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.

Taking a Cue From the Cemetery

 

Sometimes, assumptions can sneak up on us. That was what was fixin' to fool me in this process of seeking Lidia Miller, the young mother who died in 1840. Unable to find any further information on her, I reached outward to the rest of her possible family relations in search of clues to solve Lidia's riddle.

Lidia's husband, William Gordon, died at the end of the same year in which he had lost Lidia: on Christmas Eve in 1840. As would be expected for a member of the Gordon family, William was buried in the Catholic Cemetery in nearby Somerset, a village within the Reading Township where we had found him listed in the 1840 census. Likewise for William and Lidia's baby, also named William—and, unsurprisingly, so were William's own parents, the senior William and his second wife, Mary Cain Gordon. From that, a natural assumption would be to take a cue from these burials and assume that younger William's wife Lidia would be buried in the same cemetery.

Wrong.

Well, at least it seems to be a wrong assumption. I can't find Lidia's final resting place, as of this point. But what I did find was surprising—surprising enough, that is, to make me doubt the connection between Lidia and her supposed Miller relatives, Jonathan and his wife, the former Catherine Dupler. You see, with all the family burials at Holy Trinity Cemetery, it was easy to assume that Lidia would also be Catholic. Perhaps she wasn't.

Now that we've found Jonathan Miller, a possible brother or cousin to Lidia, according to DNA matches, I followed him to his final resting place, a cemetery in New Reading called simply Binkley Cemetery. With a name like that, it would be easy to assume this was just a family's private burial grounds within their farm property. Perhaps that might have been true at one point. However, Find A Grave now notes over one hundred seventy memorials posted for this cemetery, with burial dates ranging from the namesake ancestor Johann Jacob Binckley's burial in 1810 through the most recent burial noted in 1947.

Not surprisingly, included with several of those burials in the Binkley Cemetery were headstones for the Miller surname. Perhaps seeing a couple by the name of Binkley—Samuel and Elizabeth—residing in Jonathan's household in the 1860 census may have been my first hint, though at the time I discovered that, I hadn't yet made any connection between the two families.

In addition to Jonathan and his family, however, the Binkley Cemetery's burials included another Miller family, that of Michael Miller and his wife Mary. Mary, if we can rely on the notes posted on her Find A Grave memorial, was born a Binkley.

Michael, according to the age given on his headstone, was likely born in 1812. That year of birth would put Michael too young to have been Lidia's father. Considering Jonathan Miller's burial in the same small cemetery and the fact that Binkley family members once lived in Jonathan's home, I'd consider that a suggestion that Michael and Jonathan might have been brothers.

That makes one useful cue gleaned from this burial discovery. But the final clue I gained from discovering this burial spot was the reminder that at least Jonathan and Michael Miller were not practicing Catholics. If Lidia turns out to have been their sister, despite her marriage to a Catholic resident of the same township, that means I would have to look elsewhere to find those useful documents we rely on for genealogical information prior to itemized census records and civil birth records.

Whether such records are still in existence—or even whether I can discover what faith these families adhered to—remains a big question. The consistency of Catholic baptismal records has certainly been a benefit to me in researching this Gordon family's past. Stepping outside the faith may leave me with no recorded options at all. 

Hacking Into the Network

 

It may have been the shortcut of DNA testing which revealed just who the relatives of brick wall ancestor Lidia Miller might have been, but we are still missing the specific details I am after. Sure, Lidia might have been related to Jonathan Miller—as well as being his neighbor in Perry County, Ohio—but we can't be sure just how they were related. Siblings? Cousins? We need to get down to a more granular level with these Miller family DNA matches, yet the documentation doesn't seem to be there.

There is one other way that keeps calling us back, though: cluster research. This is our call to return to that network of those who knew each other best: the Miller family's traveling partners who made the journey with them to the frontier of Ohio in the early 1800s. While we as researchers may not have the convenience of birth or death certificates from that time period—let alone census records naming each member of the household—we still need to find a way to hack into that network of relatives and traveling partners who accompanied each other into the (very risky) wilds of the frontier. 

Face it: this was not the time period in which one's future grandfather hopped onto his Harley to check out the chicks hanging out in the town square, one county away. Getting around was slow and ponderous, took planning, and required security measures. Those whom you knew—and trusted—became an essential element in your immigration plan. And wherever our ancestors went, those Friends, Associates, and Neighbors—or F.A.N. Club for short—were sure to go, as well.

Though we're into our third full week of chasing information on young Lidia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother who lived only long enough to marry and give birth to two sons, we have little to show for our efforts. We have discovered that Lidia's one surviving son, Adam Gordon, was named in his paternal grandfather's will—but we have not been as successful in finding a similar mention in the will of a maternal grandfather. We traced the records for a Miller neighbor of Lidia and her husband, William Gordon, in hopes of discovering any relationship, and then, hopefully, finding his parents' names. DNA matches tip us off that Lidia and Jonathan Miller were indeed related, based on the DNA of their descendants. But that doesn't confirm the exact relationship.

Following land records, we can see that Jonathan's property once was owned by someone named Adam Onsbaugh—or Anspach—who eventually deeded the land to a daughter, who married a Dupler. And discovering that Jonathan's own wife was born a Dupler dangles yet another tantalizing hint before our eyes.

Thus, we have Duplers related to Anspaches, and Duplers related to Millers, but how the Millers relate to each other, I can't yet uncover. Still, knowing how important those networks were to early immigrant settlers, I'm convinced there has to be a connection. After all, the population of the entire county in 1820—well over a decade after Adam "Onsbaugh" acquired his property—was only eight thousand people. Back then, people stuck with those they knew. And those they knew were often family members.

To hack into that network—those friends, associates, and neighbors—will take following those other surnames which seem to keep re-appearing, every time I research Jonathan or Lidia Miller. The ultimate goal will be to zero in on parents' names for either Jonathan or Lidia, of course, but it may take us around in more circles before we close in on the answer—if, indeed, we can do so before the end of this month.  

Finding the Fastest Route

 

While I've been taking the long way around my genealogical problem—finding the parents of Lidia Miller in Perry County, Ohio—there is a speedier way to find my answer...maybe. The fastest route, it seems, would be to follow the suggestions at ThruLines, Ancestry's tool for connecting DNA matches.

Granted, ThruLines has an Achilles Heel of its own: suggestions are based, in part, on the family trees posted by subscribers. As we all can see, some trees are more accurate than others, hence the need for caution for anyone using this approach. But if the trees used are all correct—and adequately documented, I might add—it's worth following the family line from a shared ancestor down to the present-day DNA match.

