Shaking it Up

 

Some family stories are just that—simply stories. Checking for details, the documents may lacking. When I saw the published report about one descendant of Lyman Jackson—his grandson Byron Kennedy—supposedly losing his own son to an earthquake in California, I had to check it out. That research question, however, led me down a bumpy path, prompted undoubtedly from the aftermath of the American Civil War, leading to a series of moves westward through the continent, partially unpredictable, had there not been siblings whose similar moves could be used for comparison.

Despite that, it is likely that I haven't been shaken loose in this genealogical chase. For one thing, an entry in any hundred-year-old genealogy book claiming "whereabouts unknown" can now easily be corrected through the many digitized resources now available to us. In Byron Kennedy's case, as it turns out, it may well be likely that he, himself, moved to California. In fact, the 1900 U.S. Census shows someone by that name living in Santa Rosa, California whose birth in Pennsylvania lines up nicely with our Byron's story.

That very location—Santa Rosa, California—was the one identified in the Jackson book as the place where Byron Kennedy's namesake son had supposedly died in an earthquake in 1906. That detail, too, could easily be verified. Though the most widely reported earthquake of that year was the one in San Francisco, Santa Rosa also suffered, being situated on the same fault line.

The impact, though focused on a series of city blocks downtown, was devastating. The destruction of historic buildings, followed by fires fueled by ruptured gas lines, did cause a significant number of deaths in what was then a city far smaller than San Francisco. Photographs of the aftermath, preserved in the digital archives of the Sonoma County Public Library, give a far more visceral effect than the sanitized State Earthquake Investigation Commission maps of the wiped-out downtown area, now preserved through the David Rumsey Map Collection.

Could Byron Kennedy have lost a son in the aftermath of the Santa Rosa earthquake? That someone could have lost his life in the collapsed buildings or ensuing fires is without question. Whether Byron Kennedy's own son was trapped in such circumstances is harder to determine.

However, just based on what can be found in the 1900 census, the only child remaining at the Kennedy home was their daughter Belle. Furthermore, following Byron's own death in 1912, the reading of his will listed three remaining children—all daughters. Granted, Byron did have a son who predeceased him in 1903, but he named that child Charles, not Byron.

Admittedly, tracing this branch of the Kennedy descendants of Susannah Samantha Jackson has led me on a convoluted trail. Piecing together the full story, in this case, requires tracking all branches of the Kennedy line at the same time—several independent family lines shaken up, only making sense in concert with each other. Just as the genealogical "FAN Club" concept teaches us to be aware of clusters in families, these Kennedy descendants demonstrate how tracing everyone at the same time helps identify the missing story lines in subsequent generations.  

Checking, Just in Case

 

When following the trail of genealogical crumbs left in books published years ago, I'm not above considering such leads, but I still make sure to check out the details, just in case. Yesterday, when we reviewed published accounts of Lyman Jackson's twelfth child, Susannah Samantha, there were some details that simply cried out for verification—and updates.

Among those details in the 1909 Horace Mortimer Jackson publication, The Family History of Michael Jackson, was information on the man Susannah married after her first husband, Henry Kennedy, had died. The book noted that Susannah then married someone named William Robinson. Checking to confirm that detail via documentation, it turns out that name was a close approximation, but not entirely correct. Susannah's second husband was actually recorded as John Robson.

While it is unlikely that Susannah, at age fifty one, would have had any further children in this second marriage, the lesson is well-taken: no matter the assertion, double-check with documentation.

There were other details about Susannah's history in the Jackson genealogy book that I want to double-check. For instance, the book stated, concerning Susannah's son Byron, that though he was married, his wife's name was unknown and that "their whereabouts are unknown." Furthermore, according to this account, they had a son named after his father, who was supposedly "killed in the earthquake at Santa Rosa, California, in 1906." 

Conveniently, I'm situated not far from Santa Rosa and, having personally known people who lived through a more recent earthquake in that same city, I'm aware that such a report could be quite possible, despite a much better known earthquake in another city nearby grabbing the majority of headlines in 1906. These are details which we can now verify digitally in many cases—a research step I intend to take, if for nothing other than to confirm or amend this published story.

Following the lines of the children can help confirm the entire family's story, not only in Susannah's case, but also regarding the instance of her sister Lucy, the youngest of all the thirteen Jackson children of Lyman and Deidama. Especially in Lucy's case, as we'll see tomorrow, I'll need some guidance from actual documentation, wherever it can be found.

