Frances Johnstone Sherburne (1768 – 1832)

Frances Johnstone Sherborne née Dana (1768 – 1832), elder sister of William Pulteney Dana, was the aunt and godmother of my 3rd great grandmother Charlotte Frances Dana.

She was born in London on 3 September 1768, third of thirteen children of the Reverend Edmund Dana and his wife Helen. Her eldest sister, given the same name, died in infancy the previous year. Her sister Elizabeth Caroline Dana, born in 1767, was the oldest surviving child of the ten siblings to survive infancy.

On 7 July 1793 Frances Johnstone Dana married Joseph Sherburn in Boston Massachusetts. Frances Dana’s father had been born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Frances, presumably, was visiting her relatives there.

Joseph Sherburne was born 1751 in Falmouth, Cornwall, England to Joseph Sherburn (c 1721 – 1763), captain of the packet “Hanover”. In 1767 Joseph Sherburn Jr aged 16 began a career in India with the East India Company rising to the rank of Senior Merchant. The 1788 India Calendar lists Joseph Sherburne as Collector of Beerbhoom & Bishenpore [Collector of taxes and Magistrate in West Bengal in present day Birbhum and Bishnapur]. In November 1788, however, after only eighteen months in office, he was recalled on suspicion of corruption.  This appears to have been unfounded, and Joseph Sherburne was again employed by the East India Company. In 1802 he was appointed Collector of Boglepore (present day Bhagalpur in Bihar north-east India).

Joseph and Frances Sherburne had two children, both baptised in Bhagalpur: a son Pulteney Johnstone Poole Sherburne baptised on 16 December 1802, and a daughter Frances Henrietta Laura Sherburne baptised on 3 October 1803.

Joseph died on 15 July 1805. His death notice in the English Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser of 10 February 1806 stated he was late Judge Magistrate of Purneah and Senior Merchant on the Bengal Establishment now known as Purnia it was a district of the Baghalpur Division of Bengal) .Joseph died intestate and administration was given to his widow.

After the death of her husband, Frances returned to England with her children.

In 1813 Frances’s son Pulteney Johnstone Poole Sherburne joined the army, as an ensign with South Hants Regiment Of Militia from 1813. On 27 July 1815, barely a month after the Battle of Waterloo, Volunteer Pulteney Johnstone Poole Sherburne was commissioned as an Ensign (without purchase) in the First Regiment of Foot. [I will write about his career separately.] He died on 28 June 1831 as a Lieutenant in Berbice in present-day Guyana in the West Indies.

Miniature portrait of Pulteney Johnstone Poole Sherburne

Frances’s daughter Frances Henrietta Laura Sherburne, seventeen years old, died on 8 November 1819 at Leyton, Essex (now a suburb of London, about five miles northeast of the City), and was buried there in the churchyard of St Mary the Virgin. The churchyard, now in poor repair, once had an altar-tomb surmounted by an oval urn erected to the memory of Frances Sherburne, signed by Thomas Mocock of Leyton (presumably the mason). I do not know if it has survived.

In 1832 Frances Johnstone Sherburne died in Chelsea, London. She was also buried at Leyton.

Frances Johnstone Sherburne’s will dated 19 October 1831 has a detailed
list of bequests. To her god-daughter Charlotte Frances Dana she left

• her large Bible
• gold watch chain loop and seals complete
• a real sable tippet
• a pair of gold Hindustani earrings
• amethyst broach set round with whole pearls
• a pair of ??? clasps ??? in ??? set round with pearls
• a white carnelian ??? Broach and a bracelets single row
• two rings one with hair and small pearls the other with a Emerald and Ruby Gold Buckle with garnets for Both Garnet chain bracelets and earrings with Drops
• Also the face of my sainted child Frances Henrietta Laura Sherbourne on no account to be parted with the miniature picture of my son Pulteney Johnstone Poole Sherbourne
• Sandal wood work box fitted up with silver containing gold thimble in gold ??? ??? and ??? silver ??? basket and yard and Tortoiseshell window ??? hair chain
• and two pair of bracelets to ??? Black cut bracelets and ??? to
  match with Black snaps cut coral earrings
• Red morocco trinket box
• A pair of plain B??? Earrings without drops
• Tortoiseshell ??otting box
• More’s Practical Piety 2 vols of Elegant Extracts in Prose and Verse More’s Sacred Dramas [Hannah More was an English writer, philanthropist and leading member of the Blue Stockings Society; Jane Austen mentioned Elegant Extracts in her novel Emma]

snippet from the will of Frances Johnstone Sherbourne with the bequest to her niece Charlotte Frances Dana – any transcription suggestions gratefully received

Other people mentioned in the will were her nieces Penelope Dana [Anna Penelope], Helen Kinnaird Dana, daughter of William Pulteney Dana; her niece Harriete Gibbons, daughter of her sister Helen Gordon Gibbons née Dana; her sister Gibbons; her sister Charlotte Dana [probably her sister in law, wife of William Pulteney Dana]; her sister Armstrong; her niece Frances Harriette Wood [daughter of her brother Charles Patrick Dana]; her nephew Charles Edmund Dana [son of Charles Patrick Dana]; her nephew Henry Edmund Dana [son of William Pulteney Dana]; her cousin the Honourable Lady Hope [Georgiana daughter of George Lord Kinnaird, her mother’s brother]; her daughter Eliza Hope; some friends and servants.

The family Bible came to my father from his grandfather Constantine Trent Champion de Crespigny. An inscription in the front describes how it was given to him in 1892 by his grandmother Charlotte Frances Champion Crespigny nee Dana (1820- 1904). An inscription above this reads:

The Gift of Mrs Frances Johnstone Sherborne to her niece and God-daughter Charlotte Frances Dana by her will –

My father also has the miniature of Frances’s son Pulteney Sherburne.

Frances Sherborne also gave her niece and god-daughter a small sandalwood box with a silver plaque engraved with a shield and a motto. The box is a family heirloom which was owned by my great aunt Nancy Movius née Champion de Crespigny and has since been passed to Nancy Movius’ grand-daughter. The heraldry on that box is described at my father’s post at A search for the arms of the Dana family.

The box left in her 1831 will by Frances Johnstone Sherbourne to her niece and god-daughter Charlotte Frances Dana and now in the possession of Charlotte’s 3rd great grand daughter; the 5th great niece of Frances.

