Finding the Way

 

Searching for an ancestor like Elizabeth Plummer brings with it challenges not encountered in the usual genealogical research. That is for one specific reason: Elizabeth lived in the 1600s in colonial Maryland, not in the more modern era of multiple government-mandated records. When digging into a new research arena such as this, it's best to get some help in finding the way to such centuries-old documents.

While I've had plenty of experience following the trail of more recent ancestors in places like Ohio or Virginia, it's been a rare ancestor for whom the foray has led to Maryland. Venturing into colonial records for such ancestors brings me even more of a challenge.

My first inclination, in heading into unfamiliar research territory, is to look to the FamilySearch wiki. But I don't simply take that step; there are ample ways to get lost in all the diversions awaiting us at that front door. Rather than that, I use a different tactic: I Google what I want to find within the wiki by using it as a subheading. Thus, I might search for "FamilySearch wiki colonial Maryland." That search approach allows me to pick the links I want to follow, then examine each one individually.

Just in a few minutes' exploration, I discovered several useful links, all at FamilySearch.org, to bookmark for this month's exploration of Elizabeth Plummer's family.

Unsurprisingly, a wiki article headlined "Maryland Colonial Records" provided links to specific record sets held at FamilySearch.org. But it also included a helpful synopsis of colonial history in Maryland, particularly exploring the political background impacting land and church records with changing regimes. In addition, this link also included a bibliography of helpful books providing abstracts of key record sets.

My search also provided a list of links under the wiki headline, "Maryland Online Genealogy Records." It's a snap I won't be traveling to Maryland anytime soon, so "online" is my favorite word right now. This wiki page provides subheadings for types of records, such as vital records, land records, biographies, cemetery records, and some items I'm keenly interested in, such as probate and tax records.

For those appreciating a more in-depth review, the wiki "Maryland History" provides a timeline of colonial and early state history, including the border disputes leading up the the drawing of the Mason-Dixon Line. In addition, this wiki page provides a bibliography of useful books on Maryland history, for those who appreciate a more detailed accounting of what life was like for their Maryland ancestors.

To widen the lens even further, the FamilySearch wiki on United States Colonial Records provides a broader picture of the widespread immigration which occurred from the colonial era onward. Particularly useful on this page is the chart labeled "Thirteen Colonies Records at a Glance," which provides earliest dates of availability for church records, land records, and court records for each of the thirteen original colonies.

Of course, outside the many records compiled at FamilySearch.org, there is the Maryland State Archives itself, including the featured online items there.

All told, while that will involve a lot of searching and evaluation of records, a list like that provides enough wiggle room for me to surely find more on the family of my mother-in-law's sixth great-grandmother Elizabeth Plummer.   

Just Because we Can

 

There are some ancestors we research simply because we can. Elizabeth Plummer is such a case. My mother-in-law's sixth great-grandmother, Elizabeth was an antecedent of William Ijams, the more-recent fourth great-grandfather in my mother-in-law's line whom I've long since traced from his native Maryland to Fairfield County, Ohio.

The Ijams roots, fortunately, have been recorded in various genealogy books over the years, providing the help of a trailblazer to point the way. As we've seen last month, however, there is always the possibility that such a published resource may include mistakes, or even typos at the least. The best policy is to access original documents, if possible. This month will be my experiment to locate those for William's paternal grandmother.

There are a few details I already have spotted about Elizabeth Plummer. One is the year of her death: 1762. At least that is the date reported by a volunteer on Find A Grave, said to have been based on the date of her will. The challenge is to locate a copy of that actual document.

Likewise with Elizabeth's marriage to the senior William Ijams, reportedly in 1696, according to compiler Robert Barnes in his book, Maryland Marriages 1634-1777.  This is simply another detail to verify through original documents. A helpful addition to all that verification would be to confirm the identities of her nine children.

Besides exploring repositories providing digitized copies of colonial Maryland records, we'll need to spend part of this month exploring the more updated verification of the Ijams line through DNA. While a specific subset of Elizabeth's female descendants might possess her unique mitochondrial DNA signature, such would not be the case with my mother-in-law. And Elizabeth's own autosomal genetic makeup would likely be too far removed from appearances through her modern-day counterparts. However, her grandson, William Ijams, appears as a fifth great-grandfather in my husband's line, and so far we have sixty six DNA matches in that ThruLines result to verify. Perhaps we may stumble upon some interesting details as we add that aspect to this month's research tasks.

