The Daniel Wilson connection

One of the many mysteries I’ve encountered with the James Wilson line is how (or whether) Daniel Wilson of Henry County, Virginia was related to James Sr. and his known family. In several of the available transcribed tax lists of the late 1700’s he was grouped with the other known James progeny and relatives (e.g. James’ wife Martha, son Thomas, grandson James, etc.). Daniel owned property near or abutting the other Wilsons. Even more tellingly, his son Nathaniel migrated to Adair County, Kentucky with some of the other Wilsons (such as my ancestor James, son of Thomas Sr.) and lived near them there.

I have been working with one of Nathaniel’s descendants for several years trying to discern how Daniel was related. For privacy purposes I will refer to him as “L” in this post. L had done extensive research and was one of the first (and only) Nathaniel descendants to identify Daniel as his father. Many of the online trees and genealogies showed Nathaniel as the son of one of the Moses, but L found Daniel’s will that clearly established Nathaniel as his heir. L had also acquired extensive information on Wilsons in Virginia and Kentucky, some of which was quite useful to me as it related to our Wilsons. But he (as of last contact) had been unable to establish Daniel’s father or his possible relationship to James Sr.’s clan.

Based on his age, our best guess was that he was a son of James Sr. However, only sons Thomas and Moses were named in James’ 1777 will. This by itself doesn’t rule out there being more sons as he might have been estranged from them by distance or other issues, especially since there was no James Jr. mentioned either (although I have addressed this possibly anomaly in another post). L had not done much work with his DNA results and had never taken a Y-DNA test. We weren’t able to establish a good autosomal DNA match using the Ancestry.com testing, but given the genealogical distance back to James Sr. that wasn’t necessarily significant.

L finally took the plunge with a Big-Y test last year and his results came back in August of 2020. We were both surprised to see that he and I were not a match at all! He does, however, have matches with several other men one of whom is also a Wilson – which may or may not be significant. He is easily related to all of them in genealogical times, and well into the period where surnames were used. In fact, the Wilson match he has is descended from a Peter Wilson born in Loudon, Virginia in the 1770’s. The number of private variants each has (which represent mutations in their own portion of their Wilson line since their common ancestor) was consistent with a known ancestor in the 1700’s.

So it appears that Daniel’s connection to our Wilson clan was mostly coincidental, at least in terms of having the same surname. We aren’t related in anything close to genealogical time (hundreds of years) and more likely not even in modern times (thousands of years). But there are some possibilities to consider as to the relationship. First, Daniel might have been born to a woman married to Wilson that wasn’t his father (possibly due to an affair, or illegitimacy, or adoption). But the fairly close connection to another Wilson in a different part of Virginia belies this, although the same situation may apply to Daniel’s father or grandfather, for instance, which would have occurred earlier in a different part of Virginia.

Another possibility is that Daniel met up with our Wilson clan at some point, and became so close (perhaps due to marriage) that he took the Wilson surname as his own. Once again, L’s connection to another Wilson in Loudon, VA makes this unlikely, unless the Wilson connection there was also coincidental.

But perhaps I’m just trying to make too much of this possible connection. Wilson was a very common name in colonial Virginia, so the chances of two or more different Wilson clans mingling and even intermarrying were not insignificant. When Daniel arrived in Henry County he might have been initially attracted to our clan by the Wilson name and the possibility of an ancestral connection (which we now know didn’t exist), and thus settled near them and established friendly connections that continued in subsequent generations. It is also possible that is purely coincidental that they settled nearby and migrated together, much as the clans of Wilsons, Cooks, Stephens, and Martins did.

Unfortunately, the DNA results don’t provide any more clarity into Daniel’s or James’ origins as we had hoped. But having “negative” information is also often useful, and at least helps us prune the family tree a bit and avoid unnecessary research effort down unproductive paths.