Ancestor #2: A Search for Parents — Again

 

The list for this year's Twelve Most Wanted will see some repeat appearances. That is a good thing. Recent developments in online search tools may help all of us push beyond what we were once able to accomplish. Just as I hold high hopes for January's goal—seeking the parents of my second great-grandmother Sarah Catherine Laws—I hope to find documents linking the focus of my February goal with her ancestors, as well.

February's goal, the second person featured on this year's Twelve Most Wanted, will focus on another ancestor on my maternal line. This woman's mystery ancestors have been said to be the connecting agents linking me to over one hundred DNA cousins—supposedly. I have yet to find documentation to verify those assertions. I last focused on this line for my Twelve Most Wanted list in March of 2021, but this February may be the month to find out otherwise.

The ancestor in question is my third great-grandmother Delaney Townsend. Supposedly born in South Carolina about 1816, she was resident in territorial Florida by the time she was married to Andrew Jackson Charles, son of a local trader near the Suwannee River just south of the Georgia state border. The year of their marriage—1841—was certainly no time for a young, unmarried woman to be alone in such a wilderness, which makes me wonder further about her roots. Where were her family members and how did they get to Florida from South Carolina—or wherever they originated?

Since I've tested at five different DNA companies, I've had ample notices inferring that Delaney was daughter of specific parents, but I've yet to find satisfactory documentation to make the connection sure. With this year's development of AI-assisted Full Text Search at FamilySearch.org, I have a new opportunity to find Delaney's name connected to documents drawn up by potential family members. Not only that, but I may possibly find the answer to another question which has plagued me: what eventually happened to Delaney and her husband Andrew Jackson Charles, both of whom disappeared sometime before the recording of the 1860 census?

There's plenty of motivation to resolve this issue. Here's just one example: if relying on the ThruLines tool at Ancestry.com and checking my entry for her supposed parents, I have 117 DNA matches linked to Delaney's supposed father, and 114 matches attributed to her possible mother. If either of those designated parents turns out to be true, I'll have a lot of work ahead of me to reconcile records on quite a sizable set of DNA cousin connections. That alone can take me more than the month—especially a month as brief as February.