Never Too Late for Spring Cleaning

 

Spring cleaning hadn't been foremost on my mind the other day, when my niece asked for a copy of a family document. She is working on an application to become part of The Mayflower Society, and her recent request pushed me to dig out some old files I hadn't worked on for years. 

Well, maybe make that decades.

The search led me to some boxed up files which I had removed, years ago, from a file cabinet to make room for more recent records.

To my surprise, what should be the first thing my hand pulled out of that dusty box—hint: it wasn't what I was looking for—but a folder labeled "Rinehart" and some correspondence regarding Greene County, Pennsylvania.

Call that serendipity. 

In addition to a photocopied series of biographical entries from the History of Fairfield and Perry Counties, Ohio including Jesse Rinehart's entry in that 1883 book—now easily accessible thanks to Internet Archive—was a photocopied report faxed to me in 1999. I received that report from a fellow Rinehart researcher whom I had met online during those earlier days of genealogy forums and resources such as RootsWeb. He had wanted to share something written by a man named Bruce Anderson, who back in 1981 had compiled a report called "The Rineharts of Perry County, Ohio."

Yes, precisely the family I'm still puzzling over.

What was interesting about the eleven pages of that report was the reference to specific case numbers from the Perry County court system. Of course, now we have almost instant access to some of those same court records, thanks to FamilySearch.org, and specifically owing to the FamilySearch Labs' Full Text Search option. But seeing those other references tells me that there are more court records than the series I had located. There is more to search to fully grasp the entirety of that generation's history in Perry County.

The file I found in that dusty box also included a series of emails which I had exchanged with another Perry County researcher, concerning what we each had found on the Rinehart line which our families share in common. I have yet to complete that stack of reading, but I'm going through that file with a pen and some sticky notes, to mark specific details I need to confirm through documentation—now that it is so much easier to find those records online.

Some family stories we chase for a short while and catch up with the elusive answer in one quick sprint through local records. Others have us wandering in circles for decades. This Rinehart line has been one of the latter. In retrospect, I can see where some conjectures from previous decades can now be proven incorrect—but I also see some hints which, though missed in previous research rounds, may now lead to clearer answers. I'm looking forward to following those trails with fresh eyes, this time around.

Tracking Thomas Rinehart

 

Discovering the full listing of the names of Simon Rinehart's children, thanks to the court proceedings in which they were at odds with each other, has been helpful. Finding any further information on each of those descendants has certainly not been helpful. While it was easy to find an older daughter, Sarah, by virtue of her position as my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother, finding the rest of her full siblings has been a challenge.

Tracking Thomas Rinehart, one of Sarah's full brothers listed in the court records, has been one of those more challenging searches. The main difficulty is that the Rinehart family originated in Greene County, Pennsylvania, where the Rinehart name figured among the county's earliest pioneers. It was, apparently, a family whose preference for namesakes was kept alive for generations, yielding multiple opportunities for even the most avid genealogist to be steered wrong.

The court case which erupted in 1854 concerning the validity of Simon Rinehart's will noted the whereabouts of some of his adult descendants, but was unclear on the precise residence of some of the others. Among the less clear was Thomas' location. If we take the blanket statement of the siblings living in Perry County, Ohio, we could count Thomas in with that bunch. But where was Thomas?

Using a fairly wide parameter for approximate age, I did a search for Thomas in Perry County, and found one possibility in the 1850 census. This Thomas "Rineheart" was born about 1794 in Pennsylvania, a good first sign. Among his several children were names resonant with the Rinehart line: Hannah, Jesse, and Simon. Those same names, however, echoed through the generations of this old family from TenMile Country, making it hard to confirm one namesake's specific identity.

Looking further, I found what was likely his burial location in Perry County, thanks to a memorial on Find A Grave. But was this the right Thomas Rinehart? Checking for name twins back in Greene County, where the family once lived, I could find men by that same name there. Furthermore, seeing a birth year of 1794 troubles me, as that would be barely twenty years after his father's own year of birth. Not finding a marriage record for Simon and his first wife hampers deciding on a reasonable date range for the birth of their five children listed in that court record.

There is much more to explore before I'm convinced of the certainty of this Thomas Rinehart's familial identity. Since migrations in the early 1800s usually occurred in the company of family and neighbors, Simon could have moved to Ohio among many cousins or nephews, as well as closer kin. Those listed on the same page as Thomas in that 1850 census mostly seemed to share the surname Randolph, which is not a surname I've found tied to Simon's own line—so far.

Perhaps one approach will be to create a network of Rineharts in Perry County, Ohio, and Green County, Pennsylvania, to see what connections can be found among this greater party of migrating Rineharts. This I can now easily create through Ancestry.com's ProTools options. Perhaps that will also provide the bigger picture concerning the extended Rinehart family, both in Perry County, and back in Greene County, Pennsylvania. 

When Surnames Ricochet Through their Surroundings

 

While stumped in my search for Thomas Rinehart, that son of Simon Rinehart who decided to file suit in Perry County, Ohio, against his half-siblings after his dad's death, I cast my search parameters far and wide, and came up with one tantalizing insertion in an 1847 newspaper:

Filed in Monroe County, Ohio, on May 18, 1847, by attorneys Archbold & Wire for the plaintiff, Daniel Clark, the suit named Thomas Rinehart, Simon Rinehart, Arthur Ingraham, William McCarty, and M. Marling. Thomas and Simon Rinehart are names we've already seen, and the Ingraham name—or sometimes spelled Ingrham—has been a surname linked with the extended Rinehart family back in Greene County, Pennsylvania. But why were these names being mentioned in a court in Monroe County, Ohio?

According to the newspaper insertion, a bill then pending in court, 

states in substance that said Arthur Ingraham has two judgments in said Court against said McCarty and Marling, for a large sum, to wit: upwards of eight hundred dollars. That said Arthur Ingraham is in fact the assignee of Simon Rinehart, and that said Simon Rinehart is the assignee of Thomas Rinehart, who is in truth and in fact the real owner of said judgments, and is largely indebted to the complainant; and that the assignment to Simon Rinehart, and through him to Arthur Ingraham, is a shift and device to defraud the creditors of Thomas Rinehart. Said bill prays that the judgment debt due from McCarty and Marling may be applied to the payment of his debt due from said Thomas Rinehart. The defendants Thomas, Simon, and Arthur, living out of this State, are notified to plead, answer or demur in sixty days after the close of next term of said Court, or the bill will be taken as true and confessed.       —Said term will commence on the fourth Monday in June next.

Was that our Thomas Rinehart? After all, I'm not quite sure whether he lived in Ohio or back in Pennsylvania. And Monroe County, Ohio, is a mere seventy miles from Greene County, Pennsylvania, making it close enough for the Rinehart family to have acquired land or done business in that area. (Business, indeed! The eight hundred dollars noted in that 1847 document would be worth at least thirty one thousand in today's dollars.)

Whether this is our Thomas or not, it will likely pay for me to search through court records for his name in connection with that of Simon Rinehart, as well.

Insert above from the Woodsfield, Ohio, newspaper, The Spirit of Democracy, published on page three of the May 22, 1847, edition; image courtesy of Newspapers.com. 

Situation: Stuck

 

Stuck on one clue for that brick wall ancestor? When I run into such situations, I try my best to find the answer—and when I fail, I move on. Research problems can always be revisited at a later date, especially when more resources would be required to resolve research questions.

