What if it was All for This?

 

There are times, in the course of routine work, when we find ourselves thinking, "What if this was all for nothing?" The tedium of repeated effort may lead to discouragement—to say nothing of disillusionment. Wrestling with missing, misplaced, or mangled paperwork can add to frustration as we attempt the impossible task of piecing together a paper trail leading us to the brink of our ancestors' missing stories. Sometimes, it seems to be all for nothing.

And then, some tiny point of significance shines a positive light on the frustration.

This past weekend, I became audience to the recounting of a family tale which, given all signs assumed by prior generations, was never meant to be known.

...but then, DNA...

It was earlier this spring when I alluded to an unexpected DNA discovery concerning a close connection with an adoptee. Behind the scenes, we've been communicating, first through Ancestry.com's messaging system, then by email, then by phone calls. The connection was easy to confirm; then came the stage of personal connection, and eventually this adoptee was able to meet one birth parent, face to face.

Last Sunday, I got to hear the entire story of the parent-child reunion. For me, it invoked, as one of my husband's favorite Irish authors likes to call it, a dewey-eyed moment. There is already something about the awe-inspiring mystery of genetic connection, that in-a-flash instant sensing that this is family, no matter how unknown the "stranger" may be. But to hear that such an even-closer relationship finally consummated the connection which, but for circumstances, would have been a lifelong privilege was moving beyond words.

Just hearing about that meeting left me emotionally fragile. Mulling over the full significance for days. And wondering why the knowing of it could have such an impact, even to those removed from the immediacy of the situation.

Almost instantly, the thought came to me: what if it was all for this? The relentless effort. The struggle to circumvent that abrupt stop when tracking brick wall ancestors. The frustration of paper trails vanishing just when the most-hoped-for answer seemed almost within grasp.

Somehow, that work—all of it, even the aggravating gaps—does leave a trail for others to follow. We researchers and writers throw the crumbs of our work out there—sometimes even for fifteen years at a time—and somehow a passer-by stumbles upon these tiny bits and picks up the trail. And finds an answer that means more than we can tell. 

Maybe yes, it was all for this, after all. And on the dawn of another blogiversary, I tell myself those are the finds that make it all worthwhile to keep on searching for those answers. They may be answers for me, but they may also turn into answers for someone else out there, hoping to uncover even bigger pictures of where they fit in the human family. 

Making the End Run

 

When hitting an impasse—something in genealogy akin to a "brick wall" ancestor—it is now possible to make an end run around such research roadblocks. That, in Lydia Miller's case, is what I hope to do this month with the luxury of one tool genealogists of past centuries never had: DNA testing. 

Now that I've discovered the sizable family descended from Lydia and her second husband, Benedict Palmer, I've been watching for signs of DNA matches who claim that Palmer heritage. But finding any results has, so far, been a disappointment. Just using Ancestry.com, one of five DNA companies where my husband, Lydia's descendant, has tested, I can already see that ThruLines currently lists twenty seven DNA matches for him. However, when I look to the corresponding count for William Gordon, Lydia's first husband, the match count is that same exact number.

Just to be sure, I've checked each of those twenty seven matches to ensure that they descend from both Lydia and William. Yep, that's the case, for every one of those matches. Over the weeks, no matter how many Palmer descendants I've added to my mother-in-law's family tree, that DNA match count has remained the same. I would have presumed, if anyone from the Palmer side had tested at Ancestry, that the count would be lopsided between Lydia and William Gordon, with the high score going to Lydia on account of Palmer matches. Not so, despite adding multiple Palmers to my tree.

Of course, rather than only relying on Ancestry's ThruLines tool, I can also search for matches with the Palmer surname included in their family tree—but considering how many Palmers there are out there, that search might yield more work than it's worth. 

There are other options, too. Ancestry is only one of several testing companies, and I will be scouring the data at the other DNA companies, too. In fact, one collaborator with whom I'm already corresponding actually is a DNA match through 23andMe. There may be more at MyHeritage or Family Tree DNA, too.

Another option I am taking is to look for researchers who are already demonstrating diligence in researching the same Palmer line I'm interested in. I just found one Ancestry subscriber who has been quite consistent in uploading photographs and personally-acquired documents to his tree to share with other researchers. Getting in touch with someone like that can lead to a fruitful collaboration. You can be sure I'm also keeping an eye out for anyone like that to ask to take a DNA test—especially leading up to a holiday like this weekend's Mother's Day, filled with sales offerings from testing companies.

Next week, we'll take a look at what possibilities can be out there for piecing together a family tree through DNA—but keep in mind there are caveats, as well. Still, DNA may be the best way to clarify just who Lydia Miller actually was, and at least to confirm that Lydia Gordon of Perry County, Ohio, was one and the same as Lydia Palmer of Mercer County.