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Sources

• Sherborn, Charles Davies (1901). A history of the family of Sherborn. Mitchell and Hughes, London. Page 184 retrieved through archive.org
• East India Company List – A List of the Company’s Civil Servants, at their Settlements in the East-Indies; Reference Number: b22610911 retrieved through ancestry.com
• Hunter, W. Wilson. (1868). The annals of rural Bengal. London: Smith, Elder. Pp 16-18. Retrieved through Hathitrust. 
• The Asiatic annual register, or, A View of the history of Hindustan, and of the politics, commerce and literature of Asia. volume 4 (1802). p. 96. Retrieved through Hathitrust.
• Imperial Gazetteer of India (1908), v. 20, p. 412. Retrieved through FIBIS
• ‘Leyton: Churches’, in A History of the County of Essex: Volume 6, ed. W R Powell (London, 1973), pp. 214-223. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/essex/vol6/pp214-223 . “An altar-tomb in the churchyard, surmounted by an oval urn, to Frances Sherburne (1819) is signed by Thomas Mocock of Leyton.”
• The National Archives; Kew, England; Prerogative Court of Canterbury and Related Probate Jurisdictions: Will Registers; Class: PROB 11; Piece: 1801 retrieved through ancestry.com
• Asiatic Journal. Parbury, Allen, and Company. 1832. P.124. Death notice.
• Ford, Susan Allen (2007). “Reading Elegant Extracts in Emma: Very Entertaining!” Persuasions on-Line, Jane Austen Society of North America, jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol28no1/ford.htm.

Related posts

• A search for the arms of the Dana family

Bequests from Anna Penelope Wood

Among the papers of my great grandfather Constantine Trent Champion de Crespigny (1882 – 1952) donated to the State Library of South Australia by his daughter Charlotte de Crespigny is a letter of bequest, giving directions about the distribution of the writer’s belongings after her death.

The bulk of her possessions she leaves to her niece and goddaughter Ada Isidora Crespigny. She also mentions Ada’s sister Viola, Philip Crespigny, and various relatives, including her grandfather Edmund Dana.

Anna Penelope Wood née Dana 1814 – 1890 and her father, William Pulteney Dana 1776 – 1861 – photograph mentioned in the bequest and now in the collection of my father

The author was fourth great aunt Anna Penelope Wood née Dana (1814 –
1890). Anna had no children to receive her possessions automatically upon her death; her bequest is rather a considered working-out of who should get what, an insight into her opinion of the people she regarded as suitable recipients.

It is interesting that Anna was still so closely connected with her Australian relatives, for following the emigration of the family to Victoria in 1851, Charlotte Crespigny and her daughter Ada never returned to England and Anna did not travel to Australia. But it is clear that they stayed in correspondence. Anna sent a copy of “Two Years Before the Mast” to her sister Charlotte, for example.

abbreviated family tree; Anna had no children nor did 4 of Charlotte’s 5 Crespigny children: Ada, Constantine, Viola or Rose. Philip had six sons: Constantine Trent was his 2nd son.

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The following directions I wish to be faithfully fulfilled after my death.

To my niece Ada Isidora Crespigny I bequeath my evening dresses, lace dress, scarves, shawls, my dressing case (once belonged to my Father) & all the Jewelry & ornaments which it contains (except the Diamond ring and the plain torquoise ring which I leave to Mrs Greenham & her daughter after her – To Ada I Crespigny I also leave my Gold watch and bracelets containing the miniatures of my Grandfather the Revd Edmund Dana, also the portrait of him hanging over the piano. My great grandfather Charles 6th Lord Kinnaird – his likeness is the one in the scarlet coat – my grandfather is dressed in a blue velvet coat – I also leave the said Ada my brooches containing the miniatures of my Grandfather the Revd Ed. Dana my great grandfather the Revd Dr Grueber Provost of Trinity College.

…..

Dubin & My brother William Pulteney Dana, all the photographs of the Danas & George 6th Lord Kinnaird & George 9th Lord Kinnaird & of Queen Victoria also my photograph album, and other photos in cases and frames – all these family portraits I wish for Philip Crespigny and his sons to inherit after the death of Ada so that they and their descendants so that they may retain them in their family for ever. All my music books, work boxes & baskets all my fancy articles, I also bequeath to my niece and goddaughter Ada –

To Rose E Greenham I leave my amethyst brooch and bracelets my little fancy work bags and

…..

Longfellows poems. To Edith ? Greenham I leave my Indian pebble bracelets, my red leather writing case – To Katherine Maltby I leave my amethyst earrings. To Viola Crespigny I leave my cameo bracelets, the likeness of her mother when a girl, & the little dog lying on a red cushion which she worked. Also to Ada Crespigny I leave the portraits of the Countess of Chesterfield (the Honble Anne Forester) – the photograph of her cousins grouped together – the portrait of our uncle Sir William Rowan Hamilton & the photograph of our cousin Mrs Rathbone & the one of myself and our father grouped together – To the said Ada I also leave all my books among which are Dana’s and Longfellows’ works. To Alice Gough I leave my Indian Cedar Wood Chest which stands in the Drawing Room

…..

also a book called “The Land and the book” To Grahame Parry I leave my three Japanese China jars These are simple keepsakes to dear friends who have been kind to me – To my good and faithful Sidney Smith I leave my carbuncle ring Farrers Life of Christ & Picturesque Europe. To his brother Jasper I leave Capcis Family Bible for a keepsake. To Mary Ellen Jones I leave all my wearing apparel (except what I have left to Ada Crespigny) my sewing machine & all the odds and ends ?? ?? my clothing. I particularly desire that she will keep for her own use every thing that I have left to her. She is not to part with a single article. To my dear Wilfred I leave all the furniture books pictures plate ??? plate China House linen & whatever money or property I may possess on condition that he takes care of and provides fo as far as he is able Mary Ellen Jones & Catherine Wood as far as he is able as long as they live.

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My father has some of the miniatures Anna mentions, for example the Reverend Edmund Dana and the Reverend Dr Grueber. He also has “the little dog lying on a red cushion which [Charlotte Frances] worked.” When I was a child this tapestry – later left to my grandfather Geoff CdeC by Viola’s younger sister Rose Beggs née Champion de Crespigny – hung in my bedroom.

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  The Reverend Edmund Dana (1739-1823)

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  The Reverend Grueber

Tapestry dog which we have now learned was worked by Charlotte Frances Champion Crespigny née Dana

Source

• State Library South Australia Records of Sir Trent de Crespigny Number ACC 2898

Related posts

• S is for Shrewsbury
• Two Years Before the Mast

Two Years Before the Mast

Among my great aunt Nancy’s books was a copy of “Two Years Before the  Mast” by Richard Henry Dana, a second edition, published in 1869. The  book, presented by Dana to Anna Penelope Wood née Dana (1814 – 1890),  was passed on to her sister Charlotte Frances Champion Crespigny née Dana (1820 – 1904), who was Nancy Movius’s grandmother and my third great grandmother. It is now in the possession of Nancy’s son.

