Edward Doolittle
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth:
Christening: 18 May 1588 - Kidderminster, Worcestershire, England
Death:
Burial:
Cause of Death:
AFN #:
Parents
Father: Humfrey Doolittle (Abt 1570-1625)
Mother: Anne ( -1592)
Father: Humfrey Doolittle (Abt 1554-1625)
Mother: Anne ( -1592)
Spouses and Children
1. *Elizabeth Baker ( - 20 Jan 1635-20 Jan 1636)
Marriage: 28 May 1609 - old Swinford, Worcestershire, England
Status:
Children:
1. Mary Doolittle (1610-1615)
2. Timothy Doolittle (1617-1629)
3. Abraham Doolittle (1619-1619)
4. Daniel Doolittle (1622- )
5. Josuah Doolittle (1623-1624)
6. Josua Doolittle (1625-1628)
7. Samuel Doolittle (1627- )
8. Abraham Doolittle (1620-1690)
9. John Doolittle (Abt 1608-1681)
10. Humphrey Doolittle ( - )
Notes
General:
Van Kempen thinks this was Abraham's father.
Edward's christening certificate identifies him only as the son of Humphry and Anne; does not say which Humphry. Van Kempen and Dollittle disagree on which of the three Humfrey's in circulation at the time was Edward's father. Van Kempen argues, I think somewhat more logically and with better thought through evidence, that Edward was the son of Humphrey the Elder the clothier of Kidderminster - and she, way more logically, has Anne as his first wife, with the four children attributed to Humphrey and Anne. Dollittle thought that because it seems most reasonable to think that Edward was some sort of laborer or metalworker it is more reasonable to think he was the son of a farmer than a prosperous clothier, which is her only good point, and places Ann and all four children with Humphrey the Younger of Aggborough, even though as Van Kempen points out this completely messes up everyone's birth dates and marriages on down the line.
Van Kempen thought Edward was the son of Humphrey the elder. Gillian Dollittle thinks he was the son of Humphrey the younger.
Of the 10 children born to Edward and Elizabeth, apparently only four lived to adulthood, John, Abraham, Daniel and Samuel.
The family lived in Old Sinford, Worcestershire, where Edward and Elizabeth were married, from 1609 until 1611, when they had a chiuld in Stoke, Warwickshire (on the outskirts of Birmingham).
Van Kempen cites Gillian Dollittle's idea that Edward returned home to Kidderminster to care for his father in the last 10 years of Humfrey's life. Edward and his family moved back to Kidderminster in November 1615, the same month as the death of his stepmother Agnes. A year or two after the death of Humfrey the fmaily again moved away from Kidderminster.
Van Kempen thinks that Edward was most likely a metal worker. All of the towns where Edward and his fmaily lived except Kidderminster had substantial metal/ iron working industries. He probably went to Old Swinford to apprentice himself and learn the trade. (Was that even feasible for an adult?) When he became 21 and would ahve been released from his apprenticeship (even if he apprentifced himself and had not been there very long) he would have been able to marry, which he did, 10 days after his 21st birthday.
After Humfrey's death in 1625 and the settling of the estate, Edward and his family moved back to Warwickshire. In 1627 and 1628 they were in Birmingham, Warwickshire, and in 1629 they were in Warwick, Warwickshire.
Gilian Dollittle thinks that Edward was the son of Humphry the Younger, of Aggborough, near Kidderminster, and his wife Ann. His mother died when he was four, but a stepmother came two years later and then there were stepchildren. Humphrey the Younger was a husbandman farming land in Aggborough.
There is apparently no record of what Edward's occupation was. Gilliam Dollittle thinks that he was most likely some sort of metal worker because that line of work was prominent in most pf the places where he lived.. Because he otherwise inexplicably lived in Old Swinford, near Birmingham, as a young adult, she thinks that probably he was apprenticed in Old Swinford, a town known for bottle glass blowing and metal work. We know he was there because he not only married in Old Swinford, but had his first child born there, which requires that atleast after he married, he lived there. The next child was born at Stoke, Warwickshire, outside Coventry, which means he was moving around and was not tied to Kidderminster.