Finding that memorial marker erected at the final resting place of Robert Smith, just as his daughter's last wishes had dictated, seemed to rip right through all the research progress I had made on tracing just that one daughter of Simon Rinehart. Simon's daughter Mary, at least according to court records after his death, had married someone named Robert Smith. But when I finally caught up with the memorial marker for the specified Robert Smith in Hocking County, Ohio, it contained the name of his two wives. And it appeared that Mary had a different last name than what I was expecting.

The name, although blurred in the photograph at Find A Grave, seemed to be Mary Ankrum or Amkrum. No matter which way it was spelled, it didn't spell R-i-n-e-h-a-r-t. Now what?

I tried looking for marriage records for Robert Smith and Mary Ankrum, including all the spelling permutations I could imagine—with a wildcard symbol thrown in for good luck. Thinking that our Mary might have been married before she married Robert, I tried looking for other marriage records for Mary Rinehart, both in her home, neighboring Perry County, and Robert's residence in Hocking County. Still nothing.

Since Maria Smith, the one whose will stipulated the erection of the memorial for her father, was the firstborn daughter of Mary and Robert, one would presume that she would know her mother's maiden name. I'd say I've stumbled upon the wrong Robert Smith and family—except I've been wrong about being wrong before. So I'm putting that search on hold for now and moving on to the rest of Simon Rinehart's children.

That strategy, however, is not working much better than my quest to find the right Robert Smith, husband of Mary Rinehart. There were two other siblings mentioned in that 1854 court record concerning the validity of Simon's will: Samuel Rinehart and Thomas Rinehart, the one who had initiated the court case disputing the will.

It turns out both of them appear to be as difficult to find as if they were surnamed Smith. But I did find one curious legal notice inserted in a newspaper about seven years before the paperwork for the 1854 lawsuit was filed. While it may turn out to be merely a coincidence that the names appeared to be related, tomorrow we need to at least take a look at who was named in that other court case. 

Looking for the REAL Robert Smith

 

When it comes to researching the family history of people possessing really common surnames, I'll admit it: I have a bias. I really don't like chasing after documents for folks named Smith or Jones. Even finding documents for the "right" Smith with the right given name in the right place can mean absolutely nothing. There may be another person by that same name, just around the corner.

That's the way it's been, looking for Robert Smith in 1850s Hocking County, Ohio. I got a promising start by discovering a statement in a court record asserting the fact that Mary Rinehart, daughter of Simon, was wife of Robert Smith of Hocking County. How explicit can this get? But finding the real Robert Smith? Now, that's another story.

Just when I had discarded one Robert Smith in that county, by virtue of his birth and family life in England, I discovered another Robert Smith in the same county. Added bonus: this Robert's wife was named Mary. I thought I had found what I was searching for, and began adding information on their children from census records, right into the Rinehart branch in my mother-in-law's family tree. 

I added Robert's wife Mary, and their seven children from the 1850 census, and was ready to follow the family lines down through the generations, when I spotted one detail that stopped me in my tracks: Robert Smith was named in an ancestral line in an application to the Sons of the American Revolution. When I followed the line of descent to the next generation, Robert's son, I saw something that didn't add up: Robert's wife's name was given as Maria Pitcher, not Mary Rinehart.

Out went all the details I had just entered in my mother-in-law's family tree. I pulled up that old delete button and slashed away, removing each of the children I had just added to Robert's family.

But after all the genealogical carnage, I had second thoughts. I went back to the 1850 census record. Sure enough, there was a gap in ages between the oldest child listed in the household—George, aged twenty five—and the next child, fourteen year old daughter Maria. Since the court records back in Perry County—the ones regarding two sets of children from different wives in Simon Rinehart's will—stated that Robert's wife was Simon Rinehart's daughter Mary, was it possible that Robert Smith was married twice, too?

I looked. Sure enough, there was an 1822 marriage record for Robert Smith and Maria Pitcher in Hocking County. And for the date of Maria's death, an old headstone in the Old Logan Cemetery reported that Maria Smith, consort of Robert D. Smith, died in 1832.

Back into the family tree went those children of Robert and Mary. As I worked my way through the children of Robert's second marriage, I ran across a will left by his daughter Mariah, an unmarried woman who died in 1873. Mariah appointed her brother Culver to be executor of her will, which contained a stipulation that, for the property he was to receive, he was to take two hundred dollars for "the erection of suitable tombstones at the graves of my father, Robert D. Smith, and his first wife."

Right next to the memorial for Robert's first wife, Maria, stood that "suitable tombstone," as Culver Smith was instructed to provide. Seeing that picture, however, made me want to start that family tree all over again, yanking the names I had just plugged back in, and looking once again for the real Robert Smith in Hocking County.

Why? Because on that same memorial stone to her father was listed not only the name of Robert's first wife, but his second wife, as well. And her name was listed as Mary Ankrum, not Rinehart.

When Searching for Smith

 

Any time I face having to research a family member named Smith, I proceed cautiously. Well, that's not entirely true; first I fervently hope I never have to run into a predicament like that in the first place...but marriages do happen, and sometimes they involve suitors named Smith.

In the case of Simon Rinehart's will, contested by the children of his first wife, I had the helpful listing of all Simon's living children, as of the 1854 date in which they had filed the lawsuit in Perry County, Ohio. Even though I was overjoyed to receive a full listing of all Simon's children—I had missed the majority of them in previous work on this family line—I noted (with dismay) that one of Simon's daughters had married a man by the name of Smith.

Groan.

To make matters worse, this daughter's given name was Mary. I guess I am fortunate that her husband's name was not John Smith.

Setting aside those complaints, I did realize that the court records specified just where Mary and her husband—named Robert Smith—had settled by the time the complaint was filed in court. Though Mary likely was born back in Greene County, Pennsylvania, where Simon Rinehart had originated, the court record identified the couple as residents of Hocking County, Ohio.

Hocking County has a history much like that of Perry County, and in fact was a neighboring county, lying to the southwest of Perry County. Just as Perry County was formed in 1818 from neighboring counties, Hocking County was likewise organized. Both gained land from Fairfield County, as well as from other nearby counties, upon their establishment.

Finding Robert Smith in Hocking County was a search that, for the first attempt, did not turn out well. I began by searching through the census record for the decade after the 1854 court case. For that search, estimating Mary's age based on the year of birth for her sister Martha, I presumed that Mary would have married a man born during the early 1800s. I made the search parameter as wide as possible on Ancestry.com, setting the target year as 1810 and expanding the range ten years in each direction.

Bingo! I found Robert Smith! But he was a man without a wife, though several older children in the household hinted at a deceased wife by 1860. Second drawback: this Robert Smith was born in England, not Pennsylvania. Though admittedly that could have been possible—after all, some immigrants from England did historically pass through Pennsylvania—I noticed that his children were also listed as having been born in England. This gave us a profile which didn't fit what I was looking for.

With a second attempt, I pulled the possible date range for our Robert Smith's year of birth to an earlier setting—but not too much earlier. I wanted a range that overlapped the first attempt, just in case I had missed something.

Sure enough, there was a second Robert Smith, also resident in Hocking County. Added bonus: in the 1850 census, he claimed to have a wife whose name was Mary. And both Robert and Mary were reported to have been born in Pennsylvania.

The children's names did not seem to echo any family names from previous generations in the Rinehart clan. From oldest household member George Smith at age twenty five down to the youngest, five year old Wesley Smith, all were born in Ohio, not Pennsylvania, giving us a date marker to estimate their arrival from Pennsylvania. This date estimate puts the Smiths' arrival in Ohio much earlier than Simon Rinehart's arrival, as Simon was still showing in Greene County, Pennsylvania, in the 1830 census.

