I'm still holding out hope that I'll discover a new branch of my mother-in-law's matriline which will lead me to the "ah hah!" moment when I realize just how this family tree stuff all connects. But after the failed attempt to find such a matriline descending down to present time, it looks like it's time to reel back in and start fresh by casting my line from a higher vantage point. Instead of looking at each descendant of Rosanna Jackson Mitchell, as we've been doing this past week, we'll need to move back a generation or two.
In the meantime, we'll return to Rosanna's maternal grandfather's line to move back another generation there. That grandfather was William Ijams, who had been born in colonial Maryland, yet with two of his younger brothers, along with his wife Elizabeth and several children of their own, had moved to what was then the frontier of Ohio. We had found mention of his name in his father John Ijams' 1783 will. Now, it's time to step back another generation to John Ijams' parents, also named William and Elizabeth Ijams.
While the challenges of finding a story line to bring these ancestors to life seem insurmountable, we'll give it our best shot, examining the local history of Anne Arundel County during the colonial period of John Ijams and his parents in the coming week. Just knowing these ancestors are findable, despite their being my mother-in-law's sixth great-grandparents, is awesome in my book.The line just keeps going back, yet still remains in North America. Knowing that we are a nation of immigrants reinforces the assumption that eventually, we must have come from somewhere else, but here we are, still looking at last wills and testaments which were drawn up in Maryland in 1734.
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