In Lidia Miller's case—that unfortunate young woman who lost her life after giving birth to her second child in 1840—there is a suggestion for her father. While I've already looked at the documents available for this possible father—Ancestry suggests a man named Jacob Miller—the difficulty with that suggestion is that there may be more than one resident of Perry County with that name.

However, ThruLines also suggests a possible sibling for Lidia, for whom there are five possible DNA matches.

Granted, looking for DNA matches sharing an ancestor that many generations back in time—this would be my husband's fourth great-grandfather who was possible parent of both Lidia and the assumed brother—stretches into the murky area of the tiniest of shared genetic segments. In other words, the connections could border on coincidence—either from Perry County's notoriously high incidence of intermarriage of family lines over generations, or from the possibility of all the matches coming from the same geographic origin.

In what seems like a coincidence of its own, the suggested brother for Lidia turns out to be one and the same as the Jonathan Miller I've already been tracing this month. He was my first candidate to include in my "Millers of Perry County" Network on Ancestry's ProTools. While I am still following the ownership of that property which was mentioned in Jonathan Miller's will, a far quicker process would be to explore what can be documented on these five DNA matches descending from Jonathan Miller.

Looking at those five matches, right away I could eliminate two of them. One match was a person whom I had previously examined as part of my mother-in-law's Gordon line—the same line as Lidia's husband, William Gordon, descends from—who also had Snyders intermarried into that line of descent. Even if this match was descended from Jonathan Miller, that information wouldn't tell me much.

The other match had a line of descent outlined by ThruLines which I couldn't replicate by documentation, so I discarded that possibility.

However, there were three other DNA matches. I followed each one's line of descent, as outlined by ThruLines, being careful to find several documents confirming the connections. Again, despite the paper trail seemingly nodding yes to this connection, each DNA match is quite distant, containing one small segment for each match shared. Better yet, using ProTools to view shared matches of these Miller candidates, I then identified several other matches descending from this same Jonathan Miller line.

Does this point to a confirmation for Lidia and Jonathan? Possibly. But that still means identifying the right Jonathan and confirming who his father was. While DNA might have been the fastest way to speed up the process, it still requires verification by those monotonous plodding trips through the paper trail.

Reminiscing — And Reusing

 

The other day, I ran across an article on Family Tree Magazine about RootsWeb, the "granddaddy of genealogy websites." For those of us who wandered the site frequently in those early days of online genealogy, the forums and information posted could be useful—sometimes essential. Thinking about those old websites launched me into a reverie of reminiscing—but not so long that I didn't heed the article's advice to remember to check it out now.

Even though RootsWeb is frozen in time, due to the evolution of computing leaving this technological dinosaur vulnerable to hacks, there is still much that can be accessed. Remembering those many useful posts I had found there on Perry County, Ohio, resources, I thought it might be worth my while to give it a look, via a site-specific Google search. 

What I remembered finding back then were burial records transcribed from decades ago when headstones weren't quite so faded, and researchers who had hand-entered data from handwritten records. I had saved some of these resources to my own computer, in the prescient fear of maybe someday seeing the site go down, but others which I hadn't saved could have come in handy now, in my current search for Adam Gordon's mother, Lidia Miller, before her untimely death.

I did find some notes readable, including a post reminding me to check out the history of the early Catholic Church in Perry County. One entry pointed to Internet Archive, which now hosts the digitized version of the A. A. Graham tome, History of Fairfield and Perry Counties, with its listing of early church members. Someone named Adam Gordon was listed among those early members of the church, though I doubt it was our Adam Gordon. Still, it was informative to page through the 1883 publication to see what was happening in this ancestral location so long ago. I'm keeping an eye out for any biographical sketches on Miller families, despite there being so many people by that name in Perry County.

Another link I found in my exploration brought me to a site from long ago called Ohio Genealogy Express. There, a page transcribed from another early Perry County history book laid out the brief history of the formation of each of the county's townships. Since Lidia's family and the Gordon family had settled in Reading Township, I took a look at the explanation there. Apparently, Reading Township was originally established prior to the formation of Perry County. When that reorganization took place in 1818, two rows of sections which originally were in Fairfield County's Richland Township were now added to complete Reading Township as part of the new Perry County. Knowing this may help explain the location of the original land purchased by Adam "Onsbaugh" in 1806, long before Perry County was even in existence.

I'll probably continue to search through the potpourri of material still accessible through the old RootsWeb and other old genealogy websites. After all, someone once knew the details that now have me puzzled. You can be sure that someone once knew the names of Lidia Miller's parents and siblings. Sometimes, that F.A.N. Club concept is useful for that very reason: someone out there once knew the answer. The key is finding just where that someone stashed that missing kernel of truth.

Meanwhile, on the Miller Side

 

While the routine grunt work of plowing through Anspach records continues in the background—not the scintillating reading material one would prefer—I thought I'd wander over to the other side of the family representing my mother-in-law's Miller roots in Perry County, Ohio. While I seldom like to pay attention to hints copied from other people's trees, I thought just this once, I'd explore a suggestion about mystery ancestor Lidia Miller's possible father.

The suggestion, from ThruLines, was to look for someone named Jacob Miller. Since there was a Jacob Miller listed in the 1820 census in Reading Township, the same place in Perry County where Lidia and her husband William Gordon lived, that was as good a place to start with this suggestion as any.

Though the age brackets used for the 1820 census aren't very helpful for our purposes—the adult age bracket stretches from age twenty six through forty four—I first wanted to check for signs of a young daughter. Indeed, there was one, though the bracket included all girls under ten. Since Lidia died early in 1840, not even two years after her marriage, I have no way to know how old she was. However, we can safely guess she was about twenty when married, putting her birth before 1820, and thus within that "under ten" age bracket for Jacob Miller's 1820 census readout.

At the same time I noticed the one girl in the Jacob Miller household, I spotted three sons, also under ten years of age. Could one of them have been Jonathan Miller, the one whose property we've been following this past week? Hard to say at this point, though the broad age bracket could include both Lidia and Jonathan, as he appears from other records to have been almost ten years Lidia's senior. 