Does this mean I've found Simon's daughter Mary and her husband Robert Smith? Not necessarily so. After all, this Robert wasn't the only Robert Smith in Hocking County. There could be more.

As I'm doing for Mary's sister Martha Rinehart Fordyce, I'll start building a proposed family tree of descendants, not just in my search for more documentation, but to scope out any possible DNA matches linking my husband's family with this Smith family.

Stepping Sideways: Sarah's Sister

 

In some ways, I can be a chicken when it comes to genealogical research. I like to move from what I know in incremental steps. And those sideways steps in this search for Simon Rinehart's children will stop first with Sarah's sister, Martha. 

Looking at those "sideways" steps—or in more accurate vernacular, collateral lines—can sometimes reveal information that couldn't be found by focusing only on a specific, direct-line ancestor. In Simon Rinehart's case, I've discovered a number of details that need to be, ahem, clarified. In hopes of stumbling upon such details, I'm planning to poke around in the lines of all his children, not just his daughter Sarah, who was my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother. 

Now that I've reviewed all that I know about Sarah Rinehart Gordon, the next step is to examine each of Simon's children by his first wife. My initial attempt, over the weekend, didn't prove successful, so I adapted a new policy: when offered additional information about a child's spouse, take that route first. Finding two people in the same household can be a far more successful venture than looking for whatever became of one single individual. Thus, the search for Sarah's married sisters.

According to the court records from Perry County, Ohio, where Simon Rinehart had died, we have a listing of each of his descendants, separated into two groups: those from his first wife, then those from his second wife. In addition, the list provided the name of the surviving husband in the case of three of Simon's children: two daughters from his first wife, one from his second.

Since we'll begin with the children of Simon's first wife, that leaves me two options—and one of those options involves searching for someone named Mary who married a man named Smith. Since I'm such a research chicken, guess which research route I didn't opt for first?

That leaves us with Simon's daughter Martha, who remained in Greene County, Pennsylvania, after her father left for Ohio. According to the court records, Martha married Jacob Fordyce, whom I easily found in Greene County records, including the 1850 census, which listed eight children in their household—though a news clipping posted on Martha's memorial on Find A Grave indicated that she had "given birth to ten children, nine of whom she reared to adult years."

It was easy to see family resonance in the names selected for two of Martha's sons—the two sons Jacob later appointed as his executors. The elder, Jesse, was likely named for an ancestor in the Rinehart family, which ancestral name had also been chosen by Simon himself in naming another son from his second marriage. The second son named as Jacob's executor was listed in his will as "S. R." Fordyce, the initials standing for "Simon Rinehart," the name of Martha's own father.

Beyond that family resonance in Rinehart namesakes among Martha's sons, though, I learned very little about Simon through this daughter—and gained no clue whatsoever to guide me in ascertaining who Martha's mother had been. However, it was encouraging to see two DNA matches from among Martha's descendants—with hopefully more to come, now that I'm building out Martha's Fordyce line of descent in my mother-in-law's own tree.

Occupation: Old Maid

 

Yes, government documents can record the most unexpected things. Take this 1870 census record I found while searching for Simon Rinehart's first family, back in Greene County, Pennsylvania. One of the easier search tasks I found was to look for Simon's daughter Martha, whom court records had conveniently identified as the wife of Jacob Fordyce. Locating the aging Martha in her husband's household, I took a look at the rest of those listed at Jacob's place in 1870. Among those at the address was one Mary Fordyce, aged sixty six—older than Jacob, himself—whose occupation was listed as "old maid."

As I work through the court documents on the lawsuit brought by Simon's older children after his death, I've apparently gleaned quite a few names from these collateral lines. It's been just one week now that I've been on that task, having wrapped up work on Lydia Miller in the previous week. Between the two efforts, my biweekly count has zoomed ahead by 523 names, all documented individuals belonging to my mother-in-law's ancestry. My in-laws' tree now contains a total of 39,810 researched people.

On my side of the family? Nada. It's been a focused two weeks. I've been pedaling through microfilmed pages as fast as I can. Even I've been surprised at how much can be gained just from the leads in a few court documents. That work has all been dedicated to researching my mother-in-law's lines, as I stick to plans from my Twelve Most Wanted list for this year. Next month will be time to move on to my father-in-law's family lines for the next quarter, so I won't be revisiting my own tree until October—unless something unexpected happens to lure me back, say, to record a birth announcement, or details from a wedding or funeral.

Still, there is one additional source of progress to consider, and that is finding new DNA matches. It seems I usually gain about twice as many DNA matches as my husband in each biweekly period, and you know I can't pass up the chance to plug those newly-discovered cousins into my tree.

As I work my way through this month's research project, focusing on my mother-in-law's Rinehart line, I have noticed one thing, though. Like Mary Fordyce, our occupational Old Maid, it seems there are several branches of Simon's many children's lines which included a greater percentage of siblings who chose not to marry.

From our vantage point, looking backwards in time through those many branches, I've wondered why only a few children of a Most Recent Common Ancestor ended up becoming a DNA match. Now that I've filled in the blanks, I can see the answer more clearly: in some families, there were more than the expected number of children who ended up unmarried. I'm finding that to be so in the lines descending from Simon Rinehart.

A Match Takes Two

 

Now that I've found a reliable listing of all the surviving children of Simon Rinehart, my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather who died in Perry County, Ohio, I wondered whether DNA testing would provide any further guidance. I looked at the number of matches—one hundred at this point—and thought I'd find plenty of supporting genetic information...until I looked at the ThruLines breakdown of the lines of descent proposed at Ancestry.com. Surprise: those hundred DNA matches came through only four lines of descent. Seventy matches alone were from my mother-in-law's direct line ancestor, Simon's daughter Sarah. The few remaining others were scattered among two of her full siblings, plus one name I cannot account for. Where were the rest of the Rinehart siblings in this match list?

Granted, it takes two test-takers to make a DNA match, but we are talking about eleven children of Simon Rinehart—five from his first wife and six from his second wife. Aren't there any other descendants from among this eligible group who have tested their DNA?

And where does this other mystery sibling come into play in the ThruLines list at Ancestry.com? Listed as "Reason" or "Resin," this supposed child of Simon was apparently a son, not a daughter, judging from the ThruLines diagrams. While the shared genetic material is admittedly small, the seven proposed matches from this line mostly share only one segment.

The problem may come from one dismaying fact: Simon Rinehart was apparently a popular namesake, back in our Simon's hometown in Greene County, Pennsylvania. He was surely named after an older relative from among the county's pioneer settlers. I imagine we will need to stick very close to both the paper trail and the genetic confirmation in working on this Simon Rinehart's lines, in case we confuse him for a cousin by the same name.

On the other hand, I sure wish more of our Simon's descendants from the list confirmed in the Perry County court case would test their DNA. It might help me trace the rest of those others from that list—some of whom are already proving hard to document in any resources other than the court records themselves.

"Start With What You Know"

 

As we work our way through this month's research problem—confirming the family members directly related to Simon Rinehart of Perry County, Ohio—it would be good to stick with the genealogical principle, "Start with what you know." Now that I've discovered the complaints filed in court by Simon's older children from his first wife, I've learned that there is a lot about this Rinehart family that I don't yet know. No problem; those first steps still need to start with familiar territory.

