The Trents of Colonial Virginia Tracing Their DNA Trail |
| The Trent Family DNA project was begun in 2004
with the goal of determining whether there was a family relationship
between Henry Trent of Varina Parish in Henrico County, Virginia,
and William Trent, the founder of Trenton, New Jersey. At the
time, it was believed that these were the only two Trent families in
the American colonies. Reality turned out to be more complicated than that. No relationship was found between the Trents of Virginia and New Jersey, but three distinct DNA groups were found among the people claiming descent from Henry Trent. Only one was expected. Since then, the project has been working to determine the relationship (if any) between these groups, while welcoming several other new groups to the project. A spreadsheet of the current project results can be viewed here, with additional information on the participants' lines of descent here. Groups 1-3 are participants who initially believed themselves to be descendants of Henry Trent of Varina Parish. Kit #42606, from a descendant of William Trent of New Jersey, has no matches with anyone and is in the Ungrouped section. The project uses Y-DNA testing, which determines whether men have a common ancestor through their male line of descent. The people within each group match each other and have a common male ancestor in recent times (although the test can't tell us exactly who that ancestor was). But the people in one group are not matches for the people in any other group, and do not share a common male ancestor with them. This means that only one of these groups at the most can be biological descendants of Henry Trent in the direct male line, and the other groups are descended from a different male. To understand how this difference might have come about and try to determine the true ancestry of these three different lines, we have to look at the early history of the Trent family in Virginia. Females do not carry Y-DNA, so the women in the family will not be discussed in this article.
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Early Trent immigrants and the headright system. Henry Trent of Varina Parish is the only Trent immigrant to the early Virginia Colony who left enough traces in the record books to be very noticeable 300 years later. As a result, people who can trace their ancestry back to a Trent in early Virginia naturally assume that he is their ancestor. But there were actually several other Trents in early Virginia with no apparent connection to each other or to "our" Henry Trent, and some of them arrived earlier than he did.
Genealogy.com indicates that several of these early immigrants were
transported to Virginia by someone else. This was a practice that emerged
under the headright system, which was instituted in Jamestown in 1618 to
deal with the severe shortage of farm laborers in the colony. It
became standard practice throughout Virginia and several other colonies.
Virginia Places has a detailed description of the practice. Under
this system, unsettled land could not be purchased for cash, and people also
couldn't just pick out a parcel that no one else had claimed and settle on
it. Instead, land was acquired through "headrights" - an entitlement to
50 acres of land for each person that they brought to the colony, including
themselves and their families. Headrights didn't have to be
exercised right away, and people often waited years before they claimed
their land. Once the right was claimed, a surveyor had to be paid to
record the boundaries, and the land had to be settled within three years or the
claim would expire.
Although unclaimed land could not be bought directly, headrights could be bought and
sold, and many people acquired land by buying headrights from someone else.
It was common for ship captains to transport people and then sell the
headrights for cash. Recordkeeping in the colonies was sparse, and mostly consisted of land-related transactions, lawsuits, the recording of wills, and other legal transactions. Births and marriages were usually not recorded, and deaths weren't recorded unless the individual left a will. Even when there was a will, it would only mention people who were still alive at the time the will was written, and were inheriting property from the writer of the will. The names of "transported" arrivals might be recorded to help establish the headright of the person who paid their passage, but after that the transported person frequently disappeared from the record books and was never heard from again. As a result, we can't trace the DNA lines of these other Trent immigrants because we don't know what became of them or who their descendants were. It's generally thought that the surname Trent originated as a place name, indicating someone who lived near the River Trent. It's the third-longest river in England (185 miles long), draining six counties in the English Midlands. Since the river covers such a large area, we can expect to find a number of different Trent families in England who are not related to each other and do not have matching Y-DNA. It's also likely that there were people who got the name from a different location with a similar-sounding name, or there was some other circumstance that led to the name.