Using Ancestry.com's ProTools, I'm building a Miller network which includes all three of these Millers from Reading Township, just to have a place to park all my discoveries on this possible F.A.N. Club. But as I stockpile records on Jacob Miller from Perry County's Reading Township, I begin to notice a few detracting details. One is that there may have been more than one Jacob Miller in the neighborhood. And for this particular Jacob Miller in the 1850 census, his arrival in America was not only after having married, but just before the birth of his sixteen year old daughter Margaret.

In other words, the Jacob Miller in the 1850 census couldn't have been the Jacob Miller of the 1820 census. 

Tracking the Tract

 

Some research processes take time, and this month's pursuit of possible relatives of my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother Lidia Miller has led me to unexpected resources—which requires time to unfold the winding trail.

The trail follows a tract of land more than it does the person who owned the land. We first found that land described in Jonathan Miller's precise stipulations included in his 1866 will. That document pointed to the southwest quarter of section one, and the northwest quarter of section twelve in township seventeen and range seventeen in Perry County, Ohio.

We first traced that land back to the original owner through the Bureau of Land Management's General Land Office Records, a man identified as Adam Onsbaugh but likely one and the same as Adam Anspach. Now, it was time to see what other mentions could be found for that land description in other legal documents. Since not every document has been digitized and placed online, I first tried my hand at a collection of will abstracts from the old book, Gateway to the West, which is now online at Ancestry.com.

I searched for entries for the surname Anspach without any success, and was about to look for the alternate spelling of Onsbaugh, when my eye caught an entry for Adam Ausbach. Most likely the result of a transcription error—the book did mention something about the text being in German—"Auspach" could merely have been the result of a more European style of writing the letter "n" like the letter "u."

The abstract outlined the names of the will's legatees. The sons included Anspach names I had found in the 1840 census, helping to tie the family unit together. The more helpful part, though, was identifying the daughters by their married names, including the given name of each daughter's husband.

Right away, I spotted one name: Elizabeth Dupler, wife of Philip. It was not lost on me that Jonathan Miller—the possible relative of Lidia Miller who had first gotten me started on this chase—had married a Dupler. Any relationship? You bet I'd go following this trail.

My next step was to turn to FamilySearch.org's Full Text search, where I entered "Adam Anspach" as my search term, adding a keyword "Dupler." Because the Gateway to the West book had given 1833 as the date Adam Anspach's will was drawn up, I set the date parameters rather narrow, to limit the results.

Without including the description of the tract of land I was tracing in my search terms, almost immediately a search result popped up with that precise property description. In that document, Adam Anspach sold that specific property to Elizabeth Dupler for one hundred dollars.

This, of course, caused me to wonder whether Jonathan Miller's wife, Catherine Dupler, might be daughter of Elizabeth Dupler, who in turn was daughter of Adam Anspach, the likely original owner of that parcel. Nothing is ever easy, though. It sounded like a reasonable premise, but you know I had to do some additional checking to see what other documents could connect the two Dupler women.

Circling Back Again

 

The saying that everyone in Perry County is related to each other may be a concept that has roots which reach generationally deep. Or maybe that is a description which keeps circling back again. In seeking family connections for Lidia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother, I'm starting to see the same surnames pop up, generation after generation.

When we considered the original owner of the land which Jonathan Miller willed to his two sons in 1866—a man by the name of Adam Onsbaugh—that chase led us to another similar name: Adam Anspach. In the same census record where we first found Jonathan Miller's entry on the same page as Lidia's husband William Gordon—the 1840 census—we not only found mention of someone named Adam Anspach, but David, Christian, and Benjamin, as well.

That wasn't the only place where the surname Anspach popped up. I had seen it in Jonathan Miller's own will. Only problem was, this time the mentions had to do with Jonathan's daughters.

The 1866 Miller will had granted Jonathan's two sons fairly equal portions of his land, but to his five daughters, he had stipulated that his sons pay them (or their heirs) $650 each. Fortunately for us, Jonathan mentioned each daughter by name: Mary Elizabeth Crist, Belvida Anspach (for whom her portion was to pass to her children), Barbara Anspach, and Catherine and Isabella Miller.

Adding these two daughters to the Miller family tree who had married men surnamed Anspach had me looking forward to the next generation, but it didn't take long for me to circle back again to the generation preceding Jonathan's own time. Jonathan's daughter Barbara had married someone named Leander Anspach in Perry County on November 28, 1852. And Jonathan's deceased daughter—whose name apparently turned out to be Belinda, according to her 1864 headstone—once again had her name mauled in her 1847 marriage record, which stated that Malinda Miller had married Adam Anspach.

What's interesting about that Adam Anspach—in addition to ringing the bell for us with that same name we had seen one generation earlier—is that he was son of a man named John Adam Anspach, whose namesake father, Johann Adam Anspach, was of an age to have been the 1806 purchaser of the property we have been chasing.

These details have indeed kept me running in circles. Granted, this is merely a simple sketch of possible relationships, and details need to be inspected more closely. But no different than the many intermarriages I've witnessed from my mother-in-law's parents' generation in Perry County, the tradition seems to have been far more deeply rooted than just during that time period.

That brings up another question. If Jonathan Miller was related to the original Adam "Onsbaugh" Anspach, what was the exact connection? And more pertinent to my search for Lidia Miller's roots, does she even connect with Jonathan Miller's family at all? After all, we can't lose sight of the original research goal that led me down this circling trail.

Think Phonetically

 

The search for Adam Onsbaugh was on. I had found him in the Bureau of Land Management's General Land Office Records as the 1806 owner of a parcel of land which bore the same township, range, and section number as the property which, years later, Jonathan Miller was bequeathing to his two sons. Could I find any other records on this man?

I probably wouldn't have launched such a search, if it hadn't been for the unknown roots of my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother. Also bearing the surname Miller, Lidia had become the wife of William H. Gordon; after the couple's untimely deaths in Perry County, Ohio, their orphaned son Adam was raised by his paternal grandmother, herself a widow by that point. To connect Lidia to her past meant exploring any possible connections through the friends, associates, or neighbors surrounding the unfortunate young family. Searching Miller neighbors was one approach to this cluster research method.

Land owner Adam Onsbaugh, I reasoned, must be somehow connected to that Miller F.A.N. Club, and I needed to at least examine who he might have been. Could the Millers and Gordons have migrated en masse from Pennsylvania with Adam Onsbaugh? Did they know him in the past, and thus get inspired to follow his migration trail west to Ohio? I had to at least find him in the census records in Perry County to learn a bit more about this pioneer settler.

