Remembering

 

Today, folks in the United States observe the national holiday known as Memorial Day. Rooted in the observance once followed in the aftermath of the American Civil War as Decoration Day, when people would visit cemeteries and mark gravesites with flags and flowers, the purpose has been to honor military personnel who died in the line of duty.

Remembering those who have passed, whether in service to their country or to their own family and community, holds a special place for historians and especially genealogists. I can't, however, think of the task of remembering without having another memory come to mind, a comment I hear far too often.

That comment, coming from my relatives across the decades, has been a regret that they never thought to ask questions of their elders until it became too late. Questions which—whether simple or detailed, piercing or generic—could only be answered by the living, not those who have gone on before.

This holiday weekend, as I spend time with extended family which includes two generations younger than I am, I wonder how many of them will experience that same pang of regret in twenty or thirty years. What questions will they wish they had asked their grandparents? More to the point, what is it about all of us that we don't think to ask those questions until it is too late to receive the answer from those who matter the most?

I think, in particular, about one woman in my mother-in-law's line named Lydia Miller. Married not once but twice, matriarch to two family lines: what was her story? Is there anyone left to know the explanation of what became of her memory or even where she came from, back in the 1820s?

I think, also, of my own mother's ancestors. Some of them experienced big changes in the 1820s. The difference was that one of those relatives, back then, thought to share that family's story, which was heard, then repeated by someone in the next generation, who then shared it with her grandchildren, who then repeated it to their children. Some of that same story lives today because someone thought to tell it—and someone else thought to preserve it and deliver it to someone else who would pass it along.

Remembering is important. But we also need to realize that memories are a vapor which can vanish in a moment, if we don't pick up the refrain and sing it again through the ages, generation by generation. 

On the D N A Trail

 

Looking for a way to connect a brick wall ancestor with her parents will hopefully lead to answers through DNA testing. I've been on that DNA trail for Lydia Miller's ancestors for weeks now. While nothing positive has shown up yet, it's surprising how many possibilities lead me down different paths, all pointing to different Miller progenitors.

This coming week, we'll look at yet another family branch claiming Miller roots. In the meantime, we'll take today for another biweekly count of tree-building progress.

Tracing the lines of various Miller descendants has indeed inflated the count on my mother-in-law's tree, which contains Lydia's potential relatives, so far listed in floating branches. In the past two weeks, 255 more documented relatives have been added to that family tree. In total, the tree now contains 43,176 individuals.

In the meantime, since I took the opportunity while traveling to meet a distant cousin from my own side of the family, somehow I added one more name to that tree, too, so it's time to up that total to 41,939 relatives. Though my research generally follows a plan and schedule, sometimes life presents opportunities which simply can't be missed. I'm glad I did reach out and meet a cousin in this case.

This coming week marks the last full week of the month, and I'm hoping to be closing in on an answer concerning Lydia Miller's roots. Tomorrow, we'll start following a possible branch of this same Miller family who took a detour from the usual Ohio route to migrate to Indiana. 

Reaching Out

 

The connections we can gain from DNA testing gift us with the ability to reach out to strangers and meet them as family. This weekend, I had the opportunity to do just that. 

Most of us might have had the opportunity to meet first cousins once removed—those family connections some of us, before genealogy, might have called "second cousins." Some of us actually do know our second cousins. Beyond that, though, very few have a personal relationship with third cousins or beyond.

One member of our local genealogical society has found a way to break through that barrier—he simply reaches out to distant DNA matches, strikes up a conversation online, and eventually makes plans to meet up with them in person. We've been regaled with his stories over the past few years. Whether that has proven to inspire anyone else's action, I don't know. But when I had a chance to fly to a distant city this weekend, I couldn't bypass the opportunity: I asked a third cousin, once removed, if she would be interested in connecting in person.

On the surface, it took not much more than a twenty mile drive to a unique coffee shop halfway between our two locations—well, after a four hour flight cross country—but beneath that simplicity was months of email exchanges, comparing notes on cousins in common, placing mutual DNA matches in their correct position on the family tree we share. We are, after all, both researchers keen on uncovering our mystery ancestors.

