Showing posts with label how we are related or not. Show all posts
Showing posts with label how we are related or not. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 18, 2023

The Pinkerton Line in America & My Ancestry Intersect

 If you are a student of American History you will recognize the surname of Pinkerton.

Allan J Pinkerton, born in 1819 in Glasgow, Scotland, was a cooper by trade who left Scotland for America in 1842.  The timing of his departure from Scotland may or may not have had anything to do with his participation in the Chartist Movement in the United Kingdom at that time as he was a young man during it's heyday.

Pinkerton was a rather sloppy detective, playing spy among his ring of undercover information gatherers for the North during the War Between the States.  He went on after the war to form what would become known as the Pinkerton Agency and was working on a centralized criminal database at the time of his death that the FBI maintains to this day.  It is said that he died of gangrene having fallen on the pavement/sidewalk and thus nearly biting his tongue off, which became infected, leading to his  demise.  May be true or not(others feel a stroke did him in)but he died nonetheless.

As I've talked about before, I am related to Ellen Lewis "Nell" Herndon.


Post about her HERE.  Ellen was married to Chester Alan Arthur, the 21st POTUS but she died before he was the 20th VP under James Garfield and ascended to the Presidency when Garfield was assassinated.  However Ellen did give birth to three children before passing away-William Lewis Arthur, born 1860 who passed away from convulsions at age 2.5 years, Chester Alan Arthur II who lived 1864-1937(my chihuahua is named after Chester II's son Chester Alan Arthur III)and Ellen "Nelllie" Hansbrough Herndon Arthur who lived 1871-1915.  "Nelllie" Arthur is my 7th cousin 3 x removed........


To bring this back around not quite full circle, "Nellie" married a man in 1907 named Charles Downing Pinkerton(1871-1974).

"Nellie" Arthur Pinkerton died at age 44, leaving no heirs.  Charles remarried to Sarah Hunter Harrison in 1918 in Bel Air, Maryland.  First off  this second wife of Pinkerton is also my cousin as was his first wife, 
"Nellie" Arthur...

This second wife and Charles Pinkerton's were 2nd cousins(haven't found the exact pathway yet there)and his second wife Sarah Harrison was also a cousin to Benjamin Harrison the 23rd POTUS(again, I don't have the exact pathway mapped out for their cousinry).

Here's a much younger portrait of old Ben Harrison.  Currently my line to his is showing up as thus.........
As I have a metric ton of FFV(First Families of Virginia)Harrisons in my maternal lines I am sure there is a more direct pathway from Ben Harrison POTUS to me but this is what I have right now.

But I digress.......
Back to the Pinkertons.  I have done pretty thorough research and the conclusion is that the Pinkerton that married my Arthur and my Harrison cousins is NOT the same line of Pinkertons that Alan Pinkerton is from.
Charles Downing Pinkerton's surname line goes back to Ireland, not Scotland.

But in a twist of fate(irony perhaps?)there is a connection between Alan J Pinkerton and my ancestry.
One of Pinkerton's greatest failures which haunted him through his last years was his inability to track down and kill one of my other ancestral cousins, Jesse Woodson James, after Jesse shot and killed one of the Pinkerton agents.  Pinkerton had what seemed like a personal vendetta against Jesse James since when the company that was paying him to pursue Jesse stopped paying him for his services he continued to chase him at his own financial expense.  Talk about holding a grudge! lol


But Jesse James, my 5th cousin 4 x removed, is another story for another time.

Sluggy
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