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.