Still Looking for Daughters

 

Discovering a previously-missed daughter in the Ijams line I'm working on this month put another task on my research to-do list. Daughters mean possible connections to my mother-in-law's matriline, and the discovery this month of another daughter for Sarah Ijams and John Jay Jackson means more work ahead.

Sarah Ijams was my mother-in-law's third great-grandmother. As for DNA significance, Sarah was ancestral to my mother-in-law's matriline, which means any of her daughters could have passed along that same mitochondrial DNA signature. In the case of that newly-realized daughter, Rosanna Jackson, her marriage to Walter Mitchell produced at least three possibilities: her daughters Mary, Martha, and Sarah.

Our task this week will be to explore the lines of descent for each of those three daughters, looking particularly at the daughters of the next generation, those girls born to Mary, Martha, or Sarah. Once we find any candidates, we'll proceed with the same process for the next generation, and then the generation following that, looking only at daughters of daughters.

Once we arrive at any remaining daughters in that long line of female-only descent, the next step will be to see whether any connect to the mtDNA matches we have for my husband's own mtDNA test. Remember, though we are restricting our search to daughters of daughters, mothers do pass down their mtDNA signature to their sons, as well—it's just that sons cannot pass that same result to any of their children.

Thus, though we may need to peek at some genealogical clues for Rosanna and Walter Mitchell's sons, that would only be to guide us regarding their sisters—such as married names. Other than that, we'll need to be sure to keep strictly on task exploring those candidates who can pass along Rosanna's matrilineal code.

There's Always Something

 

When I hear people say that they are "finished" building their family tree, I always have to re-translate that idea in my own mind. Someone like that might have tired with the process of searching for ancestors, but you and I know there is always something—or someone—more to find. Whether that is owing to a new insight regarding an intractable mystery ancestor, or revelation of a previously missing clue, new discoveries bring more research possibilities. 

It will be no surprise to learn that, in the past two weeks, I've added 348 names to my in-laws' tree, which now holds documentation for a total of 34,831 individuals. Since I've been concentrating on my mother-in-law's Ijams ancestry—the descendants and, hopefully, the ancestry of her fourth great-grandfather, William Ijams—progress had been hampered as I tried to push backwards to previous generations specifically using documented resources. But then, a surprise discovery thanks to the ThruLines tool at Ancestry.com broke opened an entirely new source of distant cousins—and another matrilineal route to explore for mtDNA purposes.

Following that, another surprise discovery that I may share ancestral Broyles connections with a fellow member of our local genealogical society has sent both of us on a chase to discover just how close that connection might be. Since our most recent common ancestor may point us to the level of seventh cousin or possibly a connection more distant, it's no surprise to see that the initial sketches of the connection have already added an unexpected sixty names to my own family tree, which now contains 38,366 names. And even though my research goal this month is to focus on the Ijams line in my mother-in-law's family, I'll continue working on this Broyles project behind the scenes. It's so fun to discover our friends and neighbors can also be relatives.  

Missed an Entire Branch

 

Drove right by that fork in the road, I did. Didn't even see it. The sense of being blind to something so obviously staring me in the face can be startling to realize. And that, essentially, is how I felt when I discovered I had missed an entire branch of my mother-in-law's family tree.

That "fork in the road" was an additional daughter whose life story fell into the cracks in a century when married women were almost as invisible as they were as unmarried daughters. Being born, marrying, and dying all before the 1850 U.S. Census could have called any attention to their existence, these women can be hard to find on paper. That is pretty much what happened to William Ijams' granddaughter Rosanna.

Born to one of William's youngest daughters—Sarah, wife of John Jay Jackson—Rosanna arrived during the early years of Ohio statehood. Since she was born about 1821 and married in 1840, I had entirely missed her existence. It was only thanks to a DNA test at Ancestry.com—and a tip from the ThruLines tool there—that one of Rosanna's descendants showed up as a match to my husband, beginning the head-scratching process of examining available documents in hindsight.

Perhaps because the process began with a DNA test, it made sense to bolster the data I'd need for any future possible cousin matches. Since that discovery, I've been working on adding all the descendants of Rosanna and her husband, Walter Mitchell, as collateral lines on my mother-in-law's family tree. My real focus at this point is the matriline leading up to Rosanna, since her female descendants will also be passing along the same matriline that my mother-in-law passed along to her son, my husband. And right now, I'm still stuck with some mtDNA matches whose connection to that most recent common ancestor—whoever that ancient mother might have been—is still a mystery. 

At least now I've got a few more resources to help point to the answer.

Taking Time for Family

 

Keeping track of the stories of past generations, we family historians sometimes seem to become focused more on those who are long gone than those family members in our current circles. Though my research has lately transported me to centuries past and homes across the continent, this month I'll be taking time to be with more recent members of our extended family.

Thoughts like these were running through my mind yesterday as we made the long drive south to attend the funeral of a cousin's husband—the same cousin whose brother's grandchild will bid us fly to the midwest for a wedding at the other end of this month. Yes, I spend lots of time getting to know seventh great-grandparents on the east coast, but taking time to be with current family is far more important. Ancestors are fun to get to know, but there are no connections quite like the loved ones in our immediate circle.

While posts for the next few days will understandably be quite understated—there won't be any time to put into research tasks while away—you know those thoughts of family will still be running through my mind. How can we compare anything to family? Such a mix of ambiguities and unexpected outcomes as each of us morph and reinvent ourselves and our relationships as quickly as the decades fly by us. Each of us is a study in enigmas. It can take a lifetime just to say we know even one of our relatives—let alone the ancestors we've never met. But if we don't take the time to be present and absorb their ambience, how can we ever begin to understand?

According to the Book

 

Discovering a book dedicated to the recounting of one's own family line can be a mixed bag. On the one hand, we need to proceed cautiously, if we do consider the book's contents at all, just in case the published researcher has committed the same errors so many of us unpublished researchers are prone to making. On the other hand, since some of those family history volumes have the added advantage of being written by researchers one hundred—or more—years closer to the ancestors in question, they may contain personal knowledge of which those in our current century may not have been aware. My personal view is to find a reliable published researcher and use him or her as a trailblazer: someone who is pointing out the path back to more distant ancestry. For this, I adopt the motto: Trust, but Verify.

Now that we're tackling the ancestry of my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandfather, William Ijams of Maryland, for starters, I may as well proceed according to the book. "The book," in this case, would be Harry Wright Newman's Anne Arundel Gentry, a book published in 1933.

We've already seen from the Newman book that William was the eldest son of John Iiams and Rebecca Jones. The book provided the dates at which John Iiams' will was drawn up (October 9, 1782) and probated (April 21, 1783). Taking those dates to the FamilySearch Labs Full Text search engine, I was able to pull up the actual will and confirm what Harry Wright Newman had listed in his book.

It's time to move on to the next generations, so I'll test that process again for each new step. According to Newman's book, John Iiams was son of William Iiams and Elizabeth Plummer. Since the name Plummer seems to echo through subsequent generations of the Iiams and Ijams family, I'm keen to see what I can find on this maternal branch—but also mindful of my goal of following that Ijams line as far back as possible during this month.

Peeking ahead yet another generation, our William's grandfather William Iiams was in turn son of yet another Iiams by the name of William—you see now why that given name seems to have ricocheted throughout the generations of the Ijams family. This elder William—we're now talking about my mother-in-law's seventh great-grandfather—was married to another Elizabeth. (Not that we want to make this more complicated or anything....) 

The maiden name for this ancestral Elizabeth, wife of the elder William, has been alternately entered as "Cheyney" or "Cheney." She was apparently daughter of Richard Cheyney, born about 1652, according to Newman's calculations.

As for her husband William—listed as William Eyams—he was the founding immigrant ancestor of this line in my mother-in-law's ancestry. Though his name is not included in any records of arrivals to the colony of Maryland, we do have a date for his will, which was drawn up in 1698 and presented in court in Anne Arundel County—another document to verify through the FamilySearch Labs Full Text search.