What we Still Don't Know About Lydia

 

The challenge about researching Lydia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother, is that her 1820 origin is unclear. While we do know much about Lydia and the details of her later life, the time period of her early life lies within that murky era in which women were often invisible, and pioneer families might slip through the cracks in governmental record keeping. In short, there's a lot yet to learn about Lydia—but hey, that's what this month's focus for the Twelve Most Wanted this year is all about.

Granted, Lydia would have been included in her family's appearance in census enumerations dating before 1850, but only as a tick mark within a broad age range category. Get that birthday wrong, and that unnamed female could suddenly be in the wrong slot, throwing us off the chase. But then, the question becomes: which family would we be seeking her in? Lydia would be in plenty of company with a popular surname like Miller in Ohio. We don't even know which Ohio county would have been home to this Miller family; all we know is that she married her first husband, William Gordon, in Perry County.

Even her date of birth could be called into question, except that we don't really have a primary source to rely upon; the date I'm working with—October 15, 1820—is extrapolated from the age at death given on her headstone.

Given that I've yet to locate an obituary following Lydia's 1895 death in Mercer County, I'm at a loss to even say whether her first son, Adam Gordon, kept in touch with his mom after her move across the state of Ohio with her second husband, Benedict Palmer. Considering that, I doubt that any obituary, if found, would mention any of Lydia's surviving siblings, despite their usefulness to us in pinpointing Lydia's own birth family.

With so little that has been found on the personal history of this woman, it's been a struggle to determine her parents' names. There is, however, one option available to researchers now that hadn't been part of the strategy for previous generations of family historians: DNA. Thus, genetic genealogy will become part of my strategy for discovering Lydia Miller's roots with this month's research effort. We'll consider the possibilities there, tomorrow.

What we Do Know About Lydia

 

There are several details which I can affirm are already known about Lydia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother and my focus for this month's Twelve Most Wanted. Knowing at least these few points will be helpful for pressing forward with the search for Lydia's family—but many of the details didn't quite fall into place until after discovering one major fact: that she had married twice.

"Lidia" had married William H. Gordon in the Catholic Church in Somerset, Perry County, Ohio, in April of 1838. Soon afterwards, her oldest son Adam was born, followed by another son who died in infancy. By the end of 1840, Lydia's husband William had also died.

Meanwhile, one county to the west, another man had just repeated a similar scenario. In Fairfield County, Benedict Palmer had married Catherine Hovermill in February of 1839. By March of 1840, the Palmers both welcomed their son Jerome into the world and bid a final goodbye to his young mother, only nineteen years of age at her death.

Widow and widower found each other and pledged their troth in Perry County on May 1, 1842. For whatever reason, Lydia placed her son Adam in the care of her recently-widowed mother-in-law, yet brought Benedict's son Jerome with them, as the newlyweds set up housekeeping back in Fairfield County.

By 1842, the couple's eldest son, Edward, was born. Between that point and the 1850 census, two more sons and a daughter were added to the household. By 1860, the family had moved westward, though still within the same state of Ohio. By then, Lydia had given her husband two more daughters and a son, with one more daughter yet to come in 1862.

By then, the family was settled and farming in Montezuma in Mercer County, the location where much of the family remained through the next generation, and even beyond that point. So far, I've been tracing the Palmer family's lines of descent, observing that over the generations, many of them remained in Mercer County.

That is pretty much the extent of what I do know about Lydia at this point. There is, of course, much that I don't know. We'll take an inventory tomorrow of where this family chase may lead us with the exploration yet to come through the rest of this month.

When we Last Left Lydia

 

It was May 31 just one year ago when I had to close the books on my search for Lydia Miller's parents. Lydia had been May's focus for my Twelve Most Wanted last year, simply because she had evaded detection for more years than I care to recall. But what was more difficult than simply calling off the chase for yet another year was the fact that, only days prior, I had discovered that Lydia hadn't died a young mother, after all. In fact, as a young widow, she had remarried—not only that, but she had moved to a new county on the far end of the state to become mother to eight more children.

That unexpected discovery made me wish I had found out at the beginning of the month, not the end. Behind the scenes—while I was supposed to be researching yet another brick wall ancestor—I kept building out the tree for Lydia Miller and her new family in Mercer County, Ohio.

Eventually, though, I had to set the task aside and focus on the work at hand for June, then July, then...well, you get the idea. This is one month I wished I could have kept at the research trail, but I had made myself the promise that I would keep rotating through research challenges as a principle to help keep from burning out on one information dead end.