Searching for Adam in the 1810 census—the first enumeration after he acquired his land in Ohio—presented a problem. Perry County itself was not a county until 1818. The county was formed from portions of Fairfield, Washington, and Muskingum counties. Thus when the Land Office Records identified the location of the Onsbaugh property as Perry County, they were apparently identifying that land by current jurisdiction, not the county in existence in 1806. So I wouldn't have been surprised if no  Adam Onsbaugh showed up in the 1810 census in Perry County—but there was no one by that name listed in the entire state of Ohio.

No matter; let's fast forward to the 1820 census. There, I did find an Adam Onsbaugh in nearby Hocking County, but no one with that spelling in Perry County. However, there were two other listings: one for Adam Onspough, and another one for someone named John Onspough, both in Reading Township where our Jonathan Miller eventually lived.

I moved further on to the 1830 census, where I found several others with similar spelling variations. All in the same Reading Township, I found someone named John Anspaugh heading up one page of the census, and several others listed two pages earlier. All with that same surname spelling, they were David, Christian, Adam, and Benjamin.

Could Onsbaugh be the same as Anspaugh? I barely had time to consider that, when the 1840 census brought me more discoveries. There was a Benjamin and an Adam Anspach listed, again in Reading Township—in fact, on the same page which launched us on this journey when I discovered William Gordon's listing on the same page as "Johnathan" Miller. 

If you think about this morphing surname situation phonetically, it seems quite possible. We started with Onsbaugh. Realizing that several languages pronounce the letter "a" more like an "ahh," it could be possible that an "Onsbaugh" could also have been spelled "Ansbaugh." Then, too, the guttural ending, "gh" could seem similar to some ears as the German rendition of the ending "ch" and thus be substituted in spelling. Thus, we could move from Onsbaugh to Ansbaugh to Anspauch—and possible even to Anspach, as we saw in the 1840 census, all by thinking phonetically.

I couldn't help but notice the Find A Grave memorial for one Johann Adam Anspach, buried in Somerset—the town in Perry County surrounded by Reading Township—in 1838. The sponsored memorial includes a listing of his many possible children, including married names for the daughters. Though this list would represent descendants from a generation removed from our Jonathan Miller, I couldn't help but notice some similarities from names listed in a previous page of another document I had already been reviewing: Jonathan Miller's own will.  

Searching for Seventeens

 

I admit: searching for Millers in Ohio can be a challenge. Even searching for Millers during the earliest years of Ohio statehood can overload a researcher with too many search options—more specifically, with false leads. Yet, here I am, armed with the description of the land in Perry County which Jonathan Miller willed to his two sons at the end of 1866, trying to find a record of how, years before, he himself had received the land.

My thinking was rather straightforward. If Jonathan Miller did happen to be a sibling of the brick wall ancestor I've been seeking—Lidia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother—then discovering how he obtained his property might reveal his relatives. And possibly hers.

Jonathan Miller's will identified what appears to have been two parcels, one on the northwest quarter of section twelve, the other on the southwest quarter of section one. Both were identified as being in township seventeen and range seventeen.

My first thought was to check the records at the Bureau of Land Management's General Land Office Records. Just in case it wasn't a laughable idea, my first search there was for any land in Perry County obtained by someone named Miller. There were plenty of options—two pages of listings, in fact, none of which belonged to someone named Jonathan Miller. 

Remembering Jonathan Miller's mention of one parcel of land having once been where "Shelly Dupler had resided," I wondered whether that was the former owner of the Miller land, and searched for the Dupler surname. After all, Jonathan's wife was born a Dupler. Though Dupler was a surname far less common than the overwhelming Miller surname, that search for land records brought up absolutely zero results.

I noticed that the Land Office search results had some columns which, by clicking on the heading, could be sorted in number order. Township and Range were both sortable. I clicked, looking for seventeens. Nothing came up, except for one parcel registered to a man named John Miller in 1809. Though it might have been possible that our Jonathan Miller could have identified himself as "Jon" Miller for short—and thus be mistakenly transcribed as John—I already knew from his entry in the 1840 census that he would have still been a child in 1809.

Rather than manipulate the spread sheet aspect of the file, I tried something else. The Land Office records could also be searched specifically by location. Keeping the main "location" state entry as "Ohio," I scrolled down on the "search documents" landing page to the section labeled "Land Description," and entered my information there. For township, I entered seventeen; likewise for range. For section, I entered twelve. And clicked on "Search Patents." That was it.

Only one result came up for my search: not a property owned by anyone named Miller, but a parcel obtained in November of 1806 by a man named Adam Onsbaugh.

My next question was: could it be worth my while to search for this new surname? Would it lead me to any helpful information about Jonathan Miller—or, more importantly, to my brick wall ancestor Lidia Miller? While it seemed strangely similar to one of those wild rabbit trail diversions, it was worth a try to check it out.

One Hundred Years Ago

 

Much as some people might celebrate a friend's birthday—say, their fortieth, or some other mere decade's amount of life—by buying a reprint of the front page of that exact day's newspaper, I thought I'd do the same today for my mother. Today would have been her birthday, one hundred years ago, and I was curious to see what the world might have held for her family that day.

Since my mother was born in a tiny farm town called Oelwein, Iowa, I couldn't pull up any copies of the local paper from archival collections. Perhaps there wasn't any local newspaper. After all, at the time, Oelwein boasted not quite eight thousand residents, although ever since the arrival of the railroads there at the turn of the century, it had seen a growth spurt. To read the news of the day, I had to rely on the publication at Cedar Rapids, an hour's commute to the south.

There, The Evening Gazette focused mainly on leftover news from a recuperating Europe after the Great War had subsided. Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, inaugurated that day as President of the German Republic, made three separate appearances on the Gazette's front page, as did French General Charles Mangin, who died that very day. Lawsuits and murder trials rounded out the day's news, as well as an announcement of big plans to bring a replica of Cheyenne, Wyoming's Frontier Days to town. To round out the day's news, an ominous mention of a bank failure in nearby Mason City, juxtaposed with reports of the state's banking situation being "in fine condition," pointed to history yet to be made.

My grandparents' brief stay in Oelwein—a railroad center grown out of a corn field bought from the town's namesake farmer—was an odd juxtaposition of my grandfather's current employment and my grandmother's oddly out-of-place roots as a southern lady whose impetuous marriage to a tall, dark, and handsome eligible bachelor brought her where she never expected to be. The stories of those farm-based days when my mother was born I know well. After all, it was my mother who passed on the family stories from her own relatives; why not share stories of her own parents' lives? But the stories providing the context of her young life and what blend of news mixed to create her own social environment I hadn't before explored.

