Saturday, March 12, 2016

Tracking Family Immigration Patterns


Behind all the patter here on A Family Tapestry this past week, I've been working on my mother-in-law's lines. You may recall that's the family that made the move to what eventually became Perry County, Ohio, sometime after they staked their claim to territory there.

Though the immediate Flowers, Gordon, Snider and Metzger lines of our family seemed to stay put in Perry County for generations, that wasn't the case with the entire extended family.

Now that I'm tracing all the descendants of each earliest Perry County ancestor, I'm finding one interesting trend from observing both of our families: those who headed south kept heading further south; those who headed north kept heading further north.

In the case of the Sniders, it was a story of the northerners heading further north.

Fortunately, these families tended to move in groups and settle in the same community. Not only that, but when they decided to pick up and move yet another time, the whole bunch of them made the move as a community. Again.

That made for some easy tracking—at least on my part. Perhaps they all decided to scout out better farm land, settled on an area where the extended family could all buy a sizeable portion, and plotted their move that way. For the genealogist, that simply meant when the family disappeared from Perry County, Ohio, they showed up in Winneshiek County, Iowa. And when they were through with Iowa, they picked up and moved on to Fillmore County, Minnesota.

Right now, I'm following a genealogical paper trail through various counties in Minnesota. Personally, having never been there in my life—well, once, when our Christmas flight home from Ohio was cancelled due to a snow storm and we were re-routed through, of all places to avoid in the snow, Minneapolis—I've had to depend on maps to let me know about all the places these people were tromping through.

Using maps in new genealogical territory is a no-brainer. How else could you get a sense of exactly where your ancestors were moving? Once the Snider descendants made their move from Iowa to Minnesota, it seemed they kept zooming from one county to another—until I looked on the map and saw each move was actually quite incremental. Even the move from Iowa to Minnesota was merely a hop across the county line.

Life in Iowa and Minnesota must have treated these people well, for as all good Catholics were supposed to do, they took to heart that Biblical injunction to "be fruitful and multiply." However, unlike past generations, it seemed many iterations of the Snider line, there in Iowa and Minnesota, lived to see all their children survive to adulthood.

Yet, there were some other throwbacks to prior generations in their tendency to intermarry. I saw several Snider marriages to people from a Gossman surname—then a couple generations later, a Gossman descendant might, again, end up marrying a Snider. I can't wait to see how this cousin amplification will hit the DNA test analysis process.

Meanwhile, as my mother-in-law's extended family headed further and further north, my own maternal line began the long trek southward after the Revolutionary War, moving first from Virginia to South Carolina and Georgia, then to Alabama and Mississippi, and eventually to Texas—and some even to New Mexico—the southerners heading even further south.

Is it just techniques of farming particular to certain weather patterns that inspires people to seek out similar terrain and climate? I can understand snowbirds of our current era ditching the rigors of winter in Minnesota for some fun in the sun in Arizona's January—but then, that doesn't involve the hard work of farming. But I also didn't see any Nebraskan farmers forsaking their annual livelihood for easier plowing, planting and harvesting in, say, Louisiana.

Once again, I suspect that pursuing the story of our family history will lead to revelations along the lines of the hazards of daily living, 1800s style and even in pre-war 1900s. Learning our family history is so much more than just entering names, dates and places on the pedigree chart's blank lines. It becomes a whirlwind tour of the minutiae of daily living—the stuff of everyday life that we all take for granted because everyone knows it, until a new era dawns and it suddenly becomes forgotten.



Above: "Country Road in Front of a Wood," by Flemish painter Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625); courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

14 comments:

  1. I suspect a browsing of land for sale ads in the newspapers of the time would open some eyes.

    Also, the railroads sold land adjacent to their tracks from the East Coast to the West Coast - but I suspect they sold the most in the areas your relatives lived in - Iowa, Minnesota, Texas and places west.

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    1. Interesting approach, Iggy! Those land records are often an under-utilized resource for genealogical research. Using the search mechanism on newspaper archives might help pinpoint pertinent dates.

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  2. My family didn't move as much as yours, but it is interesting to note what was happening in history at the time, such as the opening of the Northwest Territory and creation of the National Road.

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    1. That's often what has induced me to actually (shudder) learn about history--to get the bigger picture about how and why those ancestors kept moving. Land offers of note could be another point of interest to check into--and have been, in some family instances.

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  3. I want to thank you for the story re: John Hogue.

    My Great, Great, Grandfather was Marshall Jackson. His service Revolver a .32 caliber (photo attached) was handed down through my Grandfather (also Marshall Jackson) to my mother and then to me. My Grandfather Marshall Jackson, who was named after and who lived in the same home as his grandfather, was about 9 years old at the time of the murder. My Grandfather had told my mother that he was the last family member to see or speak to his grandpa before he went to work that fateful day. I recently had the revolver worked on for preservation and am planning on putting it in a shadow box for display. The revolver still has the evidence number written on it. Whatever type of grease pencil or marker they used for marking it into evidence, discolored the metal in such a way that it became permanently engrained, and is still very legible.

    A few weeks ago, I took a few moments to search the internet to see if I could come up with a few articles on his service and murder to place in the shadow box with the gun. This is what led me to your fascinating story of John Hogue. It is interesting to me that Marshall Jackson was working as an Immigration Officer because I have 19 years in the U.S. Border Patrol. Our family believe he was working as a private eye and was possibly contracted over to Immigrations for transports, but we are not one hundred percent sure.

    The story I grew up with had a few similarities, but was changed through family lore; and maybe through some of my own memories of the story.

    My mother, Sandy, would like to contact you. She has done some extensive family research, remembers the story, as told by her father, and may be able to shed more light or add some personal family stories. We were all fascinated by the information you uncovered and the story you wrote. Thank you. Ron Aeirrowland@aol.com

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    1. Ron, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your comment here--and for getting in touch. I've sent you an email. Of course, I'd really appreciate hearing more of the story from your family. That must have been such an ordeal for them to undergo.

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  4. Wow that is an interesting turn of events re John Hogue! What an interesting story that will be.
    :)

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    1. Yes! I've done a lot more research on the Marshall Jackson side of the Hogue story than I included in the posts here. I really would like to delve deeper into that side of the story.

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  5. Fillmore County is a long way from me. Minnesota is no fun in the winter come in the summer:)

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    1. I would love to...but I'd like to find the sweet spot between snow storms and mosquito weather ;)

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    2. That sweet spot might only be hours big...

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