Looking Forward to Reach Backwards

 

To research our ancestors, the presumption is that we start with ourselves, then step by step, we work backwards in time from generation to generation—until, that is, we run into a research brick wall. Stymied, we twist and turn every which way, trying to find a path around the records impasse. For probably as long as people have been curious about their roots, that path to the past could only be traveled in one direction: backwards through time.

Now, however, we have another option: looking forward. And we reverse course, so to speak, by looking at a very different type of record, not from the past, but forward from those great-greats who've given us the slip.

In the case of my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather, Nicholas Schneider, I'll certainly keep searching for eighteenth century records to reveal his origin in Europe, but I have another treasure trove of information awaiting my attention: Nicholas Schneider's descendants, those DNA matches who, along with my husband as test proxy for my mother-in-law's line, share Nicholas as their most recent common ancestor.

When I started this month's research project for my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025, I began working my way through these DNA matches using the Ancestry.com ThruLines tool. According to that readout, my husband shares an ancestral connection to Nicholas Schneider with 268 other AncestryDNA customers. And I don't think it's owing to my active imagination that that number seems to be rapidly sprouting. According to Ancestry.com, when I make changes to my mother-in-law's tree—for instance, adding another generation of Schneider descendants I've just discovered—the company will update the program in about forty eight hours.

Considering this Schneider—and, later, Snider and Snyder—family has been the one line that pumps up my biweekly count the most, I'm not surprised that ThruLines connections to this ancestor keep zooming upward. Each generation of this large Catholic family brings multiple more members to my mother-in-law's tree—and, forty eight hours after adding these new cousins to the family tree, can link me to more ThruLines results.

Of those 268 Schneider DNA matches at Ancestry's ThruLines, I've gleaned the breakdown by the seven of Nicholas' children who are currently represented in the tool: six sons, one daughter, plus one additional name which I believe was actually a grandson. Of those, the child with the largest set of DNA matches, by far, is eldest son Jacob, who was also on my mother-in-law's direct line. As I make the connection between my husband's record and Jacob's eighty DNA descendants—so far—I'm being careful to also connect each DNA match entry to all available records, as well as add any of his descendants I might previously have missed. End result? You can be sure those additional entries to my mother-in-law's family tree will yield more future DNA matches.

It's a truly roundabout method to push farther into the family's past, but as I've found before in following collateral lines, you never know when a record for someone else in the family will produce an unexpected link with just the information needed that couldn't be found elsewhere.

No Longer Etched in Stone

 

We may take comfort in the apparent permanence of the names of our departed loved ones, etched in stone above their final resting place. We want to remember them for the cherished members of our family they were—and we want others to know we cared for them through such permanent memorials.

When it comes to ancestors like my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather Nicholas Schneider, however, his name is no longer etched in stone—if it ever was. According to details posted by a Find A Grave volunteer, Nicholas died on March 4, 1856, and was buried in the cemetery of the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Somerset, Ohio. That information was not obtained from his headstone, but from church records, according to the site's note.

Whether that need to check church records was owing to the weathering of an old headstone, I can't tell, but I have run across other websites for Perry County—immigrant Nicholas Snider's last home in Ohio—which included transcriptions for old cemeteries. One example from an old website included multiple Snider family members in its listings—but not Nicholas. Another, from a different Perry County cemetery, was a compilation of several sources, including some which were readings from cemetery visits in the 1970s, as well as gleanings from old church records. Some headstones were no longer legible; some were no longer located at the deceased's burial site but were simply stones found in a pile on the grounds.

No matter what happened to Nicholas Snider's headstone—or that of his wife, Anna Elizabeth Eckhardt—we can tell from the 1850 census that the couple and several of their family members had lived in Hopewell Township in Perry County. Indeed, following the census trail backwards in time, "Nicholass Snider" and his sizable family had arrived in Perry County before the 1820 census.

