Misconstruing Caleb
(Author's note: Who'dat baby daddy?)
As always, rudely unedited.
I.
Man, did I make a mistake.
I really thought I had something, or rather, I wanted to see if I did. You see, I did what we all did about five years ago—I prompted my Ancestry.com search results by "filling in the blanks" to help me get things sorted. Nowadays, we just ask some AI chatbot to do this for us, that is, to extrapolate some sort of answer out of the primordial soup. What's worse, though, is I left it (that filled-in blank) "up" and just walked away—I moved on to some other rabbit hole or brick wall. I didn't bother to take that supposed guess down, and, even while flagging it as "only speculated," something happened.
It grew like a wildfire. Yeah, it spread.
Yes, all because I presumed to know an answer that was still very much "a work in progress" by "filling in the blanks." Now, because of this, there are at least ten trees that have adopted my ill-begotten conclusion. They have adopted my misconceived notion as fact. It's even spread to FamilySearch.org, where it has glued itself onto the Mayflower lines of passenger Edward Doty—just like a parasite, or at best, like some old dog with a bone.
Above: Harriet Hathaway Hampton's daughter Elizabeth Hampton Jones, and Elizabeth's great granddaughter, (right) my grandmother, Katheryn Ogle Record - Is it something in their eyes?? Is it that the undefined "Hathaway" regard?
Hey, I didn't mean it! Hey, I take it all back?
You see, it all started when I went looking for Harriet and her Hathaways...
II.
Yes, Harriet, or rather Harriet H. "Hathaway" Hampton, born in "The Quaker City" presumably on October 25, 1802. Yes, dear Harriet, my four-times-great-grandmother on the dreaded Jones side of my family tree. It all started when I got a whiff of her possible Mayflower ancestry through Harriet's Hathaways. I figured even if she came through some less-than-stellar, slave-holding, Bible-belted pedigree lines, she was darn well worth investigating if she would lead me back to Ye Olde Ship.
But honestly, following Harriet back in time has been more like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.
I won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that about five years ago, I postulated that our lovely Harriet's father was a guy named Caleb Hathaway, "lately of Philadelphia." My basic—and very unfounded—reasoning was that as dear Harriet was born in 1802, and as there were only two Hathaways in the 1800 to 1810 censuses in Philly, one of those happy Hathaways just had to be Harriet's papa. There was even a perfect slot in the birth order of Caleb's children that Harriet fit quite well into, and even a possible spot in the 1810 census that "could make sense" for it to be Harriet. (Though in retrospect, "that spot" is likely Caleb's daughter Mary). The other choice was a young Philly dad, a guy by the name of William Hathaway, but he had no female children.
So I figured that Old Captain Caleb Hathaway surely won the "who's your baby daddy" game by default.
Can you say, "Rubber Chicken?"
III.
So now I have egg on my face—egg that I have inadvertently spread on everybody else's face too. If you're out there, and you think Caleb Hathaway of 1801 Philly is our dear Harriet's father, you'd better at least mark it as "maybe-maybe-not," because that's really all you have. Believe me, I have run this forward and backward. I've tried investigating another alternative candidate too, a guy named John Hathaway who married a German gal named Catherine Kemmel, to see if I could eliminate him. I figured since Harriet named one of her daughters Catherine "Hathaway" Hampton, and also one of her granddaughters was named Catherine, and another granddaughter was named Maude "Hathaway," I had to be on the right track. Believe me, I got nowhere fast—even though Old Caleb and Old John's marriages are both listed right next to each other on the same page.
Go figure.
I followed the whole Quaker thingy too—it's more than evident that the Hamptons (the family Harriet married into) were big-time Quakers. The trouble is, there really isn't much to indicate that Harriet herself came from a Quaker, other than being born in "The Quaker City" and the small possibility that her maybe-daddy Caleb seems to have flirted with Quakerism also—though to be fair, the only evidence I have is that a verified daughter of Caleb's was super into Oatmeal Cookies. Nah, truth be told, our dear Harriet looks like some stuffy Anglican gal who converted to the Bible-belted ways when she and hubby Joe Hampton moved to Missouri circa 1835.
They even followed their Philadelphia minister, a guy named Ezra Stiles Ely, back to Missouri when he left Philly. They even named their tenth kid after this same preacher, calling him Ezra Stiles Ely Hampton.
Oddly enough, the preacher may have preached at the same church Caleb Hathaway lived around the corner from.
Does your head hurt? Yeah, me too.
IV.
Past this, there hasn't been much to go on. I've dissected middle names for onomastic patterns, but most of the middle names lead back to the Hampton side (Harriet's husband's) of the equation. There are a couple of surnames, notably "Matlock/Matlack" and "Christie/Christy," that don't immediately identify with the Hampton side, but they also don't necessarily shed any light on my "Philadelphia Hathaways." It is interesting how Harriet made sure to perpetuate the Hathaway name in her children and her grandchildren, all the while not explaining where it came from.
Sure, I'd love it if my original theory about the baby daddy being Caleb could be shown as true, but as more time goes on, the less true it appears to be. Chalk up another false Mayflower line connection for me. I will, however, keep at it. If nothing else, Harriet is fun to try and pin down. I'm sure that somebody left something "Hathaway" behind at the turn of the nineteenth century in Philadelphia. Plus, it gives me something to argue with AI bots about—they get very annoyed with me when I push the logic and restate the inquiries or case in another form. It's like the AI is screaming for mercy and saying, "Look, I've already told your dumbass human self that you're not going to find her this way."
Personally, I think the robots are just lazy and should work a bit harder gleaning the wheat from the chaff. (Lol).
V.
In the meantime, for sh*ts and giggles, I thought I'd post what pictures there are of Harriet's (and Joe's too, of course) children among what little "Hathaway" clues there are. It gives me an opportunity to look at this next generation of Hathaways and see if there are any sneaky clues glinting out of their sepia-toned eyeballs. I especially like the picture above of Harriet's son "Uncle Edwin" with the two babies on his lap. I want to say, "Uncle, I feel your pain..." As the father of twins from moons ago, I surely must have looked the exact same way.
So if you think of any "Hathaway" clues, be sure to jot them down, list them as "maybe-maybe-not," and send them my way. Whatever you do, don't be a "copy-and-paster" and misconstrue Caleb as a pater familias into your family tree. He was a salty old dog, and as much as I'd love to claim that our dear Harriet was his love child from another Mayflower momma, sadly, I may never know the truth.
In the end, though, it may not matter.
After all, I'm still, if nothing else, a Hathaway "of sorts" anyways.
Wink!
☮
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