By the next birth in 1615, the parents had returned to Kidderminster and John was baptized in the parish church there. Humphrey was now 55, and possibly was not in good health though he lived for 10 more years. He was a farmer. Gillian Dollittle argues that maybe they returned to help Edward's parents. Several more sons were born there. Josua (Josea) was born a month after Humphry died. Shortly after Humphrey's death the family moved to Birmingham, where their next son, Samuel, was born.
Dollittle says that metawork was the chief trade in Birmingham. Smiths made knives, many other cutting implements, nails, bridle-bits, spurs, and many small metal objects. Tehre were also jewelers and goldsmiths. This supports the notion that Edward was a metalworker but he could have done a great variety of things. There was also a large cattle market that supplied work for many tanners. Edward could also have been employed as a builder or carpenter.
One of Dollittle's arguments that Edward was not the son of Humphrey the Elder the clothier of Kidderminster is that a clothier's son would have been unlikely to be apprenticed to learn metalworking. The severe economic crisis brought on by a crisis in the textile industry could have led to Edward pursuing another path, and it further looks as though he didn't apprentice in Old Swinford, if that is what he was doing there, until he was nearly or completely an adult. He may have initially been taught a different occupation.
The religious names of the children suggest that Edward was a Puritan. Dollittle points out that Birmingham was a center of Puritan activity (though not of emigration to Massachusetts), and Kidderminster was a cesspool of iniquity. My own research shows that several Puritan writers of the time have preserved the notion that Kidderminster was a cesspool of iniquity, with ministers not necessarily devoted to religious work, and people playing cards and laughing on Sunday, and just going to hell in a basket, but eventually a highly regarded and popular Evangelical minister took up residence there, and the town underwent a religious awakening. More likely the economic collapse of the time, which was triggered by problems in the international cloth trade, would have sent people from the Kidderminster area in search of work. The economic collapse was also more responsible than the religious oppression for the wave of migration to New England. The economy recovered at the same time that the religious oppression ended.
Edward left no will that has been found, and I'm assuming that searches of the areas around Kidderminster, Old Swinford, and Birmingham were made. Gillian Dollittle makes much of possible reasons why his place and date of death are not even known. The times were very disordered and people were moving around, and Edward and his sons evidently more so than most. If Edward had left a will it would mention sons in New England if he had any living there, and might have dropped other clues to what happened to his sons Abraham and John. Unfortunately the will does not exist.
Dollittle writes that "the eldest son of Humphrey was known to survive and establish himself in Old Swinford", but it isn't clear what that means, nor how we know it. This could be another tradition like the one about Abraham and John setting out to New England from Biddesford.
Van Kempen favors thinking Edward was the son of the clothier. His baptismal record says only that he was the son of Humphrey, and there were two of them.
This requires quoting her arguments in some detail.
"1. I believe Edward the only son of Humfrey, the wealthy clothier, returned to Kidderminster to care for his father after the death of his step-mother and remained there until shortly after his father's death. The records show that he was in Kidderminster the same month as his step-mother's death and does not become established back in Birmingham, Warwickshire until two years after his father's death." In other words, the timing fits with events in this family.
"2. In this, the Abraham's family scenario, Humfrey, marries twice, once at about age 30 to Anne, Edward's mother and later to Agnes Huby/Huley. Therefore, being a wealthy man, he was very likely to take out a marriage bond for his second marriage in 1594.
"3. In this scenario, Humfrey the clotheir is born about 1554. Humfrey "the younger" is most likely to be teh son of Humfrey of Aggborough. This Humfrey "the younger" marries Alice Hardwick in 1595. From this we calculate his birth to be about 1570. 16 years later than Humfrey the clothier. Clearly the terms 'the elder' and 'the younger' used in the church records are tehn logical modifiers. And happily this estimated birth date of 1570 falls exactly within the birthates of his siblings of 1565, 1569, and 1572. Let us say 1567, making him 28 at his marriage, or 1570 making him 25, or 1574 making him 21.
