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.

Another Unfinished Saga

 

Another month's research project has come to a close, and it's time to wrap up what's been done this April and what needs to be picked up in the future. For now, I'll bid goodbye to another unfinished family saga—this time, for Nicholas Snider and his young family sailing to Pennsylvania from some unknown place in Germany.

What we already knew at the start of the month was that Nicholas Schneider and his wife, Anna Elizabeth Eckhardt had sailed with their young son Jacob from somewhere in Germany. By the time of the 1810 census, their family had grown to six people and they were living in Adams County, Pennsylvania. In the next ten years, somehow Nicholas and his son Jacob had obtained land in Perry County, Ohio, and moved his growing family there.

From that point, Nicholas—now sporting a surname with revised spelling, either Snyder or Snider—appeared in each decennial census through 1850. After that, the final official mention of his name was when his will was presented in court on April 27, 1855.

Nicholas and Anna Elizabeth left multiple descendants—265 of which I've been tracing through DNA matches—but so far no one has led me to verification that would answer my question: where did the Snider family come from? Unfortunately, that answer will have to wait until I revisit this question in a future year.

In the meantime, I can draw up a to-do list of sorts, something to jump start my search, the next time Nicholas is slated as one of my Twelve Most Wanted. The main goal at that point will be to search, page by page—unless those records have been indexed by that point—through the passenger records from Germany in the earliest years of the nineteenth century. Handwritten—and not necessarily done with the aplomb of a church cleric—these records are hard on the eyes, if even legible at all.

Another point I want to develop further: tracing Nicholas Snider's F.A.N. Club in Pennsylvania and the brief moment he brought his family to Maryland before their move to Ohio. On the list for records to garner: tax and land records in Adams County, and—on a wild offshoot—lists of men who served during the war of 1812, when Nicholas was not present for the baptism of his daughter Maria, back at home.

For records to search, I want to familiarize myself with the archival collections in Pennsylvania, a state in which I haven't done much research. While there is much to find on FamilySearch.org, as well as through my subscription at Ancestry.com, there are so many other resources available, both locally and at the state level, that should not be overlooked—especially, I might add, when we are dealing with a brick wall ancestor.

With that to-do list in hand, I'll send off Nicholas Snider and the mystery of his origin and connection to his native Germany, and welcome in a new research project with the beginning of May.

When Even Housework Sounds More Tempting Than Homework

 

Have you ever become so weary of working on a goal that task avoidance sets in and anything else—I mean anything, as in even housework—seems like the better thing to do? I'm afraid that's what has become of my quest to push back just one more generation on my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather, Nicholas Snider.

Just one more generation—how hard can that be? But after pushing through for a full month with this genealogical homework assignment, I'm still wandering in circles. Granted, tackling 265 DNA matches can take up a wee bit of one's time—but right now, I only have eighteen more to go on Conrad's descendants, and he was the youngest of Nicholas Snider's children to match my husband's test. After that, I'll have to tackle the question of just why ThruLines decided to designate one of Nicholas Snider's grandsons as a son, but once I review those fourteen matches, hopefully the reason will become clear.

But trawling through page after page of non-indexed passenger records for the early 1800s? I just couldn't bring myself to do this last-hope task today. That's how spoiled I've become, so used to tapping in a name on my keyboard and seeing just the right page out of hundreds of possibilities appear on my screen.

I admit, I'll eventually haul myself over to the computer, sit down before the screen, and make myself page through the digitized records of early arrivals at the port of Philadelphia—the supposed port of Nicholas Snider's family's arrival. Or I can put that task on my to-do list for the next time I revisit this question about Nicholas Snider's roots. It is a tempting thought.

Not that I'm chomping at the bit to advance even a day earlier to May's candidate for my Twelve Most Wanted. For next month, I'll be tackling someone just as impossible. The question of her identity is only complicated by her untimely death during a period in Ohio history when records—not to mention, population settlements—were sparse. It may be time to practice those F.A.N. Club research techniques once again.

As for Nicholas Snider, hopefully I'll complete the DNA match review by tomorrow. And that will be time to recap what we've found, assess what still needs to be completed, and roll that task forward to another year's Twelve Most Wanted list.

"Nothing to See Here"

 

"Move along now; nothing to see here" may be a cliche from old cop movies, but it might fit quite nicely for an end-of-month predicament with my latest genealogical detective work. I'm not finding anything further on my research goal—immigrant Nicholas Snider—despite persistent effort.