Thus, the trailblazer—in this case, Harry Wright Newman—has laid out specific dates to guide us in confirming the Ijams family's story, once they arrived in the North American British colonies. Now, we'll begin tackling the search for documents and start reading between the lines to see what other information can be uncovered.

A Process Break to Reminisce

 

It may be the middle of the week in the beginning of a research month which is far, far from my stated end goal, but today I need to take a process break. Why? On this day, thirteen years ago, we were celebrating Mother's Day. How do I know? Because thirteen years ago, I flung the first of 4,687 blog posts out into the ether, with the idea of sharing the family stories I inherited. I wanted to serve as genealogical guinea pig, reporting on my escapades as they unfolded. And I thought it might be a good idea to launch such a series on a family-friendly day like Mother's Day. After all, it was my mother's ancestors who were careful to pass down so many of those stories I knew from childhood.

After the nearly two million page views—both human and, I suspect, AI-initiated—and 15,636 encouraging comments from fellow family history aficionados, I hope to continue stringing together enough words to resonate every day. But one never knows which posts will wend their way to someone who will find them helpful, or inspiring, or even amusing. Sometimes, even years afterwards, I do hear from people researching the same lines as I am—added bonus if they are actual cousins—but that is not the case for most of the top posts here over the years.

When I look at the posts which snagged the most eyeballs, they seem to fall into a very few basic categories. Some were retrospectives on recent genealogy events, but others involved reflections on the current status of local genealogical societies, or the pathos we unexpectedly uncover as we plod along our research pathways. Then, too, there were the rare moments when genealogical pursuits or skill sets collided with breaking news. On a lighter side, even my orphan photo rescuing projects seemed to resonate. 

It's always hard to determine which posts will connect with readers. Cousin bait has been a prime motivator, at least on this writer's end, but that doesn't mean the same will motivate readers, themselves. Above all, the process of blogging about family history demonstrates our innate desire to find commonalities through family connection, no matter how distant—not just that we are family, but that seeking family is more a team sport than an individual endeavor. 

When the Family Stories Don't Add Up

 

There are times, when we work on our family's history, that we realize some things just don't add up. Here I am this month, working to push back the generations on my mother-in-law's Ijams line, when I find myself distracted by something that falls in that category: it just doesn't add up right.

Face it, my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandfather William Ijams, was a child of colonial Maryland. Born in 1748, William was oldest son of a couple living in Anne Arundel County, whose father was a member of the exclusive old South River Club. Looking closely at John Ijams' will, it is clear the man was also a slave-holding planter.

Though William was John Ijams' eldest son, he was not the one named to inherit the prized family property when his father passed away in 1783. That privilege went to the two youngest sons in the family, Thomas Plummer Ijams and Isaac Ijams. To William was granted just one bequest: two of his father's slaves—"and no more."

What was ironic about that abrupt documented dismissal was that William's two youngest brothers eventually sold their inherited residence in 1796—a property which had been held by family members for the prior five generations—and moved with William to the Northwest Territory.

Unless you are deeply involved with the politics which established that Northwest Territory, you may not be aware that two of the men who were instrumental in framing the Northwest Ordinance were both from Puritan-influenced New England, and insisted that the new territory be established as a free territory. In other words, no slavery allowed.

So, my question: what did William do with his sole inheritance, once he decided to move to the frontier which became Ohio? Furthermore, if he did come from a slave-holding heritage, why would he have chosen to remove himself from that position of privilege and move to the edge of civilization, especially with such a restriction?

There is another piece of the Ijams story which can be interwoven into the narrative at this point. While in the previous month, we were able to connect the surnames which married into the Ijams family, we can now see that that research effort will yield us some benefits.

Remember Walter Teal, William's son-in-law, husband of William's daughter Mary? His father, Edward Teal, was one of the first settlers in Fairfield County, Ohio, at about the time of the Ijams family's arrival there. Edward, as it turns out from old history books, was among those who established the first Methodist Church in what eventually became Fairfield County—as "class leader," as one 1901 history book recounted. Other members of that early congregation represented family names of William Ijams' future sons-in-law, demonstrating the close association of William and his family to that early "religious society."

The question at this point may be whether William Ijams came to the Northwest Territory, then converted, changing his entire outlook on slavery as well as other matters of life, or whether he already had bought into those principles before leaving Maryland. Going back to the passage on the first Methodist congregation in Fairfield County, Ohio, author C. M. L. Wiseman noted it was "composed of Methodists who had emigrated from near Baltimore, Maryland." If that early group included William Ijams' family, they likely were of that religious persuasion before deciding to move to Ohio.

While many people who migrated westward went for the promise of a better opportunity in that new home, William Ijams seemed to have chosen to leave his "better" opportunity behind when he made his decision to move. Whatever was involved in that decision, it called for a radical departure from life as he had experienced it through his family's heritage.

Or perhaps John Ijams knew that about his eldest son before he even drew up his will. 

Sorting Out the Family Names

 

When it comes to tracing the extended Ijams family, it's been a challenge to sort out all the family names. Some given names appeared to be favorites over the generations. My main interest has been William Ijams, my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandfather, but it didn't take long to discover that he wasn't the only William Ijams in his family's home back in colonial Maryland. In order to make sure I didn't accidentally slip across family lines and stumble into the wrong collateral line, I had to first diagram the relatives as I found them.

Thankfully, we've located William's father's will, which provides a basic road map to guide us through the lines of descent. Though that showed us William's brothers—which, according to the will of his father John, also included sons John, Isaac, and Thomas Plummer Ijams—the document also provided us advanced warning of name twins ahead. Witness to John Ijams' will, for instance, noted John Ijams "of Plummer"—presumably son of the Plummer Ijams who also served as witness. And in the codicil dated March 15, 1783, there was mention of a William Ijams "son of George."

Fortunately, the will provided some guideposts to help us roughly estimate age ranges. John Ijams had drawn up his will on October 9, 1782, then added that codicil on March 15, 1783. The document was presented in court in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, on April 21, 1783, so we have an estimate regarding John's date of death.

The document listed four married daughters: Elizabeth Lyons, Ann Stockett, Mary Ijams—likely deceased by that point, though her two children and inferred husband were mentioned—and, almost as an afterthought at the close of the document, Margaret Sunderland. 

As for the sons, John Ijams specifically noted that his eldest son was William. Also named were sons John, Isaac, and Thomas Plummer Ijams. It was to the final two sons that John bequeathed his property and—thankfully—made mention of stipulations, in case either, or perhaps both, died before they came to  "ye age of twenty one."

That was the only device left us to help determine dates of birth for any of John Ijams' children. Since John died in 1783 sometime between his last codicil dated March 15 and the presentation of his will in court on April 21, we now can say his youngest two sons had to have been born after at least mid-April of 1762. Further, since the will specified that youngest son Isaac would be permitted to "act for himself at ye age of sixteen," his birth was likely after April of 1767.

Those dates are only estimates, of course, but may become useful as we move forward in this exploration of William Ijams and his siblings, some of whom moved with him when he left Maryland for the wilds of territorial Ohio around the turn of the upcoming century. 

A Brand New To-Do List

 

Starting a new project always throws the unexpected into one's path. That, at least, is my story, now that I've jumped into the collaborative possibilities at WikiTree. Well, let me amend that. "Jump" is too strong a word. How about "seeped" or "oozed"? Something more like molasses in January.

Speaking of January, that is usually when I assemble my research to-do list, and that becomes my working plan for the entire upcoming year. No room for detours, usually. This weekend, though, I made an exception—and ended up with a brand new to-do list to merge with the current one. 

My hope was to be more collaborative with the discoveries I've uncovered in the past kazillion years of chasing my family's stories. Another instigative shove I owe to the lonely fact that there aren't too many of my relatives out there, at least on some of my lines. Perhaps someone else is puzzling over those same family history mysteries, as well.