When we realize the power of the tools we have at hand for building our family trees, it is sometimes lost on us that that same ability can draw us closer together, personally. In my case, this relative connects to my paternal grandfather's mystery Polish roots—the back story of the life of a relative I never met face to face, a man intent on keeping his ethnic origin a well-concealed secret.

This was a chance to share observations of what details we knew about family, discovering in conclusion that perhaps those ancestors simply had no desire to ever think again about the life they left behind in their choice to emigrate. Unlike, say, the Irish who could never forget the beautiful—though ravaged—homeland they left behind, the Polish in our roots left a life perhaps deemed not even deserving of remembrance. At least for our family's journey to a new world, that consideration was left by the wayside.

Granted, any such meet-up between two strangers, even those who share genetic connections, can turn up full of energy—or lacking any compulsion to continue the relationship. In our case, we could have talked for hours longer.

In retrospect, though, this was a conversation begun months ago, just a chance to move the interactions to a different venue. Thinking back to the role model of my fellow genealogy society member—someone we've dubbed everybody's cousin—that was not a bad example to follow. In this case, it was certainly worth the time to make this connection, and to hope for many more to come.  

When Favorite Names Keep Appearing

 

While seeking the right Miller ancestor for our Lydia has led us into a maze of possibilities, one DNA match who pointed us to an ancestor named Joseph Miller came with a bonus: a son whose name has appeared often in Miller households. That favorite name was Solomon. 

From the Miller families we've already examined, the given name Solomon has been part of the household of Jonathan Miller, as well as that of someone named Michael Miller. This Michael Miller happened to marry a woman whose surname—Binkley—had surfaced when I considered this Miller puzzle a year ago. I'm beginning to see the formation of a family cluster. 

Yet another Miller had the fingerprints of being part of a set of extended relatives in Perry County, Ohio. And here was this other family, also preferring to name their son by that same name, Solomon.

Seeing the selection of a specific name repeated over generations in households of the same surname, living in the same location may be telling us something. Or maybe that's just the kind of "something" that I've been hoping to listen to more closely.

This new DNA match, though, was connected to someone named Joseph Miller. There was one more problem with that: from all indications, his residence was not situated in the usual spot in Perry County. In fact, he was said to have been a long-time resident of Whitley County, Indiana.

Yet, following the trail of other researchers—especially those generous ones who share their path so that others can check out their conclusions—I discovered some helpful supporting narratives. While I have yet to find an online resource for the particular biographical sketch this researcher provided, reading the century-old narrative told me Joseph wasn't as far removed from the Perry County Millers as I might have expected.

It was worth checking out those details. First, of course, I tried replicating the search this researcher had shared on Ancestry.com, but without success. There was apparently more than one book called History of Whitley County, Indiana. I did, however find information on Joseph Miller in a similarly-named publication, embedded within a biography of someone named Benjamin Hively.

Gleaning the basics of Joseph Miller's family history may prove helpful. Using these publications as guide, we may learn more about a collateral line to the Jonathan Miller we've already been examining. If families of that era migrated in family clusters, that might indeed be helpful in sorting out the puzzle of this month's focus, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother, Lydia Miller. Whoever her parents were, they surely migrated westward to Ohio in the company of many others—likely, members of an extended Miller family. We'll take a closer look at these details next week.

Yet Another Miller

 

Among the DNA matches isolated to point solely to a Miller ancestor connected to our Lydia in Perry County, Ohio, some linked to an ancestor named Joseph Miller. A cursory glance at this Joseph Miller showed a man born in 1801. Hmmm, I thought: a year of birth close enough to perhaps link him as a brother to the Jonathan Miller we've been watching.

So much for numbers. Even if this Joseph were born in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, as we had suspected for Jonathan, he certainly didn't die in Ohio. A link in the DNA match's tree led to a Find A Grave Memorial for a man who died in Fulton County, Indiana. Not the same story as what we've seen for Lydia or Jonathan.

