Dolmage family errors- Jacob the NY immigrant

Question

Hello, 

The Irish Palatine Dolmage family has numerous descendants all over the world, including in Canada and the USA. One of the more familiar ancestors is Jacob Dolmage (the NY Immigrant) who left Ireland to travel to New York, some 50 years after the Palatines originally came to Ireland. He is reported to have had sons Jacob Jr, John, and David (1746-1824), who were loyalists during the American Revolution. There has been some debate regarding the family structure of Jacob the NY Immigrant and where he is supposed to be placed in the family. About a year ago I came across an interesting argument that the NY Immigrant Jacob Dolmage may have been the same person as the original Palatine emigrant Jacob Dolmetsch b.c.1700 who arrived in Ireland in 1710. I am hoping to get thoughts and critiques on this position.

For reference, the NY immigrant’s profile is at Dolmage-27, and the original Palatine emigrant’s profile is at Dolmetsch-2. There is a proposal to merge these two profiles.

Unfortunately, word limit issues have stopped the full question from being posted but it can be found here. If there are any issues in viewing it please let me know!

Trent

Answer 1

The Palatine Migration Project respects the extensive work of Hank Jones, but he could only base his conclusions on the evidence available at the time. The Project leadersship contacted Hank via email to ask his opinion regarding Trent's justification, based on more recent evidence, for the 1710 emigrant to Ireland and the emigrant from Ireland to America being the same man. We asked and were given permission to post his response on G2G. Here is Hank's very thoughtful reply: 

"Thanks for your email. You don't know how much these new discoveries and in-depth back-and-forths on the WikiTree site mean to me, having first discovered the German origins of the Dolmetsch/Dulmage family via spotting the emigrant on the 1698 census of Alzey - and then studying them since I was Stanford in the early 60's. Knowing now that so many of the Camden group came pre-Pery/Perry and showed up in Falmouth in the 1750s is entirely new to me - and what a THRILL it is to finally see a more-correct view of their history and zero-in on a better date for their arrival in colonial America.

As I mentioned in my remarks at a webinar I gave to the Irish Palatine wing of the Ontario Genealogical Society last year, the descendants of the 1709ers who arrived in 1710 in New York have it much easier in their research than those who descend from the Irish Palatines: because the NY group has church records WITH SPONSORSHIPS dating back to 1708 and Kocherthal's ministry, while the Irish settlers church records WITH NO SPONSORS GIVEN only start in 1742! What a challenge! That's why not only in the preface of my The Palatine Families Of Ireland I first mention - and then reinforce it again in the actual Dolmage section of the book. To reiterate: 

Due to the repetition of Christian names in this complex family, the gaps in years of coverage for certain church books (some of which are missing completely), and the lack of sponsors in the Rathkeale baptisms to help sort out relationships, a generational study of the Dulmages is extremely difficult to make, and what follows is the best approximation of the Dulmage family structure I can set forth at this time from extant documentary materials.

Trent - I agree with what you have said. I think available evidence points to your conclusions as set forth in your version of the family structure: that Jacob Dolmage b. 1700 and the Jacob who d. after 1781 in America indeed were the same man. My dear pal Eula Lapp's data on this needs to be corrected and updated. Thanks to you all in the WikiTree forum for your hard work and excellent efforts. I'm only sorry that Eula isn't around today to see these new developments - she would have loved all this exciting new material..

Best to you all - keep up the GREAT work!"

 Hank

Henry Z Jones, Jr.

Past President & Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists, & Fellow of the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society

When Hank sent his permission to use the reply quoted above, he also shared: 

'My favorite quote regarding genealogy is: "The mark of a great genealogist is his or her willingness to revise and reevaluate their own work." '

Answer 2

I believe many (All?) of the post-Jones source discoveries and a bunch of the analysis is by me - should I not be getting some credit for this? Just sayin' - isn't this the convention?

Comments

John, you’ve done an enormous amount of work on this profile and others associated with the Dolmage family, and this is evident from the change histories of those profiles.

The suggestion that the NY immigrant and the original Palatine immigrant are the same person was first made by Jean Ffrench in early 2021. The case for merging these two profiles was developed by Trent in early 2023. However, they remain as unmerged matches, and this is not a long-term solution.

There are thousands of descendants of the family, and it’s worth having the question on a forum where it will invite more engagement, rather than leaving it in the comments on the profile where it is likely to be considered only by profile managers.

---

I’m sorry you feel that your work has not been recognised. However, as a signatory to the Wikitree Honor Code, you will understand that :

Wikitree is a forum for collaboration. We add material to Wikitree profiles so that it can be reviewed and used by others, and this occurs as a matter of course. We do not add material in order to claim ownership of it, and we do not create profiles in order to control them.

By way of a trivial example, I created a profile for Mary, daughter of Jacob Dolmage, because Jacob’s profile recorded that he was probably her father, and included a source for her marriage. This was a pretty routine Wikitree contribution.

Wikitreers give credit where credit is due. Adding new sources is also a pretty routine contribution, and is recorded in the change log. The Acknowledgements section on each profile exists to give credit to researchers who have made significant contributions, and I know your name appears in the Acknowledgements because I listed it there myself.

Wikitreers treat each other with courtesy at all times. We do not accuse each other of “manipulating”. We recognise that when someone synthesises disparate collections of information to come up with a new hypothesis, this is a unique and valuable contribution. It is not “passing off” other people’s research as one’s own.

Answer 3

Now that we have Hank Jones' assessment of this, I think we can proceed to set up the merge of the two affected profiles.

Thanks to Mr. Jones for his contribution and thank you Kie, Gina, Trent and John for all your work on this family.