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John Ware, Origins Uncovered

By Sandra Ellis

John Ware and Hannah Parker, my great-great-grandparents,
were pioneers of Paradise. Much is known of their life in Cali-
fornia, but astonishingly little is known of their origins. We
know they were said to have been from Onondaga County, New
York, and that they lived in Indiana and later in Lucas County,
Ohio, before returning to New York to sail for California.

Family lore tells us Hannah herself spoke of Onondaga to her
children, and census records document John and Hannah’s time
in Indiana and Ohio. However, there has been no trace of their
parents, no suggestion of who their siblings might have been,
and no story of how their ancestors came to this country.

A Strange Story

As their great-great granddaughter and as a researcher, I have often
puzzled over their movements. Most families who moved to the West
either did so in a series of hops, each one moving further westward,
or they traveled by boat from the East Coast directly to the West. John
and Hannah’s move to Indiana, then back further east to Ohio before
coming to California has always puzzled me. Why, I have often asked
myself, would they have moved to Ohio for a period before going
back to New York from Indiana? The move had seemingly no expla-
nation. Ohio was not closer to California than Indiana was. Nor did
it appear to offer any great chance of financial success for the young
couple or move them any meaningful distance closer to their families
in New York. I added this puzzle to my list.

DNA Testing: The Double Helix
Edwin Ware, John Ware’s eldest son and
Having failed to uncover records of John or Hannah’s ancestry, I great-grandfather of Sandra, 1910
turned to DNA testing. Both my mother and aunt agreed to test, and
we had immediate results. Most of these, though, fell squarely into Figure 1: Immediate family tree of Bea Ellis.
another part of my tree, my mother ’s paternal Harness side, rather Photos of these individuals can be found
than her maternal one where John and Hannah fell. On this Harness throughout this article.
side, my mother and aunt had thousands of DNA matches, and the James H. Ellis
links to distant cousins began to emerge. To my amazement, just as Henry Orville Ellis
DNA twists itself into a double helix, these results would also twist Nancy Harness
and wend through the Harness family line and back to link to the Bea Ellis
Ware family line (see Figure 1).
John Ware
Edwin Ware
On that paternal Harness side, my mother ’s grandmother, Nancy Hannah Parker Elsie Ware
Harness Ellis, had a rich and well-known family tree dating back to
Mariah Williams
Revolutionary times. The Harness family was an old Dutch family
who had come to America through Germany. They settled in Virginia Beth shared many DNA segments with my
and moved south and west from there. I quickly identified several family, and our families had lived only 35
second and third cousins, including one that proved puzzling. Beth miles apart for several decades. The odd-
Harness, a third cousin, was clearly related through Nancy’s parents. ity in Beth’s match was that Beth and I both
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