A Y-CHROMOSOME MYSTERY: HENRY BAUGHMAN OF STARK COUNTY, OHIO

The documentary evidence that Henry and George were brothers is relatively good, although perhaps short of absolute proof.  George was a Revolutionary War soldier, and his pension application contains considerable information (see Sue Phillip's site).  In 1832 his application stated “that he was born the 14 Oct 1755 at Upper Socken Township in the County Northampton County, Pennsylvania. There is a record of his age in his father's old Bible … in the possession of his brother Henry in Canton, Stark County, Ohio.”  The only Henry Baughmans or similar names listed in the 1830 census for Stark County are our ancestor Henry who is aged between 70 and 80 and his son Henry Baughman junior, who is aged 40-50, in Nimishillen Township.  Our Henry had bought land there about 1811 (the NW corner of section 36), after having lived in Columbiana County, Ohio (where he was appointed a judge when the county was formed in 1803).  In 1840 there are two Henry heads of households listed in Stark.  One is Henry “Bachman” junior in Nimishillen, but since the household includes a male age 80-90 as well as Henry junior, aged 50-60, it is clear that Henry senior was then living with Henry junior.  In 1844, Henry junior had agreed to maintain Henry senior for life in exchange for land in Nimishillen Township ( read ). The other Henry Baughman listed in Stark was a young man (aged 20-30) in Perry Township, who would have been way too young to have been George’s brother.  Thus the only Henry Bachman/Baughman in Stark at the time of George’s pension petition appears to have been our Henry, and this alone is the reason most researchers have assumed that our Henry Baughman senior was George Baughman’s brother. 

In addition, George Bachman is recorded in the baptismal records of the Tohickon Reformed (Union) Church in Bucks County, close to Upper Saucon Township: John George Bachman, born 14 Oct 1756, baptized 28 Dec 1756, parents Henry Bachman and Elizabeth.  This is off by one year from the birth recorded in George’s pension application, but is certainly the same person.  Three years later in the same church baptismal records, Henry and John Bachman, apparently twins, are recorded as having been born 12 Oct 1759 and baptized 10 Dec 1759, parents Henry and Elizabeth Bachman.  The witness to Henry’s baptism was Henry Buchecker, while one of the witnesses to George’s had been Maria Eliz. Bucheckern.  The 1850 U.S. Census Mortality Index indicates that Henry “Bauchman” of Nimishillen township, Stark County, Ohio, died in February of that year at age 90, and that he had been born in Pennsylvania.  This is exactly the age of the Henry Bachman who was baptized in Tohickon in late 1759, and it is very likely that our Henry of Nimishillen is indeed the same Henry who was baptized in Bucks County.  So unless there were two different Henry Bachmans with wives named Elizabeth baptizing children in the same church three years apart, this would support the belief that George and Henry were brothers. 

George’s pension application mentioned that he lived first in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and then in Washington County after leaving the Northampton area before moving to Ohio.  Charlene Sponseller Dixson reports that Henry Baughman also lived in Cumberland and Washington counties, “close to Henry’s brother George,” before moving to Ohio (Bachman/Baughman Family, in Columbiana County Bible Records, p. 13).  Thus the commonly held assumption that George and Henry were brothers appears to be logical and defensible. 

As part of the Bachmann/Baughman y-chromosome projects, three descendants of Henry Baughman have been tested (two descendants of Henry junior and one descendant of the older brother Isaiah/Jesse).  Y-chromosomes are passed pretty much unchanged from father to son (barring occasionally random mutations), so they can be used to determine if two males are likely to share a common patrilineal ancestor.  The values (number of repeats) of short-repeating segments (called STR markers) on the y-chromosome are compared. The first to be tested was a descendant of Henry junior (b. 1788), participant O329 in the accompanying descent tree (Figure 1).  He was tested for 10 markers by Oxford Ancestors.  Several years later, another descendant of Henry junior (F43333) was tested for 25 markers by Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) and matched the first participant perfectly on the 9 markers they have in common.  Finally a descendant of the eldest son Isaiah (F48365) was tested and matched F43333 on 23 out of 25 markers.  This is within reasonable expectation of the number of mutations with 11 transmissions, and given the documented genealogy it is clear that the three descendants of Henry senior do indeed share a common patrilineal ancestor (i.e. Henry Baughman, senior).  The lines of transmission of Henry’s y-chromosome are indicated in magenta on the accompanying figure.

A descendant of Henry’s putative brother George (O847) was tested for 9 markers early in the study but had completely different values on his y-chromosome and could not have shared a common patrilineal ancestor with Henry in thousands of years.  George’s descendant does perfectly match other descendants of Johann Georg Bachmann (e.g. F36392 and F21369 in the accompanying descent tree figure; the lines of transmission of Johann Georg's y-chromosome are shown in yellow).  Johann Georg Bachmann was born in Canton Zurich and settled in Upper Saucon after immigrating via Germany in 1717 (J. Ross Baughman, Apart from the World).  Johann Georg (aka Hans Gorg/John George/George) had a son Heinrich born 1717 (according to his Bible records), and it had generally been believed that Heinrich was the father of our Henry and George (i.e. Heinrich was the Henry Bachman married to Elizabeth in the baptismal records).  The y-chromosome strongly supports the belief that George of Franklin, Ohio was the grandson of Johann Georg of Saucon, but proves that Henry could not have been a grandson.  Henry and George could not have had the same biological father.

