The Todd Families of
St Lawrenc e County New York
One of the largest Todd families in St. Lawrence County, New York is that
of Samuel Todd (1780-1856) who came from Lincolnshire, England with a big
family and settled in the DePeyster area. These folks spread around a bit
with each generation, but remained mostly in that area (DePeyster, Gouveneur,
DeKalb, Pierrepont, Heuvelton, and Ogdensburg), but many came to Canton, as
well.
Another Todd line is that of a Thomas Todd (I think) from England (can't
remember where, exactly) who originally seems to have settled in Quebec in the
early 1800s and then moved on to Ontario where he dies about 1859 in Ingersoll
(near London, ONT). After his death his family moves to Massena, NY (some
may have been there prior), and from about 1860 onwards they're very prominent
in that area -- some of them living in Canton, eventually (1900s).
Thomas Todd (1823-1910) and his mother Christiana Cleland Todd (1799-1870)
emigrated to Edwards in St. Lawrence County from Newlands, Peebles, Scotland in
1831. He married in Cleora Uphelia Burt
(1855-1905) in 1864 and had three children.
Descendants likely still remain in the area.
My family descends from Thomas Todd (1787-1871) and Susannah Midgley (1786-after
1880) who left Bulmer, Yorkshire, England about 1828 and settled in Madrid
Township initially. Within the next few
decades members of this immigrant family were living not only in Madrid and
Lisbon Townships, but in Ogdensburg and Canton, as well. My particular emigrant ancestor in this
family is George Todd (1813-1889) who married Elizabeth (Betsey) Dixon
(1819-1873). George’s family seems to
have been troubled, and Elizabeth’s estate was handled by her brother rather
than her husband (who is recorded in the probate record, along with the three
children who moved to McHenry County, Illinois in the 1860s, and the daughter
and three sons who remained in New York.
The two youngest sons were given care as wards by the court in 1873, and
in 1875 were given into the care of one of their older cousins, a son of
George’s sister Mary Margaret Todd Fisher (1809-1884). My ancestor in George’s family is William
Henry Todd (1851-1893) who marries Pamelia Gillett (1852-1921). It took decades to make the link between
William and his father, but ultimately, autosomal DNA matches between myself
and my sister to many descendants of Elizabeth Dixon’s maternal and paternal lineages
made the connection obvious. My yDNA is
also links me to a descendant of another son of George Todd as well as three
other descendants of William Todd — known close cousins. The genealogy was complicated because three
sons of Thomas Todd and Susannah Midgley each had sons named William born in that
part of New York about 1850. Emigrant
son William Todd (1822-1915) had William H. Todd (1851-1924) who married Mary
Jane White (1855-1945) and who is well-referenced. So
he was obviously not my ancestor. Emigrant
son Thomas Todd (1815-1897) had a son William born in 1850 and not listed as a
survivor in his father’s obituary in 1897.
This pre-1897 death for Thomas’ son William could have been the reason some
in our family concluded that Thomas was our ancestor. Thomas married Jane O’Hara (1836-1922), and I
have yet to find even a single autosomal match to any of Thomas’ descendants
nor to any of Jane O’Hara’s paternal or maternal lineages. Thus, the likelihood of that being my lineage
is slim.
My family’s yDNA appears to form a unique haplotype amongst Yorkshire
Todds. To date, there are four male Todds in our family referenced by the Todd Project of
Family Tree DNA and all are in the lineage of George Todd (1813-1889). My 1st cousin George William Todd
lll (1943-2022) only had a small subset of his yDNA analyzed by
a National Geographic Survey, but
he seems to match the rest of us in our haplotype. Myself, Carroll Robert Todd (1945-2023), and
Nathaniel Earl Todd (1991-) have all taken an updated yDNA test that sampled
much more of the yDNA genome. The
conclusions for the three of us match expectations based on genealogical
expectations, and the mutations which distinguish each of us are consistent
with our generational distances. However,
there are several other yDNA matches to our family from folks with non-Todd
surnames, all with family origins from Yorkshire — for example, Foss (Brian,
Craig, and Raymond), Sean Moorehouse, Foxton (Herbert and Harold), and Richard Mainwaring
Laing. The extent of mutations in our
respective yDNA profiles suggest that we perhaps share common ancestors in the
1700s, but the timing and explanation for such a connection has yet to be
established. Thorough yDNA analyses are
needed from deeper in our respective genealogical histories to help clarify
this. I’m looking to find direct male
descendants in our Todd lineages from Yorkshire who I can encourage to have
their DNA analyzed. Analyses from addition
male cousins from more recently diverged lineages would also be useful, but
won’t clarify when the historical source of our unique (amongst Yorkshire
Todds, at least) yDNA haplotypes occurred.