Before that point, his trail westward had led from Adams County, Pennsylvania, and possibly a stopping point in Maryland, before heading to Ohio. While I already have some documentation located which suggests that pathway, there is much more work yet to do. But the prime question revolves around the family's arrival from their likely origin somewhere in the lands which now make up the country of Germany. And the key is finding actual documentation of that information, not just reports published by other researchers.

I have yet to be successful on such a venture, though I tried to do so the last time I visited this research question three years ago. On the other hand, with each successive year, we see more and more resources added to genealogy collections online, which boost the possibility for future research success. Maybe this will be my breakthrough year. 

Nicholas: Patriarch of Many

 

With the beginning of a new month, we not only move on to researching another ancestor, but we shift from pursuing those ancestors from my mother's family to those from my mother-in-law's roots. For April, that selection is a man who was not only my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather, but also her third great-grandfather.

If you are scratching your head over that seeming contradiction, let me explain. My mother-in-law's family came from central Ohio, where several branches of her family had lived since the earliest days of the 1800s. Over the generations in that relatively isolated community, the branches of her family intermarried until many in that county could say they were related to each other in several ways. So in my mother-in-law's instance, she could claim one patriarch, Nicholas Schneider, as her second great-grandfather through her paternal grandmother's line, while he was her third great-grandfather through her maternal grandmother's line.

That family name, though likely originating as Schneider from his native German homeland, was spelled as Snider for those who settled and stayed in central Ohio, but for those who moved on—first to Iowa, then in some cases beyond to Minnesota—the name was eventually spelled Snyder. Regardless of the spelling variations, I have traced many of these descendants, thanks to DNA testing, to confirm their relationship.

For this fourth selection of this year's Twelve Most Wanted, I would like to push back another generation—or at least find records from wherever he emigrated in the earliest years of the 1800s. That search will be my main challenge, but I have another goal: update work on the 268 DNA matches reported by Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool as descendants of Nicholas to ensure those matches are all connected to my mother-in-law's family tree—a mammoth task, indeed.

For this patriarch of so many, we'll begin tomorrow with a brief overview of what I know already about him and the young family he brought with him from somewhere in Germany. Following that, I'll spotlight the two branches of Nicholas' family from whom my mother-in-law descends. Eventually, we'll discuss each of the other siblings I'm currently aware of, then begin the study of where that DNA leads us in the subsequent generations. Bottom line, though, is to seek out any further records that can point us to his passage to America, and the place he left behind on his trip to this fledgling country. 

Last Best Guesses

 

It can sometimes be hard to close the book on an unfinished research project. Still, a month is a month, and I promised myself that each of my yearly Twelve Most Wanted ancestors would receive only a month of my attention before I move on to wrestle with the next research puzzle. That said, today I'd like to lay down my last best guesses before closing the book on this chapter.

My goal this month was to find the parents of my second great-grandfather. When I began the month—indeed, when I laid out my research plans for Ancestor #3 back in December of 2024—I had thought I'd be searching for someone born in 1812 by the name William Alexander Boothe. That was what a prodigious researcher had told me years ago, but after only a few days of digging into the records, lack of any documents with the name William persuaded me to discard that report. Further searching pointed to a birth year of 1816 rather than 1812, and I again altered my trajectory.

Just as I had for the previous month's research challenge, I looked to results from DNA testing to bolster my exploration. However, unlike February's ancestor, who brought me well over one hundred DNA matches, any DNA Boothe connections beyond Alexander's own descendants were quite slim. Those few others pointed to a presumed ancestor—at least by Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool—named Daniel Booth. Daniel's birth in New York and subsequent lifetime spent mostly in Ohio dissuaded me from giving that suggestion any more credence, despite the fact that two of his children were born in Virginia (albeit many miles from Alexander's birthplace).

My main approach from that point was to zero in on Nansemond County in Virginia, the very county in which I had found Alexander's household in the 1840 census, and from which I had extracted his name in tax records. Since there were four other Boothe households in that county that year, my research tactic was to follow what documentation I could find on each of those other Boothe men, in hopes of identifying a possible father for Alexander.

