Looking Forward to Reach Backwards

 

To research our ancestors, the presumption is that we start with ourselves, then step by step, we work backwards in time from generation to generation—until, that is, we run into a research brick wall. Stymied, we twist and turn every which way, trying to find a path around the records impasse. For probably as long as people have been curious about their roots, that path to the past could only be traveled in one direction: backwards through time.

Now, however, we have another option: looking forward. And we reverse course, so to speak, by looking at a very different type of record, not from the past, but forward from those great-greats who've given us the slip.

In the case of my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather, Nicholas Schneider, I'll certainly keep searching for eighteenth century records to reveal his origin in Europe, but I have another treasure trove of information awaiting my attention: Nicholas Schneider's descendants, those DNA matches who, along with my husband as test proxy for my mother-in-law's line, share Nicholas as their most recent common ancestor.

When I started this month's research project for my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025, I began working my way through these DNA matches using the Ancestry.com ThruLines tool. According to that readout, my husband shares an ancestral connection to Nicholas Schneider with 268 other AncestryDNA customers. And I don't think it's owing to my active imagination that that number seems to be rapidly sprouting. According to Ancestry.com, when I make changes to my mother-in-law's tree—for instance, adding another generation of Schneider descendants I've just discovered—the company will update the program in about forty eight hours.

Considering this Schneider—and, later, Snider and Snyder—family has been the one line that pumps up my biweekly count the most, I'm not surprised that ThruLines connections to this ancestor keep zooming upward. Each generation of this large Catholic family brings multiple more members to my mother-in-law's tree—and, forty eight hours after adding these new cousins to the family tree, can link me to more ThruLines results.

Of those 268 Schneider DNA matches at Ancestry's ThruLines, I've gleaned the breakdown by the seven of Nicholas' children who are currently represented in the tool: six sons, one daughter, plus one additional name which I believe was actually a grandson. Of those, the child with the largest set of DNA matches, by far, is eldest son Jacob, who was also on my mother-in-law's direct line. As I make the connection between my husband's record and Jacob's eighty DNA descendants—so far—I'm being careful to also connect each DNA match entry to all available records, as well as add any of his descendants I might previously have missed. End result? You can be sure those additional entries to my mother-in-law's family tree will yield more future DNA matches.

It's a truly roundabout method to push farther into the family's past, but as I've found before in following collateral lines, you never know when a record for someone else in the family will produce an unexpected link with just the information needed that couldn't be found elsewhere.

No Longer Etched in Stone

 

We may take comfort in the apparent permanence of the names of our departed loved ones, etched in stone above their final resting place. We want to remember them for the cherished members of our family they were—and we want others to know we cared for them through such permanent memorials.

When it comes to ancestors like my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather Nicholas Schneider, however, his name is no longer etched in stone—if it ever was. According to details posted by a Find A Grave volunteer, Nicholas died on March 4, 1856, and was buried in the cemetery of the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Somerset, Ohio. That information was not obtained from his headstone, but from church records, according to the site's note.

Whether that need to check church records was owing to the weathering of an old headstone, I can't tell, but I have run across other websites for Perry County—immigrant Nicholas Snider's last home in Ohio—which included transcriptions for old cemeteries. One example from an old website included multiple Snider family members in its listings—but not Nicholas. Another, from a different Perry County cemetery, was a compilation of several sources, including some which were readings from cemetery visits in the 1970s, as well as gleanings from old church records. Some headstones were no longer legible; some were no longer located at the deceased's burial site but were simply stones found in a pile on the grounds.

No matter what happened to Nicholas Snider's headstone—or that of his wife, Anna Elizabeth Eckhardt—we can tell from the 1850 census that the couple and several of their family members had lived in Hopewell Township in Perry County. Indeed, following the census trail backwards in time, "Nicholass Snider" and his sizable family had arrived in Perry County before the 1820 census.

Before that point, his trail westward had led from Adams County, Pennsylvania, and possibly a stopping point in Maryland, before heading to Ohio. While I already have some documentation located which suggests that pathway, there is much more work yet to do. But the prime question revolves around the family's arrival from their likely origin somewhere in the lands which now make up the country of Germany. And the key is finding actual documentation of that information, not just reports published by other researchers.

I have yet to be successful on such a venture, though I tried to do so the last time I visited this research question three years ago. On the other hand, with each successive year, we see more and more resources added to genealogy collections online, which boost the possibility for future research success. Maybe this will be my breakthrough year. 