Once I crashed into the realization that uploading my thirty five thousand name GEDCOM into WikiTree was not the best of ideas—even if I used my stripped down version—I settled down to the drudge work of starting from scratch, one name at a time. Of course, that meant uploading information on references, too. But what do you do when some of those documents were obtained pre-Internet via snail mail (and its obligatory six-week waiting period)? 

That's where my weekend got hung up. It was a simple footnote to my paternal grandfather's date of death. Fortunately for me, those New York City records are now supposedly uploaded to various online genealogical resources, so I took what I thought would be a quick peek to see if online searches would once again save me some time.

Wrong. Once again, my ancestors found a way to hide in the cracks, so back to the notebooks it was to pull up the stored hard copy of my grandfather's death certificate. Granted, those old three ring binders did not age well in the past, um, forty years since I've first been at this paper chase. But that didn't matter; of all the records in those multiple binders, the entire file on that specific family was not in that storage collection.

In the meantime, I cleaned up all those stored files on the other family lines, tossed duplicates of records I've already noted, and digitized documents I still needed to add to my records online. And then, there were just a few more minutes left to compose profile entries on WikiTree for three ancestors: my dad, my mysterious paternal grandfather of the top-secret origin, and his wife—none of whom have matches within that vast WikiTree database.

Let's just say I've managed to get a jump on my spring cleaning chores. But not much else.

Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

 

How do you take a 35,000+ name family tree and merge it with another one of the same size, then edit it down to less than five thousand names? That's what I had planned spending the rest of this weekend doing—but believe me, it wasn't what I had in mind when I first got the idea to sign up for WikiTree.

Yes, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I had been exploring the profiles posted on that universal tree, mainly to examine resources that other researchers had discovered on my family's hard-to-find ancestors. I'm not above being nosy when it comes to well-conceived proof arguments or even the serendipitous footnote.

It was while puzzling over my mother-in-law's matriline that I spotted a note on WikiTree regarding lack of any participants sharing their mtDNA results for that particular ancestor. "There's something I can share," I thought, and decided right then to sign up. I believe in collaboration and in giving back to the genealogy community, and this was the perfect open door.

After reading all the important statements and signing up to be a "member" (WikiTree is free, but does have standards), I got down to the business of uploading my tree. Only problem: WikiTree has a limit of how large a tree can be uploaded via GEDCOM. Depending on when my search engine drops me into the history of volumes of internal conversation on this touchy topic, the number of profiles permitted can be up to five thousand, or down to a much more modest amount. And the drawback is totally understandable: it's hard to police a community tree when there are far more new members doing data dumps than WikiTree volunteers checking for unsourced information.

There is, however, one problem not addressed in the conversation about unsourced material: as I understand it, no matter how well-documented my source tree might be (mine is on Ancestry.com), taking it through the GEDCOM process may automatically remove some of the hard-won documented details I might have added into the original tree. Though facts, notes, and sources are usually retained through the conversion process if text-based, media may be lost in the transition.

Of course, I say this after spending an afternoon and evening collapsing two different trees into one stripped-down pedigree in preparation to convert it to the necessary GEDCOM. Now what? Perhaps the participants in that WikiTree conversation were right: far better to just hand-enter each record one ancestor at a time. A better idea, perhaps—until one realizes the reality of my actually getting around to doing that becomes a rapidly-shrinking "maybe." 

Using Trailblazers to Chase Down the Documents

 

When a genealogy book conveniently tells all about an ancestor's family, for some that might be the end of the story. For me, it's just the beginning. I need to chase down the documents to confirm the author of the book got those details right.

Fortunately, in the case of my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandfather William Ijams, I have one of those handy books: Harry Wright Newman's 1933 volume, Anne Arundel Gentry. Among the twenty two pioneer settlers of that colonial Maryland county mentioned in the book, William Ijams' founding immigrant ancestor claimed a spot. This month, I'll be using the Newman book as my trailblazer to check out what legal documents had to say on his assertions.

According to the Newman book, William Ijams—Newman has his surname spelled Iiams—was son of John and his wife Rebecca Jones. Conveniently, the book mentions John Iiams' date of death to have been in 1783. Armed with my new favorite genealogical search engine, the Full Text search now available from FamilySearch Labs, I located the 1782 will for John Iiams in the Anne Arundel County, Maryland, records, presented to the court there on April 21, 1783.

Unsurprisingly, John's will contained mention of a son named William. Well, let me amend that: if you can buy the idea that the will for "Jhon Jiams" was really the last testament of a man named John Ijams, we are in business. If so, our William had brothers named John, Isaac, and Thomas Plummer Iiams, as well as married sisters Elizabeth Lyons and Ann Stockett. In addition, he had a sister Mary who died before her father's death, who apparently had married a paternal cousin—likely the Thomas Iiams also mentioned—for her two children were named in the will with that same Iiams surname.

Having the family constellation outlined in that document helps as we move forward—or backward in time, as we soon will be doing. Collateral lines will come in handy as we move farther along in the extended family, for this was a family which believed in recycling favorite given names, as we will soon see. Our William was not the only one to have been given that name in his family line.

A Lesson in Spelling Creativity

 

This month, I'm tackling William Ijams' heritage—that fourth great-grandfather of my mother-in-law. One of the pillars of her Ohio roots, William Ijams may have died in Ohio in 1815, but he certainly wasn't born there. His roots came from Maryland—but don't think it will be easy to search for him there. Before we do that, we'll need to exercise our spelling "creativity."

I've heard wry comments from genealogists about how "creative" spelling was once considered a mark of intelligence. I don't know how true that concept was—though I can vouch for how aggravating it can be to search for several iterations of the same person's name.

Apparently, William grew up in a community which bought into that concept, for there are almost six ways to the Sunday of spelling his surname. While later generations may have settled on Ijams, we also will need to search for records under several alternate spellings: Iiams, Iams, Ijames—and even variations in which the "I" and the "J" have, for some strange reason, reversed position.

Thus, in my first tentative steps to locate a will of William Ijams' father in hopes of confirming that generational link, I had to consider a document which I am positive was drawn up by a court clerk with dyslexia: the surname was spelled "Jiams."

Okay, I'll give the overworked clerk a slight break. After all, in the document, William's father's given name was spelled "Jhon." Either that, or the man was doubly intelligent.

If I have found the right document, then it will be well worth our time to decode the record and see what information we can glean from it. The name of William's father, according to other sources, was supposed to be John Ijams. This month, I want to verify such details through court documentation, rather than simply taking the word of others—even if those others are respected, published researchers.

Beyond that, though, if I am reading between the lines correctly, there just had to be more to the story of why William Ijams and his wife, Elizabeth Howard, chose to move their large family from what was then the comforts of an established settlement in Maryland to the wilds of what was then the American frontier in territorial Ohio. We'll take a closer look at the 1782 will of "Jhon Jiams" tomorrow—and if that isn't the document for the right man, we'll begin our search for John Iiams, or Iams, or Ijams, or...well, you get the idea.

More About Maryland

 

My May 2024 self is looking at my December 2023 self and saying, "You ain't seen nothin' yet!"

At the close of the previous year, when I was outlining my research projects for the new year, I had selected William Ijams as one of my Twelve Most Wanted to be tackled this year—this very month, in fact. Now that I re-read my post announcing that plan, and see how excited I was then about "more Maryland material" being added to online resources, I realize that was only the beginning. After that addition I referred to on December 30, regarding the Maryland Archives bonanza thanks to Reclaim the Records, we've since had another research gift in the form of FamilySearch Labs' Full Text search.

As it turns out, that might be exactly the boost I'll need to pick up on my ongoing struggle with William Ijams. As unusual as that surname might seem to be, back in Maryland, where William was born in 1748, there were plenty of aunts and uncles, cousins, and other kin bearing that same Ijams name. It will take some persistence to ensure that we're following the right William Ijams from Maryland this month.