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Henry the Immigrant. From this point forward, the original Henry Trent of Varina Parish in Henrico County, Virginia will be called "Henry the Immigrant" to distinguish him from later individuals who were also named Henry Trent. It was customary to name children after other family members, resulting in a confusing mess of people with the same names who were all related to each other, and also had similar names to people who might not be related. Using nicknames helps us identify the different individuals accurately. Genealogy.com's article on early colonial Trents has three entries for a Henry Trent, but it's likely that they are all the same person. Most sources say that Henry was born in 1642 (he testified that he was 45 years old in a 1687 court case), and he died in 1701 (which is documented by his will). But some sources say there were two Henrys, one who was born in 1624 and another born in 1642-1650 who was his son. There doesn't seem to be any actual evidence for the existence of two Henrys, and it seems more likely that there was only one. Some sources say he was born in Staffordshire, England (which is crossed by the River Trent), and other sources say he was born in Inverness, Scotland, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence for either claim. The unrelated William Trent who founded Trenton, New Jersey was reportedly born in Inverness, so it's possible that some sources are mixing them together. The date of Henry's arrival in the New World has not been recorded, but it is universally agreed that he is the Henry Trent who claimed 200 acres of land in Henrico under the headright system in 1673. The probable location of this land is discussed in a separate article. Headrights didn't have to be claimed immediately, so he could have arrived several years earlier. Henry the Immigrant married Elizabeth Sherman, the daughter of Henry and Cecily Sherman; some sources put the date at 1672. They had four sons and three daughters who were mentioned in Henry the Immigrant's will. The daughter's names were Mary, Rebecca and Susanna; the sons will be discussed in the next section.
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The next generations: Henry's sons and grandsons. Scott Zajac has an excellent multi-page article with information on several generations of Henry the Immigrant's descendants.
There
are many people here with the same names, so numbers and nicknames will be
used in some cases to help tell them apart. Many of
the dates are approximate. Here are the "standard" lines of descent, which
have some major discrepancies with the DNA evidence. The sons of Henry the
Immigrant are in bold font. There is no doubt that William/Ursula had a son named William, because he is mentioned in William/Ursula's will. It is very likely that William/Bryant is a different, unrelated person who had the same name as the biological son of William/Ursula, and has been confused with him. There are timeline differences too, with different sources giving birthdates for William/Bryant's sons that disagree by about 20 years. The Wikitree dates are used above, but we don't know whether they're any more accurate than the Scott Zajac article. There are issues with Frederick Trent too. Zajac believes that Frederick/Agnes is not the son of Frederick/Lydia, and omits this branch of the family from the article. Other sources say that they are father and son. There is no documentation that would support either claim. But the Y-DNA results indicate that Frederick/Lydia and Frederick/Agnes share the same Y-DNA, and other evidence suggests that they are probably the same person (see Frederick Trent article). In any case, he (or they) is/are apparently descended from William/Bryant, but can't be descended from William/Ursula because the Y-haplotypes don't match. Wikitree credits William/Bryant with a son named James Harvey Trent who is not listed as a son of William/Bryant in the Zajac article. But the DNA results indicate that James Harvey has the same Y-haplotype as William/Bryant, so it's correct that he is a son or other close relative of this family group. Henry Trent of Amherst 1724-1796 is not known to be related to the family of Henry the Immigrant, and his ancestry is unknown. He has the same Y-haplotype as the William/Bryant family, and is therefore likely to be a brother or first cousin of William/Bryant. Before the age of genealogical DNA testing, Barbara Marsh wrote a 4-part article presenting a plausible argument that he could be the son of John. The article sections are not linked together, and must be accessed separately: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. But he could just as easily be descended from one of the other early Trent settlers who did not leave a paper trail for us to follow. His Y-DNA does not match the Trent groups who can be linked more reliably to Henry the Immigrant.
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| Most recent common
ancestor (MRCA).
Y-DNA
tracing establishes the descent of two or more
males from an ancestor in the direct male line by traveling up the line of descent looking for the first
male ancestor
that all of them share, who is called the most recent common ancestor (MRCA).