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My great aunt’s copy of Two Years Before the Mast

The book is inscribed

Anna Penelope Dana Wood
From her
Affectionate Cousin
The Author
June 9th 1869

Underneath is a supplementary inscription:

CFC Crespigny
from her sister
Mrs Wood

A letter from Richard Henry Dana to his cousin is kept with the book

Boston May 25 1869

My dear Cousin

I have asked my English publisher to send you a copy of the second
edition of my narrative, to which I have added a revisit to the old
Scenes. I pray accept it from me as a passing* proof of my affection.

Yours faithfully

Rich H Dana Jr

Mrs A Penelope Wood

* ? not clearly decipherable

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Richard Henry Dana junior was born in Cambridge Massachusetts in 1815. His father Richard Henry Dana senior (1787 – 1879) was a lawyer but seldom practiced law, instead writing poetry and criticism. Richard Henry Dana senior was the son of noted lawyer Francis Dana and the grandson of Richard Dana, also a prominent lawyer.

Richard Henry Dana junior was educated first by a strict schoolmaster, regarded by many as an excessively harsh disciplinarian. In his later school years Dana was taught in a school run by the poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Dana then went to Harvard College but contracted measles, which led to inflammation of his eyes, forcing him to take a break from his studies.

Dana signed on the brig ‘Pilgrim‘ in 1834. His first passage was from
Boston to California around Cape Horn. He returned two years later on
the ship ‘Alert‘, which rounded the Horn in the middle of an Antarctic
winter. On this journey Dana suffered from scurvy and was forced to bear
the pain of an infected tooth.

In Boston Dana resumed his legal studies, graduated in 1837, and was
admitted to the Bar in 1840. He had kept a diary during his voyages and this formed the basis of his memoir, Two Years Before the Mast, which he published in 1840. The title refers to the quarters of ordinary seamen, which were in the often wet and uncomfortable forward part of the boat.

Dana published a second edition in 1869 with an appendix giving details of his return visit to California in 1859. It is a copy of this edition which he presented to his second cousin, my fourth great aunt, Anna  Penelope Wood.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. c 1870 photographed by George Kendall Warren. Image in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery.

Richard Henry Dana junior had met Anna, her father and her husband on a trip to England in 1856. He stayed with Anna and her husband in  Shrewsbury. [My post ‘S is for Shrewsbury‘ includes some extracts from his diary entries from that visit.]

abbreviated family tree showing Richard Dana and three of his great grandchildren: Anna, Charlotte and Richard Henry Dana junior

It appears that Richard Henry Dana asked his English publishers to send Mrs Wood a copy of the book, with an inscription on his behalf, and to include his personal letter. The handwriting of the inscription is not the same as that of the letter, and was presumably that of a member of the publishing house Sampson Low & Co. The supplementary inscription is in the handwriting of Charlotte Frances Champion Crespigny née Dana (1820-1904), younger sister of Anna Penelope Dana Wood.

It seems that Anna Penelope passed the book to her sister, who added the note concerning its provenance. The book was later passed to Charlotte Frances’s grandson Constantine Trent CdeC (1882-1952) and then to his daughter Nancy Movius née CdeC (1910-2003). It is now back in Boston / Cambridge, where the work was first composed having travelled around the world from England via Australia.

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The book can now be read online, for example through Project Gutenberg at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2055/2055-h/2055-h.htm

Related posts

• S is for Shrewsbury
• The American Revolution: my Dana connection

The American Revolution: my Dana connection

Our house in Ballarat is two blocks from Dana street, named after Henry Edmund Pulteney Dana (1820-1852), commander of the native police corps in Victoria, who was responsible for collecting the first gold licence fees in Ballarat in 1851. Henry Dana was the brother of my third great grandmother Charlotte Champion Crespigny née Dana; he was my fourth great uncle.

The Dana family is a notable American family, and when in 1989 Greg and I spent a few days in Massachusetts, we visited some places there connected with my Dana forebears.

This was through the kindness of my great aunt Nancy Movius née Champion de Crespigny (1910 – 2003), sister of my paternal grandfather. Nancy, born in Australia, had married an American and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

My great aunt Nancy, her dachshund Cobber and me being licked on the nose. Cobber means friend or mate in Australian English and Cobber the dachshund was indeed a very dear friend.

Some of our Dana forebears lived in this area, from as early as 1640. Nancy shared my interest in our family history, and during our visit she drove us to the nearby town of Concord, where, it is said, “the shot heard round the world”, the first shot of the American Revolutionary War, rang out on 19 April 1775. 

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  Orchard House

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  Wayside Inn

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  Grist Mill

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  Old North Bridge

I took no photos this day but recorded in my diary: Drove to Concord saw bridge where first soldiers were killed in Revolution, also Alcott House. Had lunch at Wayside Inn – also saw mill where flour and corn still ground.
Photos from Wikimedia Commons: Orchard House, Concord, Massachusetts. Home to Louisa May Alcott and her sisters – photo by user victorgrigas 2013 CC BY-SA 3.0; The Wayside Inn Sudbury and the inn’s grist mill – photos by user Dudesleeper CC BY 2.5 and CC BY-SA 3.0; Old North Bridge Concord, 1956 replica bridge in the Minute Man National Historic Park. Photograph by National Park Service retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

Actually, there is some dispute as to whether the first shot of the Revolution was fired in Lexington or in Concord.  In the centenary celebrations of the beginning of the Revolution at Lexington on 19 April 1875, Richard Henry Dana (1815 – 1882 my second cousin five times removed) claimed that “the first shots fired back by our troops at theirs” were fired on the Green at Lexington.