But first, before we dive into this quest to learn about Elizabeth Plummer, let's look at what resources are available to us for researching any records from colonial Maryland. 

A Sixth Great-Grandmother

 

It's a new month, and time to extract ourselves from the convoluted search for Lydia Miller's roots. For our sixth ancestor from my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026, I selected my mother-in-law's sixth great-grandmother, Elizabeth Plummer.

Not that I wanted another challenging research project to follow last month's struggle, but Elizabeth will present an entirely different kind of search. Elizabeth spent most of her adult life—that I know of—in the British colony of Maryland. She supposedly married William Ijams—or Iiams—in 1696. That alone makes her the earliest ancestor I've ever researched.

Fortunately, there are resources reaching back to that date, preserved and accessible thanks to the archival collections of what is now the state of Maryland. This month will be my workout on how to access records from this repository as I pursue this distant relative of my mother-in-law.

In the meantime, I won't entirely give up on last month's chase after Lydia Miller's roots. Behind the scenes, I'll continue building the descendancy charts for each of the Miller patriarchs whose modern-day family members have turned out to be my husband's DNA matches. In addition, not forgetting the realization of the Anspach connection for those DNA matches, I'll be examining that line more closely, too. Perhaps, if anything significant surfaces, I'll share that on a weekend post.

Meanwhile, it's time to begin our June research project. Tomorrow, we'll meet Elizabeth Plummer and see what work we have laid out for us this month. 

Messy or Not, it's Time to Move on

 

Despite a messy research detour while puzzling over Lydia Miller's roots, at the end of the month, it's time to move on. My mother-in-law's second great-grandmother will have to remain a mystery for another year.

Still, there are several observations gleaned from this month's meandering research trajectory. Most helpful was the realization that my husband, the designated DNA tester for this line, had matches reaching back to ancestors bearing that same Miller surname. My goal this month was to isolate those DNA matches who, while related through a Miller line, were not connected through any of the other intermarried lines from my mother-in-law's "endogamy lite" family.

This process yielded DNA matches whose founding ancestor—at least as far as we can tell at this point—was either Jonathan Miller (of unknown parentage) or Solomon Miller, son of George. 

While I wore myself to the bone searching for ancestral connections preceding those Miller men, in retrospect, it occurred to me that perhaps seeking Miller roots might have been the wrong approach. There might have been a second way these Millers were related: through their wives. Jonathan Miller, for instance, had married Catharine Dupler. Solomon Miller, while marrying a woman whose maiden name has seen various spelling permutations—Auspaugh or Anspaugh—may actually have been the son-in-law of David Anspach of Perry County, Ohio.

If that were the case, David's sister Anna Elizabeth Anspach would actually be mother of Jonathan Miller's wife, Catharine Dupler. In other words, Catharine Dupler Miller and Malinda Anspaugh Miller would have been first cousins. The grandfather they shared in common would be Johann Adam Anspach.

Whether that means my mother-in-law shared that Anspach ancestor, I can't yet say, though it is now obvious that these two Miller wives whose descendants ever so slightly match my husband's DNA must be in the picture for future research. Finding Lydia Miller's roots will need to be an ongoing project for next year, but finding that connection through their wives, not the Miller husbands, is at least an encouraging discovery to reference the next time we return to this research puzzle.

Messy Discoveries

 

While family history researchers may hope for a streamlined outline of their ancestors' key life events, that is not always how the search progresses. When it comes to piecing together supporting documentation, there may be twists and turns. Today, I ran into one messy discovery that seems to turn the Miller family story on its head.

Having found the 1850 census showing Solomon Miller's widowed mother Catharine still living in Perry County, Ohio—and not in Indiana, as one biographical sketch of Solomon's life had claimed—I decided to look for corroborating evidence. 