Since I've worked on this Ijams line before—William's wife Elizabeth and daughter Sarah were included in my Twelve Most Wanted last year—I've already got a running start. Since William was my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandfather, a minimal amount of his DNA shows up in my husband's ThruLines results at Ancestry.com, providing an extra research boost.

Researching William Ijams does present some problems, though. He and his wife—the same Elizabeth Howard whom we focused on last month—were born in Maryland but chose to move "west" to Ohio at the very end of the 1700s, before Ohio attained statehood. Records for that time period were scarce.

On the plus side, William apparently fought in the War of 1812, a detail which should generate some records for us. On the down side, William and his family belonged to a religious group which may not have kept records—at least, not the ones we usually like to consult for family history details.

William Ijams' half-sunken headstone in Fairfield County, Ohio, was one of the first tokens I had found on the way to learning more about his story. Like the condition of his headstone, the shape of the rest of his partially-hidden past may make the research path this month a bit rocky. The goal will be to confirm William's parentage and then see how far back in time we can push this family's story. Hopefully, between the Maryland Archives and FamilySearch Labs' Full Text search capabilities, we'll discover far more about William, his siblings, and his parents—and then some.

Looking Back Before Leaping Forward

 

We're on a bluff overlooking a whole new month, and it's time to make our leap into a new research project. But before we move forward, it's good practice to take a look backwards, review what we've accomplished over the past month, and make plans for the next time we visit this specific research adventure.

My goal for April had been to examine my mother-in-law's matriline, starting with one particular ancestor: her fourth great-grandmother Elizabeth Howard, eventual wife of William Ijams. This fourth of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2024 I had hoped held the key to determining just how my husband's mtDNA matches connected to his mother's matriline.

Step one in that process was to push the trail back as many more generations as possible, but in that one month, we only gained two generations before discovering that William Ridgely's wife Elizabeth, if she was indeed a Duvall, was not daughter of the Lewis Duvall to whom genealogists of past centuries had attributed her parentage.

From that point, we did an about-face, keeping in mind there were several daughters whose lines could be followed in that multi-generational process bringing us back to the present. After all, William and Elizabeth Ridgely, no matter who she might have been, were said to have been parents of at least eleven daughters.

Only problem: that was back in the mid-1700s, when women may have been seen, but seldom documented. A better approach was to start with what I already knew, and work the same plan from there. Hence, the start with Elizabeth Howard, herself, and the careful work to document each of her own daughters.

At that point—partially thanks to autosomal DNA matches linking back to Elizabeth Howard—the unexpected happened. There was another daughter in the matriline, someone I had entirely missed. I now needed to carefully construct her life story. That was the discovery of Rosanna, granddaughter of Elizabeth Howard and daughter of my mother-in-law's direct line ancestor, Sarah Ijams, wife of John Jay Jackson. 

It is easy to see how I could have missed Rosanna. Sarah, her mother, died at a relatively young age in 1829 in a place then still considered a frontier. Rosanna had married, and with her husband and children, eventually left the family's home in Perry County, Ohio, for new farmland in Iowa. Perhaps there was not much community built around that new home to remember Rosanna at her own early passing.

Rosanna, however, had daughters. And those daughters still need to be researched. With that on my to-do list, I need to set up plans for when I revisit this research question. Among the items I want to assemble would be records regarding Rosanna's husband, Walter Mitchell—his will, in particular. For each of their daughters, a next step would be to trace their own generations, at least for those who married and had children. Checking for any other autosomal DNA matches will be helpful, but my main focus in moving to the next generations would be to identify Rosanna's daughters, then their daughters, and onward to the present with those same female descendants. Remember the research goal: identify possible mtDNA matches by building out that aspect of Rosanna's tree.

Granted, there still is that other puzzle on the distant end of the generations: the other Elizabeth, wife of William Ridgely, who as my mother-in-law's sixth great-grandmother, was also on her matriline. She, too, had female descendants to trace, women who also may have carried that same mitochondrial DNA signature. Putting all this on my research to-do list for a future year sounds more like the makings of at least two projects, rather than one month's goal. 

That, however, is a task to puzzle over in another year. Tomorrow, we'll start fresh with another of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2024. This time, we'll turn to the Maryland ancestors of William Ijams, husband of this month's focus, Elizabeth Howard.

Still Out There

 

It is always helpful—albeit puzzling—to find that I've missed an entire branch of the family tree. Such was my challenge over the weekend when I discovered I had never even realized there was another daughter of Sarah Ijams and her husband John Jay Jackson. Exciting as that discovery might have been—after all, that adds another possible set of matches to my mother-in-law's matriline—it was quickly followed by the next discovery: there's another possible branch still out there for me to find.

It was partially thanks to a stray DNA match claiming to descend from another daughter of Sarah Ijams—one I hadn't yet realized belonged to our matriline—that I discovered this omission. Out of the forty eight DNA matches for Sarah's line linking to my husband's results at Ancestry.com, there was only that one match who claimed this missing Jackson daughter as an ancestor; all the rest either descended from Sarah's daughter Nancy, or her two sons Joseph and Robert.

That missing daughter's name was Rosanna. She was born about 1821 in Ohio, but had closed out her years in Iowa. Marrying Walter Mitchell in Perry County, Ohio, in 1840, Rosanna and her husband had several children before moving to Chickasaw County in Iowa. Using the 1860 census as a guide, I could see locations of her children's place of birth indicate that the Mitchell family must have made the move to Iowa just before 1859.

While it might be tempting to think that Rosanna ended up moving so far from home due to her husband's wanderlust, looking at the broader perspective of her extended family helps paint a different picture. Rosanna's brother Robert, after his 1851 marriage and birth of his first two children, had moved his family to Chickasaw County, Iowa, in the mid-1850s. But before either of those two siblings' families made the move, their brother Joseph was in nearby Lansing, Iowa, having moved his family there right after the 1850 census.

The suspected trigger point for all these decisions to leave their home in Ohio—at least, this is my guess—was that all the children of Sarah and John J. Jackson who lived to adulthood, with the exception of my mother-in-law's direct ancestor Nancy Jackson, opted to move out of town rather than remain close to their father's household after his marriage to his second wife. The only one who remained—Nancy—had married into another family with deep roots in Perry County. Perhaps the rest of Sarah's family wanted to separate themselves from reminders of a lost mother, as well as to get a new start in life for themselves.

Reviewing all these details this past weekend after discovering the existence of Rosanna's line, however, opened up another possibility: there is likely another Jackson line out there yet to be discovered. While working on this puzzle, I looked far and wide for another record I had yet to find: the obituary for their father, John J. Jackson.

As it turns out, John J. Jackson had a small but noteworthy claim to fame, himself: he was said to have been the oldest surviving soldier in Perry County from the War of 1812. His funeral, it was noted in newspaper reports, was attended by military representatives from much younger ranks than his own long-gone comrades. I finally managed to find the actual obituary, a long, wordy review of his life's story.

Obituaries from that era can disappointingly omit the very details we seek—names of survivors would be a nice touch—yet from that record, I noticed one mention about his surviving children. Explaining that Sarah, John's first wife, had died young, the obituary mentioned that her husband was survived by four of Sarah's seven children. While I was aware of Nancy, my mother-in-law's direct line, plus sons Joseph and Robert, and daughter Elizabeth who died unmarried in her early twenties, adding in the discovery of Rosanna still left me two children short. Looking at it another way—checking those who still survived their father's death in 1876—I had to remove Rosanna from the list, since she died in 1862. From that perspective, too, there was one child still missing from among the survivors.

Who that one Jackson child—or two—might have been, will likely need to be a project reserved for another year's research quest, as we're nearly at the end of this month's project. That will need to be item number one on the to-do list I draw up tomorrow to close out the month.    