The battle of Lexington, April 19th. 1775. Plate I.” In: “The Doolittle engravings of the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775.” The first of four engravings by Amos Doolittle from 1775. Doolittle visited the battle sites and interviewed soldiers and witnesses. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

As they neared Lexington, the report came to them that some five hundred men were under arms; and I am not disinclined to reconcile their testimony with the facts, by the consideration that they heard the roll of our drums, and perhaps saw the flash or heard the report of our signal-guns, intended to call our men together, and thought them a defiance ; and perhaps officers in the centre or rear might have thought them hostile shots. But the front knew they had not been fired upon, and saw the short, thin line of sixty men with arms at rest. Pitcairn, when he rode up to them, and ordered them to surrender their arms and disperse, knew they had not fired. He was not the man to talk after hostile shots. Pitcairn has had the fate which befalls many men who carry out orders that afterwards prove fatally ill-judged. When he ordered our men to surrender their arms and disperse, he was executing the orders of his commander-in-chief and of his King. If Britain was in the right, Pitcairn was in the right. Twice they were ordered to surrender their arms and disperse; and twice they refused to obey, and stood their ground. Then came the fatal fire; and why not? General Gage had been authorized to use the troops for this very purpose. He was authorized to fire upon the people, if necessary to enforce the new laws, without waiting for the civil magistrate. He had resolved to do so. Had that volley subdued the resistance of Massachusetts, Pitcairn would have been the hero of the drama. Was he to leave a military array behind him, and not attempt to disarm and disband them? If they refused, was he to give it up? I have never thought it just or generous to throw upon the brave, rough soldier, who fell while mounting the breastworks at Bunker Hill, the fault which lay on the King, the Parliament, the Ministry, and the commander-in-chief. The truth is, the issue was inevitable. The first force of that kind which the King’s troops found in martial array was to be disarmed and disbanded; and, if they refused to obey, they were to be fired upon. Both sides knew this, and were prepared for it.

Hudson, Charles & Lexington Historical Society (Mass.) (1913). History of the town of Lexington, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, from its first settlement to 1868. Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin company. pp. 284-5 retrieved from archive.org

The Battle of Lexington, 19 April 1775, Oil on canvas by William Barns Wollen, 1910. National Army Museum, London. Retrieved through Wikimedia Commons.

I have a further Dana connection to the beginning Revolutionary War.

One of Richard Henry Dana’s cousins (and my first cousin seven times removed) was George Dana (1742 – 1787), a Sergeant in Captain Jonathon Gates’ Company of Minutemen, which marched from Ashburnham on the Lexington Alarm of 19 April 1775.

The Lexington Minuteman. Photograph by user Daderot CC BY-SA 3.0 retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

Sources

• Edward Tabor Linenthal (1991). Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields. University of Illinois Press. p. 36.
• Dana, Elizabeth Ellery (1956). The Dana Family in America. Wright & Potter Printing Company, 32 Derne Street, Boston. p. 482.
• Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors in the Revolutionary War volume 4 page 388 retrieved through ancestry.com
• Stearns, Ezra S (1887). History of Ashburnham, Massachusetts, from the grant of Dorchester Canada to the present time, 1734-1886 : with a genealogical register of Ashburnham families. Pub. by the town, Ashburnham, Mass. pp 139 – 145 – retrieved through Hathitrust and p. 674 retrieved through Hathitrust

Related posts

• George III: my part in his downfall
• Trove Tuesday: Nancy de Crespigny at Salt Creek 1936
• D is for Daniel
• S is for Shrewsbury
• A search for the arms of the Dana family

George III: my part in his downfall

Tomorrow, 4 July, is Independence Day in the United States. I am proud to say that I have a family connection to the events it celebrates.

My eighth great grandfather Richard Dana, born in England – quite possibly in Manchester – in 1617, crossed the Atlantic about 1640 and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Around 1648 he married an American girl named Anne Bullard (1626 – 1711), who was born in Massachusetts. Between 1649 and 1670 they had eleven children. I am descended from Richard’s son Daniel (1663 – 1749) and grandson Richard (1700 – 1772).

My sixth great grandfather Richard Dana appears to have been the first of the family to graduate from a university – Harvard. He became a notable lawyer and politician, a magistrate, and a leading figure in the agitation against British imperial government. He was a founding member the Sons of Liberty, and led Massachusetts opposition to the Stamp Act of 1765.

The bloody massacre perpetrated in King Street Boston on March 5th 1770 by a party of the 29th Regt. Engraving by Paul Revere. Image retrieved from Wikimedia Commons. Richard Dana served as a member of the committee that investigated the Boston Massacre in 1770.

I have written several times about Richard’s oldest son, my 5th great grandfather Edmund Dana (1739 – 1823).  As a young man he travelled to Edinburgh to study. He married in Edinburgh in 1765 and became a clergyman in England with the support of his wife’s family. He did not return to America

On July 4, 1776, the 13 American colonies claimed independence from England, an event which eventually led to the formation of the United States. Each year on Independence Day, the fourth of July, Americans celebrate this historic event.

Edmund Dana’s brother Francis (1743-1811) has a prominent place in this period of American history. In 1773 he married Elizabeth (1751 – 1807), daughter of William Ellery, who became one of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence.

John Trumbull’s 1819 painting, Declaration of Independence, depicting the five-man drafting committee presenting the Declaration of Independence to Congress. Image retrieved from Wikimedia Commons. Among those depicted is William Ellery. The image can be found on the back of the U.S. $2 bill designed in 1976. The original painting hangs in the US Capitol rotunda.

Francis Dana became a leading lawyer and a close associate of George Washington. In 1775 the Continental Congress sent Francis Dana to England in an unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the differences leading to the Revolutionary War. He returned the following year and reported to General Washington that a friendly settlement of the dispute was impossible. Dana’s opinion helped influence the adoption of the 1776 Declaration of Independence. He was elected a delegate to the Second Continental Congress on 10 December 1776, where he signed the Articles of Confederation in 1778. He was sent as Ambassador to Russia in 1780. The future President John Quincy Adams served as his secretary. Again a member of Congress in 1784 and a leader of the Federalist Party, Francis Dana later joined the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, where he served as Chief Justice from 1791 to 1806.

Some of the signatures on the Articles of Confederation including Francis Dana who was one of six who signed on behalf of Massachusetts Bay and Francis’s father in law William Ellery who was one of three who signed on behalf of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. John Hancock also signed on behalf of Massachusetts; Hancock is remembered for his large and stylish signature on the United States Declaration of Independence, so much so that the term “John Hancock” has become a synonym in the United States for signature.

Notes

with apologies to Spike Milligan

• Dana, Elizabeth Ellery (1956). The Dana Family in America. Wright & Potter Printing Company, 32 Derne Street, Boston

Related posts

• A search for the arms of the Dana family
• D is for Daniel
• S is for Shrewsbury
• Wroxeter and Shrewsbury 11 May 2019
• W is for Whitehall

Wroxeter and Shrewsbury 11 May 2019

On Saturday 11 May 2019 we drove 75 miles south from Manchester to Wroxeter, near Shrewsbury, where in 1772 my fifth great grandfather Edmund Dana (1739 – 1823)  became vicar and settled with his wife Helen née Kinnaird (abt. 1749 – 1795), and where they raised their family.