What I know the best about this family is the name of Simon's daughter Sarah, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother, who had married James Gordon. Even so, I had struggled to find much detail on her life's story. I know from her entry in the 1850 census in Ohio that despite having a father born in Pennsylvania, Sarah herself was born in Kentucky. There is obviously a lot more to her story than I've been able to uncover so far.

That 1850 census also revealed a few other details. One was that, by then, Sarah had reported her age to be fifty two, putting her date of birth just before the start of the 1800s. The other important detail was that Sarah was, by then, a widow living with four of her children, as well as a possible granddaughter.

Rewinding history for a bit to find Sarah's husband James in a census record, we find him in the same location in Perry County—Jackson Township—for the 1840 census. He wasn't in that location for long; his will, which he drew up in July of that same year, was presented in court and noted in a court entry which was, unfortunately, not dated. His headstone, however, bore the date July 15, 1840, two days after he signed his last testament.

Sarah, herself, lived another thirty six years, buried in 1876 in a different cemetery in another part of the county from her husband's final resting place. Thirteen years after that, her eldest son Basil Gordon—the only one mentioned by name in his father's will, having been appointed his executor—was buried in the same cemetery as his mother, Sarah. 

That is what I do know about this one child of Simon Rinehart, the man whose enigmatic will had unwittingly provided me with a complete readout of the names of his children from both his marriages. And that is very little. However, it is more than I had known about any of Simon's other children. One by one, we'll need to visit records for each of these descendants and see whether we can find any further information on their own lives—as well as delve deeper into Sarah's own story.

A Genealogical Scorecard

 

There's nothing like a rousing argument to clearly mark the dividing line between two sides. A court case pitting those two disputing factions can become our genealogical scorecard, when it comes to strife over inheritances. That is exactly what has been granted us when, back in the 1850s, Simon Rinehart's children contested his will.

By the time Simon drew up his will—at least, according to his older children—he was suffering the effects of failing health. Or, to put it in the words of the complaint filed on April 24, 1854 in Perry County, Ohio, Simon had been "greatly afflicted with mental weakness, the result of sickness, extreme age, and physical debility."

That complaint, thankfully for us, began with a listing of the names of Simon Rinehart's children. Even better, the document explained that some of the parties were "children by a former marriage"—and specified their names.

Thus, the meager list of descendants I had assembled prior to discovering this packet of court records suddenly more than doubled. All I had been able to find, prior to this discovery, was Simon's daughter Sarah—my mother-in-law's direct ancestor—his son Jesse, and the three daughters who lived in Simon's household in the 1850 census. 

Now, I also have verification that Simon had been married twice. Though I still don't know the name of Simon's first wife, I can align his sons Samuel and Thomas with that first marriage. In addition, I learned the name of the husbands of that first wife's daughters. Martha Rinehart married Jacob Fordyce, and as of the court case, the Fordyces still lived in Greene County, the Pennsylvania home Simon had left sometime after marrying his second wife. However, Mary Rinehart, wife of Robert Smith, now lived in Hocking County, Ohio, near her father's final home in Perry County. And Sarah Rinehart Gordon, by then a widow, was living in Perry County.

These, as the court record noted, were "children by a former marriage."

The document continued sorting Simon's progeny. The record next noted the descendants of Simon's widow, Anna. Besides his son Jesse and the three unmarried daughters still living in Simon's household—Lucinda, Charlotte, and Hannah—the document mentioned Cassa and her husband Isaac Brown, and another daughter who was also apparently widowed, Nancy Ankrom.

Lest there be any further confusion about Simon's children, the court continued: these were children of his "second and last marriage." Each child from this second marriage was noted to currently be residing in Perry County.

Now that we have this genealogical scorecard so clearly laid out for us, our next step is to see what we can find on each of these Rinehart descendants.

Signs of Familial Discontent

 

Simon Rinehart's will was presented in court in Perry County, Ohio, on March 8, 1853. The document was so sparse of details—it didn't even provide his wife's name, though he bequeathed her the entirety of his possessions—that I thought perhaps the man had taken care of such business beforehand by recording deeds concerning land transactions for his many children.

How wrong I was.

It took a bit over a year for the signs of familial discontent to surface, but in a faded entry in an appearance docket in the spring of 1854, I found my first sign of just who thought they should have been named in their father's will.

The faded entry named Samuel Rinehart, Martha Fordyce, Jacob Fordyce, Mary Smith, Robert Smith, Thomas Rinehart, and Sarah Gordon. Below that listing of names appeared the words, "heirs of Simon Rinehart, deceased."

That wasn't the end of it. That list was followed by another similarly long list of names: Anna Rinehart, Nancy Ankrom, Jesse Rinehart, Lucinda Rinehart, Charlotte Rinehart, Cassa Brown, Isaac Brown, and Hannah Rinehart. The note continued, "also heirs of said Simon Rinehart, deceased."

In between those two groupings of names was a line with the entry, "vs."

The second group of names contained the explanation, which we've already gleaned from an entry in the 1850 census, that Anna—also listed later in the document as Ann—was the widow who had not been mentioned specifically by name in Simon's will. 

Fast forward to January of 1855. In a court document signed by the publisher of a local newspaper, we can see an example of the required insertion in the paper of record, notifying that same list of people that Thomas Rinehart had filed a petition against all of them, for the purpose of demanding partition of the land of the now long deceased Simon Rinehart. And fortunately for us, the newspaper clipping provided the land's precise location: the northwest quarter of section 15, of township 15, and range 15.

That demand was to be presented at the next term of the court of common pleas in Perry County. No matter how the case was eventually resolved, this was sure to provide me far more information on the composition of Simon Rinehart's large family than I had ever expected to learn. 

Image above: Not long after Simon Rinehart's heirs contended for his property, this plat map showed the location of the land—in this 1859 map, labeled as "S. Rhinehart's Hrs"—situated somewhat to the southeast of the town of New Lexington, Ohio, on the northwest quarter of section 15 in Pike Township; map courtesy of U.S. Library of Congress, in the public domain.

To His Beloved Wife, Mrs. No-Name Rinehart

 

Why is it that some men bequeath large percentages of their possessions to their "beloved" wife without so much as mentioning her first name in the legal document granting her the man's parting tokens of love? I know it may be the 1850s we are discussing in following the last wishes of Simon Rinehart, but couldn't he have been just a tiny bit more expressive?

Simon Rinehart, my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather, had lived a good portion of his adult life in Perry County, Ohio, though he had been born in Pennsylvania. Fortunately, I had found him in the 1850 census in Pike Township, though that discovery was hard-won; the enumerator's handwriting made his surname look more like "Phinebot" than the misspelled Rhinehart it was intended to be.

Seventy-six year old Simon appeared in that household along with his sixty eight year old wife. Here, we learn that his beloved's name was Anne—or at least that's how the enumerator spelled Mrs. No-Name's given name. With a flip of the census page, we can see that three younger adult women with the same misshapen surname also lived in the household: Hannah, Lucinda, and Charlotte, all three born in Pennsylvania.

Three years later, Simon was dead.

While I'm grateful to have found the Rineharts in the 1850 census, the first enumeration to include names of each member of a household, there was apparently much I had yet to learn about this household.

Thinking that perhaps Simon had done his due diligence and, before his demise, had deeded property to any other possible family members, I decided to go looking for a more thorough legal listing.

It's a good thing the will's sparse wording prompted me to look further. As it turned out, I found no such deeds bearing Simon's name when I took my query to the FamilySearch labs' Full Text search. But what I did find more than made up for that.