A New Branch

 

This has been one of those weeks when I have to ask myself, "Now, how did you miss that?!" Despite the number of years I've been working on my mother-in-law's third great-grandmother Sarah Ijams, I never realized she had another daughter—not, that is, until I discovered a DNA match whose connection to Sarah was through a branch of the family I hadn't previously found in my own research.

To be fair to my bewildered self, I was working with a woman's story line which had her born at the very end of the 1700s and abruptly cut short in her early thirties—long before women's names made any regular appearance in census records. To add to the complications, hers was apparently a family with the preference of deeding property to their children, rather than drawing up one of those documents which bequeathed everything to their beloved relatives. I could have found such a deed to a son-in-law and blithely flipped right past it, having no knowledge of how that person connected to the family line.

So, in a spate of document discoveries, I've tentatively added yet another daughter to Sarah and John Jay Jackson's family, and have begun that long slide back to the present, following each of that daughter's descendants. After all, any daughter of Sarah becomes granddaughter of Elizabeth Howard, and thus part of my mother-in-law's matriline. Hopefully, this will produce useful information for continuing that search for mtDNA matches.

In the meantime, though, that discovery of a new branch also bolsters my count, just in time for another biweekly report. Sure enough, when I checked, the past two weeks has brought 165 new names to my in-laws' family tree, despite the struggle to locate documentation on the women in the family during those early years of female invisibility. My in-laws' tree now includes 34,483 documented individuals—and this new discovery will keep me busy for another couple weeks to come.

In just a few days, we'll move on from my April research goal as the month comes to a close. I'm not sure I've found everything I had hoped to find for my mother-in-law's matriline—there are so many women in her ancestry for whom I still have not been able to find documentation, even with the research boost of the FamilySearch Labs' Full Text search. We'll take the next couple days to recap what we've accomplished this month, and lay out plans for next steps when I return to tackle this same family line in a future year. 

"Or Related Field"

 

Though I didn't realize it at the time, I spent my college years majoring in "or related field." For those of us who chose unusual—read: not in demand—fields of study to pursue, that became our unintended consequence for the choices our eighteen-year-old selves made. Fortunately, there are indeed job opportunities out there for "or related field," or I would have starved to death long ago. It's the power to be flexible—or as some put it, the ability to reinvent ourselves—that allows us to take any steps forward.

There is a second benefit to such flexibility. For each time we step up and bring our talents to bear in those "unrelated" disciplines, we enrich the project as much as the project benefits us. The context in which we move forward now includes more than one point of view, more than one protocol, more than one regimen. The context now becomes enriched.

While the pursuit of genealogy is avocational for me, I have watched the field pass through seasons in which those bringing their "or related field" perspective have enriched the result for all of us. I recall when I first began researching my family's history in earnest. It seemed, in those early-Internet years of genealogy forums, that I was routinely making the acquaintance of other researchers who were, in their "other" life, doctors or lawyers or professors or librarians. If "genealogist" had a job description then, these would be the candidates eligible to apply on account of their qualifications in other fields.

Yet, when we think about it, to effectively make use of all genealogical tools available to us, that is what we need: the legal chops to digest the verbiage of courtroom procedures, the medical know-how to read those illegible diagnoses scrawled on our ancestors' death certificates—or the medical history smarts to translate old terminology into current-day disease nomenclature. We need the librarian's ability to sniff out just the right resource, no matter how rare, to reveal the specific information we're seeking. And we can certainly use the scientist's procedural rigor for formulating and then testing our research hypotheses.

Maybe the ideal genealogist would be the one person who harnesses each of these research superpowers—but it would be the rare person who has all these skills finely honed and always at the ready. Rather, it might be more helpful to see genealogy as a team process, where each of us brings our special perspective to the table to help each other attain our research goals more effectively. After all, each of us has a special "or related field" skill which can broaden the approach of our fellow researchers. We can enrich the process of working together to help each other jump over those ancestral brick walls.

 

Until You Know That You Know

 

Sometimes, in shuffling through the myriad stacks of records necessary for tracking those elusive ancestors, we run across documents which we know are significant finds—but somehow the fact doesn't fully register in our minds concerning the importance of what we've found. It isn't until our mind once again comes around full circle and realizes that now we know that we knew that fact that we can proceed to actually put that discovery to use.

That's the case with this month's work on my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandmother Elizabeth Howard, wife of William Ijams. I had been working my way through Elizabeth's daughters, with the purpose of outlining all those who linked to Elizabeth's matriline for mtDNA purposes. I had already examined the lines of daughters Rebecca, Rachel, Mary, and Comfort. The only one remaining was Sarah. 

Sarah was likely the youngest daughter of William Ijams and his wife Elizabeth Howard, but she was also my mother-in-law's direct ancestor, so I had already thoroughly researched the women descending from Sarah—except, apparently, for one detail. That detail was clearly represented in a document which I had seen and known about for years; after all, it was called to my attention by one of those convenient "hints" at Ancestry.com. How could I have missed that?

The document was housed at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's General Land Office Records. If I had ever thought to access that website and conduct a search on Sarah Ijams' own name, the document could easily have been found. But who would go looking for a land record under a woman's name back in 1817? And under her maiden name, too!

Yesterday, in a research tailspin over lack of progress on this month's research goal—finding more connections to Elizabeth Howard's matriline—I decided to celebrate DNA Day by reviewing all my husband's autosomal DNA matches using Ancestry's ThruLines tool. At this point, he has forty eight matches there directly linked to Elizabeth Howard through her daughter Sarah Ijams' descendants. Most of them are linked to our tree, but there are about eight new matches which I hadn't yet added. Hoping for that small chance that an autosomal match might also have connected via that same matrilineal path, I didn't want to miss any details.

Nothing significant materialized. In that dull moment of grasping for "what's next," up popped that persistent hint about the land record with Sarah Ijams' name on it. The property description didn't seem to match the location I had remembered from other court records for her family—I had assumed in the past that her name was on the document due to some land she had inherited—and was stymied by what the hidden story might have been.

Mulling over what that untold backstory might have been, rather than just staring at the document as it was presented on Ancestry, I decided to look at the version from the source. Though the record had stated "Sarah Ijams of Fairfield County," looking up such a document at the BLM website produced nothing. However, if I searched for Sarah's name in Ohio in general, but didn't enter any county name, up popped the record in neighboring Perry County. 

Clicking on the tab labeled "Related Documents," showed clearly that the land was in Perry County, not Fairfield County, Sarah's family home. Interestingly, another document also showed in the list from that second search, regarding an adjoining property. That property belonged to Sarah's brother-in-law, Walter Teal, whom I had also had trouble tracing during this month's research project. Now realizing that Walter's property was likewise in Perry County, that would be a helpful detail to know when searching for any deeds or other documents to trace possibility of daughters for Walter's line, since his wife was also on Elizabeth Howard's matriline.

But what I had failed to remember—this is the part I should have already known—was that Perry County was not established until March 1 of 1818. And since the Ijams family had lived in Richland Township in Fairfield County—which history I had read only a week or so ago—I should have remembered that tiny detail about Richland Township losing two of its sections to form part of Perry County. 

I'm pretty sure I know that I know that—now. That detail has finally sunk into the "working knowledge" side of my brain. That also explains why I had seen some other deeds recorded in both counties, despite being a single transaction. But as to why the land was listed in 1817 under the name of an unmarried woman, that is a puzzle whose answer I have yet to know.

Sisters and Their Stories

 

Though I can't say I've found an answer yet, this has been a month which may have come full circle. I began the month looking for all the women who belong on my mother-in-law's matriline. I eventually settled on researching the daughters of her fourth great-grandmother, Elizabeth Howard, wife of William Ijams. The only problem: it's hard to find stories of sisters born in the late 1700s. Until, that is, I ran across a document identifying two of them, and hinting at a third.

