My DNA test lead me to discover that I had small but as expected DNA matches with distant cousins who all had links back to Tudhoe (pronounced TUDDER), just 5 miles south of Durham City in County Durham. Together we realised that, as the cousins were all descended from the Harrison Family, who farmed in the area in 1860, for me to have a DNA match with them, the mother of Jane Adamson, my great grandmother, born 11th January 1860, must have had a liaison with one of the Harrison family, four brothers, a sister and their parents. Jane's birth certificate does not show the name of the father. Possibly Ann didn't know or possibly she was encouraged to keep it a secret. At the time Ann was living at the Black Horse pub in Tudhoe, run by her father, now the Black Horse Inn & Pitman’s Grill Restaurant.
One of the brothers, Francis, born 1841, was about the same age as Jane's mother, Ann Adamson, so we favour him as the suspected father. It might possibly have been Francis's father, of course. The four other brothers were all born between 1828 and 1843. Further DNA research is planned. The eldest brother was married and living in Durham city by 1851.
Ann spent the rest of her life with Edwin Potter, listed on the 1861 census as a blacksmith, born in Banbury, Oxfordshire, to George and Mary Potter, boarding with the Brough family at 7, Mount Pleasant, Tudhoe. (31 people are listed at this address.) Both George Potter and Joseph Brough were bricklayers. (In 1851 Edwin was listed as being an Iron Moulder (age 12!), so it can be assumed that he was an industrial blacksmith, rather than a horse blacksmith. It seems likely that he worked at Tudhoe Iron Works, built in 1853, owned by Weardale Iron and Coal Company. Forges and rolling mills were built, and collieries were opened.
In 1861 the company began to make steel by the Bessemer process in Tudhoe, the first to do so in northern England. The Iron works closed in 1901.
They married in March 1863, by which time Ann's daughter would have been 3. On the 1871 census Jane is still using the surname Adamson, so it seems that Edwin knew he wasn't Jane's father. We have no knowledge of when Edwin and Ann got together, whether before, during or after the pregnancy. They had further daughters together.
A census entry for Jane in 1881 has not been found. She seems to have lived as their daughter until leaving home. One of her future sisters, Lydia, a nurse, born in 1869, later became the wife of Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, heir to the family chocolate empire. No evidence of contact between Jane and Lydia after 1880 has been found.
In 2019 I visited the area around the Harrison farmhouse, Cocken Lane.
2023 update:
I've had two DNA tests, which I believe show that Edwin Potter was not the father of Jane Adamson, even though Jane lived with Edwin and his eventual wife, Jane's mother Ann. My DNA matches 5 descendants of a member of the Harrison family, farmers in Tudhoe, Durham, in 1860. We are all convinced that Francis Harrison (or very slightly possibly his elderly father!) is the father of Jane, my great grandmother. Jane's birth certificate leaves the father's name blank. (Also, my DNA does not match any of Edwin's siblings, although that is quite reasonable.)
Jane's half-sister, Lydia Potter eventually married Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, heir to the Rowntree chocolate fortune!