Those four Boothe men in Nansemond County were named Robert, Kinchen, Nathaniel, and Andrew. Robert, who appeared to be the oldest of the four, had one son in his household who would have been the right age to be Alexander. This could have been promising, except for one detail: that male child under ten years of age in the 1820 census turned out to be his son named Daniel, not Alexander. Granted, one of Daniel's descendants was named William Horace Boothe, the very name my Alexander gave to one of his own sons, but other than that tempting detail, there was no way to make Alexander fit in the census age brackets that would fit his own specifics.

Kinchen, likewise, was old enough to have been father to Alexander, but given the use of age brackets for census records before 1850, plus the inaccuracies of age estimations in those earlier years, the wiggle room left too much uncertainty. Yes, if Kinchen's son Abram, said to be born about 1820, was actually one year younger, it might have been possible to squeeze my Alexander into that age slot, and count Abram in the next, younger, age category along with his brother Henry. But that "if" would be my conjecture, not supported by any documentation. I'll need to search further for records on that family which might include the missing information I'm seeking—a task for another year.

As for Andrew Boothe, apparently the youngest of the Nansemond County Boothe men, his age alone would disqualify him from being Alexander's father. I could not even find a listing for Andrew in the 1820 census, where Alexander would have shown up as a son in the "under ten" age category. Even the 1830 census showed a household of a young married couple with only children under the age of five.

If any of the Nansemond County Boothe men were to be my suspected direct line ancestor, it would have to be Nathaniel Boothe. Though his death—and any possible will—occurred just before an unfortunate courthouse fire, obliterating any hope of finding handy documentation, the son administering his (apparently considerable) estate—Joseph—was a child born of what appeared to be a second marriage, and one long post-dating Alexander's own birth. Indeed, Nathaniel's 1830 census suggested a household comprised solely of one adult male and one male child between the ages of ten and fourteen, precisely where Alexander would have fit in. Alexander's entry just one line below Nathaniel's in a personal property tax register for 1836—just when Alexander would have turned twenty—seemed also to indicate a connection. And the fact that the next decade's enumeration for Nathaniel indicated the arrival of a new wife and baby a few years after that previous census might well have been Alexander's signal to leave home (and step-mother) and start afresh with his own family for that 1840 census.

While I can point to no records which would positively assure me that that guess was spot on, I wonder, given Nathaniel's successful business reputation, whether he might have had a son from a previous marriage who would have been knowledgeable about horsemanship to the extent that Alexander seemed to exhibit. Even in his later years, Alexander was simultaneously claiming extreme poverty and a reputation for owning—possibly selling—stallions. Two different newspapers ran announcements of the passing of "Uncle" Alex Boothe. The Comet of Johnson City, Tennessee, where Alexander died in 1895, noted on August 8  that he was "well known in this and adjoining counties" for traveling through the area "with famous stallions" in past years. News of his death was also carried by the Knoxville Journal two days later, mentioning also that he died at the home of his eldest daughter, Laura Caroline, wife of William F. Brooks.

There will be another year for returning to this puzzle. Hopefully, more records will become available online, aiding research for those not at liberty to fly across country to personally dig through locally archived documents. But even as we discovered this month, old published genealogies, while containing errors, may provide helpful pointers, and thorough searches through collateral lines may turn up answers where we least expect them. Next chance I get to revisit Alexander's past, it will be time to explore as much of the extended Boothe kin in Nansemond County as I can find. The answer may well be hidden in records that didn't burn down in courthouse fires. It's just a matter of patience and turning lots of dusty pages.

Image above: Insertion on page four of the August 8, 1895, Johnson City, Tennessee, newspaper, The Comet, regarding the death of Alexander Boothe; image courtesy of GenealogyBank.

Putting the Brakes on

 

Some quests for mystery ancestors produce lots of leads or round up unexpected relatives. Not so this month. For the last two weeks, especially, progress has been slow as I pursued possible connections that turned out to be, well, bum leads. With only one more day left to this month's chase, it's time to put the brakes on and slow down enough to park this family history vehicle.