We drove past the Mainwaring Arms at Whitmore en route south

Market Drayton tea rooms

Our route from Manchester took us past Whitmore Hall and the Mainwaring Arms. (We visited my Cavenagh-Mainwaring relatives at Whitmore on Wednesday 8 May.) We stopped at a pretty Shropshire town called Market Drayton for morning tea.

Narrow lane on the way to Wroxeter

The narrow lanes that brought us finally to Wroxeter took us past the ruins of Uriconium, said to be the fourth largest town of Roman Britain.

St Andrew’s Church in Wroxeter, now a designated Grade 1 listed building, ‘of exceptional interest which may not be destroyed’, closed in 1980. It is now used for ‘champing‘, camping in churches. (There’s also ‘glamping’, glamorous camping, not the same thing.) At the western end of St Andrews, just inside the main entrance, there were stretchers and a tea-urn for the use of passing champers.

St Andrew’s Church Wroxeter

Charlotte found a Dana grave in the churchyard and in the chancel we found stones that marked the graves of Edmund and Helen Dana. Unfortunately they are now too worn to read.

The grave of Edmund Dana , son of Charles Dana and grandson of the Reverend Edmund Dana, buried 18 February 1836

 

From Wroxeter we visited a National Trust property a few miles away called Attingham Park, once the seat of the Berwicks. I wondered if Edmund Dana and his wife ever called on them. Lord Berwick was very very rich and grand, and the Reverend Dana, as merely one of the local clerics, perhaps moved in different social circles.

Attingham Park

 

In the afternoon we spent an hour or two looking at Shrewsbury. Unfortunately, the Dana Walk was closed for repairs and we could not see the prison.

Holywell Terrace Shrewsbury where my 4th great grandfather William Pulteney Dana (1776 – 1861) lived at the time of the 1841, 1851, and 1861 censuses.

Shrewsbury Abbey

 

Castle Gates House

sign for The Dana

footpath closed, no view of the prison for us

On the drive back to Manchester we stopped to look at the site of the Battle of Shrewsbury (1403), three miles north of the town. This was a victory for King Henry IV against rebel forces under Henry Percy, nicknamed “Hotspur”; Percy was killed.

The site of the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403

Related posts

• S is for Shrewsbury
• J is for jail: Bankruptcy of William Pulteney Dana

W is for Whitehall

In my 2020 A to Z blog challenge each letter links a bit of my family history to a London place-name. The connection is sometimes rather tenuous, so I’m pleased to say that I’ve got a fairly direct link to a well-known ‘W’: Whitehall, the district of the City of London that comprises the administrative centre of the government of the United Kingdom.

The Old Palace of Whitehall by Hendrick Danckerts, c. 1675. The view is from the west, in St. James’s Park. The Horse Guards barracks are on the extreme left, with the taller Banqueting House behind it.  Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

 

On 18 December 1768 my fifth great grandfather Edmund Dana (1739 – 1823) was ordained first as a deacon then, a few months later, as a priest of the Church of England at the Chapel Royal of the Palace of Whitehall.

 

The Reverend Edmund Dana (1739-1823), a miniature in the possession of my father.

The function of the Chapel Royal was (and is) to serve ‘the spiritual needs’ of the reigning monarch and the Royal Family. In practice this meant conducting private religious services for the sovereign. Attached to the Chapel Royal was a choir; the liturgy was often choral.

Administrative structures have a momentum of their own, and by Edmund Dana’s time the Chapel Royal’s role had expanded to include ordinations of well-connected candidates for ecclesiastical office.

It seems likely that self-interest and the ambitions of his wife’s family rather than a sudden rush of religious fervour brought about Edmund Dana’s interest in the Church. He had commenced studying medicine, but when in Edinburgh in 1765 he married Helen Kinnaird, her family, specifically her maternal uncle William [Johnstone] Pulteney
(1729 – 1805), sponsored Edmund Dana’s change of career and supplemented the Dana family income to ease the transition. (His qualification for the role was an MA from Harvard College. It seems likely he received training for the Church of England in London.) Three days after his ordination Edmund Dana was appointed as vicar of Stanion Chapel, at Brigstock in Northamptonshire.

This painting by an unknown artist records the magnificent flotilla of barges that sailed to Westminster to commemorate Sir Henry Tulse being sworn in as Lord Mayor of London on 29 October 1683. In the background is the sprawling palace of Whitehall. The Palace of Westminster is on the left  and the roof of the Banqueting House can be seen on the right. Retrieved from The Royal Collection Trust.

 

Following a fire in 1698 which destroyed most of Whitehall Palace, Sir Christopher Wren was instructed to fit out the Banqueting House, the only part of the Palace that survived the fire, as a Chapel Royal to replace the ruined Tudor chapel. It remained in use as a chapel until 1890.

“Whitehall-Chapel” in Pyne, W. H. ; Combe, William; Ackermann, Rudolph; Rowlandson, Thomas; Pugin, Augustus, The Microcosm of London or London in Miniature, Volume III, London: Methuen and Company, (1904) [1810] . Pages 237 – 239 including Plate 95

The Banqueting House, marked with a black x, was the only part of the Palace of Whitehall that survived the 1698 fire. It is 1/3 of a mile north of the Palace of Westminster.

Sources

• Details of Edmund Dana’s ordination and career in the Church of England are provided by The Clergy Database at jsp/ persons/10426
• ‘Whitehall Palace: Buildings’, in Survey of London: Volume 13, St Margaret, Westminster, Part II: Whitehall I, ed. Montagu H Cox and Philip Norman (London, 1930), pp. 41-115. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol13/pt2/pp41-115

Related posts

• S is for Shrewsbury
• 52 ancestors: Whitehall June 15 1727

Charlotte Constance Blood nee James (1840 – 1935)

On 27 January 1859 my third great aunt Charlotte Constance James, eighteen, married Francis Gamble Blood, twenty-nine, at St Andrews Church, Clifton, Gloucestershire. He was a captain in the 69th regiment. The marriage was performed by Charlotte’s step-mother’s brother, the Reverend Charles Dighton, Rector of Mitcheldean, Gloucestershire.

Cheltenham Examiner 2 February 1859 page 8 from the British Newspaper Archive retrieved through FindMyPast

Captain Francis Gamble Blood served in the East Indies from 21 April 1860 to 23 May 1864. He was promoted to Brevet Major on 28 December 1865 and retired on 6 May 1869. On his return to England, in December 1869 he was appointed lieutenant of the 1st Somerset Regiment of Militia.