"However, even this 'Abraham' scenario is not without its questions:
"Why would Edward the son of a wealthy cloth merchant become a metal worker?
"Also the name Edward appears previously in the Aggborough line. However, names often occur due to name poularity shifts..."
"Gillian believes we are descended from teh Aggborough fmaily. She believes that Humfrey 'the younger' is the same Humfrey who is the father of Edward, our ancestor and that this Humfrey is teh son of Humfrey 'the elder' of Aggborough. These men were husbandmen of the large Aggborough Farm. I find several serious questions with the details of this scenario:
"1. The logical compleling reason for Edward the metal worker to return to Kidderminster the textile town to care for his father, must be ignored. If we accept this scenario, we must accept that Edward returned to Kidderminster coincidentally with the death of the wife of another Humfrey (not his father), remianed in Kidderminster for 10 years, and left again coincidentally with the death of the non-related other Humfrey.
"2. Humfrey the clohteri would have had to be age 40 at his first and only marriage (rather old for a first marraige). He took out a marriage bond in 1594. A marriage bond was taken out as a rule for a second marriage of a wealthy person.
"3. Humfrey the clotheir is by my calculation born in about 1554. In this scenario, Humfrey the younger, the father of Edward, is born about 1558. [Not clear to me why] Four yeasr age difference between the Humfreys. Yet these 2 men are later called "the elder" and "the younger" in the church records.
"4. So in order to force this scenario to work a birth date needs to be stretched to make them able to be called "the elder" and "the yunger". Since Humfrey "the younger's" birth date is fixed in this scenario, (which is also 7 to 14 years older than his siblings), our only option is to move the birth date of Humfrey the clother back in time, to say 1544. But this causes a new set of problems.
"a. Humfrey the clothier is now 50 at his first and only marriage, and there is still the question of the marriage bond.
"b. Humfrey the clothier is the sibling of 1 of the 2 wives of Rauf Clarke. At this age he is probably too old to be the sibling of Ann so must be the sibling of the first wife Joane. But if this is the case, we must accept that their father Thomas would, in his will, leave an inheritance to a STEP granddaughter, but would totally disinherit atleast 1 or possibly 2 grandsons. [he wasn't obligated to inherit grandchildren and maybe she was a favorite?]
"c. Thoams the weaver, as Humfrey's father, now also has to have his birth date stretched back, to make him about 20 years older than his younger brother John the tailor."
"Ibelieve this scenario came about because of the assumption that the terms 'the elder' and 'the younger' must always mean father and son. This of coruse is not the case in this situation, especially with there being 2 Hufmreys "the elder" and 1 Humfrey "the younger". ... In this case the terms were used to differenteitate between 2 unrelated men with the same name in the same community. "
I have another question; how could Humphrey the Younger have had Edward in 1588 if he did not marry until 1595?
I am assuming all this is based on no baptismal record for Humphrey the Younger.
Finally, Van Kempen warns that there are problems with both scenarios.
In general, Van Kempen's logic is typically vastly superior to Dollittle's, and in this case Dollittle's thinking is outright loose, and Van Kempen's is better thought out, which is hardly unusual. Nevertheless in this case on has to see Dollittle's points. I think that all of the evidence is not in; for instance, the DNA evidence clearly falls into two clumps of people in Kidderminster with some sort of relationship to each other that goes a good deal farther back than relationships within the clumps, and that also branches in a way that would help put the lines together if enough lines of descent from Doolittle's in Kidderminster in the 16th century were tested.
Sam Behling has slightly different children for Edward than does Van Kempen, and I suspect hers are correct; the information is more exact.
The DNA evidence on the family group is consistent with Van Kempen's placement of Edward, and maybe consistent with Dollittle's.
