Finding Females Before the Fifties

 

Since I realize that caving to the allure of alliteration may leave me wide open to misinterpreted hits from spammers, let me clarify that title: I'm now looking for the females in Walter Teal's family from before the fifties—the 1850s, that is, not their fifties. 

I'm still on the trail of my mother-in-law's matriline, looking for any mtDNA matches, specifically any women descending from her fourth great-grandmother Elizabeth Howard. Elizabeth's daughter Mary Ijams had married Walter Teal in Fairfield County, Ohio, in 1805, but somehow may have disappeared before her husband showed up in the 1840 census in Wabash County, Indiana.

It's hard to tell on those enumerations prior to 1850. While tally marks within age brackets can give us somewhat of a picture of a family's composition, they certainly can't tell us the names of any of those women in the household. But at least the document reveals that there was one possible daughter of Walter and Mary still remaining in the 1840 household: someone between the ages of fifteen and nineteen. Who could it have been?

Stepping back another ten years, Walter's household in the 1830 census had shown two other possible daughters: at that time, both were between the ages of fifteen and nineteen. If they were still alive by the time of the 1850 census, that would mean Mary had at least three daughters we need to find—assuming all three had lived to adulthood.

Fortunately, one of the daughters showed up in a transcription of a record in the Teal family's new home in Indiana. That transcription, a marriage index for Indiana weddings, clearly showed the parents' names as Walter and Mary Teal, but as for the bride's name, it was rendered as either Prudence or Providence. Likewise, the married surname display had problems, but appeared to be Jessup.

That's a start. Another marriage index supplied a bit more of the story. The groom was Jacob N. Shallenberger—or possibly Shallenborg. The bride was listed as Jessup. Apparently, if this was our Walter and Mary's daughter, she was married more than twice.

Sure enough, other documents began to fill in the blanks. Moving to earlier records than Shallenberger, Providence was once married to someone named Jessup. And before that, was married to someone named Thomas Dain. The good news in all of this? I could find that earliest couple in both the 1850 and the 1860 census—complete with the names of all their children.

Especially the daughters.