Australian Descendants of Jefferson County, New York settlers

One narrative of the research  links between DNA results, the Patriot War, and New York ancestry.


Sometimes one thing leads to another in genealogy research, usually seemingly with reason, at least for awhile. Then it turns out that the connections weren't the ones we were looking for, or maybe they are, but we can't prove it yet. But...we always get a good story, and therein lies much satisfaction.

This story started with a speculation on a chromosome match spotted on Gedmatch. It appeared that there would be a Northern New York connection worth defining. Long story short, through pursuing the ancestry of the match, I found the name of  Ira Polley, born about 1816 in Lyme, Jefferson, New York.



All names connected to the DNA match were from an area of Tasmania. All of the names, not just some.  Considering that I was looking for a connection to  Northern New York ancestry, how could that be? Well, the Patriot War resulted in Northern New Yorkers being sent to Tasmania--"Van Diemen's Land." When I looked up the names of those transported to Tasmania,  I found that only one name matched--the very same last name of the person for whom I had found an online tree--Polley. The man "transported" (taken as war captive) was named Ira Polley.

Now the big question was whether Ira Polley had met a fate of death at sea or elsewhere, as did many who were transported, whether he was pardoned and returned to New York (again, like many others), or if by chance he had stayed in Australia.

Strangely enough (or not so strangely, given the DNA matching), he is  one of the very few who stayed--one of four--he was actually eventually pardoned, and got as far as Hawaii before returning to Australia. There is no explanation as to why he chose to stay, but stay he did, and he married twice and had many children. His descendants are now numerous.

Before the brief war waged against England in Canada, he had been living in Lyme, Jefferson County, New York. Although many researchers say that his father was John Polley, who also lived in Jefferson County, his death information in Australia names his father as William Polley. Other documents show that Ira Polley of Australia was born in New York, while the son of John Polley named Ira was born in Connecticut. It does appear that William Polley, also of Connecticut, but who moved early to New York, is indeed father of Ira. William Polley died in 1852 in Russia, Herkimer County, New York, not far from Lyme. He does not mention Ira in his will, however, and I cannot be sure he is the father without more documentation.

Sir George Arthur, of Upper Canada at the time of the Patriot War ordered the transportation of captives to Australia. Ira Polley named one of his sons George Arthur Polley. See the following website for details on this and on various captives  in the online article "American Patriots  Political Prisoners in Van Diemen's Land": leatherwoodonline

The story that I was able to piece together (beginning with a DNA clue) gave me more knowledge of, and interest in, the Patriot War of the late 1830's, and of the lives of those who begin as captives and continue as citizens of a different land and culture. 

Jefferson County, New York Will Absracts

Many will abstracts for counties in New York are available at NEHGS. One of the counties that is not included is Jefferson. I was pretty interested to find that a book of will abstracts for Jefferson County from 1830 to 1850 has been published by the Jefferson County New York Genealogical Society and is and is available for purchase from them. Will abstracts can be very brief and relatively uninformative, or they can be very informative, naming a mother, a grandchild, a nephew, land purchases, and so on. I've enjoyed perusing the will abstracts that I have read. They can be relied on as pretty factual. If someone names a daughter or stepson in a will, that person is very likely a daughter or stepson to the person who wrote the will. The abstracts often mention relatives in other States, and often include the town in which the relative dwells. These are major clues in genealogy research. The will abstracts are indexed by name, and the book includes maps of the county and a diagram showing how cities changed their names. If your interest is in Jefferson County, NY genealogy, this is a good book to see, and if you can find a similar book (online or hard copy) for any area, it will probably prove to be very useful. You may see names that you have not seen in census searches.

The website for the historical society mentioned above is Jefferson County New York Historical Society

Hidden census records

The census records you find on ancestry.com for the U.S. census are a useful, and  the scanned records cover every decade from 1790 to 1930 (except some early records and  1890-with some exceptions, and a few other omissions due to lack of records).

It is useful to be aware that there may be a few more census records that will be useful to you out there, including State or county census records. Parts of these may have been transcribed and are available, if you know where to look. In New York, for example,

New Horizons Genealogy has free searchable census records by county. See http://www.newhorizonsgenealogicalservices.com/ny-census.htm. There are records for many years in years not covered by the U.S. census.

State census records on microfilm are indexed online by the New York State Library. You can see which records are available by county and year You should be able to order them from LDS centers. For the index, see http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/genealogy/nyscens.htm.

And for Jefferson County I have a favorite site: Alice Corbett's, which has some towns for the 1855 census. See: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~aliecor/. She has many other interesting and searchable items on the website--all involving Jefferson County history. The 1850 census is also there.

Northern New York Historical Newspapers digitized

Lake Bonaparte

Photo to the left by J. Stephen Conn. Photo above from syracuse-ny.americanlisted.com
A great digitized resource that serves as a useful companion to Old Fulton NY  Postcards, is Northern New York Historical Newspapers, a site that provides for free searches of historical newspapers by county. Counties with digitized newspapers include: Oswego, St. Lawrence, Jefferson, Franklin, Clinton, Essex, and Lewis.  The kind of information you can get there is just exceptional, including advertisements, legal matters, and social notes. One of the most useful is the social brief which tells of an individual who visits a cousin. That can be very useful for sorting out relationships in a family tree.

Reading about the way things once were is also a treat. For example, the February 6, 1872 Watertown Re-Union has an article on Joseph Bonaparte's (yes, brother of Napoleon) purchase of land at Natural Bridge, Lewis County, where he built an estate in the early 1800's. And why not? The area is indeed beautiful. Especially pleasant are the easy searches of the newspapers.
See  http://news.nnyln.net/ and enjoy. Image below from New York State Department of Enviromental Conservation at http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/8009.html

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Mistakes! And about your Ancestor

Most of the ancestors out there, if they go back hundreds of years, are not just our ancestors, but the ancestors of others as well. And they aren't known just to us; they are often known publicly in some way or another.
Unfortunately, researchers and descendants, or would-be descendants get mixed up. Then they publish their results, or make corrections to the public family tree of others. It happens, and it happens not infrequently. It is one reason that you look to a public tree only for possibilities and not for answers. In my case it happened with several ancestors so far.

One ancestor who has been so mistreated is Phineas Keith, of Henderson, Jefferson County, New York, and originally of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He served in the Revolution, as is well documented in the text Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War. and in Revolutionary Soldiers in Onondoga County, New York. The DAR also documents his service.


 Another resident of Jefferson County, Phineas Heath (similar name--different person!), also served from Massachusetts. If you see family trees online, you may see the post-its that try to explain that this person actually deserves the credit for the service of Phineas Keith. Not so.



What can you do to counter the damage when your ancestor is maligned or incorrectly categorized? Publish here there and everywhere who your ancestor is, what he or she has done, and what the sources for that information are. And of course, you contact the poster who has the misinformation. The writer is usually quite attached to the misinformation, so it is best to just lay out the facts and ask that they be taken into consideration.

Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't.We can always hope that truth will win out, or at least that the best facts will be available to be understood! It is our responsibility as descendants to try to set facts straight, and if we happen to be the ones in error, to acknowledge that and move on.

Genealogy is about facts, truth, getting it right. Yet it is also about narrative, past and present, and that is always a matter of subjectivity. Science and art, with an emphasis on science.