The goal this month was to identify the parents of my second great-grandfather, Virginia-born Alexander Boothe. Unlike past projects where I felt confident in adding tentative family connections with a "hypothesis" tag or bright yellow warning sign, the leads I followed for the Boothe family didn't inspire even that much confidence—not even the DNA matches.

Perhaps that repeated experience of viewing—then rejecting—possible relatives was what caused my biweekly count to tank. I did manage to add ninety six relatives to my family tree with confidence, but mainly those were members of the Boothe family whom I already knew were descendants of Alexander, not any newly-discovered siblings or parents. My tree is still quite full and "bushy" at 40,206 researched relatives, but I certainly would have welcomed more, if I could just crack the code to solve this mystery family connection. (I have some observations to make tomorrow, but the bottom line is: no solid answer yet.)

As far as my in-laws' family tree goes, I haven't made one bit of progress on their side of the family for this entire first quarter of 2025, with the exception of some family news received over the winter holidays which tempted me to do some searching early in January.

That static situation will change with the flip of the calendar page from March to April, when I leave my Twelve Most Wanted goals for my mother's side of the family, and venture into the to-do list for my mother-in-law's relatives next. With that fresh start in April, we'll be working on a tree which now has 37,367 researched individuals to see if we can push beyond the brick wall on my mother-in-law's Schneider/Snider/Snyder line before the family's arrival in Ohio in the 1800s.

Someone Else Might Know

 

At a loss for how to solve my research problem this month—finding the parents of my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe—I decided to step out and take a look at who else might know something about this family. My specific route was to DNA—but not just the ThruLines possibilities I mentioned yesterday. This time, I went searching for potential matches at other testing companies which might share the Boothe and related surnames tied to this branch of my family.

Specifically, I headed to my DNA match list at MyHeritage. First, I tried the obvious: search for that Boothe surname in the trees of my matches. That didn't produce significant results, so my second attempt borrowed a more unusual surname from the hints back at AncestryDNA: McAlexander, the maiden name of the wife of Daniel Boothe, the suggested father of my Alexander, according to ThruLines. Again, nothing special showed up.

From that point, I turned to my recent readout from MyHeritage's tool, called AutoClusters, the very development which had helped me break through another brick wall on my paternal side a few years ago. AutoClusters had pinpointed sixteen clusters—some so small, they only contained three people. No matter; when I had found my paternal grandfather's roots that previous time, there were only a few people in that cluster, as well. Small can still be powerful.

In the process of reviewing all these clusters, I realized I could also cross-check those DNA matches at MyHeritage with my extensive family tree at Ancestry. After all, in the eleven years since I sent in my first test sample, I've been busy building out a very "bushy" family tree, in the hope of pinpointing how all these matches were related to me. Surely someone out there might know about my second great-grandfather's roots—or at least their genes could tell me something.

In the process, I've now identified and labeled some clusters based on our shared ancestor, including some brick wall ancestors I had struggled with in past months. While my Boothe question may remain unanswered this month, there's always the hope that someone from that line will eventually show up in my DNA results.

Three Boothe Ancestors

 

When brick wall ancestors have brought research progress to a dead stop, DNA testing can provide the bypass to reach an answer. In my case, I have three DNA matches who each claim a different Boothe ancestor. At least two of those matches' ancestors were children of Daniel Boothe, the Ohio resident who some people claimed to be parent of my brick wall ancestor Alexander Boothe. Let's start today by taking a look at one of them.

Unlike the other two DNA matches, this one's ancestor was listed in ThruLines results for both Daniel and his wife Mary. The match's progenitor was the couple's daughter Evelina. According to ThruLines, this match would be my fourth cousin once removed, a distant cousin indeed. Perhaps that's why we share only one segment of nine centiMorgans, a slim sliver of genetic material indeed.

Since we had already found Evelina's supposed parents in the 1850 census, living alone as an elderly couple in Lawrence County, Ohio, the search was on to find this Boothe daughter listed elsewhere for that census. That required an additional step, for by that point Evelina was already married. The date of their marriage had been back in 1837, still in Lawrence County, so by the time of the 1850 census, Evelina and her husband, Shadreck Ward, were already proud parents of four daughters.

