Son of:
Unknown father &
Elizabeth A. Carty/Carter

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Who was Hopewell's father?

The story had been passed down in my family for many years that my great-grandfather Hopewell Carter, Sr (who was illegitimate, and was the only child of my great-great-grandmother Elizabeth Carty/Carter who never married) was the illegitimate son of "a wealthy Dr. Hardcastle" in the Caroline County, MD area. The story was that Elizabeth worked in their household, became pregnant, and shortly after the birth of her son left Maryland and moved across the border to Kent County, DE, and around that time she changed her surname from Carty to Carter. (In her grandfather's time, the name had originally been McCarty). Thus, her son was given the surname Carter. (Side note: all of Elizabeth's siblings seem to have also changed their surname from Carty to Carter around this same period, so her name-changing may not necessarily have been specifically related to her having given birth to a child out-of-wedlock).

The stories passed down (which were told to me first-hand by my great-aunt Agnes before she passed away, who was the daughter of Hopewell Carter, Sr) also included such details such as: 1) although Elizabeth moved away from Maryland to Delaware, there was still occasional contact between her family and the Hardcastle family; 2) Agnes named her daughter Doris after someone in the Hardcastle family who was wheelchair-bound or otherwise physically challenged and was named Doris; 3) there had been some male member of the Carter side of the family who had enlisted in some form of the military at one time but later had reason to want out, and the family contacted someone in the Hardcastle family who was able to "pull strings" to get him out, etc. There was also a story of there being a connection through the Hardcastles to a Delaware senator or governor. Well, after doing research, I found out that Governor James Caleb Boggs of Delaware (who later became Senator Boggs) was indeed a paternal grandson of Mary Elizabeth Hardcastle Boggs (dau. of Peter, son of Thomas J., son of Thomas H. of Castle Hall, son of Robert).

So...all of these stories seemed to make it clear that there must indeed be a connection between my family and the Hardcastle family. Therefore, once I got a copy of my great-grandfather's death certificate and saw that it listed his father as "Alexander Carter" of Maryland, it started pointing toward Dr. Alexander Hardcastle as being the likely candidate for being Hopewell's biological father. Especially since everyone in the family knew that Hopewell was illegitimate and thus could not have a father named Carter--the Carter having come from his mother's side--(and there being no record of the existence of an Alexander Carter, anyway). So, my presumption was that at the time of Hopewell's death, when the person filling out the death certificate asked the family member/members for the name of the deceased's father, they may have answered simply "Alexander" and the person filling it out put "Alexander Carter" in the box, assuming the deceased's father's surname would be the same as the deceased's. (Or, perhaps the informant willfully gave the full name "Alexander Carter" in an effort to avoid the stigma of Hopewell having been "a bastard" child).

(Side note: Hopewell was born 28 Jan 1857, which is six months prior to Dr. Alexander Hardcastle's marriage to Catherine "Kate" Louisa Naudain on 28 Jul 1857).

So, after many years of research and coming to the conclusion that Hopewell was Alexander's illegitimate son, when an opportunity arose back in the year 2000 to have a y-chromosome DNA test done (through a company called Relative Genetics, which had sprung from an earlier DNA study I'd participated in through BYU--Brigham Young University), and comparing my sample against that of a fellow Hardcastle researcher named Thomas (Tom) Hardcastle with whom I'd corresponded for a number of years, I jumped at the chance to solidify the connection. Although Tom descended from a line somewhat removed from Alexander Hardcastle's line, we presumed it would still be a good place to start.

Here's a link to an article from the local paper here (the former St. Petersburg Times, now the Tampa Bay Times) about the DNA test. (Note: there is a typo in the first sentence of the article. Instead of saying "...to prove that his great-grandfather Alexander Carter was..." it SHOULD say "to prove that his great-grandfather Hopewell Carter was....")--

Story: link.

Anyway, after that first test came back negative, Tom and I found another male Hardcastle willing to participate in the test, this one named Mike Hardcastle who lived in Germany (and was also an avid genealogist). However, his line was even further removed from me than Tom's--in fact, his connection with the Maryland Hardcastles was through an even-further-back common ancestor back in England, so the connection was quite distant. Nevertheless, we had the lab test his DNA against Tom's and mine. Well, the test came back and said that NONE of the three of us appeared to be connected within the expected number of generations. This meant that out of the three of us, AT LEAST TWO of us were likely "not Hardcastles." Well, at that point, although we agreed that we needed more male Hardcastles willing to participate (and, for the sake of Tom and I, we needed some that were more-closely connected to the Maryland Hardcastles), the number of living Hardcastle males descended from the Maryland branch were few and far between.

A few years later, around late 2008 / early 2009, I took another DNA test, through a "remnant" of the previous company--or what the previous company had evolved into--called DNA Heritage. This test produced very little in the way of usable results (my closest match was separated by FORTY generations) but it did inform me that my DNA haplogroup was E3a, later re-named by the International Society of Genetic Genealogy as E1b1a, and still later re-classified as subclade E-M2 of haplogroup E-V38, a sub-Saharan African haplogroup. So, this was further confirmation that Dr. Alexander Hardcastle was most likely not Hopewell's father, since Alexander's paternal great-grandfather had emigrated from England and would presumably not belong to a sub-Saharan haplogroup. (That is, unless Alexander's own paternity--or that of his father or grandfather--is in question).

It's unclear then what the genesis may have been for all of the Hardcastle-connection stories passed down in my family. Was it simply a misunderstanding over the generations? Could it have been misdirection on Elizabeth's part to hide the identity of Hopewell's true father? Who knows.

In early 2016 I took the DNA test being offered by Ancestry.com, and uploaded my results into GEDmatch.com as well. As of yet I've not made a concentrated study to determine if the results/matches can be utilized to narrow the field of possibilities for Hopewell's paternity.

Stay tuned!