If two males are siblings, the MRCA is their father; if they're
first cousins, it's their paternal grandfather; if they're second cousins,
it's their paternal great-grandfather, and so on up the line. Once
the MRCA has been located, it can be assumed that they have the same
male ancestors in the direct line going further back in time.
But this does not prove that these shared ancestors have been
correctly identified; for example, they might believe that
their great-great-grandfather was John Smith, but if it was actually
James Doe they won't have a match with males who were genuinely
descended from John Smith. The chart below shows the MRCAs (highlighted in yellow) that I have identified for participants in the Trent DNA project. The lines of descent in the project's participant information don't always show as many generations as there are in the chart, because I added enough generations from "standard" family trees to see whether they did or did not match their expected family members. The results show that Group 1 has multiple lines of descent converging on William/Ursula through three different sons. Because there are so many lines converging on William/Ursula, it is reasonable to assume that he also shared the Group 1 haplotype (until we receive information indicating otherwise). This group has an unexplained match with the Howell DNA project. Group 2 has 5 lines converging on William/Bryant (two through son Frederick, two through son Williamson, and one through son James Harvey Trent). We can reasonably conclude that William/Bryant is the biological ancestor of all five lines. But we can NOT assume that he is biologically descended from William/Ursula (who appears to match the Group 1 haplotype, not Group 2), or from Henry the Immigrant (who does not have multiple lines of descent converging on him at present). We can safely assume that William/Bryant does not have the same biological father as his three "brothers" in Group 1 (Henry, Alexander, and Benjamin). But William/Bryant apparently does share a common ancestor (possibly a father or grandfather) with Henry Trent of Amherst, who does not have a known relationship to the family of Henry the Immigrant. Group 3 has two and possibly three lines converging toward Alexander 3, as well as a match with a Trent line that never left England and one that immigrated to Canada. If Group 3 is descended from Henry the Immigrant, their MRCA with the English Trents is someone who is further back in time than him. 
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| Tentative conclusions.
There is not enough information at present to determine whether any
of these three incompatible groups are biological descendants
of Henry the Immigrant. If descendants of Henry the Immigrant's
sons Henry 2 and John could be located and tested, they might shed
some light on Henry's haplotype - or they might create more
confusion by adding more incompatible groups to the project.
In the meantime, we can make some educated guesses about the
relationship (if any) between the current three groups. Group 3 (the Alexander line) seems much more likely than the others to be Henry's biological descendant. The name Alexander was less popular at the time than names like Henry, John, and William, and he only lived long enough to have one child, which makes it relatively easy to trace his line. Group 3 matches with a Trent line in England and Canada which seems very significant. It is unlikely that this family line would match a group of unrelated Trents by pure coincidence. Henry Sherman (the father of Henry the Immigrant's wife) left legacies to only two of Henry the Immigrant's sons, Alexander and Henry 2, and Henry 2 was the only male who inherited anything from Cecily Sherman. It could be argued that this is a sign that Alexander and Henry 2 were their biological grandsons, and John and William/Ursula were not. This is certainly possible, but there are other reasonable explanations. The idea of treating all the children equally hadn't really taken hold yet in this time period. Tradition and the law favored sons over daughters, and older sons over younger sons. Henry Sherman had two daughters and no surviving sons, and only one of those daughters (Elizabeth Sherman Trent) had sons. The only grandchildren who received an inheritance from Henry Sherman were his two oldest grandsons, and there was nothing unconventional about this. There may not have been enough property to give a substantial legacy to all the sons, and it was desirable to keep land holdings in parcels that were big enough to be economically viable instead of breaking them into tiny pieces so everybody could have a share. As the oldest, Alexander was the "natural" heir, and it would have been socially acceptable to leave all the land to him. But it looks like Henry 2 was his grandmother's favorite - he is the only person called "beloved" in her will. He might have been grandpa's favorite too. In any case, Henry 2 