I found a brief glimmer of possibility with this connection. Despite the family's residence in Ohio, the two oldest daughters, May and Martha, were reported to have been born in Virginia. Since May was born in 1839 and Martha in 1840, I looked for a family with that composition in the 1840 census. There they were, living in Cabell County, then part of Virginia (though now in West Virginia), one county removed from Lawrence County, which was across the state line to the northwest.

This was not near Randolph County, where I had found another Daniel Booth living in earlier years—Randolph County being nearly two hundred miles away—so I dismissed any thoughts of Evelina moving to be closer to grandparents. At any rate, the Ward household had apparently lived in Virginia only briefly, as both the 1850 census and 1860 census showed them back in Lawrence County, Ohio. Evelina died in 1886 and was buried in Lawrence County, indicating what likely was a lifelong residence in that location, other than that brief move across the state line. Indeed, that 1860 census had reported her own birthplace as Ohio, a possible sticking point, considering her 1818 date of birth would have been only two years after my Alexander was said to have been born in Nansemond County, Virginia, hundreds of miles to the east.

With only nine centiMorgans shared between myself and this descendant of Evelina, such a slim margin could be attributed to other reasons. We both could be related through another, as yet undiscovered, family line. Or we could simply share more distant relatives—or merely the fact that our ancestors were from the same regional origin, sharing history from centuries previous to this Boothe family puzzle.

Considering that the other two ThruLines Boothe matches, descended from supposed siblings of my Alexander, shared even less genetic material, they too could be considered identical by state, rather than identical by descent. Looking at the records showing various men named Daniel Boothe, as we did yesterday, causes me to doubt the fact that we're even looking at one specific individual—let alone a man who could have been my Alexander Boothe's father. In the next few days, we'll wrap up this exploration, noting possible next steps for continued research in future years.

Deconstructing Daniel

 

March has been a month of negatives. In pursuit of my candidate for this month's Twelve Most Wanted, my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe's unidentified father, the bulk of this month's exploration has been devoted to finding documents to signify why possible choices would not be the right man. In this process of elimination, there is one more candidate we need to consider: the suggestion given by Ancestry DNA's ThruLines tool, Daniel Boothe.

It's time to deconstruct that proposal about Daniel Boothe. Let's start with the information gleaned from family trees of the few DNA matches I have who are linked to that supposed ancestor. According to ThruLines, this Daniel was born in 1785 and died in 1853. Plugging in those dates, coupled with his name, I almost instantly was led to the Find A Grave entry for someone with that same information.

Unfortunately, that entry did not include any photographs of the headstone or supporting documentation. While I appreciate information provided by Find A Grave volunteers, documentation trumps mere hearsay masquerading as genealogy. Despite the lack of the usual headstone picture, though, one other detail stood out to me immediately: unlike my Alexander, native to Nansemond County in Virginia, this Daniel was born in New York and died in Ohio. This was a far different narrative than Alexander's own migration story from Virginia to Tennessee.

Digging deeper into Daniel's story, only three years earlier than his death—but in the same Ohio county of Lawrence—I could find Daniel's entry in the 1850 census. There, along with his wife Mary, these two aging parents lived alone in their home, with no sign of any children whose descendants could some day discover that they share DNA with my Alexander's great-great-granddaughter. 

Though the 1850 census would be the last census where I could find this couple with all family members named—not just counted—I checked for previous records on the couple. The 1840 census revealed that Daniel was still living in Lawrence County, Ohio, along with his wife, two sons in their later teen years, plus a daughter between the ages of ten and fourteen. Daniel's family was even living in Lawrence County in 1830, according to that decade's census.

The only ray of hope from that more recent 1850 census was the sign that Daniel's wife was born in Virginia. Sure enough, there was a Daniel Boothe who married a Mary McAlexander in Patrick County, Virginia, on April 24, 1806, so it was back to Virginia I went to see if I could trace Daniel back to that temporary stopping place before his move to Ohio.

