William Heritage is another one of those tricky ancestors who just bugs the heck out of me. This time I have chosen someone from my mother-in-law’s family, and William Heritage is my husband’s 5th great-grandfather. I keep going over and over my evidence for him. I have been doing this for years. It ought to be simple. There is a well-documented Heritage family from Gloucester, New Jersey, but I cannot make William fit in anywhere.

I have a fair amount of information from Ancestry.com, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Church and Town Records, 1708-1985. My husband’s William Heritage is the one that married Catharina Knaus (Knauss, Knows, Knoes) sometime prior to 1790. They proceeded to have four children together: Catharine Heritage, b. 1790; Maria Heritage, 1793 – 1800; William Heritage, Jr., 1795 – 1825; Samuel Heritage, 1797 – 1861; and Margaretha Heritage, b. 1800. In 1790, William is counted in the Federal Census not too far from his father-in-law, Joseph Knows.

What I really want to know, though, is where did William Heritage come from and who were his parents? He should belong to the Richard Heritage line of New Jersey – formerly of Warwickshire, England.

I have never found a William Heritage who is the right age for a match. Judah L. Heritage, son of Richard, had a son who was born in 13 November 1769, but that does not match the tombstone inscription. Some family trees show Judah’s son William as having died young. There is a record for a William Heritage, who married Susannah DeNyce, on 13 Aug 1771 in Salem County, NJ. Susannah died on 27 Aug 1774 and was buried at Old Pennepack Baptist church Lower Dublin Twp, Philadelphia, PA. They had one son, John. I would speculate that this could be our William, but the son John is clearly not in William Heritage’s household in 1790. The household is all female with the exception of William. Further, if the tombstone date of death is correct, my husband’s William would have been too young to marry in 1771.

The most intriguing part of all of this for me is that my mother-in-law’s autosomal DNA shows clear connections to other test subjects who have the New Jersey and Warwickshire Heritages in their lines. The identity of my husband’s William Heritage, with his unknown heritage, may just be few chromosome SNPs away from a breakthrough!