Page 11 - TalesoftheParadiseRidge-Fall2020_Neat

but a few surnames persisted. Bradt, Bratt, Brott, Putnam, name was Adam Gardancer (various spellings).
Putman, and Van Eps were some of the more common
ones. I spent long evenings filling in their descendants, as Now I also had the explanation for John’s move to Ohio,
many as I could find, hoping to stumble across a link to one that made perfect sense! John and Hannah were liv-
my family tree. ing in Indiana when his mother Sarah Lewis Ware and
her second husband Adam Gardancer moved to Toledo,
Then, I had my first piece of luck. Jeff Lewis, descended in Lucas County, Ohio. John and Hannah had moved to
from John’s son William Ware, had his DNA tested. Ohio to be close to John’s mother, and possibly to intro-
Jeff matched my family on a number of chromosomes and duce their first son, my great-grandfather, Edwin, to her.
segments as expected. One of those segments though was By September 1850, John and Hannah were in Lucas,
the same segment that matched Beth and Bill! When I Ohio. Little Sarah Ware b. Apr. 1850 in Iowa was probably
saw this, my jaw dropped. We now had a 4-way triangu- a great delight to her grandmother in the last years of her
lation with Beth and Bill sharing the Bradt ancestors and life. Sarah Ware was Sarah Lewis’s first granddaughter
Jeff and me solidly sharing our Ware/Parker connection. and was probably named for her.
This didn’t connect all the dots, but it did prove that the
Bradts were the ancestors of eitherJohn or Hannah. We know that by 1860, John and Hannah and their
children were in California. Sarah Lewis Ware Gardancer
I found other triangulations over the next two years, died in Ohio in 1864. And so we also have an explanation
but the Bradt connection remained hidden. I tried even as to why there were no visiting grandparents or further
harder to fill in the Bradt descendants and to find other trips back east, at least for John’s side of the family. Wil-
triangulations. Unfortunately, the other triangulations I liam Ware had died too young, and Sarah died shortly
found either were adopted or otherwise did not know of after John and Hannah came to California.
their origins.
See Figure 3 for what is now known about the origins of
Then one day, my second piece of luck arrived via an John’s father and his mother’s side of the tree.
email from an individual named Mark. Mark was a DNA
match on Gedmatch, and his email inquired as to any in-
formation I might have. As soon as I saw his email, I was Siblings of John Ware?
intrigued. His surname was Putnam. Could it be a Bradt
descendant? I checked the segment he matched, and sure
enough, he matched the exact segment that Beth, Bill,
Jeff, and my family shared–the segment with Arent Bradt
and Catherine DeVos at the end of the trail. It was now a
5-way triangulation, and Mark’s note indicated he had an
extensive family tree. I had read his email on my phone
while at work, and I raced home early to write to him.
Maria Williams Ware,
I explained in my email to Mark that, while I had no help- wife of Edwin, 1910
ful direct information in my tree, I thought he might be
related to the Putnam-Bradt line, based on his name.
I explained that I thought this might be my line of either
John Ware or Hannah Parker of Onondaga, New York.
To my surprise, Mark quickly replied that not only was
he descended from this Putnam-Bradt line, but that this
Putnam family history was a field of his expertise. He
then stunned me by providing the exact link I had been
looking for: John’s parents were William Ware and Sarah
Lewis b. 1790. Sarah’s mother was Sarah Putnam b. 1751.
Sarah Putnam’s line went directly back to Arent Bradt
and Catherine DeVos.

Sarah Lewis (John Ware’s mother) and William Ware
Elsie Ware Ellis,
married on March 15, 1812, in Fonda, Montgomery, New daughter of Edwin
York. William Ware had died young in about 1825, and and Mariah, 1915
Sarah remarried and then moved. Her second husband’s
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