Elizabeth Howard and her husband, William Ijams, had five daughters. Besides my mother-in-law's direct line third great-grandmother, Sarah, the other daughters were Rebecca, Rachel, Mary, and Comfort. This month has been one continuous struggle to find any records of these sisters' married lives, particularly the details indicating the names of their children—especially their own daughters.

We've found a bit of information on Mary's daughter, Providence Teal, but none of her three daughters had continuing lines of female descendants—they didn't "daughter out." With Rachel, an early census record after her marriage to James Turner indicated that she may have had at least five daughters, but what their names were or whether they lived to adulthood and married, I still can't say.

And then there's Rebecca. With Mary and Rachel, at least I could find some documentation beyond the marriage record to indicate what life had brought them in later years. For Rebecca, I had little beyond a reference to her husband's name in her father's will—William Ijams had named William Wiseman as his executor. I did find a will for someone by that name, living in Fairfield County, but the document didn't specify the names of any descendants. All the will mentioned was three apparently unrelated people with whom William Wiseman had been living at the time of the most recent census before his 1854 death.

In the 1850 census, living in William Wiseman's household were Eliza Noals and her likely daughters Elsa and Catherine Noals. Like William, Eliza had been born in Maryland, though she was almost thirty years younger than William. Her two supposed daughters were both born in Ohio, and were in their twenties. An unrelated eleven year old boy from Germany rounded out the household.

When William Wiseman's will was entered into the court records on February 7, 1854, names quite similar to those appeared as his legatees. Those named were Alicia Ann Noles and Catherine Noles. In addition, a third person of that surname—Leo Noles—was mentioned in William's will. Oddly, though Eliza Noles was also mentioned, she was only indicated as recipient, along with the other women, of support from the estate's executor for "protecting and maintaining" the three women "during their single life." All the rest of William's estate was bequeathed to the Literary Society of Saint Joseph in neighboring Perry County, Ohio, whose director was named as executor of William's will.

With no mention of a wife or descendants of his own, I considered whether the document was written by our William Wiseman. And yet, some details seemed to match. As indicated in his will, William was buried in Perry County. But there was no sign of a wife named Rebecca or any children from that marriage. I began to wonder whether there was another William Wiseman in town.

Fortunately, a land transaction in Fairfield County helped provide another piece of the Wiseman story. Dated May 1, 1831, the record indicated that land purchased by one Edward Stevenson was sold to him by "William Wiseman and Rebecca his wife," and "James Turner and Rachel his wife." With that one document, we are gifted with the names of the wives of those two men. Of course, we already knew from their father's will that Rebecca and Rachel were sisters, but finding their husbands' names in any records has been a challenge. This, at least, gave another verification of the connections.

What is interesting about that document in Fairfield County records is that, immediately preceding it was another document regarding another property exchange, between Joseph H. Ijams and Edward Stevenson. Referring to an original exchange in 1827, the 1831 document revealed that the description of the property in question contained an "incorrect recital of the metes and bounds" of the location.

What doesn't get mentioned in those documents is the other relationships contained within the named parties. Joseph H. Ijams was brother of William Wiseman's wife Rebecca, and James Turner's wife Rachel. In addition, Edward Stevenson had married another Ijams sister, Comfort, in 1811. While the land may have been changing hands, it was all still kept within the same family—but if it weren't for knowing who the sisters were, that fact would have remained invisible.

Too Many Turners in Town

 

It seemed like a really good research plan. To find the names of the Turner children—the unnamed descendants showing in the 1820 census household of James Turner and his wife Rachel—I thought I'd simply look for James Turner's will in Fairfield County, Ohio.

Apparently, that idea crashed and burned far sooner than I ever dreamed would be possible—all thanks to the efficiency of Full Text search capabilities at FamilySearch Labs. On to Plan B: look for signs of any transfers of property in the same county, from James Turner and Rachel, his wife, to any others with that same surname. But that idea isn't working too well for me either. Why? Apparently in a county of sixteen thousand people, there were too many Turners in town for that approach to yield any helpful clues.

Still, I'll keep my eye open for these possibilities. Besides seeing the deed transferring ownership of property from James and Rachel to someone else named James M. Turner, I found another deed mentioning Solomon Turner—another possible son? Among the deeds in Fairfield County during that time period, I also ran across Turners by the names of Isaac, Joseph, and even Bazel. Then again, in later dates, I couldn't be sure whether the Williams I found were sons of James' father William, or sons of another Turner sibling. I had enough tabs open on my laptop to cause a computer meltdown, surely.

But what about the daughters? That, after all, was my original goal for this month's research project. I wanted to find information on the female descendants related to my mother-in-law's matriline for DNA purposes. There certainly were a few land transactions in those Fairfield County deeds which mentioned men of other surnames. What they lacked, though, was any mention of how—if at all—they might have been connected to James Turner. So the 1823 transaction selling land to Herbert Winegardner, or the one naming James Price, provided me no details to give me any traction. Though James and Rachel certainly did have daughters, we're still left not knowing what their given names—let alone their married names— might have been.

In the midst of searching through pages and pages of court records, though, I did run across another curious land transaction, bringing together some of the same names I had encountered while taking that research detour to learn the history of one of Fairfield County's first churches. We'll take a moment to examine that deed tomorrow.

Near the Old Graveyard

 

Richland Chapel was the name of the first Methodist church built in Fairfield County, Ohio. From a description in an old local history book, the chapel was said to have been a log cabin built "near the old graveyard." Among the church's first members appeared the surnames of collateral lines descending from my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandmother, Elizabeth Howard, wife of William Ijams.

Right now, as I take a hiatus from the search for all Elizabeth's matrilineal descendants, a detour to examine the history of this county's earliest church may be helpful. As it turns out, that "old graveyard" near the chapel is a place I've written about before. Known by some as the Stevenson Cemetery, by others as the Ruffner Cemetery or the Campground Cemetery, it was an old burial ground where the now-half-sunken headstone for William Ijams rests. 

A more recent cemetery sign—at least, according to Find A Grave resources—identifies the location as the Stevenson Ruffner Cemetery. Through chatty weekend "Nature Notes" over the years by Lancaster Eagle-Gazette columnist Charles Goslin, we can glean some of the history of the place. His May 6, 1961, article takes us on a Sunday afternoon drive along "Snake Run," stopping in at the cemetery to learn a bit about the history of the area.

On or near that same property, not long after 1800, a man named Daniel Stevenson settled, along with his brothers. Daniel was said to have been a "soldier of the Revolution"—though D.A.R. can find no service records and admits earlier membership applications may have mistaken him for another soldier entirely—and received a land grant to settle in Fairfield County in 1806. Columnist Charles Goslin mentioned that the area became known as the "Stevenson Settlement" after this early settler.

How well-integrated the Ijams household became within that Stevenson Settlement, the church meetings held on that property, and even the burial of Elizabeth's husband there, can be gleaned by comparing names in hundred-year-old history books with the intermarriages of the Ijams daughters. As we've already seen, though daughter Rachel's husband James Turner has not been specifically mentioned, history reports we've already covered did mention others of that surname in the congregation. Younger Ijams daughter Comfort married Edward Stevenson, and although I have yet to document his father's identity, the surname does resonate. Daughter Sarah, of my mother-in-law's direct line, married John Jay Jackson, mentioned in yesterday's post. And William and Elizabeth's son William married a daughter of the Ruffner family. All these marriages handily demonstrate the intertwined community whose legacy became the now-deserted cemetery called by many names where our Ijams ancestors once lived, worshipped and, eventually, were buried. 

In the Right Vicinity

Some local histories just resonate with surnames from our family's history. That, according to the history of Richland Township in Fairfield County, is what I've been noticing as I search for signs of my mother-in-law's roots during the early years of Ohio's statehood.

