Some families are difficult to trace. The distance of generations, even centuries, is not the only impediment; some family dynamics are simply challenging to navigate. Tracing Simon Rinehart's family has been one example, due to the contentious nature between the children of his first marriage and those of his widow, Anna, who was his second wife. But even though we've found court records to guide us through the twists and turns of Simon's family, it looks like the continuing story of one daughter, Nancy, will require us to repeat that step-family examination through yet another iteration.
We've already learned that Nancy was married at least twice: once to a man surnamed Ankrom, then to a widower named John Colborn. And yet, the question remains: did Nancy, herself, have any descendants? Searching for Nancy Ankrom yields very little, other than her 1855 marriage record to John Colborn in Perry County, Ohio. Records showing a woman's own name were rarer before the 1850 census mark, and so far, I've come up empty-handed for that enumeration. Yet, pursuing the court records for Nancy's step-children might be more informative—something that will become more obvious as we continue this quest over the weekend.
Fortunately for us—though not for yet another squabbling family bringing their argument to court—digitized Perry County court records became just the guidance we need to sort out the tangles in that family. John Colborn had died intestate, and one of his sons decided to petition the court for division of John's land.
While we can find John Colborn in the 1850 census, that document was recorded after the death of John's first wife. Because the 1850 census did not include any explanation for how each person in a household was related to the others, we can't just presume that those others listed were his children—though they could be. That's why the discovery of the Colborn court case became so helpful—if, of course, the document correctly represented what was affirmed in the proceedings.
The 1850 census entry for the Colborn household listed twenty year old Martha, then twenty one year old Ephraim and eighteen year old Elizabeth, followed by six year old Alfred. The odd order of ages made me question whether each of these younger Colborns were children of John and his first wife. Ephraim and Elizabeth could also be a couple, although given their ages, Alfred would be too old to be their son.
Perry County court records following John Colborn's May 1866 death spelled out the details for us completely. The plaintiff's name was given as N. B. Colborn, one of John's sons. Also named was another son using initials: E. S. Colborn—Ephraim from the 1850 census? Apparently, Alfred J. Colborn from the 1850 census was actually John's grandson, from John's deceased daughter Mary. Another daughter, Lydia, was listed as wife of Samuel Feigley. Daughter Sarah was listed as wife of—oh, groan, another research challenge—John Brown. (Fortunately, they were identified as living in Pickaway County, Ohio, helping to eliminate the thousands of other John Browns who are out there.) Rounding out the list of surviving children was daughter Martha, who was by then wife of Henry J. Trout.
There were other family members included in the court listing of John Colborn's legal heirs. Another deceased Colborn daughter, Charlotte, had surviving children James P. Colborn and Mary Hare—later surnamed Dick—listed in this same readout. And deceased daughter Euphema had left heirs Francis M. Wright, Margaret Wright, and Elizabeth Eddington, wife of Perry A. Eddington.
It may seem odd, while I'm researching the extended family of Simon Rinehart, to take this detour to list another family's descendants. There is, however, a reason for this: I want to discover whether Simon's own daughter Nancy had any children of her own. The document instigating this question is the census following John Colborn's death, after his second wife Nancy had given up her dower rights in the process of dividing the Colborn property.
In 1870, sixty seven year old Nancy Colborn appears in the household of a man named David Hull. More to the point of this question, Nancy's entry under the column heading "occupation" was a curious—and hopefully helpful, rather than misleading—statement: "lives with son in law." Was David's wife Eliza part of the extended Colborn family? Could the enumerator—as I've sometimes seen happen—have confused step-family for in-laws? Or was Eliza actually Nancy's daughter from a previous marriage?
That's the next step in this twisting family history trail—a step I wouldn't have been able to take without this clue, and certainly one I couldn't take without being equipped with the full listing of Nancy's second husband's children.
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