Apparently, Mrs. No-Name was Simon's second wife—I won't speculate on whether the first wife was also his "beloved"—so perhaps I discovered one reason why Simon chose to move from Pennsylvania to Ohio. Evidently, a son who still lived in Greene County, Pennsylvania, as well as a married daughter there, joined forces with several others among their siblings to contest that will.

While that act may have made life difficult for Simon's three (presumed) daughters still living in his household—to say nothing of his wife—the documentation which resulted from that family rift has been most informative for me, a nosy researcher trying to piece together the family picture from a vantage point of nearly one hundred seventy five years removed.

From those documents, I gleaned the names of each of the children from the first marriage, as distinguished from those of the second marriage—in addition to Hannah, Lucinda, and Charlotte. Added bonus: those daughters who were, by 1853, already married had not only their married surnames given, but the name of each husband to whom they had been "intermarried"—if the husband were still living.

One of those daughters, in fact, had already lost her husband, a fact I knew by virtue of that line being my mother-in-law's direct line ancestor, Sarah Rinehart. Sarah's husband, James Gordon, had died in 1840, thus explaining the reason why the mention of her name in the family's court case did not include her husband's name.

That convenient listing of each surviving member of Simon Rinehart's family may have helped me compose a more accurate and complete listing of the family constellation—but it also provided me with an unexpected narrative of the family's contentious dynamics at the point at which their father's last testament was publicly revealed. 

"Uh Oh"

 

Somehow, unexpected realizations can push that grade-school response out into the open when we least plan for it. And "uh oh" was exactly what slipped out of my mouth when I took a look at one of the ancestors I hadn't worked on in years.

You know how it can go. You work on one line of the family, moving backwards in time, but perhaps attack another part of the line from an ancestral vantage point and work forward. However it happened, the end result was that my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather Simon Rinehart was born nine years before his father was.

Yes, I know that is not humanly possible. But that's what ended up in her family tree.

In my defense, there are a lot of ancestors in my mother-in-law's family with the name Simon Rinehart. It was apparently a top-ten hit for naming sons born into that extended Rinehart clan, back in Greene County, Pennsylvania. In fact, there were so many Rinehart pioneers in that region that I'm sure I'll need to rework far more than just this one Simon Rinehart's line.

But, still: a son born before his father? C'mon now. It's a good thing Simon made it to my Twelve Most Wanted list for this year. We've got a lot of work ahead of us this month.

What I do know about Simon, however, is that while he was likely born in Greene County, Pennsylvania, he died in Perry County, Ohio. And while I have yet to find his final resting place there, I have a pretty good idea of when he died: 1853. A date I gleaned from Simon's will—a simple document which barely filled a third of one page in the county's court records—the document was presented there on March 8, 1853, launching the family into a multi-year, contentious struggle over Simon's purported desire to give his entire possessions over to his wife, and no one else.  

Time for a Do-Over

 

Welcome to June, when we move on from Lydia Miller's surprise last month to the next ancestor in my Twelve Most Wanted who needs a do-over for 2025. This month, we will be reviewing my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather, Simon Rinehart.

Up until this point, I had assumed that Simon was born in Pennsylvania just before the start of the American Revolution, and that he eventually migrated to Perry County, Ohio. But the more I look over this man's entry in my mother-in-law's family tree, the less I'm certain I have all his information correct.

Prime among the goals is to seek further confirmation of Simon's parents and siblings. I hope to put FamilySearch's Full Text Search through its paces this month in hopes of finding documentation to either confirm the information I already have, or rewrite it entirely. I have my doubts about what I had previously entered on this man, and keeping in mind the surprise discoveries made in last month's ancestor hunt, it would do me well to pay attention to those hunches.

Tomorrow, we'll review what details I already have on Simon Rinehart, then zero in on the information which causes me the most angst. The main goal will be to confirm each assertion with solid sources. As the month progresses, a secondary goal will be to review the one hundred DNA matches my husband shares with Simon's descendants. A glaring clue there also reminds me that not all is correct in that line. With this month, we have our work cut out for us—but it will only be resolved if I can locate sufficient documentation to shed some light on this muddled mess.

Unexpected

 

This month began with hopes to find information on the parents of Lydia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother. Lydia was my fifth choice among my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025, a goal I have had for not just this year, but a brick wall that has plagued me for decades. While I can't say I accomplished that goal in the past month, I certainly can vouch for a month of unexpected results.

The prime unexpected result was discovering that, after the death of her husband and second-born son, Lydia went on to raise eight children from a second marriage. Since that discovery came late in the month, I am only now working my way through the lines of descent for each of those surviving children from her marriage to Benedict Palmer. My goal with this most recent task is to seek out any possible DNA matches among her Palmer descendants—but so far, no results for that goal. I suspect the time frame has been too short to see results yet.

A second result has been the unexpected disappearance of DNA matches which had formerly been linked to my account at Ancestry.com. Apparently, nobody else knows the identity of Lydia Miller's parents, either, yet at Ancestry, ThruLines had offered up a guess—an entry labeled "Jacob???? Miller." Yes, that's Jacob with four question marks.

Through some unexpected digital sleight of hand, Jacob???? Miller has now disappeared from my ThruLines listing for this family. No one else has replaced him, either. That, however, means that the DNA matches which ThruLines had previously proposed—and that I had already confirmed through documentation—have suddenly, poof!, disappeared. So much for the theory that Jonathan Miller might have been a brother of Lydia, or at least a first cousin. Checking on the ThruLines results today showed Lydia with absolutely zero DNA matches linked to her own line.

Where to go from here is my next question. The end of this month means it's a wrap for Lydia—at least for this year's research projects. I will need to revisit her case again in a future year. When that time comes, I will once again rely on DNA connections, if any materialize. In the meantime, my task will be to complete her line of descent from all surviving children, down to the current generation, as I have done for all other lines I've worked on in my mother-in-law's family. With eight Palmer children born from the mid 1840s through the early 1860s, that will be a lot of work to confirm each line with appropriate documentation.

Another task that needs completion is the cluster research approach I've taken to examine the Miller households in Perry County, Lydia's original home where she had married, first, William Gordon, and second, widower Benedict Palmer. Since I've decided to continue my subscription to Ancestry's ProTools, where I can access the beta Networks tool, this will facilitate continuing that rather broad survey of parental possibilities. Again, much repetitive work that may well become necessary if I hope to find any answer to my research question.

Granted, this isn't the first time I've come to the end of a month without an answer in hand to my research question regarding one of my Twelve Most Wanted. But at least I've come close to discovering more useful information about that targeted ancestor. That is the value of at least trying to attain research goals.

Next month, for the last of my Twelve Most Wanted for my mother-in-law's line, I'm afraid we'll be again staring down a decades-long research goal. Whether we accomplish what has been hoped for or not, I'm confident the effort will bring some useful but unexpected results, as well. Though not the target I hope to hit, at least those unexpected bonuses add helpful details to the picture of these long-ago ancestors' stories.  

Nothing to Write Home About

 

It's a day before the end of another month, and I'm feverishly working on last-minute tasks on my to-do list for Lydia Miller's side of my mother-in-law's family tree. Sometimes, though there is a lot of work being done, there's not much to say about it—as they say, "nothing to write home about." 

My task today was to wrap up my exploration of Miller families appearing in the early census records of Reading Township in Perry County, Ohio. That was the location of Lydia's first married home, which she shared with her husband, William Gordon, and her one surviving son, Adam.