Sometimes, in addition to gaining the right details about birth dates and places and the names to which they belong, it is helpful to spend a moment surrounded in the news of the day. To see what has yet to come down the road for an ancestor—those newsworthy items which to us are "old news"—can open up new vistas to us and help gain an appreciation for what shaped those family members from past eras.

Above: Headlines from the front page of the May 12, 1925, Cedar Rapids newspaper, The Evening Gazette; image courtesy of newspapers.com. 

Mother's Day Takes the Lead

 

If genealogy were a race, in my case I'd say the moms take the lead. I can't yet be sure, however, whether it's my mother's tree that's out ahead or my mother-in-law's tree.

Right now, I've been working on one brick wall ancestor in my mother-in-law's tree: her second great-grandmother Lidia Miller, wife of William B. Gordon of Perry County, Ohio. However, don't let that "brick wall" status give you any notions of stalled forward motion. I've been working every angle I can on this roadblock, trying to do an end run around Lidia. I'm hoping DNA will play a part in unraveling this mystery.

Of course, with an advanced Mother's Day gift to myself—Ancestry.com's ProTools addition to my subscription—I've had some additional tools to play with, and I've been running comparisons on every DNA match I can find. Using the ProTools Shared Matches option, I've been flagging each close relative of those ThruLines matches and then adding them to my mother-in-law's tree, as well.

End result? I'm still on a tear with that Gordon and Miller line. In the past two weeks, I've added 500 more individuals to my in-laws' tree, which now has 38,871 researched people. Many of them are ancestors leading to newly-discovered DNA matches. Others are collateral lines filled with people just waiting to fulfill their role as connectors for more DNA matches to come.

That's not the only progress made in these past two weeks. While I was showing a fellow genealogy society member what I've been finding with ProTools, I tested out the Shared Matches option on my own tree. And voila! A recent DNA connection resulted in adding thirty four new individuals to my own mother's line, so I now have 40,257 people in my own tree.

It's a race. But I concede; my mother-in-law's tree grows far faster, thanks to those large Catholic families who settled in rural Ohio, Iowa, and Minnesota. Though the count of DNA tests potentially linked to that tree are much less than mine—my DNA match count is a bit over twice the size of my in-laws' results—the sheer number of family members over the generations makes my in-laws' tree a robust one, indeed.

We have three more weeks before we move on to the last of my mother-in-law's Twelve Most Wanted for 2025, and then we'll shift to my father-in-law's side of their family tree. It will be interesting to see how much that tree grows between now and then. For the past two biweekly reports, the tree has been growing at a clip of about five hundred individuals for each report sequence. Three more reports at that rate would add another 1,500 names to that tree—at which point, the in-laws' tree will indeed take the lead.

Speed, however, is not the point of this exercise. While it may take learning the personal history of every Miller who lived in Perry County before 1850, the result will hopefully be that the end of the month brings us an answer to the question, Who were the parents of Lidia Miller Gordon? That's one young mother about whom I'd like to learn so much more.

A Point of Digression

 

Would you even realize it if you had crossed paths with a fourth cousin? How about a third cousin? Some people aren't even aware of who their second cousins are—but now that some of us are using DNA testing to round out our family tree, we are growing an awareness of these distant relatives.

This weekend, I'm taking a break from the search for Lidia Miller's parents, that seemingly orphaned second great-grandmother to my mother-in-law. Instead, I've jumped to her husband's line, whose parents I do know about, in hopes of discovering even the tiniest hints about their extended family. After all, this being a community of early settlers in Perry County, Ohio—a place known for its many intermarried lines over the generations—there could be another connection to that mysterious Miller family coming at me from a different angle.

My approach right now has been to work off the suggestions at Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool, and trace each descendant listed from the selected ancestor. Working with the line of William B. Gordon, Lidia's father-in-law, I zeroed in on his children from his second wife only, since that is the line from which Lidia's husband was born.

While that may sound particularly restrictive to you, keep in mind that William B. Gordon had eight children, including Lidia's husband William H. Gordon—and that was just the family from his second marriage (he had eleven more with his first wife).

And so the work begins. From each child, beginning with the oldest, I add that child's marriage and descendants to my mother-in-law's family tree. Then I move on to the second-born of William B. Gordon's children, adding each descendant in that line. Eventually, I've laid out a basic working descendancy chart for William B's progeny, from which I can then plug in DNA matches in their proper place in the extended family tree.

Yesterday, I was working on William's daughter Susan, who married David Hewitt in 1846. While the Hewitts had seven children (at least that I can find), when it comes to current-day DNA matches, there were none showing on the ThruLines chart. Curious, I worked my way through the descendants for this couple—and that is where I spotted one of those rabbit-trail-worthy points of digression.

Susan Gordon Hewitt had a granddaughter, Grace Doyle, who was a second cousin to my mother-in-law's own grandmother. This Grace married a man considerably older than she was at the time. For that fifty three year old man, it was his second marriage.

Like so many people from rural Perry County, Grace's parents had chosen to move to a big city. First to Cleveland, where Grace was born, the young family eventually moved to the state capital, Columbus, a city not more than an hour's travel from Perry County. Likewise, Grace's future husband eventually moved from his native West Virginia to Columbus, and there they married.

Looking closely over the details in that 1931 marriage license, an unusual entry jumped out at me: Grace's intended—a man by the name of Harry Westerman—listed his occupation as cartoonist. I thought finding that occupation listed was rather unusual—and that's where the rabbit trail beguiled me.

With a quick check at Google, I found very little on the man, but the search did lead me to some illustrations at Wikimedia Commons. For one, there was a line drawing labeled as Harry J. Westerman, attributed to an entry in a 1904 book, The Art of Caricature.

Quick! To Internet Archive to see whether anyone had uploaded the now-public domain book. Yes! There it was, with the same image visible on page 173. Whether that was a drawing by Mr. Westerman or one portraying his likeness, I couldn't tell from the information, but the trail was getting warmer.

Looking for the man's biography—after all, there must have been some reason why he was mentioned in a book, right?—I found very little at first. But each step opened up a glimpse of a possible second step. Moving along the research path can help, even one step at a time.