Success came with an 1820 census entry for the young family in Randolph County, then part of Virginia, and again in 1810. In fact, there were census entries for three Boothe families in Randolph County, suggesting the reasonable argument that while Daniel might have married his bride in Patrick County, following the wedding in the home county of Mary's parents the couple might have moved to Daniel's own home county.

It was there, however, that I ran into trouble: court records from Randolph County reported an estate sale for one Daniel Boothe, deceased, which was appraised on May 12, 1827. Among the purchasers listed in the sale's inventory report were Isaac Booth and Sarah Booth.

That's when the thought hit me: what if there were still a man named Daniel Boothe residing in Patrick County, the Virginia location of the Boothe-McAlexander wedding? 

To check for that possibility, I located two likely indicators. The first was an entry in Find a Grave. Again without a photograph of any headstone, the memorial gave this Daniel's dates as 1776-1857—dates quite different from those supplied by ThruLines for my DNA matches. The second record was this Daniel's entry in the 1850 census. Showing his wife's name as Susan, not Mary, that aberration might be explained by the death of the previous wife, as suggested by the volunteer who created the Find a Grave memorial—or could be advising us that this wasn't the right Daniel.

With the three possible Daniels found in records, much more research would be needed to follow what became of the children of each possible candidate, in hopes that at least one document would provide an explanation of where my Alexander might have fit into that family constellation. Right away, though, I can think of three possible candidates among those said to be children of Daniel and Mary: the three who were named as ancestors of my DNA matches from that original Boothe couple in Ohio.

Double, Triple, Quadruple

 

Double-checking facts found for a brick wall ancestor? Maybe make that a triple-check. Or possibly a quadruple-check. Just in case someone gave a wrong report.

In the case of the Boothe men in Nansemond County, the fact that three of them were said to have been sons of Henry—no, whoops, make that Abram or Abraham—gave me cause for concern. Either it was one father or the other. Can't have both results for the same sons. So, given my predicament in trying to figure out where my brick wall second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe might have fit in, I decided to look for more confirmation.

Despite a genealogy book featured on Ancestry.com stating that Robert, Kinchen, Nathaniel, and Andrew were sons of Henry Boothe, I had already found one tiny detail reporting otherwise. That report was one single answer on the death record for Andrew Boothe, who died in Nansemond County in 1860. According to his brother, Andrew's parents were actually Abram and "Cherry" Booth.

So I went looking. I needed to double check that report. Could I find another Boothe sibling whose death record confirmed those same parental names?

Well, I found something, alright, but it added another tailspin to my journey. Found in the same death register for Nansemond County was the entry for a sister (see line number thirty two) who—at least according to the reporting party, her son Edwin Duke—also claimed Abram Boothe as her father (although naming her mother as Charlotte, not Charity or Cherry). Only problem was: the woman's given name contained a questionable first letter. What was her actual name? 

Since her son Edwin Duke was identified as the reporting party, and the death occurred in 1853, it was a simple matter of finding the family in the 1850 census. There, the woman's name was given, in a clear hand, as sixty five year old Pennina Duke, assumed wife of Jacob. Checking further, a similar name was mentioned in a collection of North American family history books assembled at Ancestry.com—but also accessible through Internet Archive under the specific 1909 title, A Genealogy of the Duke-Shepherd-Van Metre Family. That time, her name was rendered as Penniniah Booth—and thankfully, her fifth child was indeed named Edwin. (Her first-born, incidentally, was given the name Abraham, if that Genealogy was correct.)

No matter whether that woman's name was Penniniah or Pennina, that's a far cry from the report claiming Henry Boothe named his daughter Lottie. Perhaps, indeed, he did—but he apparently was not the father of this Booth woman, nor her brothers Nathaniel, Robert, and Andrew. Granted, some grandchildren may not have been as familiar with their grandparents' names as we might like, but I have a nagging suspicion that Henry Boothe was not the man we thought he was.

