The Hagan Line

If you shake my family tree . . . well, Hagans are going to be falling out everywhere!!

Seriously, if not for the Hagan family, well, yours truly (me, if you weren't paying attention) wouldn't be here . . . and neither would any of the other members of my family.

In order of no importance, at least not yet, the following Hagans are responsible for, well, me, my siblings, my mother, aunts, uncles, and a good number of cousins . . .

Rosena Hagan
Elizabeth Hagan
Benjamin Hagan
Bennett Hagan
James Hagan
Tabitha Hagan
Enoch Hagan
Thomas "The Immigrant" Hagan
Thomas Hagan II
George Hagan

That's ten Hagans in all. Talk about your twisted roots.

Seriously!

In order to track generations, and to verify that siblings (eeewww) and or first cousins (eeewwww) didn't marry, I had to create an Excel worksheet . . . and color code it to track the generations (five in all, seven if you track down to Miles Nicholas Boone, the son of William Henry Boone and Rosena Hagan) of Hagans that eventually led up to, or down to if tracking through the years, me.

The Hagan name, at least for my tree, ended with the marriage of Rosena Hagan to William Henry Boone.

Rosena's parents were Enoch Hagan and Tabitha Hagan (her surname and married name - more on this in a bit). William Henry's parents were Walter "Watty" Boone and Elizabeth Hagan. Uh-huh, you read that right.

So, Tabitha Hagan, mother to my Rosena, didn't have to change her monogrammed handkerchiefs, nor did she have to change her surname. Lucky woman! She was the daughter of James Hagan and Monica Johnson. Enoch Hagan, Tabitha's husband, was the son of Bennett Hagan and Ann (surname unknown). Yes, there is a familial connection between Enoch and Tabitha . . . beyond their marriage. No, they're not siblings or first cousins.

But, I, like Sophia Petrillo on the Golden Girls many times before me, digress. The end of the Hagan line in my family tree happened when Rosena Hagan married William Henry Boone. They had eight children: Edward, Elizabeth, John, Thomas, William, Ann Catherine, Charles Henry, and my ancestor (2 x great grand father) Miles Nicholas Boone.

So, now that I've somewhat filled you in about the Hagan line, I'll give you the descent as I've researched it, along with the help of fellow Hagan cousins . . .

First Generation: Thomas "The Immigrant" Hagan (1645) - m - May Aisquith (1645). They had the following children: William, James, Ignatius, Thomas, Mary, Sarah, Charity, and Ann (the bolded names are direct ancestors of mine).

Second Generation:
James Hagan (1670) - m - Elizabeth Langworth (1674) ~ they had the following children: William, Mary, and Elizabeth
Thomas Hagan (1683) - m - Sarah Mudd (1684) ~ they had the following children: Thomas, Ignatius, James, Mary, Rebecca, Eleanor, Basil, and Benjamin.
Sarah Hagan (1673) - m - Richard Edelen ~ they had the following child: Jane.

Third Generation:
Elizabeth Hagan (1700) - m - John Blandford ~ they had the following children: Sarah, Monica, and James.
James Hagan (1725) - m - Monica Johnson ~ they had the following children: Mary, Edward, Susannah, Sarah, Aliege, James Jr., Tabitha, and Clement.
Benjamin Hagan (1721) - m - Monica Blandford (this would be his cousin Elizabeth, who married John Blandford, daughter) ~ they had the following children: Benedict, Edward, Elenor, John Christopher, Rachel, Wilfred, Nicholas, and Elizabeth.
Jane Edelen (1713) - m - Thomas Boarman Sr. ~ they had the following children: Mary, Thomas James, Edward, John, and Raphael.

Fourth Generation:
Monica Blandford (1725) - m - Benjamin Hagan ~ they had the following children: Benedict, Edward, Elenor, John Christopher, Rachel, Wilfred, Nicholas, and Elizabeth. As you can tell by this marriage, the generations (third and fourth) cross lines. This happened often due to the number of children and the large age range, so that a younger child of a second generation (i.e., the child is third generation) might marry a child of their cousin, with such child now being the fourth generation).
Tabitha Hagan (1774) - m - Enoch Hagan (1770) ~ they had the following children: Valentine, Louisa, Nathaniel, Matilda, Catherine, Austin, Edward, Mary, and Rosena.
Elizabeth Hagan (1771) - m - Walter Boone (1757) ~ they had the following child: William Henry
Mary Boarman (1730) - m - Charles Boone (1710) [these are the parents of Walter who married Elizabeth Hagan] ~ so, you know, they had the following children: James, Catherine, John, Henrietta, Walter, Henry, Charles II, Ann, Sarah, and Eleanor.

Fifth Generation:
Elizabeth Hagan (1771) - m - Walter Boone (1757) ~ they had the following child: William Henry.
Rosena Hagan (1818) - m - William Henry Boone (1820) ~ they had the following children: Edward, Elizabeth, John, Thomas, William, Ann Catherine, Charles Henry, and Miles Nicholas (1851).

And thus, the name Hagan fades from my family tree. You can also see why I needed an Excel worksheet to track the relationship between the various Hagans.

If you'll note, I didn't do much with Enoch Hagan. I know his father was Bennett Hagan, and his mother Ann (surname unknown). Bennett's mother was Magdalen (surname unknown). There was a theory that Magdalen Hagan was the second wife of Ignatius Hagan, son of Thomas "The Immigrant" Hagan. Further research by Hagan cousins determined this was not the case. The best guess is that she married either William, son of Ignatius, or one of the other James Hagans since a wife for either of these two hasn't been located. Whatever the case, Bennett Hagan married Ann (surname unknown) and they had the following children: Enoch, Sarah, Eleanor, Randolph, James, Treasy, and John. And, as already pointed out, Enoch married Tabitha.

For my cousins, a more detailed document containing census records, marriages/children of siblings, last wills and testaments, and other information will follow . . . at some point!

S

When an "L" is not an "L" but actually an "S"

I have this ancestor Lurannah . . .

Say What?

Yes, you read it right L-u-r-a-n-n-a-h! It's not the first - Leodicia - odd name - Huldah - I've come across while dancing with the ancestors, and I'm sure it's not the last odd name I'll come across in my research. But . . .

. . . while emailing back and forth with someone also researching the Masterson line in my family tree, she pointed out something I knew, but didn't take into account: more often than not, transcribers of records misinterpreted the letter "S" as an "L" which is why the name Lemuel is such a common occurrence. Lemuel is the misinterpretation of . . . Samuel.

You see, the cursive "S" and "L" were quite similar to each other . . .

. . . in fact, on one Census Record, my great-grandfather John L. Smith is listed as, you guessed it, John S. Smith. So, that finding alone should have clued me in. Well, it didn't.

So, dear ancestress Lurannah is, most likely, dear ancestress Susannah!

Ahhhhh! Did the light bulb go off in your head?

What does this mean? Well, what it means, at least in my warped little world, is that any instance where I've come across Lurannah or even Lewrannah, I'm going to go back and change my search parameters to search for Susannah and see what I come up with. The same thing goes for anytime I come across an ancestor named Lemuel . . . which is probably Samuel.

So, as you're dancing with the ancestors and looking at old records, remember that an "L" might be an "S" or an "S" might be an "L" and a simple change in those letters, or others, might turn up different search results!

S