Since the 1904 Grant Wright book had attributed Mr. Westerman's work to a publication called the Ohio State Journal, I tried searching through the usual newspaper collections we use for genealogy work. With no luck at two different subscription sites, I turned to the Internet search engines again, and found the Journal uploaded to the website "Ohio Memory," a collaboration of the Ohio History Connection and the State Library of Ohio.

There, searching the newspaper collection for the name "Harry Westerman" plus the publication title, I found one example of the man's work as a cartoonist from January 30, 1909. Digital collections at the Columbus Metropolitan Library informed me that H. J. Westerman began his career with the Ohio State Journal in 1897.

Working in a state in which there was "so much political activity and strife," as Wright's 1904 Art of Caricature book observed, perhaps it is no surprise to discover that Westerman the cartoonist targeted political topics. Of course, from my vantage point of having just stumbled across this rabbit trail, I had no idea of the political interests of Ohioans at the launch of the twentieth century, but when I read the report of Harry Westerman's sudden demise—he died of a heart attack en route with his family to New York City—and saw his death covered in newspapers from the nation's capital to rural Iowa, that research excursion led me to find at least one of his books.

Called simply, A Book of Cartoons, the 124-page collection of Westerman's work, now in the public domain, is easily viewed at Hathi Trust.

After exploring this man's life story—not to mention his tangential connection to my mother-in-law's family—I had to take a look. Not that I have any knowledge of the back story for the political commentary flowing from his pen via newspapers of the time, I still was curious to get more of a sense of who this person was, and to imagine what his family must have gone through on that train trip to New York which, unbeknownst to them, was Harry Westerman's final journey.

I think so many times about that "sound advice" to develop research questions and stick with research plans—but then I realize how much I'd miss if I heeded that advice. There will always be tomorrow to look further into Lidia Miller's kin, but when a story unexpectedly presents itself with more questions than answers, I simply can't resist turning aside to chase that target.

Last Wishes — With Precise Details

 

When Jonathan Miller drew up his will in Perry County, Ohio, on December 7 of 1866, he provided a small gift to future generations of curious genealogists by the insertion of one particular stipulation. He wanted not only to leave a specific piece of property to two of his sons, but to personally ensure that the boundaries of each split portion be designated precisely as he wished.

To that end, Jonathan not only provided the verbal description of each surveyed lot, but sketched in the lines of the perimeter for each parcel: the north section to his son Andrew, and most of the southern portion to his son John, with the exception of a small section alongside John's portion also designated for Andrew.

The gift to us—particularly for our purposes in finding the roots of this Jonathan Miller, and hopefully his connection to my mother-in-law's ancestor, Lidia Miller Gordon—is the description of the property. Not so much the landmarks—the surveyor's notes running from a maple tree to a hickory tree, then to a beech tree, then ash, and finally elm—but the legal description is what I'm seeking. 

Just from the fine print in this document, I can see mention of possible family connections. Before I had even found the marriage record for Jonathan and Catherine—she was formerly a Dupler—I had spotted one mention in Jonathan's will. Noting Jonathan Miller's mention of a particular acre of land "on the north side of the Columbus road" which once had been "the same lot on which Shelly Dupler had resided," I had wondered even then if this was a sign pointing to a relative.

With the land described as being part of the northwest quarter of section twelve, and also part of the southwest quarter of section one in township seventeen and range seventeen, I now have some details that might help trace the ownership of this parcel back through the years. If I'm fortunate, this could reveal the name of the owner from whom Jonathan originally obtained the land. Better yet, it might reveal another relative from a previous generation—maybe even help us discover the identity of Jonathan's father.

Diagram above from 1868 will of Jonathan Miller of Perry County, Ohio, illustrating property subdivision; image courtesy FamilySearch.org; in the public domain. 

Fourteen Years Ago . . .

 

Fourteen years ago, this date—May 8—was a Mother's Day. I remember it well, for the day's designation didn't set well with me. My own mother had died a few years before that point, due to lingering injuries sustained in a car wreck occurring on her way to her favorite hiking spot.

While my mother was no longer with us, her legacy remained—the many family stories she had passed down in a long chain of succession to me from her relatives who had received them from ancestors before that. Those were the types of stories which would cause children's eyes to light up around campfires late at night. I still remembered them from my childhood, and I wanted a way to preserve them.

More than just the stories, though, I also wanted to seek out the missing parts of some of the other family stories—the ones where my questions didn't seem to get answered. I had questions from those childhood years, but now as an adult—and one who had learned effective search strategies, thanks to genealogy training—I was confident I could find those answers.

Over the years, thankfully, the tools available to seek out those family mysteries have made the search easier and easier. I've pushed far beyond the stories I remembered from my childhood. Now, much of what I write is an effort of breaking into new territory, exploring possibilities, testing hypotheses. But most importantly, making sure to keep writing it all down. Someone else might want to follow this trail.

Tomorrow is another day to get back to the task at hand, exploring the possible relatives of my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother, Lidia Miller. For today's break from the chase, I wanted to reminisce about that day fourteen years ago, when A Family Tapestry was "born."

The Right Tools Can Make the Difference

 

Now that I've got my search direction set—hoping to find anything significant about Jonathan Miller of Perry County, Ohio—I'm off to (hopefully) make some discoveries. Since I recently accepted an offer to try one month of Ancestry.com's ProTools for free, I realized this was a great opportunity to use the beta version of their network-building option to explore how the various Miller families in the county might be related. In other words, I'm building another F.A.N. Club, this month for Lidia Miller's possible relatives.

The right tools can make the difference when puzzling over such a brick wall ancestor. We've certainly been the beneficiaries of multiple advances that have streamlined family history research over the years; this network-building option is just another benefit among several tools included in Ancestry's ProTools. I'm hoping it will help me work my way through this Miller puzzle.

First step was to set up the network, which I labeled Miller Family in Perry County, Ohio. (I know, highly original.) I put Lidia Miller front and center as the key network member, then added in her neighbor, Jonathan Miller.

As soon as I entered this non-relative into my new network, Ancestry noted, "this person will be visible as an unattached person in your tree." Basically, what Ancestry has done with this networking process is set up floating branches within the already-existing family tree. If I gather enough documentation to convince myself that the two Miller neighbors are actually relatives, all I need to do is re-attach Jonathan to my tree according to his correct relationship.

With that automatic set-up, I was free to attach documents to Jonathan with abandon. Right away, I added Jonathan's entry in the 1830 census, then the 1840 census, as I had already found those. By then, Ancestry's hints program kicked in and pointed me to a very likely marriage record from April 15, 1824,  identifying Jonathan's bride as Catherine Dupler. 