Nicholas: Patriarch of Many

 

With the beginning of a new month, we not only move on to researching another ancestor, but we shift from pursuing those ancestors from my mother's family to those from my mother-in-law's roots. For April, that selection is a man who was not only my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather, but also her third great-grandfather.

If you are scratching your head over that seeming contradiction, let me explain. My mother-in-law's family came from central Ohio, where several branches of her family had lived since the earliest days of the 1800s. Over the generations in that relatively isolated community, the branches of her family intermarried until many in that county could say they were related to each other in several ways. So in my mother-in-law's instance, she could claim one patriarch, Nicholas Schneider, as her second great-grandfather through her paternal grandmother's line, while he was her third great-grandfather through her maternal grandmother's line.

That family name, though likely originating as Schneider from his native German homeland, was spelled as Snider for those who settled and stayed in central Ohio, but for those who moved on—first to Iowa, then in some cases beyond to Minnesota—the name was eventually spelled Snyder. Regardless of the spelling variations, I have traced many of these descendants, thanks to DNA testing, to confirm their relationship.

For this fourth selection of this year's Twelve Most Wanted, I would like to push back another generation—or at least find records from wherever he emigrated in the earliest years of the 1800s. That search will be my main challenge, but I have another goal: update work on the 268 DNA matches reported by Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool as descendants of Nicholas to ensure those matches are all connected to my mother-in-law's family tree—a mammoth task, indeed.

For this patriarch of so many, we'll begin tomorrow with a brief overview of what I know already about him and the young family he brought with him from somewhere in Germany. Following that, I'll spotlight the two branches of Nicholas' family from whom my mother-in-law descends. Eventually, we'll discuss each of the other siblings I'm currently aware of, then begin the study of where that DNA leads us in the subsequent generations. Bottom line, though, is to seek out any further records that can point us to his passage to America, and the place he left behind on his trip to this fledgling country. 

Last Best Guesses

 

It can sometimes be hard to close the book on an unfinished research project. Still, a month is a month, and I promised myself that each of my yearly Twelve Most Wanted ancestors would receive only a month of my attention before I move on to wrestle with the next research puzzle. That said, today I'd like to lay down my last best guesses before closing the book on this chapter.

My goal this month was to find the parents of my second great-grandfather. When I began the month—indeed, when I laid out my research plans for Ancestor #3 back in December of 2024—I had thought I'd be searching for someone born in 1812 by the name William Alexander Boothe. That was what a prodigious researcher had told me years ago, but after only a few days of digging into the records, lack of any documents with the name William persuaded me to discard that report. Further searching pointed to a birth year of 1816 rather than 1812, and I again altered my trajectory.

Just as I had for the previous month's research challenge, I looked to results from DNA testing to bolster my exploration. However, unlike February's ancestor, who brought me well over one hundred DNA matches, any DNA Boothe connections beyond Alexander's own descendants were quite slim. Those few others pointed to a presumed ancestor—at least by Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool—named Daniel Booth. Daniel's birth in New York and subsequent lifetime spent mostly in Ohio dissuaded me from giving that suggestion any more credence, despite the fact that two of his children were born in Virginia (albeit many miles from Alexander's birthplace).

My main approach from that point was to zero in on Nansemond County in Virginia, the very county in which I had found Alexander's household in the 1840 census, and from which I had extracted his name in tax records. Since there were four other Boothe households in that county that year, my research tactic was to follow what documentation I could find on each of those other Boothe men, in hopes of identifying a possible father for Alexander.

Those four Boothe men in Nansemond County were named Robert, Kinchen, Nathaniel, and Andrew. Robert, who appeared to be the oldest of the four, had one son in his household who would have been the right age to be Alexander. This could have been promising, except for one detail: that male child under ten years of age in the 1820 census turned out to be his son named Daniel, not Alexander. Granted, one of Daniel's descendants was named William Horace Boothe, the very name my Alexander gave to one of his own sons, but other than that tempting detail, there was no way to make Alexander fit in the census age brackets that would fit his own specifics.

Kinchen, likewise, was old enough to have been father to Alexander, but given the use of age brackets for census records before 1850, plus the inaccuracies of age estimations in those earlier years, the wiggle room left too much uncertainty. Yes, if Kinchen's son Abram, said to be born about 1820, was actually one year younger, it might have been possible to squeeze my Alexander into that age slot, and count Abram in the next, younger, age category along with his brother Henry. But that "if" would be my conjecture, not supported by any documentation. I'll need to search further for records on that family which might include the missing information I'm seeking—a task for another year.

