All Hart               

(Author's note: Family history can be a journey. This post deals with a particular Anglo-Irish line of my cousin Dan Wells, and a couple of his ancestors I met along the way.)

As always, unapologetically, unedited.

There are times in genealogy when I simply become lost. Not in the usual sense of "lost." No, it's more like falling into an abyss of obsession, or one of those Through the Looking Glass moments of family history. It's here where some old ghost calls out to me across time and says, "Do you think you could tell my story too?" In response to such a beguiling query, I am then quite hooked. From there, I'm all in - and endeavoring to know and understand just who this man or woman was. 

                   

                                               

I can't tell you why. It just happens. Beware the old genealogist awaking ghosts.    

This week, that's been the case with a couple of Irishmen, "and theirs." It started out simply enough - that is, with me trying to push a line out to the furthest limit, and pushing it out to one Irishman in particular, a Mr. Hugh Hart. From there, the line moved onto Hugh's daughter, Mary Hart, and then bled over into Mary's husband, Dr. William Cummin, of whom further. I don't know what it was about Hugh Hart that caught my eye. Was it that he was an Irish immigrant to America arriving well ahead of schedule of the usual Irish immigration and who arrived in the mid to late 1700s, or was it the startling bequests to his family contained in his will, I can't say. 

Indeed, there is so much about Hugh Hart that has called me back to ask, just who was this guy?

Then there is a rumor of his poetry. Frickn' poetry?!?! Egads!

Really, just a wisp of a rumor about Hugh Hart's beautiful poems, which has surely been an intoxicating idea for any reasonable person or some wannabe genealogist like me to fall victim to. Yet it was hard for me to picture this guy, Hugh Hart. How was it that I was encountering a very wealthy Irish immigrant poet in late eighteenth-century Pennsylvania Society?

What had brought him here? How? Why?        

The accounts of Hugh are few, save for the airy recollections of his children or grandchildren or the notices of his civic-mindedness in the newspapers. I kept asking myself, What was the source of his fortunes? 

Okay, so I was a little curious. It's the nature of the beast.

And further, did he publish or leave behind The Lost Poems of Hugh Hart, still gathering dust on some backwater Philadelphia bookshelf? Can't you just see it? Learner-bound and sitting on some dusty antiquarian's shelf? I simply must have a copy. I've searched local library catalogs and archives in Philadelphia/Belfast for any possible poetry attributed to Hugh Hart with no success. Perhaps it was a family joke, or his poems exist only in the forgotten letters of his children...

I can only say that I wish I knew more. 

But my ability to research over and beyond the pond into the scarred and scattered depths of Scots-Irish ancestry is limited. I guess I don't speak the language. The only thing I can do about Hugh Hart is to record his life as best as I can, to notate it, and yes, to stumble.

But I do see you, Hugh Hart. I do hear you. 

Truly, though, old ghost, you simply gotta speak up a little louder.    

    (1816)  

                     

                        (1811)

Most of Hugh's life is gleaned from County Histories, obits, and biographies, and certainly not from any vital records. I find no immigration record or marriage record, though his 1795 marriage to Mary Ard is anecdotally well recorded. Still, you get to me, Hugh Hart. You are such a curious man with all your "poetic to-do" and all your seemingly great Irish wealth. 

You are such a curious man with all your unclaimed letters at the post office. 

Had you absconded with something that did not belong to you, Hugh Hart? Did you leave a family behind or rob your King and Queen?

For shame! lol.

                                 (1795)

I just cannot fathom who you were, old man. Show yourself, Hugh Hart.             

That you loved your daughter, Mary Hart, seems quite evident in your will. You seem to have wanted her to have the best of everything, and if I read the will correctly, perhaps even the lioness's share of your fortune. This tells me that you must have vetted her suitors, or, at least, in understanding your absence or future demise, compelled your sons and brothers to do so for you. 

You left her (in today's money equating to) over $50,000 in 1836. This amount was in addition to your other bequests. 

Not exactly a potato farmer fleeing famine, eh, Hugh Hart? 

Did you acquiesce lightly or grumble when she accepted the offer that she should marry the widower Dr. William Cummin, lately graduated from the Belfast Institute? Mary was beautiful. Why did she entertain this widower? You must have missed notating or thought it irrelevant (wherever you were) that he was, after all, a doctor. You must have wondered about him, though, that Dr. William Cummin, or taken in letters you tried to ignore from Your Family of Harts sent from the old country on his behalf. Did you live long enough to see your Mary consider this upstart? I have to check. You must have wondered what Dr. William Cummin could possibly know about life in America. He'd arrived so many years after you had. Did you live long enough to see her betrothed?  

Did the good doctor even read proper Irish poetry? 

Was he adept enough to appreciate Swift, or was he an acolyte of that debauched Goldsmith? 

It's been so hard to say.

                                                                     II.

The story of Hugh Hart may remain a riddle, but his legacy flowed directly into the life of his daughter, Mary, and the man she chose: the promising, but short-lived, Dr. William Cummin.

Of Dr. William Cummin, I will admit, I have been a bit enraptured too. He strikes off a branch of the Harts with vigor, quickly assembling in his own industry a dynasty of well-wishing late nineteenth-century Main Line Pennsylvanians. However, fate wasn't necessarily going to be kind to Dr. Cummin, and hence to poor young Mary Hart. Could you have known, Hugh Hart, that your son-in-law would die at the tender age of forty-two and leave your Mary with three children from his previous wife, the beleaguered Margaret Steele, and three by your Mary? 