To aid in the exploration, I've been using an Ancestry.com beta tool, called simply, "Networks." Early this month, I had set up a network which I dubbed "Miller Family in Perry County, Ohio." One by one, I've been adding specific Miller households to this tool, then locating them in as many documents as possible, before extending each hypothetical relative's line of descent several generations.

On the one hand, I've failed miserably in finding any confirmed connection between these other Millers and Lydia's own Miller roots, but on the other hand, I'm hoping the effort may produce some sign of DNA matches. An additional possible outcome might be to discover patterns, such as any Millers who might have followed Lydia and her second husband Benedict Palmer to their new home in Mercer County.

So far, no such promising signs have emerged. Thus, the repetitive grunt work—with nothing much more to say about it. Some work takes time but, regardless of the proportion of work, yields very little in the way of remarkable results.

Tomorrow, whether the work is done or not, we'll close out this exploration to discover Lydia Miller's roots. It will be time for a recap of the month's progress—including some unexpected discoveries—and an outline of what to do the next time I revisit this research puzzle. And if we are really lucky, perhaps Ancestry's algorithms will catch up with us and be ready to yield some new DNA matches from the descendants of Lydia's second family.

Piling on the Palmers — And Just in Time

 

Quick! To the chase—at least, before the end of the month beats us to the finish line.

Right now, to my mother-in-law's family tree I'm feverishly adding the children of Lydia Palmer—formerly the Lidia we had listed as widow of William Gordon of Perry County, Ohio. The reason for this rush to add the children of Lydia's second marriage is my hope that connecting them to my tree today will give us enough time for the algorithms at Ancestry.com DNA to pick up this additional line of descent. After all, no matter how people spelled her name—Lidia Gordon or Lydia Palmer—she was ancestor of not only those descending from her first son, Adam Gordon, but from her many Palmer children, too. There may be a lot more DNA matches out there to discover.

According to an article about ThruLines posted by Ancestry.com's support team on their website, changes in family trees at Ancestry are usually reflected in ThruLines within forty eight hours. That means, if I hurry, all these new discoveries about Lydia's second family may generate ThruLines results by May 31. Talk about a deadline!

Of course, I'll likely continue the chase into June, despite my promise to myself to move on to the next month's feature from my Twelve Most Wanted for this year. I'm curious to see whether any matches show up who share DNA specifically based on the Miller line—Lydia's as-yet unknown parents' line—rather than the Gordon line of her first husband.

In the meantime, here are a few details to wrap up the month.

First was the question about what became of Benedict Palmer's first wife. We found the 1839 marriage record for Benedict and Catherine Hovermill in Fairfield County, but her ominous absence just a few years after that marriage demanded a search for her burial information.

In what seemed to be a fluke from Find A Grave, I did indeed find Catherine's burial—but it came to my attention as a hint at Ancestry pointing to a Find A Grave memorial supposedly for her husband, not for herself. 

Once I clicked on the link provided by that hint, I could see that the headstone itself was for Catherine, not her bereaved husband.

We could already see that there was a monument marking Benedict Palmer's actual burial location in Mercer County, where he and his second wife Lydia had settled, but because the stone was engraved with the man's name spelled as "Benadict," it did not surface as a hint for his final resting place. I had to go in and manually change the search to the other spelling to get the memorial linked to the right person.

As for Catherine's son Jerome, he, too, was buried in the same cemetery in Mercer County, Ohio, where his father had moved the family. I suspect his Find A Grave entry contains some errors, though, as the memorial states that he was born in Mercer County, when we can see from the Palmer family's entry in the 1850 census that they had not yet moved from Fairfield County until after that point.

If Jerome Palmer, born about 1840, had lived a longer life, his death record might have confirmed his mother's name for us. As it turned out, though, Jerome died before his fortieth birthday, leaving a wife and two young daughters, long before the advent of such helpful documents.

Locating information on those two details from Benedict Palmer's first marriage, I can now get back to work, building out this newly-discovered branch of my mother-in-law's family tree. From Lydia Miller's additional eight children in the Palmer line, there surely will be multiple candidates for DNA matches to connect us to her unknown Miller parents. And while I impatiently wait out those forty eight hours, I have some wrap-up work to do on Lydia's possible brothers' families, back in Perry County, Ohio.

About That Other Lydia

 

Whenever we encounter conflicting assertions about a branch of our family tree, there is no route that possibly can be taken—at least, if we want a tree that reflects documented, correct information—other than to inspect all that can be found, according to each version of the "truth." In the case of that "other" Lydia, wife of Benedict Palmer of Mercer County, Ohio, that is exactly the task we need to attend to today.

Here's the assertion that got me started on this chase: a Find A Grave memorial for someone named Lydia Palmer, who was buried in Ellis Cemetery in Montezuma, Ohio, a tiny village in Mercer County that even today claims a population under two hundred people.

Nestled up against the state border with Indiana, Mercer County is on a road leading from Columbus, Ohio, to Fort Wayne, Indiana. From Perry County, where Lidia Miller lived, to Mercer County would be a trip of almost two hundred miles. If Lidia Miller, the widow of William Gordon, were indeed one and the same as Lydia Palmer, it would help to assemble records documenting the transactions that made that assertion a reality.

Let's check first to see what we can find on Lydia Palmer before her death in 1895. As early as 1860, I could find a census record for Lydia and her husband Benedict Palmer in Montezuma. The household included two daughters and five sons, with the oldest being named Jerome and the youngest, at one year of age, designated as his father's namesake, Benedict. The senior Benedict was noted to have been born in Delaware, while Lydia claimed to be an Ohio native.

The difficulty with the ages indicated for these children—Jerome listed as being twenty years of age in that census, meaning a birth year in 1840—was that "our" Lidia had given birth to her one surviving child, Adam Gordon, only a year prior to that. Not to mention, Lidia's husband, William Gordon, died at the end of 1840, certainly not in enough time for her to have remarried and brought another son to full term in the interim.

Looking for marriage information on Benedict Palmer, I did find a marriage record dated in February of 1839—the same time as our Lidia's son Adam was born—not from Mercer County where I had found the Palmers in 1860, but from Fairfield County, not far from Perry County. Benedict's wife's name, however, was listed as Catherine Hovermill.

Thinking this might have been a different Benedict, I went looking for someone by that name in Fairfield County. When I located him in the 1850 census, Benedict Palmer was indeed living in Fairfield County—but his wife's name wasn't Catherine at all. Despite the scrawl of the enumerator's handwriting—and his propensity to use abbreviations for names—the resultant entry for "Benidic" Palmer's wife looked far more like Lydia than Catherine.

It was time to branch out to more recent records—hopefully, those of the type which would include names of parents, such as death certificates. Remember that youngest son from the 1860 census, the one named after his father? I found what might—or might not—have been his death record. However, this Benedict Palmer died in Iowa, not Ohio. The informant, his wife, stated that her husband was born in Iowa, not Ohio. To complicate matters, she also reported that his father was born in Ohio—not Delaware, as we had seen from census records. 

The biggest problem, however, was that while this Benedict's death record noted his mother's name to have been Lydia, her maiden name, according to her daughter-in-law, was Barker.

Wrong Lydia? Don't be too sure. I kept looking—thankfully. Among the marriage records turning up in searches was one for a wedding performed in, of all places, Perry County, back where we had left our own Lidia Miller Gordon. On May 1, 1842, Benedict Palmer and Lydia "Gorden" stood before a Justice of the Peace, who solemnized their marriage.