Stop one was to look for what became of the two other people living in the widow's 1850 household. While I have yet to figure out who the child, Ann Boyer, might have been, verification on Catharine's mother, Catharine Humberger, was easier to find. At Find A Grave, Catharine Humberger's still legible headstone showed her burial place to be at the Zion Reformed Lutheran Cemetery in Thornville, Ohio, a village situated in Perry County's Thorn Township, where we had found her living in the 1850 census.

As often appears in Find A Grave entries, this memorial for Catharine Humberger included information provided by volunteers. A note indicated that this Catharine's maiden name was Snider, a pertinent discovery for tracing my mother-in-law's line, which is full of Sniders. A Find A Grave volunteer also provided links to three other memorials related to this Catharine, including one for Catharine Humbarger Miller, the mother of the Solomon we've been researching this week.

Looking at that linked memorial for Catharine, Solomon's mother, brought with it a surprise: according to that volunteer-provided information, Catharine was married twice. Her marriage to George Miller came after her previous marriage to someone named Herbert Winegardner.

Perry County being what it is—a place where many longstanding residents found themselves related to each other in multiple ways—this was not encouraging news for a researcher using DNA testing. Not only would the Snider connection cause problems seeking clarity on the Miller line, but my mother-in-law's Perry County roots—to say nothing of my father-in-law's connections there—intertwine with the Winegardner surname as well.

The Find A Grave information indicated that the Winegardners had a daughter born in 1816, as well as a son born in 1820, the same year as Herbert's death in 1820. That would explain the female in Catherine Miller's entry in the 1830 census, long after the deaths of both her husbands, Herbert Winegardner and George Miller—and discard my hoped-for resolution of where Lydia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother, fit into the picture.

That, at least, was according to the entries provided by Find A Grave volunteers. You know I had to check those details.

My first stop was to look for a marriage record for Herbert Winegardner and Catharine Humbarger. Voila! Thanks to FamilySearch.org, in a snap, I found a handwritten—and rambling—entry in the records for a May 7, 1816, marriage in Fairfield County for "Harbert" Winegardner and Catharine "Humbarge." (The record also indicated an alternate spelling as Humberger.) And the location in Fairfield County? Not to worry: Perry County wasn't established until two years later, when it was carved from Fairfield County in 1818.

So far, so good, right? Next step was to look for a marriage record for George Miller and a widowed Catharine Winegardner. Easy peasy: an 1823 entry, possibly signed by the same minister who had performed the earlier Winegardner marriage in Fairfield County, verified the Miller-Winegardner ceremony.

But wait! There is a problem with that second record. If Solomon's father George Miller died three months before Solomon was born in 1822, it would have been an eerily otherworldly ceremony indeed, if his father married his mother almost a year after that point. Not to mention, ten years after Herbert Winegardner supposedly died in 1820, there was someone by that name still showing in the 1830 census back in Fairfield County.

Complicating matters was the discovery that there might have been two Catharine Humbergers in Perry County, a discovery I made while mulling over all the Humberger men showing in Thorn Township in the 1830 census, some of whom were listed on the very page where I spotted Catharine Miller. Not to mention, after the demise of our short-lived George Miller, two others by that same name remained in Perry County in 1830, making it quite possible that we've been chasing the paper trail for the wrong name twins.

One result of these messy discoveries was to turn back once again to the published biographical sketch mentioning Catharine's son Solomon Miller. That 1907 narrative mentioned that Solomon's parents, George and Catharine, had been parents of ten children, the youngest of whom was Solomon himself. The three children counted in the Miller entry for the 1830 census were hardly ten, but perhaps they also didn't represent the two presumed Winegardner children.

With differentiating between name twins and ferreting out corroborating details, we may be facing some tree-building exercises for an ever-expanding Humberger family line. Or perhaps, delving into the identity of Ann Boyer, that mystery child in Catharine's 1850 household, might provide a shortcut to the answer identifying the right Catharine.

About Catharine

 

Some family stories progress predictably. From the earliest stage of boy-meets-girl to marriage, then children, then grandchildren and beyond, the history plays out in a logical manner. The family, perhaps, has lived in the same town for generations. No one died prematurely. Or changed their name without confirming it legally. The play-by-play details have been laid out publicly for all to see in retrospect, the kind of predictability appreciated by genealogists.