               

Yes, there has seemed to be as much to know about the good Dr. William Cummin as there has been about his father-in-law, the elusive Hugh Hart. 

   

                            (1890)

So...I decided I had to get down to it a bit.

That is, I decided that I needed to dissect what records there were about Dr. Cummin to see if I could get a better idea of who he was during his short life. 

Some of my research here is ongoing, as my emailed queries haven't been answered just yet. 

      

     (1846)

I started out with his education, that is or Dr. William Cummin. It says that he was educated at the Belfast Institute, and so, believing that an ancient school like this must surely contain some record of his attendance, I contacted them. Unwittingly, I contacted Queen's University Belfast, believing it to be one and the same as the Belfast Institute. They replied that they took over collegiate-level learning in 1845 from what would have been called the "Belfast Institute" and referred me back in time to the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, which predates them. These folks were quick and kind in their reply, too, but sent me packing, and referred me on to the PRONI (sounds like a disease) and said that "some of their older records had been moved here 15+ years ago..." This is the "Public Records of Northern Ireland," and the website landscape is hard. The academic era I am looking for is likely the 1820s-1830s. It's anybody's guess what they might still have. Still, to know the good Dr., and on behalf of my new friend Hugh Hart, I gotta try.

So I've written off to the Great Halls of Belfast's Public Records in high hopes that they will take pity on an old man's inquiry. My electronic reply is that it will take them twenty business days from yesterday to "process" my request. 

One never knows what might show up. It is a bit like kismet, that is, genealogy. As they say, Stranger Things...

Still, I have to wonder, what brought you here, Dr. William Cummin? What is a letter from the Harts? What was the draw to leave the relative comforts of Belfast or Londonderry, Ireland, for a life in Londonderry, Pennsylvania? 

What did the Harts promise you?

In the meantime, it's been a bit less than dope in my learning much more about you, dear Dr. Cummin - that is, as I have scoured the web in search of "Dr. William Cummin" to see what might be revealed about our Belfast boy - and usurper of the daughter of Hugh Hart.

Oddly enough, I find mention of our boy William, and indeed mention of his father-in-law, the indomitable Hugh, together in volume sixteen, and mentioned in these other clippings of your life pictured below.

Did someone know something, or make up something along the way? 

    

(1818)

(1830)

Indeed, in the volume below:

However, wouldn't you know it, volume sixteen is still under its 1951 copyright and harder than "Holy Hart" to get at. The Google snippets imply wonderful things like "Royal Irish Pedigrees" next to "Cummin-Hart" and imply at least a decent fabrication of royal lines. Are they true or not? Aye, they certainly will make for some fun reading - if only one can get at them. 

It seems for now they will have to remain a part of Hugh, and part of William, and most assuredly a part of the no "tell-tale-hart." 

Crazy. You can't even buy a copy; it is so out of print.

    

A cousin of President Adams?

I mean, how could one not want to see these forgotten or forbidden pages? A delicious ancestry. Would or will those pages within prove to be a bust? In my spare time, I may go back and delve into what little clues there are among the snippets, but in the meantime, I have written away to the Mid-Continent Genealogical Library for copies of the applicable pages. I can't get my hopes up too high here...tracing the Cummin line back to the folks shown below would be a Herculean task. Still, why not see what they have to say? Perhaps some mid-century modern socialite may have revealed some hidden genealogy gems as yet unverified.

   

 Above: Winifred Cummin Westfall 

Whose mother was (quite curiously) Lavinia "Hart" who married Thomas Stinson Cummin - and likely the contributor of the pedigree to the Colonial and Revolutionary Lineages...

Apparently, Harts and Cummins were naturally betrothed even a century or so later.

Perhaps contained in all that Hart-Cummin chapter, there will be a clue as to The Lost Poems of Hugh Hart.

Aye, Hugh, I did not forget ye!

       

John "The Red" Comyn

In the meantime... There is the curious tale of the Cummin family (Comyn) and John "The Red" Comyn and the dastardly (?), brave (?), arrogant (?) Robert the Bruce. I mean, this is right out of the late Middle Ages, and abounds with murder and intrigue. Good stuff - in retrospect anyway. (Nasty business between the Comyns and the Bruces if you ask me...)

Is this what the old times will choose to reveal? To link up the Hart/Cummin line to John "The Red?" It remains to be seen as we wait for word from Belfast about William's academic records, and as we attempt to glean what we can about Hugh Hart.

I have to say that this is an interesting section in Dan's family tree. 

Heck, they've even made a few of the classics about these folks along the way. Stay tuned, though, this post is somewhat fluid, and I will add back into this blog post what answers come out of Belfast, or are contained in the pages of Colonial and Revolutionary Lineages, that is, if they, the Great Genealogical Gods, choose to favor me.

And, of course, if Hugh Hart and the good doctor truly want the story told.

🕊     

PostScript #1: Word received today that the Mid-Continent Genealogy Library does not have "volume sixteen" of the series above... they are referring me to the NYPL.  

New York??? Pray I don't get lost. 

PostScript #2: The NYPL was great to work with. The volume (16) of Colonial and Revolutionary Lineages is stored off-site, but they say they will scan the applicable chapters and email scans to me in two weeks. How awesome is that?