Moving to the 1850 census, I added in Catherine's identity in the network, then entered names and approximate birth years for each of the children in the Miller household. Likewise for the 1860 census, providing details on the youngest children in the family.

Another hint for Jonathan's headstone photo at Find A Grave provided a record of his date of birth and death. Equipped with that 1868 year of death, I switched gears from building this floating branch on my family tree to searching for a copy of Jonathan Miller's will.

This will, as it turns out, may lead us to some useful information—not, as I had hoped, based on the family members named as legatees, but thanks to a specific provision Jonathan had made concerning his property. We'll need to take some time to look at that property record in greater detail, in hopes that it will lead us to further discoveries.

Seeking Millers in Ohio

 

The quest I'm on right now may seem a hopeless plight: finding the family of Lidia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother. It doesn't help that Miller has always been one of the three most common surnames in Ohio—not to mention, in much of the rest of the country. But when a Miller shows up in one's family tree, unattached to any relatives at all, what else is there to do?

Having discovered that the entry for Lidia's husband, William Gordon, in the 1840 census happened to be on the same page as someone named "Johnathan" Miller in Perry County's Reading Township, I figured that was as good a starting point as any to find her family. Taking a look at what was on that 1840 census for this other Miller, it seemed he could possibly be an older brother to Lidia. In his thirties while she was likely in her early twenties, that was far more likely than a father-daughter scenario—though the age ranges given for early census records provided plenty of wiggle room for such estimates.

This neighbor, Johnathan Miller, was head of a growing household which included one boy under five, three more under ten, as well as another daughter of the same age, plus two more under fourteen years of age.

Jumping ten years ahead from that 1840 census, we get a bit more detail on Jonathan Miller's growing family in 1850. This time, we find names for those children: Michael, Barbara, Andy, John, Jonathan, Dianah, and Isabel. And we now know at least his wife's given name: Catherine. Again, we can track the family's changing dynamics with the 1860 census, where not only the younger children remain, but a couple named Samuel and Elizabeth "Burkly" are included in the household.

What was interesting was when I reversed directions and looked for signs of Jonathan Miller in earlier records. In tax records for his home in Perry County's Reading Township in 1838—the same year in which Lidia Miller married William Gordon—Jonathan was listed as owning forty four acres. Looking for earlier records, an 1829 entry showed him owning one horse and two cattle. An added bonus: several other Millers' names appeared on the same page in that earlier record, hinting at more possible relatives.

If I could find Jonathan Miller in tax records for 1829, what about the 1830 census? Sure enough, he was listed right there in Reading Township, with a much younger family including his wife and two daughters under the age of five.

That question led to another question: what about William Gordon, the man whose wife had started this exploration in the first place? Had he arrived from Pennsylvania by that point? It's doubtful. Although there were two heads of households named William listed in the 1830 census, the surname was entered as William "Jourdan." While our William would have been seventeen at the time, and thus still living in the home of his father (also named William), both households entered in the 1830 census seemed to represent younger families. William and Lidia's story would not have blossomed until after that point.

All this exploration has done for us, however, is demonstrate that someone named Jonathan Miller lived in Reading Township, Perry County, since at least 1829. That still doesn't tell us who else might have been related to the man, and certainly doesn't provide any clues about a connection with Lidia. We'll still need to dig further to learn more about Jonathan.

Friends, Neighbors — or Family?

 

As we search for the identity of another brick wall ancestor in my mother-in-law's line, it's time to rely once again on that helpful concept of the F.A.N. Club: the friends, associates, and neighbors of that mystery relative. In this case, I'm wondering whether a neighbor of William Gordon and his wife, the former Lidia Miller, might also have been a family member. 

Looking at the far end of the same page in the 1840 census where William Gordon's name had been entered, I spotted someone by the name of Johnathan Miller. Granted, with a surname as common as Miller—one of three of the most common surnames in the entire state of Ohio—musing about relationships between neighbors named Miller may turn out to be a fool's errand. After all, searching for all Millers listed in Perry County for the 1840 census results in nearly forty hits—and that's just the names of heads of households. Even narrowing the parameters to those Millers living in William Gordon's neighborhood of Reading Township puts us chasing eleven heads of household.

Granted, we have to start somewhere. Since Johnathan Miller was the name listed on the same page as William Gordon's entry, I'll assume that is a good sign. We'll spend some time this week exploring what can be found on this other Miller family, in hopes of finding some documentation which leads us to family connections for our Lidia.

The Usual D N A Rant

 

When the results of my first DNA test arrived, I wasn't looking to see whether I could exchange lederhosen for a kilt. Actually, I was floored by all the results. "Who are all these people," I wondered about my initial test at Family Tree DNA. My results came back with well over one thousand DNA matches—and most all of them were barely as close as a fourth cousin. I had a lot of work to do.

Just in case a different company's DNA test was where all my close cousins had flocked, I eventually tested at Ancestry.com, 23andMe, and MyHeritage. I didn't want to miss any clues that could help bust through my brick wall research roadblocks. Despite that overzealous approach, over the years, I've found the tools at Ancestry DNA to be the most helpful to me—despite their unyielding resolve to withhold any form of chromosome browser—and have to remind myself to go back and check my investments in the other companies.

This weekend was one of those times to revisit the DNA results at the other companies. I started with 23andMe—just in case they wouldn't be there the next time I got around to checking. Since I've been working this month on my mother-in-law's tree, I focused on the results for her line, finding one recent DNA match who seemed to be a fairly close relative. 

Could I discover the connection? I'm glad that Relatives in Common has been added back in as a feature at 23andMe after the credential stuffing incident, but between navigating that tool and the steps to add a match to the family tree there, I was worn out in no time. Granted, I did find one match to enter in the tree, but the process reminded me of what a ghost town my family community has become at that company after their woes of the past two years.

In contrast, jumping back to Ancestry DNA—especially now that I'm testing the Pro Tools option on my account there—seemed like a breeze. I've already gotten a tree built there for my mother-in-law's line, and sorting through DNA matches linked to her surnames seemed like a breeze. This was my first weekend to specifically examine the Pro Tools' shared matches option, and it's helping me gather those loose matches whose close relatives I've already linked to my tree.