When I had started that research goal last May, all I had was the detail that "Lidia" Miller had married William H. Gordon in 1838 in Perry County, Ohio. In a very short amount of time, she gave birth to two sons, the eldest of whom became my mother-in-law's great-grandfather, Adam Gordon.

The other major detail about Lidia—one I thought I knew, given the appearances—was that she, along with her husband and second son, had died by 1840, or at least before 1850, when her eldest son was being raised in his paternal grandmother's home.

How wrong I was. It turns out that Lydia, as a widow, had married a young widower who was then the father of one son, himself. By the time I discovered documentation verifying that turn of events, we were fast approaching the end of the month.

Despite working feverishly to trace that new family's line of descent, the month closed out long before I had done this new task justice. This month will become our chance to revisit Lydia—once Miller, then Gordon, then Palmer—and see what else we can learn about this entirely new family. Hopefully, by the end of this month, we may also look to the opposite direction to close in on the story of just whose daughter Lydia Miller was, herself.  

A Sisyphean Task

 

Truth be told, though I left the Jackson family behind at the close of last month, I still can't help but try to complete one task I like to do with each of my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors for each year: I take the collateral lines of each of these Twelve Most Wanted and research their family's line of descent down to our present time. I like to include this task, primarily to help spot possible DNA matches who have also descended from that same ancestral line. 

Now, even though we're into a new month, behind the scenes I've been trying to do so with the Jackson family. There's one problem with such a practice, once we encounter a family like this. Though admittedly, it's a rough go, trying to trace ancestors in America before the mid-1800s, the real struggle is not one of finding elusive court records. It's in dealing with the sheer numbers of this unusual family. I'm afraid I've set for myself a Sisyphean task.

Granted, most families from those earlier time periods had many children. That, in a way, was a plan for survival, given the reality of many children dying before adulthood. In the Jackson family's case, however, each of their thirteen children did live to adulthood. Not only that, but they married and, in most cases, had many children of their own. Multiplying that case by the many generations separating Lyman Jackson's era and our own generation gives pause. 

Just looking at the numbers in this Jackson case tells how impossible that task may be. For Lyman Jackson and his wife Deidama Dunham, they saw ten sons and three daughters live to adulthood, marry, and have families of their own.

Taking a hypothetical number and extrapolating out this case, I asked the AI search engine at Google just how many people I'd be researching if those thirteen Jackson children married and had thirteen children of their own, then repeated the process for another generation. 

The answer: 4,758 people in three generations, assuming all children lived a full life, married someone from outside the family, and subsequently had their own family of thirteen children.

No wonder I feel as if I never can catch up with myself.

A Little Spring Cleaning Detour

 

There is a little wood and wicker three drawer cabinet which I've repurposed to store some of my research odds and ends—you know, the notes-to-self reminders that I'll do when I get a "round tuit." Evidently, I must have recently added one file folder too many, because yesterday, it began creaking. Not long afterwards, I noticed this cabinet was doing its best to imitate the Leaning Tower of Pisa. There are many instances in which history is worthy of emulation but this was not one of them. It was time to investigate.

Among all those notes-to-self in those filled drawers, I rediscovered some records gleaned from on-site research in places that ancestors used to call home. I found records from the Fort Meade Historical Society, from the little town in Florida where my McClellan ancestors once lived, and remembered our family's visit to their museum, which displayed a dentist's chair once used by my great-grandfather. From another long-distance genealogy trip, I rediscovered a map of the Roman Catholic parish in Ireland now known as Ballina-Boher, with the townland of Tountinna highlighted in yellow to draw attention to the place where my father-in-law's Tully ancestors once lived.

There were, of course, many other slips of paper, reminding me to check on specific details of this or that ancestor. From some of my earliest research forays, there were actual photocopies of documents, items which I'll now need to scan and upload to my digitized records.

Fortunately, several of these reminders have made a timely appearance, for I've already planned to work on these family lines in upcoming months. For those notes regarding my mother's family, this is a great prompt to add those maternal ancestors to my Twelve Most Wanted list for next year. There is always more work to do on these brick wall ancestors.

Organized into groups of similar tasks, these odds and ends of notes written to myself in past years are now laid out into a work flow that will hopefully vanquish the paper piles, but at the same time, looking at each one and remembering what first sparked those reminders has been a pleasant trip down my genealogical memory lane. Research may seem tedious at times—and provide me with motivation to move on to the next task when the frustration of dead ends looms—but it is always enjoyable to look back and remember the trip from beginning puzzle to latest stopping point. Somehow, a little spring cleaning detour turns out to provide me with more energy to pick up that trail once again.