Gillian Dollittle made some changes in her scheme of family relationships to bring it into line with the DNA evidence, but her rearrangement is only as good as her ability to reason logically in the first place, and I find some problems with it.
The DNA shows two systematic changes between Abraham Doolittle's line of descent and the lines of descent of Maurice Dollittle and the Irish Doolittle's, out of 25 markers, and three systematic changes between the two groups out of 37 markers. The Doolittle DNA Project argues that this supports thinking that the common ancestor of these two groups is atleast three generations further back.
Theoretically three degrees of genetic distance would be far more than three generations farther back. Actually the rate of mutation in family groups varies a great deal. Three degrees of genetic distance could represent three generations, or 500 years, and far most likely to represent two or three hundred years. What usually does not happen is for an established mutation rate in a family to change suddenly and radically from one extreme to the other, twice, within a couple of generations, or possibly we are to wonder what chemicals textile workers did use in Kidderminster in the 17th century, that would cause a higher mutation rate than life in the twentieth century. Abraham's line has 0 to 3 mutations since Abraham in 400 years, with an average of 1 1/2. If one leaves alone the problems in the Y Search version of Maurice's haplotype, the Irish and Maurice group have 0 to 2 mutations, with an average of 1, over 350 years. It is only reasonable to think that in 1600 years the common ancestors of these two groups had already probably been separated by atleast a couple of hundred years.
One must also consider that Y Search's (probably FTDNA) version of Maurice Dollittle's haplotype is significantly different from the version of his haplotype reported on teh Doolittle DNA Project web page. One of the Irish group has similar differences. It is possible some adjustments were made somewhere on account of different labs doing the testing of people who live in Great Britain. Clearly someone adjusted something for some reason. It matters which one is correct. Gillian Dollittle makes alot of conclusions that she can't support and is prone to fuzzy thinking, and the head of the Doolittle DNA Project, though more cooperative with other people than others of the genre, shows signs of excessive loyalty to Gillian Dollittle.
If Y Search's version of Maurice Dollittle's haplotype is correct, then Maurice is more distantly related to the Irish group and the Abraham group than they are to each other, and it is also the case that more than one line went to Ireland.
There are three lines of known Doolittle's tracing to between 1500 and 1570; a line of husbandmen of Aggborough Farm (a manorial farm of some sort on the outskirts of Kidderminster) that begins in the 1490's, where Dollittle placed both Edward the father of Abraham and John whose descendants went to Ireland, a line of Kidderminster weavers and clothiers that begins in the mid 1500's, where Van Kempen placed Edward the father of Abraham,, and a line of Kidderminster weavers and clothiers that begins in the late 1500's (with a death in 1606), from which Maurice Dollittle claims descent, and to which Dollittle moved John whose descendants went to Ireland. The Aggborough and 1500 line do not connect to each other after 1500. Maurice's line does not connect with either of the others after 1570. There are also stray families, children and individuals of the name Doolittle from around 1500 that cannot so far be connected to any of the three lines, which tells us that the Doolittle family had been in Kidderminster for some time by 1500. There is also a group of E3b Doolittle's who claim to trace to Kidderminster. (The main Doolittle family group is R1b1c.) Doolittle DNA Project hasn't so far told us more on who these were, but Y Search tells us that they trace to Kidderminster. We don't know if more than one family had the name Doolittle, which is possibly by medieval naming conventions, or if there was some nonpaternity event, which happened even more often then than now. A child was adopted and this isn't now known, a child was raised by another family and took their name, possibly without being mentioned in the family's wills, a woman named Doolittle had a child out of wedlock and he took his mother's name, or someone was raped or had an affair.
Gillian Dollittle interpreted the DNA evidence to mean that the Irish Doolittle's are far more closely related to her than they are to Abraham. She also interpreted the results to mean that she is as closely related to teh Irish Doolittle's as they are to each other. The Doolittle DNA Project's version of the haplotype of Dollittle's husband Maurice is consistent with that, and not inconsistent with thinking, for example, that the father and grandfather of the people who went to IReland was a brother to one of Maurice's ancestors. (See notes on John, husband of Joane Howell, born abt 1571, died 1629. I've placed him in both his old and new familes - and he could belong to neither.)