Thankful for the Trailblazers

 

Researching the men among our distant ancestors may be difficult enough, once we move from "modern" times to previous centuries, but turning to the women from those past generations presents even more of a challenge. Perhaps on account of this, I'm thankful for the trailblazers of earlier generations who thought to write down what they discovered about their family history, both of men and women.

As we move from the youngest of the ten sons of Lyman Jackson and Deidama Dunham to the next child, we step from that world of somewhat documented men to the invisible world of women. In this case, thankfully, we can rely on old family letters and records preserved in one book focused on the descendants of Lyman's father—The Family History of Michael Jackson—to serve as trailblazer for the three remaining Jackson children, daughters all. And more to the point, with the many digitized records available to us online now, we can confirm or reject many of the assertions made in such century-old genealogy tomes.

Following the birth of Norman Landon Jackson, the youngest of Lyman's sons, the next child was the last child to have been born to the couple in New York before the family moved to Erie County, Pennsylvania. This daughter, born on January 17, 1805, the Jacksons named Susannah Samantha.

By 1828, Susannah was a married woman, the wife of Henry Kennedy. Seeing that married surname sparks a question. As the Jackson sons had already demonstrated themselves to marry sisters—the Hendryx sisters for Jackson brothers Michael, David, and Abner—seeing the name Kennedy causes me to wonder whether Susanna's husband was related to the two Kennedy women who married Lyman junior and Royal Jackson. That is a research question I've yet to answer.

By the time we've arrived at researching the life story of the Jacksons' twelfth child, it comes as no surprise that Susannah and her husband Henry showed up in the 1850 census in Knox County, Illinois, destination for several of her Jackson relatives. We've seen that pattern before. And the census narrows the date range for when the Kennedys left their home in Pennsylvania, for their four year old son Byron was born there before the family made the trek westward to Illinois in time for the 1850 census.

Things did not go well for the Kennedy family in Illinois, for not long after their arrival, Susannah was widowed and remarried in Knox County on February 18, 1856. By the time of the 1860 census, Susannah and her son Byron were living in the household of her second husband John Robson, along with two of John's sons from a previous marriage.

Though in Susannah's case, the outline of her children's history in the Jackson genealogy book is sparse, it appears that following the trail provided by the book's author does at least help trace the family yet another generation—though the details need to be brought into clearer focus. This, as with all uses of published genealogy books, is a task for me to complete behind the scenes, but it has already been informative to peek ahead and compare notes with digitized records. Books can certainly point the way, especially when we are working with families whose recorded generations stretch back centuries, but those reports are best coupled with the documentation we can easily access online in our own times.

The Last Son

 

The last in a long line of sons of Lyman Jackson and Deidama Dunham was Norman Landon Jackson. The tenth son and eleventh child born to the Jacksons, Norman likely made his 1801 appearance in upstate New York before the Jacksons' final move to Erie County, Pennsylvania.

While his parents and a few brothers chose to remain in Pennsylvania, Norman was among the Jackson siblings who decided to move west. For a while, he could be found in Knox County, Illinois, along with his brothers Obediah and David Bardsley Jackson. However, he eventually settled farther west, in Minnesota territory. There, in the 1857 territorial census, Norman Jackson and his wife, along with his son Eli's household, were listed in a place once known as Jackson Lake in Blue Earth County. 

Left behind in Illinois were his two daughters. Back in Knox County, Lois married Andrew Tapp in 1847, and shortly afterwards settled in Black Hawk County, Iowa, before the 1856 state census.  Her sister Louisa followed suit, marrying John Ferris and settled in Black Hawk County, Iowa, before the 1860 census.

As for Norman Landon Jackson, he died in the place where he had settled in the 1850s. His memorial in Blue Earth County, Minnesota, bears the dates 1801 and 1869, spanning a life which took him from upstate New York, to Erie County, Pennsylvania, then westward through Indiana to Illinois, and eventually onward to what was once known as Minnesota Territory.   

Sometimes, It Takes Just One

 

This month's project for my Twelve Most Wanted had me thinking I'd be busy all month long, just tracing the many descendants of Lyman Jackson and his wife, Deidama Dunham. After all, not only are we talking about a couple whose lifespans bridged colonial years and a revolution, but progenitors of a family which ultimately resulted in ten sons and three daughters. Unsurprisingly, many of those children followed in their parents' footsteps.