Among the earliest settlers in that vicinity, according to one 1912 book, History of Fairfield County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens, were these: Wiseman, Turner, Stephenson, Ijams. All of these, I already know, fall handily into what some genealogists call the "F.A.N. Club" of my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandmother Elizabeth Howard and her husband, William Ijams. Or, to look at this report from the eyes of another genealogical phrase, "cluster genealogy," those surnames lead us to the right cluster.

To see that cluster a bit more clearly, though, we need to take a detour from our main research goal to explore what brought those families from their previous, distant residences to their new homes in the formative years of Ohio's Fairfield County. In a word, that gathering force was religion.

That same 1912 history book noted that the township—indeed, the whole of Fairfield County—saw "the early organization of religious societies and churches," but the first of such meetings were held before any church buildings could be erected. Those meetings were held "in the log cabins of the settlers."

In another book, Pioneer Period and Pioneer People of Fairfield County, Ohio, published in 1901, author C. M. L. Wiseman noted that the church in question—at least for my mother-in-law's family—was Methodist. Included in a list of those who attended services in that early church prior to 1805 were:

Daniel Stevenson and wife, Isaac and Thomas Ijams, John J. Jackson, John Sunderland, Edward Teal...William Turner.

Perhaps you, as I do, see that cluster of familiar surnames taking shape—the very surnames I've been following as we look for the matrilineal descendants of Elizabeth Howard and her husband, William Ijams.

When attendance overtook building capacity, church meetings were held out of doors in 1803, and then again in 1807, a year said to have drawn over one thousand people to such a "camp meeting." The site of the camp meetings, and the log cabin itself, was noted as "near the old graveyard" and "in sight of the home of Daniel Stevenson." Before we explore further how these surnames intertwine with the daughters of Elizabeth Howard and William Ijams, let's take a step back, tomorrow, to learn a bit more about what that author meant in 1901 when he talked about the old graveyard. 

Revisiting a Six Year Old Story

 

It was almost exactly six years ago when I began sharing the story of a photograph I rescued from an antique shop up in Gold Country. The picture itself was sweet, containing the cherubic faces of two young boys, the younger barely one year of age. The puzzling part was that the portrait was labeled in French, and likely dated from the earliest years of the 1900s, an odd find from a store in a small town in the northern California foothills.

At that time, I had begun what has become a habit of rescuing old abandoned photographs and researching the subjects of the picture in hopes of finding current-day descendants who might be interested in receiving the orphaned picture. In the case of Emile and Lucien Hallée, the two boys in the photograph, with barely enough details to locate a possible descendant, the generous assistance of a Canadian blogger who spread the word plus the power of social media enabled a happy ending: the photograph made its way home to family.

Ever since that point, I've been totally sold on the thrill that comes from what I call "giving back" to the genealogical community, and have returned several other photographs to family over the years. But it has only been lately that I've been able to share such stories in person. This coming Monday, April 22, I'm privileged to have that opportunity to head up to the same gold rush country where it all began in 1848 to present "The Genealogical Legacy of the California Gold Rush" to the Placer County Genealogical Society. If you're curious or want to hear that story once again (as well as others), I invite you to come along, whether in person for those living in the Auburn, California area, or online for those in time zones in which an evening presentation at seven, Pacific Time, would not be prohibitively late. The Society's website has the information to guide you in accessing the online meeting, and they are very welcoming in inviting visitors to their meetings.

   

Granny Hobbies: Do We Make the Cut?

 

Recently, I read an article by one writer I follow online, who was reflecting on something he had read in another writer's blog. The topic he had shared was about what's called "granny hobbies." The originating writer, in a blog called Working Theorys, explained granny hobbies like this: hands-on and thumbs-off. Hands-on, because these are hobbies which are all about creating something. Thumbs-off, to signify being as far removed from online activities as possible, especially if mindlessly consuming social media posts.

The list provided by the original writer encompassed the kind of activities you might presume would be in such a list: cooking, gardening, knitting, playing board games. What I found interesting was to see how the second writer augmented that list of granny hobbies: he included genealogy.

Great. Now we can officially claim family history research to be among those in the domain of senior citizens? While I prefer to see people of all ages finding themselves fascinated with their family's stories, I do have to grant these authors one concession: there are benefits to the act of creating and the discipline of mindfulness about those creative processes.

If there is now a movement returning to such beneficial hands-on activities, I suppose I don't mind the moniker of "granny" hobbies. By its description in these two online articles, it apparently is something seen in a positive light. And there is certainly plenty to say for the therapeutic benefits of working for pleasure with the end goal of creating something of beauty or value. Preserving one's family legacy—at least the intangibles of personal and family history—can apparently not only give us something to pass down the generations, but it can serve to benefit ourselves and others in the doing of it, as well.

When All the Details Line Up

 

It's encouraging, when looking for a brick wall ancestor, to finally find the document in which all the details line up and we can say with assurity that we have discovered the name belonging to the previous generation. In some cases, the one court document I found which mentions James Turner assures me of his connections to my mother-in-law's family. In other cases, though, it brings up more questions.

James Turner, if you recall, was son-in-law of my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandmother. And that distant great-grandmother was a matriarch on my mother-in-law's matriline, a potential common ancestor for the three exact matches my husband has on his—and thus his mother's—mtDNA test results. All I need to do is determine just how those female descendants for that matriline might figure into the puzzle.

After discarding the possibility of several of the women descending from Elizabeth Howard, that fourth great-grandmother, due to lack of daughters to pass down that mtDNA signature, we are currently circling the family of Elizabeth's daughter Rachel. Because Rachel was married in 1802, before Ohio had even attained statehood status, it would be a very slim chance indeed for me to find mention of her own name in legal documents—with one exception.

That exception was my hope to find a will for her husband, James Turner—and that her husband predeceased her. That hope, however, was quashed when my search for such a legal document in Fairfield County came up empty-handed.

It was as far as a last will and testament go that I was foiled in my research attempt. In its place, however, I found something else which turned out to be quite helpful—except for one detail.

The document was an indenture dated January 11, 1843. By the time of the 1840 census, James had already declared his age to be in his seventies. His wife was not far behind him. And the document being drawn up in court on that date in 1843 served as an exchange of property between the elderly couple and another man named James M. Turner.

The record was helpful in that it identified Rachel specifically as James' wife. In addition, we could possibly infer that James M. Turner may have had some relationship to the originating parties in that he exchanged a mere two hundred dollars in exchange for the property (worth about $8,000 in today's economy, not a bad price).

There was, however, one glitch in that document which didn't seem to line up. Toward the end of the first page of the court record, in specifically describing this property of James Turner, the wording stated, 

...which lot or section of land was granted by the United States unto the said William Turner by Letters made Patent...

Wait. Which said William Turner? I went back to reread the document—not relying on the AI transcription provided by FamilySearch Labs' Full Text search function, but reading that handwriting for myself. If there was a "said" William Turner previously mentioned, I have yet to find it.

However, the indenture provided some other very specific details, like the date in which that original transaction occurred (August 13, 1805), and the description of the property location (Section 28, Township 17, Range 17). I blasted over to the Bureau of Land Management's General Land Office Records to see whether there might be any record of a William Turner receiving land in Ohio.

There was. In Fairfield County. At that precise location: Section 28, Township 17, Range 17. On that same date: August 13, 1805. 

Don't you love it when all the details line up?

Better yet, if James Turner had somehow received that land from someone named William Turner, perhaps William was James' father, just as James M. Turner, next recipient of that property, might have been son of the elder James.

Of course, that's just a guess on my part. But at least it points me in a possible direction to continue my search. After all, it will take some cluster genealogy to help point out what became of Rachel and James Turner's currently invisible daughters.     

Turning to the Turners

 

Stomping around the wilds of pre-statehood Ohio without genealogical trail, map, or compass can be a disorienting experience. Looking for someone with a name as common as Turner does not help the situation. And yet, intrepid researchers on a quest to map out their family tree remain undeterred. Let's see what we can discover about James Turner, husband of Rachel Ijams.