As for Andrew Boothe, apparently the youngest of the Nansemond County Boothe men, his age alone would disqualify him from being Alexander's father. I could not even find a listing for Andrew in the 1820 census, where Alexander would have shown up as a son in the "under ten" age category. Even the 1830 census showed a household of a young married couple with only children under the age of five.

If any of the Nansemond County Boothe men were to be my suspected direct line ancestor, it would have to be Nathaniel Boothe. Though his death—and any possible will—occurred just before an unfortunate courthouse fire, obliterating any hope of finding handy documentation, the son administering his (apparently considerable) estate—Joseph—was a child born of what appeared to be a second marriage, and one long post-dating Alexander's own birth. Indeed, Nathaniel's 1830 census suggested a household comprised solely of one adult male and one male child between the ages of ten and fourteen, precisely where Alexander would have fit in. Alexander's entry just one line below Nathaniel's in a personal property tax register for 1836—just when Alexander would have turned twenty—seemed also to indicate a connection. And the fact that the next decade's enumeration for Nathaniel indicated the arrival of a new wife and baby a few years after that previous census might well have been Alexander's signal to leave home (and step-mother) and start afresh with his own family for that 1840 census.

While I can point to no records which would positively assure me that that guess was spot on, I wonder, given Nathaniel's successful business reputation, whether he might have had a son from a previous marriage who would have been knowledgeable about horsemanship to the extent that Alexander seemed to exhibit. Even in his later years, Alexander was simultaneously claiming extreme poverty and a reputation for owning—possibly selling—stallions. Two different newspapers ran announcements of the passing of "Uncle" Alex Boothe. The Comet of Johnson City, Tennessee, where Alexander died in 1895, noted on August 8  that he was "well known in this and adjoining counties" for traveling through the area "with famous stallions" in past years. News of his death was also carried by the Knoxville Journal two days later, mentioning also that he died at the home of his eldest daughter, Laura Caroline, wife of William F. Brooks.

There will be another year for returning to this puzzle. Hopefully, more records will become available online, aiding research for those not at liberty to fly across country to personally dig through locally archived documents. But even as we discovered this month, old published genealogies, while containing errors, may provide helpful pointers, and thorough searches through collateral lines may turn up answers where we least expect them. Next chance I get to revisit Alexander's past, it will be time to explore as much of the extended Boothe kin in Nansemond County as I can find. The answer may well be hidden in records that didn't burn down in courthouse fires. It's just a matter of patience and turning lots of dusty pages.

Image above: Insertion on page four of the August 8, 1895, Johnson City, Tennessee, newspaper, The Comet, regarding the death of Alexander Boothe; image courtesy of GenealogyBank.

Putting the Brakes on

 

Some quests for mystery ancestors produce lots of leads or round up unexpected relatives. Not so this month. For the last two weeks, especially, progress has been slow as I pursued possible connections that turned out to be, well, bum leads. With only one more day left to this month's chase, it's time to put the brakes on and slow down enough to park this family history vehicle.

The goal this month was to identify the parents of my second great-grandfather, Virginia-born Alexander Boothe. Unlike past projects where I felt confident in adding tentative family connections with a "hypothesis" tag or bright yellow warning sign, the leads I followed for the Boothe family didn't inspire even that much confidence—not even the DNA matches.

Perhaps that repeated experience of viewing—then rejecting—possible relatives was what caused my biweekly count to tank. I did manage to add ninety six relatives to my family tree with confidence, but mainly those were members of the Boothe family whom I already knew were descendants of Alexander, not any newly-discovered siblings or parents. My tree is still quite full and "bushy" at 40,206 researched relatives, but I certainly would have welcomed more, if I could just crack the code to solve this mystery family connection. (I have some observations to make tomorrow, but the bottom line is: no solid answer yet.)

As far as my in-laws' family tree goes, I haven't made one bit of progress on their side of the family for this entire first quarter of 2025, with the exception of some family news received over the winter holidays which tempted me to do some searching early in January.

That static situation will change with the flip of the calendar page from March to April, when I leave my Twelve Most Wanted goals for my mother's side of the family, and venture into the to-do list for my mother-in-law's relatives next. With that fresh start in April, we'll be working on a tree which now has 37,367 researched individuals to see if we can push beyond the brick wall on my mother-in-law's Schneider/Snider/Snyder line before the family's arrival in Ohio in the 1800s.