Yes, today I did take the time to trawl through the baptismal records from Conewago Chapel in search of any Sniders—or those many other spelling permutations of the surname—living in Adams County, Pennsylvania, at the same time as my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather Nicholas. Did I find anything of significance? Short answer: no.

Despite the abysmal handwriting which scrawled out the information I was seeking, I managed to find a mere five other couples with the surname Snider (or spelling variations) living in Adams County who also attended the church where Nicholas had his children baptized. One of the baptisms I found was likely too early to have happened while Nicholas and his family were there. Another was too late, since by then Nicholas had moved his family west to Ohio. But there were two baptisms within the time frame which would be just right.

The first entry was a baptism for Joseph "Shneider" on September 24, 1797. Though the handwriting was challenging to read, my best guess is that the parents were Antonii (?) and Catharina. Sponsors for this baby were also Shneiders, but again the handwriting challenged me to guess: Antonius and Carlara (?).

The latest entry was for a son of Francis Snyder and his wife Elizabeth Rhineheart, who was baptized on October 29, 1817. By then, our Nicholas would be heading west, so I didn't expect to see his name listed as godparent. However, the surname of the godparents looked like "Khune"—which I doubt was correct—but certainly not any variation on the name Snider.

But what about the other two baptisms? A Catharina Shneider, baptized on June 4, 1801—again, likely before Nicholas arrived in this country—was the daughter of Peter and Catherine. What encouraged me to dig deeper was the name of the godparents: Martin and Catherine Gossman. Well, I'm assuming that surname was Gossman; it was written with the double "s" style of handwriting prevalent at the time; otherwise it would appear to be Gofman. At any rate, Gossman has been a surname that has intermarried with later generations of Nicholas Snider's descendants, something to follow up on when I revisit this research questions.

The final possibility for baptisms showing other possible kin to our Nicholas would be the January 3, 1816, baptism of Sara Shneider, daughter of John and Elizabeth Reinhard Shneider. This date might be within the timeframe before Nicholas and his family moved away from Adams County, so I was hoping to find something when I read the sponsors' names, but no luck here. The godparents named were John and Apolonia Becher.

Looking again at the godparents' names for Nicholas' own children yielded no clues, either. After these few attempts, I began wishing for the same search capabilities as I've found for the Irish baptismal records I've used in researching my father-in-law's roots. There, it was possible to search for godparents' names as well as the child's name or the parents' names. I'd be curious to see if Nicholas and his wife Anna Elizabeth had been named as godparents for anyone else in the Conewago Chapel records, if for nothing else than to build their F.A.N. Club listings.

Tomorrow will be one more chance to find Nicholas Snider in early records during his first days after arriving in this country from Germany. Whether I can find an actual document containing his name in passenger records, I'm not sure. But we'll give it one more try before we wrap up and move along. 

Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back

 

You just have to be careful if you are building a family tree of people who lived in places like Perry County, Ohio. That's where my mother-in-law grew up, a place where high school students had best produce their family pedigree if the first date night went well—friends could unknowingly be cousins.

Thus, when I rewind my mother-in-law's family tree to the generations before her time, I end up adding spouses who, whoops, turned out to be cousins of some sort. Time to merge identities on that family tree—I already have that spouse's parents listed in a different branch of the family tree.

So it's no surprise, in doing my biweekly count today, to see I hadn't advanced quite as much as I thought I'd have gone, in adding Snider DNA matches to my mother-in-law's tree. It had felt like I had added so many more individuals—until I realized how many identities I had merged. Those branches on the family tree are indeed twisting and turning.

Still, I've added 519 more individuals to my mother-in-law's tree, mainly by verifying the Snider DNA matches I've been working on this month. And that number is certainly plenty for two weeks of work. Her tree now includes 38,371 individuals.

Since this month's research goal for my Twelve Most Wanted was to focus on the family of her second great-grandfather Nicholas Snider, the bulk of the work has been on connecting the 265 DNA matches listed on Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool for this ancestor. It's been a slow slog. But that also precludes any progress on my own family tree, which is holding steady at 40,223 people. It won't be until the mid-autumn when I'll return to working on that tree. I anticipate that my in-laws' tree will bypass that number easily before October gets here.

In the next three days, I'll try to slam-dunk those additional Snider DNA matches, as well as review two historical documents in hopes of building a F.A.N. Club network for Nicholas Snider: passenger records for his supposed arrival from Germany in 1804, and church records from Conewago Chapel in Adams County, Pennsylvania, where some of his children were baptized. After those three brief days of working on this goal, it will be time to pack it up with a summary for the next time I work on this line—and then, move on to my research goal for May.