On 9 November 1869 their son John Neptune Blood was born at Cheltenham. He was baptised on 25 February 1870. His middle name is a Blood family name. At the time of his baptism his parents were living at Royal Parade Cheltenham.

In June 1870 the newspapers, including The Times and papers from the Bristol and Cheltenham area, began reporting a divorce case, Blood v. Blood. Charlotte Constance Blood was suing for judicial separation on the grounds of the adultery of her husband, which was said to have taken place in February 1870. She was granted custody of their son John.

Cheltenham Mercury 25 June 1870 page 2 from the British Newspaper Archive retrieved through FindMyPast

Divorce laws had changed since the divorce of Charlotte’s parents in the late 1840s. The marriage reforms of 1857 created a court that could dissolve marriages under certain carefully defined circumstances. Only adultery was recognised as grounds for divorce. A husband had merely to prove simple adultery but a wife had to prove adultery compounded by some other marital offence such as cruelty or desertion. The court could, and did, rescind provisional divorce decrees if it became convinced that there was evidence of collusion between the spouses. This law remained the basis for divorce in England until 1937.

Divorce was relatively unusual: in the five year period 1869 – 1873 only 289 divorces were filed per year.

Charlotte Blood nee James sought and gained a judicial separation from her husband and custody of her child. Perhaps she did not have the evidence to prove cruelty or desertion as well.

Despite collusion being illegal there seems something odd about the tale. Captain Blood appeared to make every effort to be discovered in his adultery.

In 1881 John Blood was a boarder at Holywell and Bath Wells House, Hanley Castle Worcestershire. I have not found Charlotte Constance Blood on the 1871 or 1881 census.

On the 1881 census taken on 3 April Francis Gamble Blood, Major of Foot retired, was a boarder at 7 Berners Street, Marylebone, London. On 20 May 1881 he was admitted to the Munster lunacy asylum at Fulham. He died there on 14 August 1881. Newspaper notices, such as that in the Cork Examiner of 20 August 1881 stated he died of inflammation of the lungs. “BLOOD – August 14, of inflammation of the lungs, Major Francis Gamble Blood, late of the 69th Regt.,son of the late Colonel J. Aylward Blood, late of the 68th Light Infantry.”

On 23 December 1881 administration of his estate was granted to his widow Charlotte Constance Blood: personal estate 12,820 pounds. At the time Charlotte Constance Blood was living at Ferneyfield, Mitcheldean.

Huntley Court

In 1884 Charlotte Constance Blood bought Huntley Court in Gloucestershire. She became a manager of Huntley school.

Her son John Neptune Blood was educated at Rugby College, Rugby, Warwickshire from 1884.

In 1891 Charlotte Constance Blood, widow living on her own means, was residing at Huntley Court with her son, a student at Magdalen College, Oxford, and four servants: a housekeeper cook, a parlour maid, a house maid and a kitchen maid.

John Neptune Blood graduated from Magdalen College, Oxford University with a Master of Arts (M.A.) and Bachelor of Civil Law (B.C.L.).

In 1893 John Neptune Blood was admitted to the Inner Temple, entitled to practice as Barrister-at-law.

In 1901 Charlotte Constance Blood, living on own means, was residing with her son, a barrister-at-law, in Huntley. The household included three servants: a cook, parlour maid and groom.

Huntley Court was transferred from Charlotte Constance Blood to her son in 1907.

In 1911 her son, a barrister-at-law, was listed as head of household. There was a visitor from Ireland and 5 servants: a butler, cook-housekeeper, housemaid, kitchen maid, and under housemaid.

In 1925 John Neptune Blood sold Huntley Court. Mother and son then lived in Gloucester.

On 7 December 1935 Charlotte died aged 95. She was buried at Huntly, Gloucestershire.

Her son, John Neptune Blood, never married. He died on 29 September 1942 in Gloucester.

Gloucester Citizen 30 September 1942 page 4 retrieved from the British Newspaper Archive through FindMyPast

Coincidences

I suspect that Charlotte did not know much about Philip Champion Crespigny, the man her mother had run away with. In 1870 Charlotte was living in Royal Parade, Cheltenham, a few doors away from her mother’s father-in-law, Charles Fox Champion Crespigny, who lived at 11 Royal Parade with Charlotte Blood’s half-brother, Constantine Pulteney Trent Champion Crespigny  (1851 – 1883).

On 14 July 1869  Constantine joined the 69th regiment less than two months after Francis Gamble Blood had resigned on 6 May.

Related posts

• Charlotte Constance James born 1840

Sources

• Savage, G. (1983). The Operation of the 1857 Divorce Act, 1860-1910 a Research Note. Journal of Social History, 16(4), 103-110. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.slv.vic.gov.au/stable/3786994
• ‘Huntley’, in A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 12, ed. A.R.J. Jurica (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 174-196. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol12/174-196.
• British Army Service Records retrieved through FindMyPast for Francis Gamble Blood born 1829. Wo 76 – Regimental Records Of Officers’ Services 1775-1914 Regiment: 69th Foot.
• Baptism record retrieved through ancestry.com John Neptune Blood Baptism Date 25/02/1870 Baptism Place Cheltenham, St Mary Gloucestershire England Father Frances Gamble Blood Mother Charlotte Constance Blood
• Census records retrieved through ancestry.com
  • John Blood Birth date: abt 1870 Birth place: Cheltenham Residence date: 1881 Residence place: Hanley Castle, Worcestershire, England  Detail Class: RG11; Piece: 2919; Folio: 46; Page: 28; GSU roll: 1341700.
  • Francis Gamble Blood Birth date: abt 1830 Birth place: London, London, Middlesex, England Residence date: 1881 Residence place: Marlebone, London, England Detail Class: RG11; Piece: 133; Folio: 57; Page: 44; GSU roll: 1341030.
  • Charlotte Constance Blood Birth date: abt 1841 Birth place: Newnham, Gloucestershire, England Residence date: 1891 Residence place: Huntley, Gloucestershire, England Detail Class: RG12; Piece: 2007; Folio 76; Page 2; GSU roll: 6097117.
  • Charlotte Constance Blood Birth date: abt 1841 Birth place: Newnham, Gloucestershire, England Residence date: 1901 Residence place: Huntley, Gloucestershire, England Detail Class: RG13; Piece: 2418; Folio: 31; Page: 5.
  • John Neptune Blood 1911 census Class: RG14; Piece: 15215; Schedule Number: 18

S is for Shrewsbury

My fifth great grandfather Edmund Dana (1739 – 1823) was born in Charleston, near Boston, Massachusetts to Richard Dana (1700 – 1772), a lawyer and a prominent local politician, and Lydia Dana nee Trowbridge (1710 – 1776). He was their second child.