However, arriving at their tenth child, Royal Gilbert Jackson, that pattern didn't remain unbroken. Marrying Sophia Kennedy and setting up their home in Erie County, Pennsylvania, the couple may have had only one child. At first, I wondered if that was the reason why I didn't see any descendants of Royal and Sophia in my husband's DNA matches. Following that line, though, made me realize that sometimes, it can take just one ancestor to result in many descendants.

Tracing Royal's life story has been challenging so far. When I took his name and dates to FamilySearch.org's Full Text Search, little appeared for my effort. It seems Royal Jackson followed his father's example and deeded property rather than utilizing a will. At least that, at first glance, is my conjecture.

According to family histories preserved over the years, Royal and Sophia had one child, a daughter whose name in one history was listed as Emeline. She, in turn, supposedly married someone with the surname Cheeseman. Finding any verification of such a detail, however, was hampered by one problem: Emeline apparently went by two different given names.

Eventually, I found her name by that specific format mentioned in family histories—Emeline Jackson—in the death certificate of a son. Thankfully, this son bore the telltale mark of being his grandfather's namesake, for he was named Royal Cheeseman. This son's father's name, according to his death record, was William Cheeseman.

That confirmation led to the realization that Emeline also went by a different given name which sometimes appeared as Laurena E., and sometimes as Lorine E. What was clear, once all the correct Cheeseman documents were assembled, was that this Jackson descendant, even if she was an only child herself, went on to have several children. Daughters all, except for the couple's one son, Royal Cheeseman, but this only child became a source of many descendants—and, hopefully, a connection leading to additional DNA matches, as well.

Brothers Marrying Sisters

 

Thanks to all the work I've been able to do with DNA matches this month, I had already outlined several descendants of the next son of Lyman Jackson. Researching the descendants of David Bardsley Jackson, the eighth son and ninth child of Lyman and Deidama, became a curiosity owing to one point: like two of his brothers, he married a Hendryx. And with that choice, he also married his first cousin.

David Jackson's wife Lucy Hendryx was daughter of Mehitabel Dunham Hendryx, who in turn was sister of David's mother Deidama. To complicate matters, David's older brother Michael had married Lucy's sister Ruth, and we've already learned that David's brother Abner had also married one of the Hendryx sisters, Tryphosa. 

At a closer relationship level, I imagine such marriage arrangements would make for some interesting DNA matches, but in my mother-in-law's case, though she does have several instances of pedigree collapse in her heritage, that is not the case for this Jackson line. Her direct line Jackson ancestor, John Jay Jackson, married someone outside this family connection along the Jacksons' migration route from Vermont through upstate New York to Erie County, Pennsylvania.

Still, it is interesting to realize that descendants of both David and Abner show up in our Jackson DNA matches, but not any descendants of Michael—yet. However, I wouldn't be surprised if patient waiting and diligent checking over time might yield some new matches to descendants of all the Jackson children.

From Dynasty to DNA

 

Now that I've sorted out most of the various namesake grandsons of Lyman Jackson—as well as the many other descendants of his ten sons and three daughters—it's time to see whether those DNA connections to my husband's fifth great-grandfather make sense. After all, he currently has seventy one Jackson matches. It's time to get busy.

Lately, I've been using the "Shared Matches" from Ancestry's ProTools collection, enabling me to blast through entire family lines in some cases. Of course, this includes the current culmination of a twelve-year-long project to build out my mother-in-law's family tree to include all the descendants of all her ancestors. By the time we get back to fifth great-grandparents, that can add up to a lot of descendants, indeed.

Having just worked on the line of descent from Lyman Jackson's seventh son, Abner, I was ready to see what matches ThruLines had already attributed to specific sons of the patriarch Lyman. Among those seventy one DNA matches, there are descendants from the lines of Jesse Dunham Jackson, whom I researched earlier this month, and Abner Jackson, whom we touched on yesterday. Of course, the majority of DNA matches—currently fifty five—come from our direct ancestor, Lyman's son John Jay.

Of the remaining Jackson siblings, I have yet to research two sons and one daughter for whom we have six DNA matches. My hope, though, is that this additional work building out the family tree to include all the collateral lines plus all their descendants will point out additional matches for whom Ancestry has yet to pin a shared ancestor. 

From that step, I then look at each match's shared matches, sorted in order of relationship from closest downward, to see how I can place those other unidentified matches within the Jackson tree. It's an ongoing process and, yes, time consuming, but it does help sort those DNA matches into informative connections. The more work done on this process, the easier it becomes to place newer DNA matches within this Jackson family constellation.