But Maurice Dollittle's markers are entered very differently at Y Search than in the Doolittle DNA project. Y Search identifies that line only as Dollittle, and conceivably it is not really Maurice's. Only one branch of Doolittle's with few members spells the name Dollittle. One must consider that Gillian Dollittle puts careful bars between herself and all channels of information on her line that one must pay large amounts of money to pass through, which supports the idea that the Dollittle haplotype at Y Search, which is a free database, is not her husband's. The haplotype is R1b1c and close to the Atlantic Modal Haplotype. 60% of the people of Western Europe are very close to the Atlantic Modal Haplotype, due to some bizarre founder effect in Spain during the last Ice Age and possibly some adaptive advantage common among that group of people, with the result that it is not unusual for people of haplogroup R1b1c to be very similar to each other by accident. The "Dollittle" haplotype at Y Search is different enough to belong to a different family group. Actually, it is hard to explain how some of the differences occurred simply by mutation within a few hundred years between lines of the Doolittle family. It is possible that this belongs to a different member of Maurice's family, who is descended from a nonpaternity event, he uploaded his value to Y Search because his motive for being tested wasn't financial profit, and noone is going to explain the discrepancy to anyone who doesn't pay out $65 to Ed Doolittle and Gillian Dollittle.
If the Y Search version both is Maurice Dollittle's haplotype and is correct, then Maurice Dollittle is more distantly related to the Doolittle family group than either the Irish group or the Abraham group. In fact if that is really Maurice Dollittle's haplotype, he may not be of the Doolittle paternal line. I personally used the English censuses and bmd indexes at ancestry.com to trace his ancestry to Birmingham at the beginning of the 18th century, and unlikely he is found there and wearing the name Doolittle by any spelling, and his ancestors didn't really come from Kidderminster. It would be unfortunate if that happened because Maurice's Y DNA is actually the only real proof that any of the group come from Kidderminster and not elsewhere. Maurice could trace by paper trail to Kidderminster but not have the family group's Y DNA if either there was a nonpaternity event in his line, which is not uncommon, or more than one family in the Kidderminster area took the name Doolittle, which depending on how that name originated would not be unusual.
So Gillian Dollittle started out by putting both John whose offspring went to Ireland and Abraham in the Aggborough line, and herself in one of two lines of weavers and clothiers in Kidderminster, which cannot be connected directly to each other. The Y DNA convinced her that Maurice adn the Irish line are more closely related to each other than to Abraham. So she left Abraham in the Aggborough line, meaning she left Edward the son of Humphrey the Younger, and she moved John, alleged father and grandfather of the Doolittle's who went to Ireland, to a position as the brother of her ancestor Thomas who was known to have a brother John, as yet missing from the pedigree, married to a Joan. John was placed in the original position on account of his wife's name Joan being mentioned in his mother's will. Dollittle considered that John and Joan were both very common names. The placement of this John in either line actually rests on evidence as shaky as where she placed Edward, both of which are shakier than the identification of Abraham of Connecticut as Abraham Edward's son.
Placing Edward where Van Kempen placed him, as the son of Humphrey the Elder, also puts him in a line that does not directly connect to Gillian Dollittle's. If she'd left John where he originally was that would put all three in three separate lines, which is not inconsistent with the DNA evidence, particularly as Maurice's line could possibly connect to the Aggborough line after 1490. John born after 1490 had a son Thomas about whom nothing is known, not impossible he was John a weaver who died in Kidderminster in 1606.
Certainly the DNA evidence is as consistent with Van Kempen's solution to Edward's place in the Doolittle family group as to Gillian Dollittle's solution, and I think Van Kempen's solution makes more sense.