Happy Belated D N A Day

 

National DNA Day has come and gone, and I didn't even take the time to wish you a happy one this April 25. Some genetic genealogy companies chose to celebrate the occasion by offering sales through the weekend on their testing products. As for me and my house, we opted to celebrate by taking a walk on the beach. No reason in particular, though perhaps being close to the ocean has been bred into my genes. Oh, and my husband did wear a genetic genealogy T-shirt to breakfast at the hotel, a little gift from a long-past conference hosted in Houston by Family Tree DNA.

Right now, the fact that my husband's autosomal DNA test has yielded me over twenty thousand DNA matches to sort through and catalog, I confess I'm in need of a vacation. Granted, the only DNA matches who really count are those hovering around the fourth cousin mark or closer. For those, I struggle with only 1,420 matches—and not all of those are connected to my mother-in-law's lines.

Granted, the 265 DNA matches who are specific descendants of her second great-grandfather Nicholas Snider are the ones concerning me this month. And even though those matches are laid out clearly by Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool—only fifty one more to go!—it can be a slog to run through each name and accurately document that match's relationship.

Now that I'm trying out Ancestry's Pro Tools, that ThruLines project is only the start. Next will be a thorough examination of the shared matches revealed by Pro Tools to see if there are any other clues to dig through on this family's hidden mysteries from generations back. Yet, with only four more days to go in this month, this appears to be a daunting project. And I still don't know much more about Nicholas Snider's roots than I did when I started this month.

There are some months when the selected project from my Twelve Most Wanted for the year reveal the answers I've been seeking. Other months, well, I have to make concluding notes and button up the task for another year's attempt at solving the mystery. Though it is clear that learning more about the local history of Adams County, Pennsylvania, may be enlightening, this may turn out to be a belated situation of more project than month in which to accomplish it.

Speaking of FAN Clubs . . .

 

It wasn't long after I had written, last Tuesday, about using F.A.N. Club research techniques to ferret out who, among Nicholas Snider's neighbors in Adams County, Pennsylvania, might have been fellow immigrants from Germany, when I received an offer I couldn't refuse. There on my screen was a banner posted from Ancestry.com, offering one month's free trial to their Pro Tools. Could I use that to help pursue my mother-in-law's brick wall ancestor and his F.A.N. Club? You betcha.

Granted, I had long thought about springing for Ancestry.com's Pro Tools. I had first heard about their Pro Tools development from DNA researchers, who mainly focused on Ancestry's "Enhanced Shared Matches" mainly because it provides a research boost similar to the tools we once had at 23andMe before their security woes initiated their long spiral downwards (at least from a user's perspective).

But listening to fellow genealogical society members who at the first had sprung for the additional subscription cost at Ancestry gave me pause. Some felt the tree checker and accuracy ratings were more stress-inducing than helpful. The bottom line was something like this one friend's sentiment: "Well, I'll try it out for a while, just to see what it's like, but then cancel the subscription." For me, that equated to a wait and see message.

Granted, the boost to DNA matching is a big plus. I can see how some of those multiple dozens of DNA cousins who never made the cut to ThruLines recognition could still be pencilled in to my trees, simply by examining shared matches' strength of relationship to key known relatives among my DNA cousins. My half-brother's daughter, for instance, makes an automatic connector to my paternal line, as does my mother's cousin to my maternal grandmother's line, leading to clues I otherwise would not have, since Pro Tools offers a way to see shared matches and determine how closely they might be related, not only to me, but to each other.

But it is not only DNA for which that new Ancestry tool set catches my research imagination. Their Pro Tools include a network creation option. Granted, that option is still in a beta phase, so it might not be available to every subscriber who opts for the additional cost of Ancestry Pro Tools. But here's what I see, specifically pertinent to this month's research project, finding family connections for my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather, Nicholas Snider. I want to know: for the brief time his family lived in Adams County, Pennsylvania, after arriving from Germany, did he live with relatives? Did he travel with a F.A.N. Club or cluster of people known to him from life in his native Germany?

I've been exploring possible connections to the other Snyders listed in Adams County for the one census in which Nicholas appeared: the 1810 census. Now that I'm using Pro Tools, Ancestry.com has made a provision for just that: a work space for creating networks of neighbors or associates who might not turn out to be family.

In other words, I now have a genealogical sandbox to play in as I dabble with the neighborly connections Nicholas Snider and his wife and children may have made during the decade in which they stopped in Pennsylvania before moving on to their final dwelling place in Perry County, Ohio. I've already created one network which I've labeled Snyders at Conewago Chapel, the church where some of Nicholas' children were baptized. And I'll use that network sandbox once again to explore Snyder listings throughout that 1810 census for all of Adams County, not just the Mount Pleasant location where Nicholas was enumerated.