Table 1 shows the actual results of the tests of the three descendants of Henry (in magenta) and four descendants of Johann Georg (in yellow).  The most common values of the two groups only match on 6 out of 25 markers.  In fact they do not even belong to the same haplogroup.  Haplogroups are defined as descendants of individuals who had a unique mutation, usually thousands of years ago.  The paternal ancestor of Henry most likely belonged to haplogroup I1c, which may be as old as eight thousand years, while the paternal ancestor of Johann Georg belonged to haplogroup R1b, which is the most common in Europe and may be even older.

TABLE 1.  SOME BACHMANN Y-CHROMOSOME RESULTS

There are several possible explanations, none very satisfactory.  The accepted genealogy could just be wrong.  Thus, our Henry senior in Stark County was not the brother that George was referring to in 1832, and another Henry of the same age also was in Stark County at that time, perhaps briefly.  This does not seem very likely. 

We can rule out that there was a simple lab mistake, since three descendants of Henry were tested by two different labs and had identical or near identical results.  Thus we are left with the possibilities of an unrecorded adoption or of an illegitimacy (collectively referred to as “non-paternal events” by genetic genealogists).  If Heinrich (the putative father of Henry and George) were born in 1717, as his father’s Bible records state, he could easily have had a daughter old enough to have had a child by 1759.  A common adoption was for a parent to adopt a daughter’s premarital child and raise it as their own.  This was done by my Baughman grandmother’s sister in the early 20th century, and my 2nd cousin did not discover that his “mother” was really his birth grandmother until he applied for social security.  Of course in the 1750’s there would have been no similar records for others to later uncover.  Or Henry (and his twin John) could have been adopted from any of the many other relatives in the area.  Heinrich was the oldest of a large family that included four sisters, the youngest of whom was still at home and unmarried when the father, Johann Georg, died in 1753. That sister would have been 17 years old at the time of Henry and John's birth. In the case of an adoption, the child's surname would be Bachman, but his y-chromosome would likely have come from a non-Bachman father.

Although an adoption remains likely, we must also consider the possibility that the Henry (senior) recorded in the baptismal records was not the biological father of Henry (b. 1759) because of an extramarital liaison by his wife Elizabeth.  According to J. Harvey Littrell, Elizabeth had been the widow of Joseph Frye of Springfield Township prior to marrying Henry Bachman (Littrell, J. Harvey, Lewis Harvey Webster and Susan Agler, Their Descendants, Including the Baughman, Bradford, and Other Related Families, 1984, p. 107), but since Henry was born after George, he could not have been a child from the earlier marriage. 

A more remote and unlikely possibility that must be considered would be that Henry was the full brother of George but his sons were not his.  For this to have happened, Isaiah and Henry junior would both have to have been fathered by the same man (not Henry senior) seven years apart.  We know from the Bible records of Henry’s parents-in-law that Henry Bachman and his wife Ester (also nee Bachman) were married in 1778, so we can rule out that Henry had adopted children from a previous marriage of his wife’s.  Henry (b. 1759) had two other sons listed in his Bible records, George (b. 1784) and Jacob (b. 1790), and we hope to find descendants of one or both of these sons who are willing to participate in y-chromosome testing.  But we expect to find the same y-chromosome in those descendants as in the descendants of Isaiah and Henry junior. 

Henry’s wife Ester was a granddaughter of Johann Georg Bachmann (and daughter of Johann’s son John George junior), and both the Bible records and will of John George Bachman junior make this clear.  Thus those of us descended from Henry (b. 1759) can still claim biological descent from Johann Georg Bachmann and the Richterswil Bachmanns, just not through a strict patrilineal line.  The DNA test results also mean that Henry and his wife Ester were not biological first cousins, as has long been assumed.  Perhaps they knew that they were not biological first cousins when they married, although at that time first cousin marriage was relatively common.  Henry’s son Henry junior’s first marriage was to his first cousin Elizabeth Oberholtzer (daughter of his mother’s sister Catharina Bachman) in 1811.

Abraham Baughman, born ca. 1750, is also believed to be a brother of George Baughman.  Abraham settled in Richland County, Ohio after also living in Cumberland and Washington.  In an 1880 sketch of the family (History of Richland County, Ohio, 1880, p. 689), George Baughman who settled in Franklin County is specifically named as a brother of Abraham.  In the future we hope to test a patrilineal descendant of Abraham to see if he matches George (as expected), Henry, or neither.  There were at least two other brothers.  John was baptized at the same time as Henry, with the same listed birthdate and has long been assumed to be his twin brother. If this is true then we would expect John’s descendants to carry the same y-chromosome as Henry.  It is also possible that John and Henry were not really twins, but that one was a natural child and the other an adopted child that were baptized at the same time (and listed with the same birthdate). There was also another brother named Jacob, since a legal notice by George in 1784 named his “brother” Jacob as his “true and lawful attorney.”  Unfortunately I am not aware of any information about descendants of either John or Jacob.

Even with additional tests and further research, we may never know exactly what happened in early 1759 when Henry and his "twin" John were conceived.  Y-chromosome testing can be a powerful tool for confirming or disproving suspected relationships, but it will not always be able to solve the mysteries that will be uncovered when the results contradict conclusions from traditional genealogical.

Philip Ritter June 2006, revised Mar 2008