George and Catharine Miller were not, apparently, such a couple. At first, I was elated to discover a biographical sketch about their son Solomon which seemed to provide key details about the family's roots. Once I began reconstructing the story via documentation, though, the path to their past became a bit bumpier.

As I had mentioned yesterday, I saw that the narrative in the 1907 publication, History of Whitley County, Indiana provided three particular guiding details about Solomon and his parents:

• Solomon's parents, George and Catharine, had moved from Pennsylvania to Perry County, Ohio.
• George and Catharine were parents of ten children.
• When Solomon moved west to Indiana about 1843, he was accompanied by his wife, his daughter, and his widowed mother. 

My first clue about reliability, in tracing those details, was when I tried to follow Solomon's mother, Catharine, in records. While the published narratives mentioned that Solomon's move west was in a group of travelers including his mother, that could only be true if she had accompanied them for only a short while. In today's world, that sort of arrangement might be feasible, but when I checked the 1850 census for Catharine's name, it led me to a different indicator.

There, as predicted, in 1850 in Whitley County, Indiana, was Solomon and his family: his wife Melinda and six children, five of them born in Indiana. The one glaring omission from that growing family was the widowed mother who supposedly had made the journey westward with Solomon.

Where was Catharine? Back home in Perry County, Ohio.

Catharine's 1850 census entry showed her in a small household including two other people: seventy seven year old Catharine Humberger, and a six year old girl named Ann Boyer. Though I have yet to figure out how young Ann Boyer might have been related to the two women, we already know that Catharine Miller's maiden name was Humberger, thus leading to the conclusion that after Solomon's departure, Catharine was still living in Perry County with her own mother. Plus, in this census, Catharine was living in Thorn Township, where we had seen her before, after the 1822 death of her husband George Miller.

In fact, in Catharine Miller's appearance in the 1830 census, my hopes had been lifted by the fact that her household included two boys and a girl between the ages of ten and fifteen. The Miller child we've been pursuing this month, my mother-in-law's brick wall ancestor Lydia Miller, born in 1820, would have fit perfectly in that category. After all, the Whitley County narrative mentioned that Solomon was one of ten children. But now I'm not so sure that biographical detail was correct, either.

The reason for my doubt? Another discovery about this Catharine and who those other children in her household might have been.

Nothing is Ever Easy

 

I've said it before. I'll say it again: nothing is ever easy. In research, this limiting factor gives rise to warnings such as "don't believe everything you read" and other sayings. In the case of Solomon Miller and his parents, George Miller and Catharine Humbarger, we are about to see that sentiment played out for us. This, I discovered while congratulating myself on perhaps solving the puzzle of just where my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother Lydia Miller might have originated. It's time to think again.

Thanks to a distant DNA match to my husband who directed my attention to Solomon Miller, I had found two biographical sketches regarding this man. Looking more closely at the more detailed sketch from Whitley County, Indiana, I thought I'd use the details to point the way to Solomon's roots. 

According to the narrative in the 1907 publication, History of Whitley County, Indiana, I gleaned three particular guiding details:

• Solomon's parents, George and Catharine, had moved from Pennsylvania to Perry County, Ohio.
• George and Catharine were parents of ten children.
• When Solomon moved west to Indiana about 1843, he was accompanied by his wife, his daughter, and his widowed mother. 

As I began tracing those details, it became obvious that those three hallmark details from the Whitley County biography were not entirely correct. There were, apparently, missing parts of the story involving not only what happened after Solomon married Malinda Anspaugh, but also what happened before Solomon's own birth.

Those missing parts may turn out to embed key details of an untold story, if what I'm finding in documentation turns out to tell a fuller version of the same couple's history. George and Catharine may both, for instance, have come from Pennsylvania, but they may not have migrated at the same time. Also, between the two of them, George and Catharine may have claimed ten children, but not all from the same marriage—a detail which will take some research to not only confirm but clarify. And the widowed Catharine may not have been her son's constant companion in his journeys westward to Indiana.

Knowing that Miller was such a common surname in Ohio back then as it is today, we'll need to tread carefully through the archived details pertaining to our couple's life story. There may have been much more than what was told in that handy published biographical sketch. Then again, those details could have been a story reserved for another couple by the name of George and Catharine Miller. It's up to us to uncover the full report.