Starting this week, I'll have a month to decide whether it's yay or nay for Ancestry.com's Pro Tools. And I have less than a week remaining to work on this Twelve Most Wanted project for April, so it's really time to get busy and see whether Pro Tools can give me the boost I need to build out Nicholas Snider's F.A.N. Club network.   

Assembling Shards of Identity

Imagine, for a moment, participating in an archaeological dig and finding a sliver of pottery. Though its broken edges are rough, one side seems smooth, and even bears the faint outline of a design. Could this be part of something bigger? Sifting through the surrounding rubble, you try to find a similar piece. 

Eventually, several such pieces get revealed through the silt of ages. It's time to gently brush them off and examine them closer. Could they fit together?

That, sometimes, is how I feel about the process of viewing the minuscule segments of matching genetic material, brought to light only when two people--unknowingly, distant relatives--coincidentally purchase a test at the same DNA company. Somehow, unseen hands know how to brush off the extraneous genetic layers added through generations, to focus on the details revealing our specific familial connection.

Equally invisible processes sift through countless family trees to spot a run of two or three names here, a connection to the next generation there, to piece together a pedigree chart connecting distant cousins. Get one step of the pathway wrong and the sign leading the way now leads astray. Run into a forest of family trees which unanimously stop at that same brick wall ancestor, and the way pointers no longer speak to us.

That's how I've been feeling, lately, about pursuing Nicholas Snider's roots. Yes, he showed up in Pennsylvania from—supposedly—Germany, but it's almost as if he had landed in Adams County by being dropped there by space aliens. As I sift through tokens of his identity, I feel as if I've been grasping for shards from an archaeological dig, unsure whether I'd find anything—and even if I did find something, unsure of what, exactly, it means. No search tool like Ancestry's ThruLines or MyHeritage's Theory of Family Relativity is pointing the way, because no way has yet been proposed, much less proven.

This is when we move into an experimental role. Granted, I'll still be examining all those DNA matches—eighteen more to go on Peter Snider's forty descendants who match my husband, then twenty two matches for Nicholas Snider's youngest son Conrad—but taking my cue from archaeologists sifting through the layers of time, I've got to broaden my search parameters. And welcome even the slightest shard I find. After all, it might turn out to be just the clue I've needed.

Concerning Conrad

 

There was something compelling about discovering that name, Conrad Snyder. Sure, that was a man who lived in the same county in Pennsylvania as my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather, Nicholas Snider—and it wasn't lost on me that Nicholas had named a son of his own by that same given name. But trying to flesh out more of the elder Conrad's story from an 1810 census just wasn't yielding enough information.

After all, the age brackets used for those early American enumerations could sometimes be a bit too generous. If you think that giving the age of a son as "under ten years" can be befuddling, let's just say it  doesn't help to pin an identity on the head of a large household by simply saying he was forty five or older. 

Older? How much older?

The Conrad Snyder I found in Adams County, Pennsylvania—living in the same township where Nicholas once lived—could have been forty five. Or forty six. Or fifty six. Or much older.

I did the math. Even if Conrad had been forty five at the time of the 1810 census, that would have meant a birth year of 1765. Every year older than that would push that date of birth earlier. Hmmm. Doing a bit more math, I realized the man's age could have had him hovering around a serviceable age for a significant date in American history: the American Revolutionary War.

Could this Conrad have been of a right age to have served in the war? I popped over to the website of the Daughters of the American Revolution to check. Sure enough, there were three Patriots listed in their files with that name—and all three of them served from Pennsylvania.

The first entry, a man who served as a captain in the army, was for someone born in Germany, a promising sign—until I realized he died by 1802. No appearance in the 1810 census for him.

The second entry—also a man who was born in Germany—brought back memories of the family story we had found earlier this month about Nicholas supposedly serving as a drummer boy during the war. Could this actually have been a story about a relative of Nicholas, mistakenly borrowed and ascribed to Nicholas, himself? After all, here was a man named Conrad Snyder, who had that same scenario ascribed to him. I was tempted to revisit that story we had run across.

But the third DAR entry seemed the most similar to what I had seen in the census entry—yet frustratingly an entry not quite cooperating with the scenario I had assumed would have been Nicholas' own story. Here was a man born about the same time as Nicholas—handy, for the possibility that this Conrad and Nicholas could have been brothers—and dying in Adams County, Pennsylvania.