Someone Else Might Know

 

At a loss for how to solve my research problem this month—finding the parents of my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe—I decided to step out and take a look at who else might know something about this family. My specific route was to DNA—but not just the ThruLines possibilities I mentioned yesterday. This time, I went searching for potential matches at other testing companies which might share the Boothe and related surnames tied to this branch of my family.

Specifically, I headed to my DNA match list at MyHeritage. First, I tried the obvious: search for that Boothe surname in the trees of my matches. That didn't produce significant results, so my second attempt borrowed a more unusual surname from the hints back at AncestryDNA: McAlexander, the maiden name of the wife of Daniel Boothe, the suggested father of my Alexander, according to ThruLines. Again, nothing special showed up.

From that point, I turned to my recent readout from MyHeritage's tool, called AutoClusters, the very development which had helped me break through another brick wall on my paternal side a few years ago. AutoClusters had pinpointed sixteen clusters—some so small, they only contained three people. No matter; when I had found my paternal grandfather's roots that previous time, there were only a few people in that cluster, as well. Small can still be powerful.

In the process of reviewing all these clusters, I realized I could also cross-check those DNA matches at MyHeritage with my extensive family tree at Ancestry. After all, in the eleven years since I sent in my first test sample, I've been busy building out a very "bushy" family tree, in the hope of pinpointing how all these matches were related to me. Surely someone out there might know about my second great-grandfather's roots—or at least their genes could tell me something.

In the process, I've now identified and labeled some clusters based on our shared ancestor, including some brick wall ancestors I had struggled with in past months. While my Boothe question may remain unanswered this month, there's always the hope that someone from that line will eventually show up in my DNA results.

Three Boothe Ancestors

 

When brick wall ancestors have brought research progress to a dead stop, DNA testing can provide the bypass to reach an answer. In my case, I have three DNA matches who each claim a different Boothe ancestor. At least two of those matches' ancestors were children of Daniel Boothe, the Ohio resident who some people claimed to be parent of my brick wall ancestor Alexander Boothe. Let's start today by taking a look at one of them.

Unlike the other two DNA matches, this one's ancestor was listed in ThruLines results for both Daniel and his wife Mary. The match's progenitor was the couple's daughter Evelina. According to ThruLines, this match would be my fourth cousin once removed, a distant cousin indeed. Perhaps that's why we share only one segment of nine centiMorgans, a slim sliver of genetic material indeed.

Since we had already found Evelina's supposed parents in the 1850 census, living alone as an elderly couple in Lawrence County, Ohio, the search was on to find this Boothe daughter listed elsewhere for that census. That required an additional step, for by that point Evelina was already married. The date of their marriage had been back in 1837, still in Lawrence County, so by the time of the 1850 census, Evelina and her husband, Shadreck Ward, were already proud parents of four daughters.

I found a brief glimmer of possibility with this connection. Despite the family's residence in Ohio, the two oldest daughters, May and Martha, were reported to have been born in Virginia. Since May was born in 1839 and Martha in 1840, I looked for a family with that composition in the 1840 census. There they were, living in Cabell County, then part of Virginia (though now in West Virginia), one county removed from Lawrence County, which was across the state line to the northwest.

This was not near Randolph County, where I had found another Daniel Booth living in earlier years—Randolph County being nearly two hundred miles away—so I dismissed any thoughts of Evelina moving to be closer to grandparents. At any rate, the Ward household had apparently lived in Virginia only briefly, as both the 1850 census and 1860 census showed them back in Lawrence County, Ohio. Evelina died in 1886 and was buried in Lawrence County, indicating what likely was a lifelong residence in that location, other than that brief move across the state line. Indeed, that 1860 census had reported her own birthplace as Ohio, a possible sticking point, considering her 1818 date of birth would have been only two years after my Alexander was said to have been born in Nansemond County, Virginia, hundreds of miles to the east.

With only nine centiMorgans shared between myself and this descendant of Evelina, such a slim margin could be attributed to other reasons. We both could be related through another, as yet undiscovered, family line. Or we could simply share more distant relatives—or merely the fact that our ancestors were from the same regional origin, sharing history from centuries previous to this Boothe family puzzle.

Considering that the other two ThruLines Boothe matches, descended from supposed siblings of my Alexander, shared even less genetic material, they too could be considered identical by state, rather than identical by descent. Looking at the records showing various men named Daniel Boothe, as we did yesterday, causes me to doubt the fact that we're even looking at one specific individual—let alone a man who could have been my Alexander Boothe's father. In the next few days, we'll wrap up this exploration, noting possible next steps for continued research in future years.