One tiny detail in a life story doesn't provide the full picture, of course. As it turns out, this Joseph may well have made a stop in Ohio on his way to Indiana, after all. Joseph Miller apparently married his wife, Barbara Overmyer, in none other than Perry County. Surprisingly, the entry for their wedding is displayed on the same page as that for Jonathan Miller and Catharine Dupler, occurring just one month before the other Miller ceremony, on March 18, 1824.

That was enough to beguile me into following more of Joseph Miller's story. After all, there was a promising Joseph Miller listed among those thirty five Miller heads of household listed in Perry County in the 1830 census. Perhaps this was the one.

Many Millers

 

Continuing the quest for a possible Miller father for our Lydia, we have many Millers from which to choose. And I don't mean a choice from among the many Millers resident in the state of Ohio—although the Miller surname does happen to be one of the top three surnames in that state. Back in 1830, the first census taken after Lydia was born, there were at least thirty five heads of household in Perry County, Ohio, claiming that surname.

Although it was possible that Lydia's immediate family might not have stayed in Perry County—after all, as we've already seen, some Millers came from Somerset County, Pennsylvania, and could just have kept on traveling—I'm hoping that gleaning information from this one snapshot of 1830 might give a chance at discovering members of Lydia's immediate Miller family.

In tandem with a search through the Perry County Millers of 1830, I am reviewing the rest of the DNA matches tying my husband to candidates with Miller roots. To continue this search in a way that would yield meaningful results for our search for Lydia's parents, we need to remember some details:

• The Miller DNA match must represent a line which is not intertwined with the many other surnames in Perry County which have, over the centuries, intermarried with my mother-in-law's family.
• The potential match would need to be someone who could be identified, placed within the context of a family tree, and verified by documentation—thus, no enigmatic labels replacing match names.
• The tree needs to convey a reasonable story: no wild migrations over hundreds of miles of rough terrain in a matter of days; no births to teenaged couples barely old enough to parent children; no unexplained surname changes or other fingerprints of confused identities.

I have already found six DNA matches at Ancestry who all descend from Jonathan Miller and his wife, Catharine Dupler. Since then, I've located almost as many more Miller matches satisfying my prerequisites, but who descend from a different Miller ancestor. The challenge now is to build out trees for those matches, confirm the assertions, and watch to see where the Miller nexus might occur between our Lydia and the DNA match's ancestor.

This, as you can imagine, will be a time-consuming process.... 

Supposed Siblings and Their Possible Patriarch

 

I confess: I cheated. This wearying search for possible siblings and parents of my mother-in-law's brick wall ancestor Lydia Miller has nigh worn me out. So when I spotted an Ancestry hint that perhaps Lydia's possible sibling Jonathan Miller was son of a man named Henry Miller, I decided to check it out. 

Since Jonathan was said to have been born in Pennsylvania—at least, according to his Find-A-Grave entry—it made sense to look for such a father both in Jonathan's home in Perry County, Ohio, and for his supposed home town back in Pennsylvania.

Checking the 1830 census in Perry County, Ohio, however, led me nowhere. That was the first census in which Jonathan had appeared in Ohio after his 1824 marriage to Catharine Dupler, but the significant number of Miller residents in 1830 in Perry County told me the search might be challenging. Besides, the lone Henry Miller in Perry County that year, himself a man under forty, turned out to be far too young to have been father of Jonathan, himself born in 1802.

The suggestion at Ancestry, however, was to check out a Henry Miller still residing in Pennsylvania. While on its surface, a card transcribed from Mennonite Church records, offered up as documentation of Henry Miller by Ancestry hints, seemed plausible as father of Jonathan—and thus, possibly, of our brick wall ancestry Lydia Miller.

Plausible, that is, until a closer look revealed that that Henry Miller couldn't possibly have been father of Lydia. If Lydia's own burial record contained the correct age, her date of birth would have been in 1820. Pennsylvania Henry, according to the card gleaned from Mennonite records, had died by 1812. Indeed, one Henry Miller, dying intestate in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, became subject of a court appointment of administrators late in that same year.

While this Henry might well have been father of Jonathan Miller, he certainly couldn't have filled those same shoes for Lydia. It's back to the drawing board for another hypothesis on just who Lydia's father might have been.