Granted, I would not be looking for Rachel Ijams if it weren't for her mother, formerly Elizabeth Howard of Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Elizabeth was my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandmother, and sat squarely in the path of her matriline. My husband's mtDNA results bid me chase that trail as far as I possibly can. Thus, all the female descendants of that line are in the crosshairs of my spyglass.

Having failed to find any continuing female lines of Rachel's sister Mary, it was time to move on to the next eligible family member: Rachel. What little I already knew about Rachel I gleaned from the probate proceedings for her father's 1815 will in Fairfield County, Ohio. Thankfully, Rachel was married by the time she signed to acknowledge receipt of William Ijams' legacy, since his will only obliquely mentioned his female offspring as "my daughters." The one clue—best one so far—was that in 1802 in Fairfield County, still part of the Northwest Territory, Rachel married a man by the name of James C. Turner.

Yes, I know Turner as a common surname can be a research challenge. At least I can find James Turner in census records in the early years of Ohio statehood. From the 1820 census, we learn that James and Rachel were likely the parents of two sons around the age of ten, and three daughters under the age of ten plus two more in their early teen years. If each of those daughters lived to adulthood, that would give me five chances to find potential mtDNA matches.

Easier said than done by far, of course. When we fast-forward to the 1830 census, still in Fairfield County, only one female remained in the household—a possible daughter in her later teen years. The others could already have married—or they could have met the demise of so many in those early years, fallen to death-dealing diseases.

By the time of the 1840 census, James Turner and his wife—we can only presume she was still Rachel—remained alone in their household, with James in his seventies and his wife in her sixties. On a hunch, I took a look to see if any other Turner households were listed in this census at the precise location of James Turner's entry in Richland Township. As it turns out, there were five. Of course, that could mean they were nephews of our James just as much as it could signify his own sons. There is no way to tell at this point, though I am tempted to explore our James' F.A.N. Club to see if I can uncover any leads.

With James supposedly in his seventies by the time of the 1840 census, I would have been surprised to see any mention of him in the 1850 census, as much as I would have hoped it were possible. It was time to explore other options to uncover details about this family. Unfortunately, looking to old county history books yielded little more than we already know. The History of Fairfield County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens, a 1912 book edited by Charles Christian Miller, provided the slightest of nods to James and Rachel's roots.

Among the first settlers were: William Wiseman, Theodore Turner, Stephenson and Ijams families and Judge William McClung.

Granted, the very first name in the list—William Wiseman—caught my eye, as we will turn to that name next in our search for matrilineal descendants, but I can't yet say whether James was even related to the list's second name, Theodore Turner. The only consolation in that passage is that I know another Ijams daughter did indeed marry a Stephenson. We are in the right place and on the right track—but not far along enough to yield us any usable information.

There was, however, another resource to check: the latest tool to smash through genealogical brick walls, FamilySearch Lab's Full Text search. Looking for James Turner in Fairfield County, Ohio, did produce some records. Not quite what I was seeking—it would be handy to locate James' own will, for instance—but it is worth some consideration. We'll take a look at those court records tomorrow.

Providence's Progeny

 

On the trail of all the female descendants of my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandmother Elizabeth Howard didn't seem to be that challenging of an assignment. At least that's how it seemed at the beginning. But after running into several daughters whose female offspring birthed only sons—if any children at all—I was beginning to despair of reaching my matriline-mapping goal with that handy mitochondrial DNA test.

Then, I found Providence. And among Providence's progeny, there were three daughters: Elizabeth, Sarah, and Mary Eugenia—not one, but three chances to make progress with my research goal.

Don't assume things will go well for us here, though. Providence, daughter of Elizabeth Howard's daughter Mary Ijams, was married to Thomas Dain, an Indiana man whose death in 1865 came with no documentation that I can find (so far), other than his monument in the Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis.

With Thomas' passing, he left Providence with their youngest daughter—Mary Eugenia—still at home. Born after the 1850 census, which listed her two older sisters, Mary Eugenia did not marry until her 1874 wedding with Jacob Smith.

It's fortunate to have found that record, for the 1900 census revealed exactly what I've been looking for: more daughters among the descendants of Elizabeth Howard. In fact, Mary Eugenia and Jacob had two daughters: Bernice and Myla. Bernice, however, never married. And Myla, soon wife of Frank Merrill Talbot, followed the family pattern by producing three sons for the next generation. No daughters.

Don't think looking to Mary Eugenia's older sisters will help us out in our quest. Her oldest sister Elizabeth's marriage produced one son. Period. And the middle sister, Sarah, has eluded me ever since her disappearance after the 1850 census.

With that, we'll retrace our steps back through the generations until we arrive at the generation of Elizabeth Howard's other daughters. Tomorrow, we'll see if we have better results in following Mary Ijams' sister Rachel, wife of James Turner, back in Fairfield County, Ohio.

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.

Where's Walter?

 

When relatives disappear, the natural question arising in a genealogist's mind is: where did they go? Since I've lately been working on the female ancestors comprising my mother-in-law's matriline, thanks to testing that full mitochondrial DNA signature, I can't simply wonder what became of her third great-grandmother's sister Mary Ijams. I need to ask what became of her husband. Thus, my question this week is: where's Walter Teal?

We've already seen that Walter Teal was the man who married Mary. Though the only accessible digitized copy of their marriage record somehow managed to cut off Mary's maiden name, we fortunately have documentation of her receipt of her portion of her father's inheritance—thankfully, received after her marriage to Walter Teal.

Because this detail leaves us researching a woman during the invisible decades for women in the early 1800s, I can only hope I found the right Walter Teal when locating such a name in the 1830 census for Fairfield County, Ohio, the same place where the couple had married twenty five years earlier. But when we turn to the 1840 census to look for Walter's family, there is no mention of this head of household in the place where they had lived for decades. 

However, using the Full Text search at the FamilySearch Labs, it was apparent that Walter's name had been mentioned in a number of deeds in Fairfield County over the years. Perhaps this made me a little less apprehensive of the discovery that there was indeed a Walter Teal in the 1840 census—but not where we thought we'd find him. This time, a Walter Teal showed up in Indiana. Was this our guy?

Once again, the census wasn't really of any help in identifying who else might have been part of Walter's household. We can see from the readout that whoever was in the Teal home—we have no way to know whether they were relatives or, perhaps, farm hands—it was headed by a man between the years of fifty and fifty nine, exactly ten years difference from the report we found back in Ohio for the 1830 census.

The 1840 entry was for a household in Pleasant Township in Wabash County, Indiana. Along with that older man in the Teal household was one between fifteen and nineteen years of age, along with two younger boys, one of whom was five years or younger. The data for the women in the family paint a far different picture than what we had gleaned from the previous enumeration, however. The oldest woman this time was in her thirties. She was accompanied by one other female, aged fifteen through nineteen.

This might have been our Walter, alright, but it certainly couldn't have been his wife Mary. Looking elsewhere for confirmation—or at least explanation of what might have happened in the past ten years—I spotted a General Land Office record for someone named Walter Teal. It was, as I had hoped, for property in Wabash County, Indiana. Thankfully, where his name was to be entered in the document, the actual detail stated: "Walter Teal of Fairfield County, Ohio."

It may be possible that Walter's wife Mary had died before the 1840 census, and that he had remarried. Depending on when he acquired the Indiana property, Mary may have died before he made the decision to leave Ohio—or she may have made the trip with him, then died shortly afterwards. It is my guess that that youngest child in the household could serve as a clue as to how long it had been since Mary's death—if we are unable to locate any death record for her in either state.

In my pursuit of the family's matriline, though, it will be to those possible daughters of Mary that I will turn my attention next. Not only that, but in following the family—hopefully to some point beyond the 1850 census—we can see whether that matriline was carried forward to future generations.