Edmund entered Harvard in 1756 and graduated in 1759. After a brief apprenticeship with a local doctor, he travelled to England, never to return. By 1764 he was at Edinburgh, perhaps he was studying medicine and science at the university.

The Reverend Edmund Dana (1739-1823) A miniature in the possession of my father.

 

At Edinburgh Edmund Dana met the Hon. Helen Kinnaird (abt. 1749 – 1795), daughter of Charles (1723-1767), sixth Baron Kinnaird of Inchture, and his wife Barbara Kinnaird nee Johnstone (1723 – 1765). Edmund and Helen were married on 9 July 1765 at the church of St Cuthbert in Leith, Edinburgh’s port, a few miles from the city.

The couple moved to London where their first three children were born.

On 18 December 1768, at a ceremony in the Chapel Royal of Whitehall, Edmund was ordained a deacon of the Church of England. Two months later he was made a priest and appointed as Vicar of Brigstock Northamptonshire with the chapel of Stanion in the Diocese of Peterborough.

In a letter to his father Richard, written soon after his appointment to Brigstock he explained his new situation and his decision to abandon his medical studies:

My living has been magnified beyond measure, but I have great privileges in it [wh[ich] no other person ever had upon acc[oun]t of its being upon an Estate of Mr Pulteney. I really understood before I took the gown that whatever deficiencys it labor[e]d under Mr Pulteney w[oul]d make good.

In effect, therefore, Edmund had accepted the assurances of his wife’s family, notably of his wife’s uncle William [Johnstone] Pulteney (1729 – 1805), that a career in the church would be assured and well paid. The parish of Brigstock itself was controlled by the Crown through the Bishop of Peterborough, but Edmund’s letter indicates that the land was owned by William Pulteney and that his basic salary would be supplemented. Given the influence of his wealth and position, it would not have been difficult for Pulteney to persuade the bishop to find a place for his niece’s husband.

In November 1772 the Reverend Edmund Dana took up new duties as Vicar of the parish of Wroxeter in Shropshire, in the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield. Wroxeter is a village five miles east of Shrewsbury. William Pulteney had first entered Parliament in 1768 as member for Cromartyshire in Scotland, but he had substantial interests in Shropshire and had also contested the seat of Shrewsbury. Successful at the 1775 election, he held the borough until his death in 1805. Because of the property William Pulteney held, he was patron of several livings in the area: that is, he had authority to name the priest who would head the parish as rector or vicar. The previous incumbent at Wroxeter, Robert Cartwright, had died, and the vacancy was free for Pulteney to nominate his nephew by marriage.

Edmund Dana and his family  settled in the region of Shrewsbury, and William Pulteney continued his support. In 1775 the living of Aston Botterell became vacant through the death of the former Rector Nehemiah Tonks, and Edmund Dana was appointed his successor.

In 1781 Edmund Dana received two further appointments as Rector: to Harley and Eaton Constantine. Both parishes were in the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield and both lay southeast of Shrewsbury, Eaton Constantine just two miles from Wroxeter and Harley a couple of miles further. The livings were formally in the gift of a certain John Newport, but Newport was under age and William Pulteney was his official guardian.

Helen continued to bear children: thirteen, nine girls and four boys, in twenty-one years. Three died in infancy. Helen died at Shrewsbury on 17 April 1795, aged about forty-five, and was buried at Wroxeter on 22 April. She and Edmund were married three months short of thirty years; he did not marry again.

Though Edmund Dana had no previous contact with Shropshire, the patronage of William Pulteney gave some status to the newcomer. Wroxeter is a notable parish: a short distance east of Shrewsbury, it occupies the site of the ancient Roman town of Uriconium. Some time after his arrival, Edmund Dana became a local magistrate.

An early supporter of the great engineer Thomas Telford, William Pulteney arranged for him to work on the refurbishment of Shrewsbury Castle during the 1780s, and a few years later had him appointed Surveyor of Public Works for the county, where he constructed roads, bridges and canals. Edmund Dana was a member of the trust concerned with roads and streets, so the two men were at least acquaintances. When Telford was commissioned to construct a new prison in the city, close to the castle, Dana had Telford construct a passage from the castle, across the line of the present-day railway, to the main entrance of the prison and then some distance along the River Severn. The route became known as The Dana, and local custom applied the same name to the prison itself.

Lancasterian School with Castle and Dana path. Before construction of the Railway Station in 1848. Shrewsbury Museums Service (SHYMS: FA/1991/125). Image sy8896

Former HM Prison Shrewsbury viewed across the road named The Dana at the end of May 2014. The prison constructed during 1787-1793, closed in March 2013.

 

Some sources claim that Edmund Dana lived in Castle Gates House, close to the entrance to the castle, and it is possible that for a while he did. From the time that he arrived there, however, all his children were born and baptised at Wroxeter, and his wife Helen died and was buried there.

abbreviated family tree showing William Pulteney, Helen Kinnaird, Edmund Dana, William Pulteney Dana (his son who was jailed),  granddaughter Anna, and great- nephew Richard Henry Dana Jr

 

In 1856 Edmund’s great-nephew Richard Henry Dana Jr (1815 – 1882), grandson of Edmund’s brother Francis, visited England and spent three days at Shrewsbury. On the first day he met his cousin Anna Penelope Wood nee Dana (1814 – 1890), Edmund’s grand-daughter. Anna’s husband William Henry Wood escorted him on a tour of the city. Richard Dana was shown the Dana Terrace, “principal walk of the castle, and named from the Rev Edmund Dana, who planned it.” He also saw an old house with black timber cross-beams, where the future King Henry VII was said to have spend the night on his way to defeat Richard III at Bosworth in 1485. There was no mention, however, of Edmund Dana living in the city and, since Anna Penelope Wood nee Dana was nine years old and living near Shrewsbury when her grandfather Edmund died in 1823, she probably would have remembered it if he had.

Richard Henry Dana’s diary entry for the following day, Sunday 10 August, records how he accompanied Mr and Mrs Wood to Wroxeter, where they attended the evening service. In somewhat romantic style, he tells how:

Wroxeter is a fair specimen of the old English parish Church, parsonage and village. . . The church stands in the midst of the graves of the villagers, and the vicarage opens into the Church Yard. In this vicarage, lived and died, Edmund Dana, my grandfather’s only brother. Here he officiated from 1766 to 1823 – a period of fifty seven years. Here he brought his beautiful noble bride, a peer’s daughter, in the bloom of her charm, and here he laid her, under the stone of the chancel, at middle life, the mother of twelve children, loved and honoured by all. Here he lies by her side, and here most of this children are buried. . . . . Here grew up, here played, here walked and studied, and loved, and married, those beautiful daughters, whom Mrs President Adams [ Abigail Adams nee Smith] says were the most elegant women she saw in England, and whom George III called the roses of his court.

