New Cousins Discovered: An Ashton Gottlieb Family Connection Family
So the name John Sherrington Ashton has a nice British ring to it, don’t you think? Well, it should — my family immigrated from Lincolnshire, England in 1851.
But how about the name John Sherrington Gottlieb? Doesn’t quite roll off the tongue the same way. Still, through the wonders of Ancestry and DNA testing, I’ve discovered that he has a rightful branch on my family tree!
The Ashton Gottlieb Family Connection Started With a DNA Match…
Just the other day, I noticed a new, extremely high 4th–6th cousin match from a user named glgottlieb1. Based on the surname, I assumed the connection would be through the German side of my tree — but I was shocked when I previewed his small (10-person) tree and saw the name we shared was Ashton!
His grandmother was listed as Catherine Ashton. When I checked our shared locations, I saw that his father, Lawrence Emil Gottlieb (born May 6, 1907), was born in Philadelphia. In the 1910 census, I found the family — Mary (his mother) was born in New Jersey, as were her parents. She was 28 at the time, putting her birth around 1882. Emil was born in Illinois, with parents from Denmark. The pieces were starting to come together.
The Ashton Gottlieb Family DNA Connection Link
My great-grandfather, John Sherrington Ashton, was born in 1858 and married his first wife, Mary E. Warwick, in 1881. In my tree, I had four children listed for John and Mary: Blanche, Edward, Horice, and William — the earliest born in 1884. But looking anew at the 1885 Beverly, NJ census, I discovered another child: a daughter Mary, between 0 and 5 years old — a perfect fit to become Mary Gottlieb.. Mary Ashton was found in the 1910 census married to Emil Gottlieb and living with her family in Philadelphia.. The link would soon be cnfimred…..
By 1920, the Gottlieb family had moved to Baltimore, Maryland. Emil and Mary had five children: Francis A. (18), Clarence E. (15), Lawrence E. (12), Catherine M. (9), and — low and behold — John S. Gottlieb, age 3. After more digging, my wife Kathleen (aka the best genealogist ever!) found a death record confirming his full name: John Sherrington Gottlieb.
That fact, plus the DNA match, is more than enough for me to welcome the Gottlieb family into our Ashton line!
The Rest of the Ashton Story…
When I started my genealogical research, I only knew that my great-grandmother was Margaret McCloskey. My mother knew she had had an Uncle Bill who lived out near the Devon Horse Show in Pa. It wasn’t long into my research that I discovered that my great-grandfather had actually been married twice. John was born in 1858 and married his first wife Mary E. Warwick in 1881.
They had the following children:
- Mary Catherine, born in August of 1881—only four months after their marriage, hmm?
- William, born in 1884, died in 1953
- Edward, born around 1884?, died in 1902
- Blanche, born in 1886, died in 1904
- Horace, born in 1889, died in 1890
- Alice Matilda, born in 1890, died in 1932
The sad part of the story is that Mary E. Ashton died in 1892. A year later, John remarried—taking Margaret McCloskey as his wife. Between 1895 and 1902, they had four children: Violet (1895), Agnes (1897), John (my grandfather) (1900), and Madaline (1902).
By the time my mother was born in 1928, only three of the children from John and Mary’s marriage were living: William (Uncle Bill from Devon, whom my mother remembered), and the two girls, Alice Matilda and Mary Catherine… You’ve heard Mary Catherine’s story—in the next post I’ll tell you how DNA led me to discovering what happened to Alice and finding more Ashton relatives!
