connections with John and Ophelia’s known descendants if I was also one of them.) On the other hand, I know that Benjamin Cleveland had at least one child out of wedlock, my great-great-grandmother Sarah Smith, born in 1815. So the likelihood is that either John or Ophelia was Benjamin’s extramarital child.

Both John and Ophelia came from the same village near Glens Falls. Benjamin Cleveland was living in Unadilla in the 1810s, over 200 km away across the state of New York, but if he was able to father Sarah Smith over in New Hampshire in 1815, a short excursion from Albany doesn’t seem unreasonable at the time of John’s conception in 1816 or 1819. By 1839 Benjamin had moved to Pennsylvania, a step in the westward trek that eventually took him to Wisconsin where he died in 1853. So it seems less likely that he was Ophelia’s father, since she was born only in mid-1840.

John’s mother, who rejoiced in the name Annis or Annice, was born in March 1797. She married Samuel, the man generally recorded as John’s father, on 15 October 1820. John’s gravestone says that he died on 3 October 1889, aged (rather precisely) 68 years, 11 months and 26 days, giving a birth date of 8 October 1820. The 1880 federal census and the 1865 New York state census both give ages for him consistent with being born in late 1820. But there’s one crucial detail here – if Annis married Samuel on 15 October 1820, she can hardly have given birth to John the previous week! So the gravestone must be wrong.

The 1870 federal census gives John’s age in that year as 54, and the register of his Civil War service gives his birthday firmly as 8 October 1817. To me it’s pretty clear. The war service record is the one document that John is likeliest to have completed by himself, and it’s also the only one (apart from the gravestone, which we know cannot be right) that gives a precise date of birth. It was probably Ophelia who gave the census takers the information they wanted in 1865, 1870 and 1880, and also who gave instructions for the tombstone in 1883, and she may have been vague, perhaps deliberately so, about his precise age.

I am certain that John was born on 8 October 1817, three years before his mother Annis married Samuel; and that Benjamin Cleveland was his biological father. I still have no idea what business Benjamin was on, travelling so much around New York and New England, impregnating my married great-great-great-grandmother in 1814, and 19-year-old Annis in 1817. But the evidence of his active life runs in my veins, and in the veins of dozens of his living descendants.