He goes on to describe the church itself, with the tombs of Edmund Dana, his wife Helen, and several of their children, placed before the chancel.

Wroxeter Church, Shropshire. Watercolour. Artist: J. Homes Smith. Shrewsbury Museums Service (SHYMS: FA/1991/071/40) image sy1325

Richard Henry Dana remarked that the Wroxeter local bridge, a Roman column in the churchyard, and several trees were named in memory of Edmund Dana who had died 33 years earlier, while the old people of the parish still call him the “old gentleman”, and look upon the present rector, who has been here twenty years, as the “new vicar”, and complain of his innovations.

Excavation at Uriconium by Francis Bedford Retrieved from Wikipedia. Original from the Victor von Gegerfelt collection, Volume K 1:3, Region- och Stadsarkivet Göteborg.

Related posts

• J is for jail: Bankruptcy of William Pulteney Dana

Sources

• research by my father, Rafe de Crespigny
• Dana, Richard Henry, Jr and Lucid, Robert F. (Robert Francis),1930-, (ed.) The journal. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1968.
• Thorne, R.G. “PULTENEY, William (1729-1805), of Westerhall, Dumfries and The Castle, Shrewsbury.” History of Parliament Online, The History of Parliament Trust, https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/pulteney-william-1729-1805.
• http://shrewsburylocalhistory.org.uk/street-names/the-dana

D is for Daniel

One of my eighth great grandfathers was Richard Dana (1617-1690), a New England Puritan, who landed in Massachusetts in 1640. Richard married Anne Bullard in about 1648.

My seventh great grandfather Daniel Dana was born on 20 March 1664 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Daniel was the tenth of twelve children.

In 1661 Richard Dana had purchased a farm of 108 acres near the area later called “Oak Square”.  Daniel probably grew up here.

Dana Homestead in Little Cambridge from “The Dana Family in America” by Elizabeth Ellery Dana, picture opposite page 40.

Richard Dana and his family attended the “First Church” in the older part of Cambridge. Richard and his family crossed the Charles River each Sunday to attend church. Daniel was baptized in the church which was then in Harvard College Yard on 3 April 1664.

In 1689 Daniel served in the militia. In that year there was a revolt against the Governor, Sir Edmund Andros; Daniel may have played some part in this.

In 1694 Daniel married Naomi Crosswell.

They had nine children:

• Thomas Dana 1694–
• Caleb Dana 1697–1769
• Richard Dana 1700–1772
• Naomi Dana 1702–1726
• Timothy Dana 1705–1705
• Priscilla Dana 1706–1785
• Daniel Dana 1708–1713
• Ebenezer Dana 1711–
• Hepzibah Dana 1714–1789

Daniel had been a cooper and a farmer and worked as a surveyor of highways and as a tithing man. In 1715 and in 1723 he served as a selectman – on the local board of government. In 1736 he served on an important church committee.

On 10 October 1749, Daniel died, age 86, and was buried in the Old Burying Ground at Harvard Square, Cambridge . His headstone made of slate still survives.

Headstone of Daniel Dana who was buried in the Old Burying Ground at Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Image from FindAGrave, photographed by Bill Boyington and used with his permission.

DNA
Daniel was one of twelve children and he himself had nine children; his descendants number in the thousands.

In 2016 I found that my DNA matched that of several people also descended from Richard or Daniel Dana.

In the brief notes that follow:

– AncestryDNA, FamilyTreeDNA, GedMatch and MyHeritage provide DNA analysis services

– a centiMorgan (cM) is a measurement of how much DNA is shared. Higher centiMorgans, more shared DNA

– fourth cousins once removed commonly share from zero to  117 centiMorgans. The average in one survey was 28cM.

DS is my fourth cousin once removed. We share William Pulteney Dana (1776-1861) as a common ancestor. We share 38 centiMorgans of DNA across one segment. The amount of DNA we share is consistent with our relationship of fourth cousins.

AncestryDNA gives us limited information about our DNA matches. It does tell us though for perceived close matches who we share DNA with. DS and I share DNA with DV and EH who both descend from Daniel Dana’s son Ebenezer. 8th cousins have been found to share between zero and 50cM. The amount of DNA I share with DV and EH is within the range for 8th cousins and 7th cousins once removed.

Without more information about the segments shared I cannot make predictions that the shared DNA does come from Daniel Dana and his wife Naomi. If my matches uploaded their DNA data to FamilyTreeDNA, GedMatch or MyHeritage, those sites would give me information to see if the segments match. We could then infer using the principles of triangulation that our paper trail pedigree matches our genetic tree.

At this stage it seems likely, based on the information from AncestryDNA that we share DNA even though this information is not quantified.

I have two other DNA matches with Dana descendants. As we share only small amounts of DNA, AncestryDNA does not provide the information if we share this with any other matches.

With such distant common ancestors, it is quite possible that we share other ancestors that we have not yet researched and the shared DNA is attributable to another ancestor.

It would help enormously if AncestryDNA gave us more information about our shared DNA as do the other companies. Otherwise, if people who have had their DNA tested would be prepared to upload to the other companies, we would be able to understand more about our shared DNA and determine if we have correctly identified out most common recent ancestor and there confirm our paper pedigree with shared DNA. Uploads to FamilyTreeDNA, GedMatch and MyHeritage are free, no further testing or payments are required.

Although it is interesting that I can find that I share DNA with distant cousins who are descended from the same forebears, it does not tell me more about Richard Dana and his son Daniel. I have learned most from Elizabeth Ellery Dana‘s genealogy of the Dana family.

Sources

• Dana, Elizabeth Ellery The Dana family in America. Cambridge, Mass. 1956, reprinted 2018. It can be viewed online through archive.org at https://archive.org/details/TheDanaFamilyInAmerica
• “The Church in Harvard Square: The Church And College.” Harvard Square Library, 9 Sept. 2014, www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/congregational-polity/the-church-and-college/.
• Lucius R. Paige (27 May 2017). History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1877, Volume 1. Jazzybee Verlag. pp. 194–. ISBN 978-3-8496-7722-0.
• “International Society of Genetic Genealogy Wiki ISOGG Wiki.” Autosomal DNA Statistics – ISOGG Wiki, International Society of Genetic Genealogy, 29 Nov. 2017, isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_DNA_statistics.