That's where the similarities stopped short. This Conrad was said to have been born in Pennsylvania, not Germany. Worse, there may even be problems with his service record, providing us with less information on his biography than I would have hoped. About the only helpful detail on that man's DAR entry was that it provided the date of his death in Adams County—March 25, 1837.

Now having a date of death for this Conrad, it might be possible to examine his will—if he had one—to see what we can learn about his family constellation. While this research path may turn out to be a rabbit trail, at least it will be one we can set aside, knowing we have done what we could to examine the possibilities.  

Family and/or Neighbors

 

One way to pinpoint a mystery ancestor's place in the family line—especially immigrant ancestors—is to look for the "F.A.N. Club" that traveled with him. In the case of Nicholas Snider, my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather, the first place where I can find any possible family, associates, or traveling neighbors after his arrival in America would be in Adams County, Pennsylvania. 

Specifically, Nicholas Snider and his family lived there from the early 1800s through some time before 1820, when the Sniders appeared in the census for Perry County, Ohio.

So who else lived in Adams County in 1810 who might have had the same Snider surname? In the case of that particular census, all heads of household with that surname had it spelled Snyder for that enumeration, but I made note of all with that surname who lived in the same township as our Nicholas: Mount Pleasant Township.

There were actually two households claiming that surname besides Nicholas. One, appearing to be a young family, was headed up by someone named John Snyder—a generic name which doesn't reveal much of anything. The other household, however, looks a bit more promising.

That household was headed by someone named Conrad Snyder. I lit up as soon as I considered that prospect, because at the end of the long list of names bestowed on Nicholas' many sons was that same name: Conrad. 

This Conrad, listed in the 1810 census for Adams County, seemed to be an older man with a large family. Included in the enumeration were two sons under ten years of age, another one between the ages of ten and fifteen, and two more between the ages of sixteen and twenty five. Conrad, himself, was categorized as forty five years of age or older, and was joined by a slightly younger wife and seven daughters—in all, a household of fourteen people.

Well? Could Conrad have been Nicholas Snider's father? This is not clear. At age forty five or older, Conrad would have been born in 1765 or earlier. Nicholas himself was born about that same time—1766, according to some notes, though I've yet to find any verification. However, when we found Nicholas in the 1810 census, he had a far younger family than Conrad appeared to have at that time. Since the 1810 census doesn't specify ages above forty five, we can't really be sure whether this was a father-son or sibling relationship without further information.

It's Still a Tapestry

 

Sometimes I forget how interwoven a family tree can get—until I return to work on my mother-in-law's family. Then I'm reminded that hers is not a pedigree chart—it's a tapestry. Those strands get woven together, over and over.

This past weekend, I was reminded once again that this family is still a tapestry. Working on the descendants of Nicholas Snider, my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather (well, depending on how you calculate it), I ran into a name which seemed vaguely familiar.

Make that déjà vu familiar. I'd seen that name before. Sure enough, checking the index for names already entered into her family tree, there were two entries for that same name, complete with matching details. Time to merge duplicates. 

No, make that times two. Soon, there were even more. Some duplicates had their roots two or more generations back. Who knew that the family line I built out a few years ago would develop loose ends that didn't find their family match until now?

And so, I weave in another branch of the family—or, more correctly, weave it back in, once again, to an unexpected place in the ever-bushier tree. With pedigree collapse, you come to expect that issue will pop up—once or twice. But with this "endogamy lite" tree, it is smart policy to keep checking for duplicates. After all, I can't be expected to remember everything about a family tree approaching forty thousand names.

This brings up a policy question. For such a situation, when I enter DNA matches by their specific relationships, such as can be done at Ancestry.com, which of two or more relationships do I note? At first, I tried listing both relationship pathways for DNA matches, but had given up when the process became tedious. However, if anyone is using such data to help hone DNA predictions for future use, my input might skew any conclusions drawn from my entries.

So many of the strands in this ever-growing tree can be tied into the bigger picture in more ways than one. I'm not sure why I find that humorous, but I do. This tree does not lack for unexpected connections.

With the break over the weekend for the Easter holiday now past, it will be back to work on Nicholas Snider's descendants to map out the DNA connections—the behind-the-scenes grunt work that embodies the entertainment value of watching sausages being made. But it is time to get back to exploring those old documents from his time period to see if I can pinpoint any other Snider relatives—or at least members of his "F.A.N. Club" who made the journey with him from his home back in Germany. Somebody out there has got to have a connection noted to our founding immigrant Nicholas Snider.