inherited a nice chunk of land from grandpa, and most of the assets that grandma left behind. Elizabeth Sherman Trent also had a favorite grandson who received most of her assets while her other descendants got much less or nothing - it was one of William's sons. William/Ursula (Group 1) appears to have a genuine connection to the family as a social unit and may be related to them by blood in some way. But it's very doubtful whether he is the biological son of Henry the Immigrant. The unusual name of William's wife makes it relatively easy to identify him, and he didn't do a lot of moving around. There's no serious doubt that he was in the right place at the right time to be part of Henry's family. He named his sons after all the right people, which helps mark him as a family member. It's believed that his wife Ursula was the first cousin of Alexander's wife Obedience Branch, but it has not actually been proved that Ursula was a Branch. But the Y-DNA of the William/Ursula family group matches Group 2 of the Howell DNA project instead of matching the line of his "brother" Alexander. This group is identified as a Howell New York group, which descends from a prominent individual called Edward Howell of Southampton (Wikipedia). It appears that this match is due to Howell DNA infiltrating the Trent family. The prime suspect to be William/Ursula's biological father is Thomas Howell of Henrico County, who left a legacy of 8 pounds sterling to William/Ursula in 1696 when William was underage. William/Ursula went to court in 1713/14 to collect the money from William Blackman and Thomas Turpin (Genealogy.com, Geni). Howell was also a witness to the will of Henry Sherman, the father-in-law of Henry the Immigrant, so he obviously knew the family. Thomas Howell's line of descent can not be identified, but the timeline suggests that he could be a grandson or great-grandson of Edward Howell of Southampton. Group 2 (the William/Bryant line) seems
most likely to be an unrelated family that has been grafted into
Henry the Immigrant's tree due to mistaken identity. This
line does not match the other sons of William/Ursula, but does
match Henry Trent of Amherst who has no known connection to Henry the Immigrant. It has been speculated that Henry of
Amherst could be Henry the Immigrant's grandson through his son John
(Marsh
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4). If that's true, it's likely that William/Bryant is another son
of John.
This would mean that at least three of Henry the
Immigrant's sons (Alexander I, John, and William/Ursula) have
different Y-DNA haplotypes. Group 2 does have a match to Group 2 of the Childress DNA project. But this looks like a clear case of Trent DNA infiltrating the Childress family, and there's no reason to think that John, Henry of Amherst or William/Bryant have Childress ancestry. The vast majority of the Childress participants are in Childress Group 6, and it's believed that this group is descended from early settler Abraham Childers or his brother Philemon. The Childress project's spreadsheet for Childress Group 2 creates the impression that this group descends from John Childress who was born in 1759 in Albemarle, but the project administrator says that this is incorrect; well-documented descendants of John Childress match the main Childress group. Inspection of the land records show that the two adult male Trents in Albemarle at the time who could have provided the DNA (Henry of Amherst and a John Trent who is thought to be Henry's brother) owned land that was very close to Abraham Childers in the period from the 1750s to about 1762. It's very likely that this is the time and place where the NPE occurred. Henry Trent's son Obediah was born before 1742 and is a candidate to be the culprit during the later part of this time period. We do not have enough information to identify the NPE child. Coincidentally, Childress Group 6 has the I-M253 haplotype, and so does Trent Group 3. But they do not otherwise appear to be a match, so there is no reason to think that any of the Trent groups have Childress ancestry. This haplotype is Scandinavian in origin and was apparently brought to England by the Vikings. It looks like about 20% of English men have this haplotype. The other 80% are mostly R-M269, which is the haplotype of Trent Groups 1 and 2. Group 4 is descended from a stepson of a Group 1 Trent who chose to use the name Trent instead of his birth name.
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Cavaliers and Pioneers: a Calendar Of Virginia Land Grants 1623-1800 page
123 shows Percivall Champion receiving headrights in New Norfolk, VA in
1638 for the transport of Humphrey Trent and several other people. There are
no other Trents listed in this book.
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Other family history articles:
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Article by Group 2 Trent descendant Carolyn H. 2020-2024 All rights reserved |