Perhaps it's a form of guilt by association, but the Pro Tools provided the boost I needed to incrementally harvest matches from the list of unknowns and migrate them over to their rightful place in the family tree. Granted, that boost won't answer every relationship question, but I also remember that for every DNA match I can add to my tree, it paves the way for me to attach others who were once unknown. Our family trees are so inter-related—especially for my mother-in-law's Perry County, Ohio, roots—that the more we add by way of collateral lines, the more information we can find to eventually attach those mystery matches to their rightful place in the family line.

That usual DNA rant that hits me periodically may just be a feature of a system lacking effective tools. Right now, as I migrate more toward those tools which facilitate finding answers, the less I find to complain about.  

Checking Out the Home Place

 

When facing a brick wall ancestor and finding no wiggle room from clues or other hopeful signs, my approach is to widen the spotlight when peering into the murky darkness. For Lidia Miller, my research project for this month, that is the only choice I have at this point. I've found very little on her, other than a marriage license bearing her name. I even lack an actual record of her death, although the implication of her orphaned son, living with his paternal grandmother in 1850, suggests that Lidia did not live long.

For this weekend, I thought I'd broaden that search by exploring the place that Lidia called home. Shortly after Lidia's marriage to William H. Gordon on April 24, 1838, William did appear in the 1840 census, calling Reading Township of Perry County, Ohio, his home. If that was so, let's check out the home place that—at least for a few years during her brief life—Lidia called her home.

Perry County, which was established in 1818 as a county in the relatively new state of Ohio, was where William's extended Gordon family had settled after leaving Pennsylvania. While I am not sure yet how Lidia and the Miller family came to call the place home, I do know that, at the time of that one census showing the couple's own family in 1840, they lived in a county with a population not yet reaching twenty thousand people.

Perry County contains fourteen townships, of which Reading was the one where William Gordon had settled. Reading Township surrounds the village of Somerset, which was established over a decade before the county itself was formed. The area also contains Saint Joseph's Church, home of the first Catholic parish in the state of Ohio, formed to minister to pioneer Catholics who had traveled along Zane's Trace to settle in the vicinity in the earliest days of Ohio statehood.

Whether Lidia Miller's parents were among those first settlers to the area, I can't yet say, though years later, her son Adam Gordon reported that his mother had been born in Ohio. I don't even know yet whether Lidia was herself Catholic, though a memorial erected after the death of her infant son can be seen at a Catholic cemetery in the area.

Reading through an old history of the township, I can spot a few mentions of early settlers claiming the surname Miller, but of course, no mention to clue me in to which of them might have had a daughter named Lidia. The sense of it, however, suggests that many of the settlers there may have had a German origin, having most recently migrated there from Pennsylvania.

Taking a look at who was in the area, I started first with the very page upon which Lidia's husband's name had been entered in the 1840 census. I didn't have far to look before I ran across the name of another man by that surname Miller. Reported to have been a man in his thirties, apparently with a wife, four sons and three daughters, if "Johnathan" Miller were related to Lidia, he could have been an older brother. Then again, he could have been a cousin—or no relation whatsoever. To find out, though, we'll have to poke around in the dark to find anything more on this mystery ancestor.

Indirect Indicators

 

In the case of a young bride dying so soon after the birth of her second child, not much can be found to record her life's story—not, at least, for those living in the early 1840s in Perry County, Ohio. To find anything more on Lidia Miller, wife of William Gordon, it may be necessary to rely on indirect indicators of her family and infer from those details what would likely be Lidia's life story.

Lidia Miller was my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother. One of the few actual signs of her existence is the faded record of her marriage to William Gordon on April 24, 1838, in Perry County. Though she did have two sons who survived her, not much can be found concerning those children's early years; I have yet to find baptismal records, for instance. The brief life of the second-born son, William, can be found in his 1841 memorial headstone where he was laid to rest at Holy Trinity Cemetery in Somerset. There, the faded engraving indicated the infant lived one month and died on February 25. Even the note etched on the stone, naming his parents, seems to blur out Lidia's name, though the child's father's name—also William—can clearly be seen.

From there, the details dim further. Firstborn son Adam spent his earliest years living with his widowed paternal grandmother—where he can clearly be seen listed in her household for the 1850 census. We need to fast-forward to the 1900 census to see where Adam stated that, while his dad was born in Pennsylvania, his mother was an Ohio native.

Adam can also be found in his by-then deceased paternal grandfather's 1849 will. This grandfather, also named William Gordon, had seen to it that provision be made not only for the many grown children from his two marriages, but specifically for his orphaned young grandson in the sixth item in his final testament, also naming Adam's father.

As for any other signs of Adam's mother, we need to jump to the seventy ninth year of his own life to see one last mention of Lidia's name. On Adam's March 5, 1918, death certificate, his son Simon reported that Adam's mother was named "Lida" Miller.

So Lidia was remembered, at least by family. But where else was she documented? And can we find anyone else from her own Miller family? That's the question I'll have to grapple with this month. I want to find something more than mere indirect indicators of her existence.

Meet Lidia Miller

 

For the month of May, when we celebrate Mother's Day, we'll be exploring what can be found on a young mother whose story has been repeated often throughout history. Lidia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother, appeared long enough in history records to be recorded as the bride of William H. Gordon in 1838. Nine months later, she gave him his firstborn child, a son whom they named Adam. Just shy of one year later, she bore another son—but the arrival of baby William cost her her own life.

Baby William, bereft of his mother, did not thrive, and died in infancy, but his older brother Adam lived a full life, marrying—a descendant of Nicholas Snider, incidentally—and raising a family of his own while becoming an active member of his community in Perry County, Ohio.

I've known about Lidia Miller—well, at least that cameo appearance she made as a young wife and mother—for almost as long as I've been researching my mother-in-law's family. Despite being one of my first family history discoveries, though, I've not been able to locate anything further on the woman in other records. 

Ominously, Lidia's husband also died the same year in which she died. Her surviving son, Adam, was raised by his paternal grandmother, reported in her household for the 1850 census. Whatever was happening in 1840 in Perry County cost three members of the Gordon family their lives—and yet, sparse records from that time period keep me wondering what actually happened to Lidia. Was her loss due to difficulties in childbirth? Or a contagious disease sweeping through the community?

In addition to that, though, is my question about just who Lidia actually was. With a surname as common as Miller, it may be challenging to find her connection in the community, but using cluster genealogy techniques, at least we can try to pinpoint the other Miller family members living nearby. To expand on Lidia's story is an important goal for this month—even more so, to be able to connect this young mother to her parents' generation is my hope for May.