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. 

Abner 'n' Phosa

 

As we continue pursuing the ten sons and three daughters of Lyman Jackson, we are now up to his seventh son, Abner. And yet again—yes, adding another Lyman to the list—we find one more Jackson descendant who made sure to name one of his own sons after his father. Only in Abner's case, he went above and beyond in borrowing the names of his siblings to round out the namesakes represented by his own family.

Abner Jackson was born in 1795 in the community of Richfield in the then-newly-formed Otsego County, New York. Along with his parents and siblings, he eventually moved to Erie County, Pennsylvania. Marrying Tryphosa Jane Hendryx, sister of his brother Michael's wife Ruth, the couple went on to have a large family of their own.

Perhaps owing to her less common name, Abner's wife often went by the nickname 'Phosa, or 'Phosa Jane. This nickname, in turn, sometimes showed in transcriptions of handwritten records as "Phora."

Abner and 'Phosa remained mostly in western Pennsylvania, though notes preserved from some relatives in family history books mentioned their temporary residence in Ohio. The 1870 census supports that report, showing Abner and "Thosey" living near his namesake son and his family in Columbiana County that year.

It has been fairly straightforward to follow several of Abner and 'Phosa's children through the next two generations. This task, repeated down to our present time, will hopefully inform the ThruLines tool at Ancestry DNA, which currently pinpoints seventy one of my husband's DNA matches as Jackson descendants. Not that seventy one is too small a number for me, but I suspect that count might grow even larger with a little more work on our family tree. Ten sons and three daughters from the late 1700s can result in a far more remarkable pool of descendants than that. 

Another Grandson Named Lyman

Much as I had suspected, Lyman Jackson would have more than one grandson named after him. While I'm building out the family tree for my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandfather, I've been noticing how many of his grandsons seemed to have shared this man's story. I've also spotted a few of those descendants sporting this grandfather's given name, so as I moved on through Lyman's ten sons to Obadiah Jackson, I wasn't surprised to find another namesake grandson.

Obadiah, the sixth son and seventh child of Lyman Jackson, was born in 1794, likely after the family had moved to upstate New York. Judging from the census return for 1830, Obadiah had moved once again with his father and older siblings to Erie County, Pennsylvania. But by 1850, he was far from that latest Jackson home in Pennsylvania.

The 1850 census revealed Obadiah's new residence in Knox County, Illinois, where he claimed the value of his real estate to be six hundred dollars. There with him were his wife, Mary, and several children. All but the oldest—Lyman—were born in Illinois.

In 1850, Lyman was listed as a nineteen year old harness maker in his father's household. Though I haven't yet located him in the 1860 census, before the following enumeration, Lyman was married and raising a family of his own.

Looking back to Lyman's father, I searched for a copy of Obadiah's will, to see a listing of all his children, but to no avail. While I did find a will, it was brief—far too short to confirm the names of any of his children. The document basically gave everything of Obadiah's property to his wife, Mary Ann, also appointing her as his executor. If there were any other legal instruments used to transfer property to his children, I'll need to revisit FamilySearch.org's Full Text Search to find any deeds mentioning Obadiah's name.

Lyman, in turn, remained for the rest of his life in Knox County, Illinois, marrying and raising a family of his own. As with all the other grandchildren of the senior Lyman Jackson, I'll revisit the children of Obadiah and continue documenting their lines of descent for guidance as I work through the DNA matches who turn out to be descendants of the Jackson lines. With many of the elder Lyman Jackson's ten sons and three daughters marrying and having large families of their own, there will be plenty to keep me busy for the remainder of this month.

Thankful for the Third Generation

 

As I work my way through the family tree of Revolutionary War Patriot Lyman Jackson, I'm realizing what a challenge it is to confirm anyone's line of descent during the earliest years of this nation. To trace any of the descendants of his ten sons or three daughters, one would have to rely on court records, tax records, land records or other obscure documents in those years predating death certificates or even post-1850 census enumerations.

In the case of this Jackson family, though claiming a fairly common surname, they had one thing going for them: Lyman Jackson's grandchildren were quite willing to keep the family's stories alive. We've already discussed how helpful it was to find the story of grandson Lysander Jackson, in whose published biographical sketch he was sure to credit the accomplishments of his grandfather, the senior Lyman Jackson. I've since run into other Jackson grandsons' stories preserved in biographical sketches in county history books from the late 1800s.

I'm thankful for the willingness of that third generation to keep those Jackson family stories alive for future generations. It puts me in mind of a quote I ran across recently—which itself models the illustration of the importance, yet fragility, of passing along a comment from one person to the next.

The quote, as I most recently heard it, was from fellow genealogy blogger Randy Seaver. He had shared it in a presentation he had made in northern California, not far from my own home. Speaking to the Genealogical Society of Santa Cruz County, Randy reminded us that "it only takes three generations to lose a piece of oral family history."

This thought he had credited to another genealogist, Judy Russell, who had shared that quote in her keynote presentation at the fourth annual RootsTech conference back in 2014. Recapped by Judy Russell in her own blog, The Legal Genealogist, she mentioned finding the quote in an article published at the end of 2013 in Examiner.com by a Texas genealogist, Judy Everett Ramos.

That, however, was not the fountainhead of that provenance trail. Judy Everett Ramos, in turn, had drawn her inspiration from the actual source of that quote, a longstanding archivist at the National Archives in Fort Worth, Texas, named Aaron Holt. The cogent part of that statement, going back to Judy Russell's blog post, was

it only takes three generations to lose a piece of oral family history. ...It must be purposely and accurately repeated over and over again through the generations to be preserved for a genealogist today.

As I work my way through this one Jackson family's story from colonial times through the nineteenth century, I'm realizing how key that third generation was in ensuring that their ancestors' stories were preserved for the future. Whether in oral transmission or preservation in writing, their stories have not been entirely lost because someone chose to pass those details along to yet another set of descendants who were willing to do their part. 

A Grandson Returns Home

 

The search for the ten sons and three daughters of Lyman Jackson continues, but in this case, it is a grandson, not a son, who returns home to Erie County, Pennsylvania, where Lyman himself had finally settled. Once again, we find our clue from a century-old county history book, but this time, rather than a report from far to the west, the book is a publication from Erie County.

Lysander Jackson, Lyman's grandson, was also son of someone named Lyman. His father, born in 1790,  was his grandfather's namesake, but unlike the senior Lyman, Lysander's father ended up traveling to Wisconsin, where he served as a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

According to his biographical sketch in the 1884 History of Erie County, Pennsylvania, Lysander was born in Erie County in 1823, and remained there—at least for all but two census enumerations—for most of his life. In his early adult years, Lysander apparently moved to Ashtabula County, Ohio, seeking work, but returned home soon afterwards. Married to Elizabeth McKee of his home county in Pennsylvania, he and his wife had only one child, Sarah. Years later, the couple could be found living with his brother-in-law back in Ohio for the 1900 census, but returned again to Pennsylvania before Lysander's death there in 1907.

Thanks once again to the published story of a grandson, we are able to trace the line of another of the senior Lyman Jackson's sons. Despite seeing those sons move far from their home in Pennsylvania, at least two of Lyman's grandsons made sure to keep the family story alive for another generation.