My Old Ohio Home

In 1841 Joseph Hamilton, age 20, was living in his mother Jean (Hazlett) Hamilton's household on Donny Holm Street in Kilbirnie. He had been born in Ireland and was working as a coal miner. Jean was 45 and had also been born in Ireland. Also in the household was a Mary Hamilton, age 15, born in Ireland, working as a flax spinner. If Mary is Joseph's sister, then the family was in Ireland until at least 1826.¹

Soon thereafter Joseph married Agnes Rennie, since their first known child, Franny, was 9 years old on the 1851 Census. Franny was born in Lochwinnoch, Renfrew, but the next three children in the household-- Ellen, William, and John--were born in Kilbirnie. The youngest, Joseph, was born in Kilmarnock.¹ All these locations are close to each other.

Other children in the family were Jane, Janet, David, and a daughter whose name was recorded just as "Wm" on the 1861 Census.²

Joseph Hamilton died in Kilbirnie on June 20,1863, of chronic bronchitis. The informant was his son William. The record includes the information that Joseph was married to Ann Rainey. Joseph's father was John Hamilton, a gardener, and his mother was Jane Hamilton, maiden name Hazlet.³

a DNA Match

My cousin recently submitted our Hamilton y-DNA for testing and the results showed that we matched on 25 markers of 25 with a descendant of Joseph Hamilton. According to familyTreeDNA.com, this means that we have a 95% probability of sharing a common ancestor in the last 13 generations with that family.

Our "paper trail" only goes back to 1818 and the documentation for Joseph's family goes back to about 1795, if his father was the same age as his mother. So it isn't possible at present to locate our common ancestor. But it does confirm our family's story that they were Scots-Irish, and it does put our family's roots most likely in the Ayrshire area of Scotland.

Perhaps someone in the Joseph Hamilton–Agnes Rennie line knows more about the preceding Hamilton generations and will post the information. If my cousin or I locate any earlier ancestors on our side, they will likely be posted here or on a tree at ancestry.com.

Continued in John and Jane (Hazlett) Hamilton.

The image of a DNA strand comes from Wikipedia:File:DNA orbit animated static thumb.png.

Footnotes

1. 1. 1841 and 1851 Scotland Census. Transcriptions only. at ancestry.com
2. 2. 1861 Scotland Census, images at https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/
3. 3. 1863 Deaths in the Parish of Kilbirnie in the District of Ayr, page 15 #43. From Images of the National Records of Scotland at https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/.