To complete the tale, I'll need to look for any record of what became of Benedict's first wife, Catherine, who was evidently the mother of the oldest son, Jerome, whose burial was also noted with a Find A Grave memorial in Montezuma.

And that youngest son Benedict? Though he died in Iowa, he was indeed buried back in Montezuma—and, despite her provision of incorrect information on her husband's death certificate, so was his wife Rachel.

Thanks to an unexplained entry at Find A Grave—one which, without that documentation, seemed to make no sense at all—we now have the rest of the story, as far as Lidia Miller's life went. The birth dates for the sons of each husband, while seeming to contradict assertions about this marriage, made much more sense, once we followed through to find documentation to tell the full story.

Now, I'm left with far more to do on this month's research project. Besides documenting these discoveries for the family tree, I'll need to add the line of descent for children of Lidia's second marriage. Then, because those descendants may mean additional discoveries among perplexing DNA matches, I'll need to pursue that angle, as well—all before the close of this month, if all goes well.

What if That was All Wrong?

 

The month-long chase to discover the parents of Lidia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother who seemed to materialize out of nowhere, is almost over. Only four more days remain to work on this month's selection for my Twelve Most Wanted, but while I feel I've made headway on this brick wall puzzle, I haven't come to any solid conclusion.

I feel good about the progress I've made—especially the discovery of DNA matches linking to Jonathan Miller, a Perry County, Ohio, neighbor whose descendants may be telling a story I couldn't find through the traditional paper route. There is, however, one nagging question: what if that discovery—and all the documentation it led me to—turns out to be all wrong? What if Lidia Miller's story was far different than what we've discussed so far?

There's a good reason for asking—perhaps one you have noticed too, if you followed the links I've included with this month's posts. Notice the 1840 burial information for Lidia's husband, William Gordon, as presented by the volunteer posting his memorial on Find A Grave. As is often done by these volunteers, memorials are linked with those of family members, a helpful gesture—as long as the connections are correct. In this case, I'm not so sure the information is right, but I can't just not check it out. 

William Gordon's memorial has the usual listings for his parents, children, and siblings—and in William's case, his half-siblings, as well. As is often the case, volunteers also link a memorial with the burial information on a spouse. However, in William's case, information supposedly about his wife Lidia was cross referenced with the burial information of someone named Lydia Palmer.

This Lydia was born about the same year our Lidia's birth was estimated to be: 1820. That's where the similarity ends. Lydia Palmer was the wife of someone named Benedict Palmer, and she was buried with him in 1895, not in Perry County, the location where we'd expect to find Lidia in Ohio, but in Mercer County, a county halfway across the state on the Indiana border.

True, it could be possible that our Lidia, widowed with a young child in the early years of Ohio's statehood, might have sought out an eligible bachelor to fill her departed husband's shoes—but I can't just take anyone's word for it, not even that of a dedicated Find A Grave volunteer. This brings up a possibility that we need to take our due diligence to inspect for ourselves.

Memorializing Family

 

Today, Memorial Day in the United States, is one day set aside to honor those who died while in the line of duty in military service. A custom which began after the Civil War, when families decorated the graves of their lost loved ones—hence the original designation as Decoration Day—the day now also honors the memory of those who have fallen in subsequent wars and military engagements.

Though my husband's family includes many members through the generations who have served in the armed forces, they have very few relatives who have actually died while in service. But as I explore the family's collateral lines, I find more and more who had harrowing stories of service to share—or, more the case, didn't share those stories much farther than their own immediate family.

I've lately been exploring the Miller lines of possible siblings of my mother-in-law's brick wall ancestor, Lidia Miller Gordon. In the extended family of one DNA match, I ran across an old news article concerning one such distant cousin, who had—finally, after five years of confinement—just been released from captivity as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam conflict.

The newspaper report included one detail about those five years: the veteran's younger brother had enlisted, served, finished his tour of duty and returned home, all before his brother regained his freedom. If the news could have been shared with this brother in captivity, the family didn't want to do so, for so many reasons. While both brothers eventually lived to tell about their experiences, what a burden it must have been to suffer through. These types of stories need to be memorialized, too—not just hidden away in a newspaper article now long forgotten that only a genealogist would stumble upon.

Then, too, there are stories of military loss that were so traumatic at the time that those closest to the tragedy could not bring themselves to speak of it. Though even the thought may be painful for those who lived through the loss of their loved one in service, eventually it will become important to share those stories. The rest of us need to hear them, to be informed of them, to learn from them. Despite the pain. Despite the grief. We mourn with those who grieve—and gain a different perspective of what it was like to live through that loss. We never know until we are told. Share the story. Pass it on. That story is worth living through the generations.

Not the Usual Five Hundred This Time

 

It takes a lot of collateral relatives to put a DNA match in the proper place in the family tree. As I search for clues about my mother-in-law's brick wall ancestor, Lidia Miller Gordon, there have been a lot of DNA matches connected to one growing branch of that family tree. And that means the numbers keep growing for every biweekly count—just not at the usual five hundred per fortnight rate experienced in the last two counts.

Still, in the past two weeks, my mother-in-law's tree has grown by an additional 416 relatives, mostly from known Gordon lines and those proposed Miller relatives whose descendants have turned out to be DNA matches. Granted, that falls short of that five hundred rate of the last two session, but my mother-in-law's  family tree now has 39,287 documented individuals included in the records.

In addition, this past two weeks brought in another seven DNA matches, including at least one related to my mother-in-law's Gordon line. As I work through the DNA results with my recent addition of Ancestry.com's ProTools assist, I'm connecting more and more of those Gordon and Miller collateral lines. Eventually, there will be enough information to figure out Lidia's connection to her own roots—and thus push back the curtain obscuring her origins at last. Someday.

In the past two weeks, I think the only reason that rate of increase on the tree has slowed has been because I've been traveling. It is, after all, Memorial Day weekend—not to mention graduation season. Hopefully, in the next two weeks, the celebrations and socialization will slow to a normal summertime pace, and I can get back to the typical five hundred additions for the next biweekly count. After all, it will only be a few more days, and we'll be on to a new research target for June's ancestor in my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025.

Off the Shelf: "Time Anxiety"

 

Not that I'm experiencing time anxiety myself, but Time Anxiety is a book I've wanted to read for the past, oh, thirty nine days. That's when the book was released, a perfect choice for a release date for a book like this: April 15, just in time for every American to release a collective sigh of relief over the national tax deadline.

Author Chris Guillebeau defines "time anxiety" as "the feeling of being crushed by the scarcity of time and the inevitability of things ending." He has been mulling over the problems with time management for a long time, and this newest of his books is a collection of his observations on what he calls a myth: Time cannot be "managed." 

Time management, this author asserts, "is a powerful story built on an entirely false premise." However, there is, he assures us, still much we can do about that.

While reading through Guillebeau's explanation of this predicament, I noticed a few thoughts that can be applied to genealogy—a pursuit which itself, much like the perennial "to do" list, is never really "done." Here's a sampling of some ideas which caught my eye.

• In a practical tip he calls "The Reverse Bucket List," the author urges readers to "make a list of the amazing things you've already done." It's not just a matter of a pat-yourself-on-the-back journey down memory lane; the process may inspire you to set new or revised goals, especially if the review lights up some previously obscured information or resources not available to you the last time you tackled the problem.
• In questioning just what constitutes "enough" for a project, begin by deciding on "a logical finish line" for the goal. Observing that a lack of boundaries for a project conditions us to "the idea that work simply never ends," the author sees the lack of "milestones and end points" as robbing us of a sense of purposeful accomplishment. Genealogy research in general can have that effect, as many of us have experienced. That's why I've chosen my Twelve Most Wanted research cycle for the year: to help me attain finish lines with each goal, even if it only turns out to be a wrap-up summary at the month's end with a next-step list of objectives for the next time I tackle that research question.
• When getting started on a research project, think about where you tend to get sidetracked or encounter stuff that throws you off your planned course. Rabbit trail? Yep, that's me, so I need to do an evaluation of the dips and twists in a typical project cycle, make a note of them, and create tactics for reshaping the behaviors. I don't worry so much about the rabbit trails—they generally lead me to some useful insights in the end—but it is helpful to have a rescue plan on hand to get me back on track when I veer off course.

Time, as Guillebeau observed, is "the greatest nonrenewable resource in the world." For example, unlike many other items—out of milk? go to the store; out of money? find a way to get more—he notes: "if you run out of time—you're done." 

"Time is limited, but desire is limitless" is an observation the author shared which likely resonates with so many who are pursuing questions about their family history. There is always something more we want to know, some new question that looms on the horizon of our latest family discovery. These are two facts in conflict which the book examines—and that those of us fascinated with pursuing our ancestors would benefit from considering, as well. While we have made considerable progress in unearthing our family's stories, there is always more work to be done.

Perhaps we can benefit from a tip in the book as Chris Guillebeau, an author known for his writing and speaking on entrepreneurship, considers what has come to be called "granny hobbies"—activities among which has been counted the pursuit of family history. Such activities, he explains, can bring us into a "flow state where time seems to feel more expansive." Noting a New York Times article on that very subject, he explains that such activities can be associated with "cognitive improvements related to both memory and attention." 

The main point that caught my eye in this section of Time Anxiety is this: doing such activities in groups—think knitting groups, quilting circles, book clubs—is not solely to execute the task, but to incorporate it into community. When we think of the quintessential avocational genealogist, we think of someone in pajamas and bunny slippers, hot cocoa in hand, holed up at home, feverishly scrolling through digitized documents long past midnight. What if we took a page from this chapter of Chris Guillebeau's book and considered genealogy to become a team effort, gathering to build family trees together?

Perhaps I can't take a detour away from genealogy without seeing applications which relate back to that endless pursuit of our family's long story throughout time. Every "granny hobby," as Guillebeau noted, has a "large ecosystem of teachers and practitioners." In the genealogy world, we certainly do. I'd like to see us energize that world even further—especially through local genealogical societies—by coming together in community to encourage each other as we discover more about our own families. That may well be our best option as an antidote to "time anxiety" for those of us who realize our family trees will never become "done." 

      

Exploring the Map

 

Now that we have several possible Miller names swirling about in this month's posts, it's time to take a different look at the possibilities: by exploring the map of Perry County, where those Miller relatives of my mother-in-law's brick-wall ancestor Lidia once lived. Geographic proximity can lend a sense of genealogical connection, and that's exactly what a plat map can provide.

Though finding such a map for Perry County in the 1840s—the point at which Lidia's family met with so much misfortune—would have helped, there was a plat map available online at the U.S. Library of Congress for 1859. Fine. I'll settle for that.

We've already seen that one property belonging to Jonathan Miller was described as the northwest quarter of section twelve in township seventeen and range seventeen. Based on the Public Land Survey System, which was historically a way to divide and describe public lands in the United States for eventual distribution, such a numbering system should make it easy for us to locate the property.    

Since Ohio was designated as a Federal Land State, a series of congressional laws established the process for doing so, eventually involving a rectangular survey system which divided and numbered land into a system of "townships," each township containing thirty six square miles. From that point, each township was divided into thirty six "sections," each containing 640 acres.

From that point, each section was numbered in a specific order, beginning with the northeast corner section, then proceeding across the six sections of the top row of the map's grid to the northwest corner section, then dropping down one row and snaking back in the opposite direction to continue the numbering system. 

Visualizing that sequence may seem complicated, until you view a diagram like this one at FamilySearch,  which makes everything much clearer—and should help me find Jonathan Miller's property in section twelve. 

Well, let me interject one caveat to that crystal-clear diagram: it helps to know that, when Perry County was established in 1818, the land system required the neighboring county of Fairfield to give up two rows of sections to complete the township of Reading, the precise place where Jonathan Miller's property ended up being designated after the reorganization.

Looking at the 1859 plat map I found at the Library of Congress, you can follow the PLSS numbering system across the northernmost row of sections, from right to left, section one through six. After section number six, though, there are two more unexpected sections continuing in that same row, oddly numbered out of sequence from section seven to what appears to be another section two. Drop down one more row from that additional section two, and we snake around to the other direction, beginning with what was obviously another added-on section, numbered section eleven.

Following that, in logical sequence—but only for that one section—is the section twelve we've been seeking for Jonathan Miller's property. Indeed, in 1859, the 139 acre parcel of land was labeled "J. Miller." Along with the label of his land, we see familiar names among his neighboring land owners: Anspach and Spohn, a surname which eventually married in to the Miller line.

From that point, the numbering system reverts to the usual PLSS system: sections 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and—strangely—another section 12.

If I hadn't found that explanation of the aberration when setting up Perry County's original land holdings upon the county's founding, it would have been puzzling to try and locate the Miller property. Likewise, finding Jonathan's other property, listed as the southwest quarter of section one, should have been directly above section twelve, if we followed the established numbering system.

Sometimes, despite such orderly systems for naming and describing land, it helps to know a bit more of what the locals already knew. 

Notes From Long Ago

 

Sometimes, the old trumps the new. In the case of reading nineteenth century headstones, I'd take a seventy-two year old transcription any day, so when I found just that, I sat down for a good read.

My question lately has been, "Where was Lidia Miller Gordon buried?" It was not with her Catholic husband and in-laws, apparently. When I discovered a number of Miller family members buried in a humble, farmland-based burial ground in Perry County's Reading Township, I thought I'd take a look around.

While Find A Grave has photos of many of the still-legible headstones in the Binkley Cemetery—like Lidia's possible brother, Jonathan Miller—the earliest burials have suffered the ravages of time, weather, and unkind trespassers. Fortunately, while I was looking online at FamilySearch.org/labs for any documents to resolve my research dilemma about Lidia, one search result produced a transcription of Binkley Cemetery headstones.

The beauty of this discovery was that, though they are mere typewritten transcriptions of the engraved headstones, they represent work done in 1953—a full seventy two years ago. Granted, 1953 is a long time after the first burials occurred in that cemetery in 1810, but it is still a vantage point much earlier than our present day.

I thought I'd take a look, line by line, page by page. Job number one was to keep an eye out for any mention of Lidia Miller Gordon, my mother-in-law's brick wall second great-grandmother. There were indeed a number of Millers recorded in that transcription, so now that I've created a Miller Network through my Ancestry ProTools, I'll be careful to add those entries into the appropriate places as I build out the Miller Network. Every bit of detail helps.

The FamilySearch entry continued for several pages. While organized alphabetically by surname, it appeared to cluster information pertaining to family plots. Thus, I could find the cluster for Jonathan Miller's family, and, just below that on the same page, a grouping for Michael Miller's family, another family which might be considered relatives to Lidia. In addition, there was a set of burials listed for the Dupler family, likely a connection to Jonathan Miller's wife Catherine, who was herself born a Dupler.

No matter how helpful it was to find this seventy two year old cemetery transcription, there was one detail missing: any sign of a burial for Lidia Miller, wife of William Gordon.