Having examined documents for each of the supposed sons of Henry—now, presumably, actually Abram—we'll take a final look at what we've found in this exploration, come the last day of this month. In the meantime, we have another puzzle to unravel from its family-myth moorings: the claim that my second great-grandfather's dad was actually a man named Daniel Boothe. Time to begin quadruple-checking all over again.

When Death Records Get it Wrong

 

While it may seem that the holy grail for genealogists is the documentation verifying our ancestors' life details, I've had my own complaints about the use of one particular type of documentation: death records. While they may get it right when we look for verification of date and even time of a relative's death, the other details on a modern death certificate can range from reliable to ridiculous.

Take my prime bugaboo with death certificates: mother's maiden name. To illustrate what I mean, we need only to take a step back and view the scenario at the moment of that unpleasant interview between official record keeper and designated spokesperson for the bereaved family. Think about it: the family has just received the worst possible news about a loved one, and is currently experiencing predictable waves of grief and, sometimes, incredulity. Then some stranger pops on the scene, abruptly demanding information on the identity of the deceased.

I can't tell you how many times I've realized that the respondent to such interviews, in the midst of personal grief, reverts from answering questions about the relative, and instead begins answering for one's self. Take the question, "Mother's maiden name?" That question follows in a logical progression from name, details about residence, maybe even about usual occupation, to date and place of birth. All well and good—until we hit that sticking point of the mother's maiden name. I'm not sure why I've seen so many informants blurt out as answer to that question their own mother's maiden name, but there it is, plain as can be, on the deceased's completed death certificate.

Chalk it up to nerves, I guess. Family members have gone through a lot by the time a loved one has passed—whether that death was an unexpected surprise, or the end of a very long and difficult illness. So when I find an old death record in Nansemond County, Virginia, for the suspected relatives of my second great-grandfather, Alexander Boothe, I can't be sure the report about the man's parents is actually correct.

The reporting party at Andrew Boothe's death in 1860 was his older brother Nathaniel. A savvy businessman known for his successes, Nathaniel was not likely to flub this mention of his brother's parents' names. After all, he shared those same parents; this was life-long knowledge. According to Nathaniel Boothe, their parents were named Abram and Cherry Booth—at least, that's what the official record keeper noted.

When we go exploring on genealogical websites, though, we can find records indicating otherwise. Take, for example, this find from a book originally published by Clearfield Company in 1963, volume seven of Historical Southern Families. There, on page 109, we discover:

Family tradition states that Henry Boothe m Elizabeth Rabey, dau of Kedar Rabey of Nansemond County, and they were the parents of Robert, Kinchen, Nathaniel, William, Andrew and Lottie Boothe, who were b between 1779 and 1805. This tradition also states that William Boothe, son of Henry, owned a tavern in Gatesville, N C,  and that Lottie (Charlotte) Boothe m James Rabey.

Well, doesn't that put together a splendid package?! A genealogical report even outlined the connections a bit further. But what happened to Nathaniel's own report that his brother's parents (and thus his own) were Abram and Cherry? Must we assume that, grief-stricken, he reported the wrong names on his brother's death record?

Almost as an afterthought, the article continues with this curious addendum about Nathaniel and another brother, Robert. The two had apparently purchased 

land in Nansemond which had belonged to an Abraham Boothe, near the original Boothe grants. Abraham Boothe was dead by 1812, when his estate was carried on the tax lists. He left a widow, Charity (Cherry) Boothe, who d in 1825, when Nathaniel, Kinchen, Robert and Charlotte bought items at the sale of her property.

Ironically, that passage in the book concluded, "Abraham Boothe's relationship to this family is not known."

Last of the Nansemond Boothe Men

 

There were six Boothe men listed in the 1840 census for Nansemond County, Virginia, birthplace of my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe. Still unable to verify Alexander's parents' names, my quest this month has been to sift through all available records to examine the stories of each of the other Boothe men in that county who might be kin to Alexander.

Last on our list is Andrew Boothe, someone we encountered briefly when noticing that his final appearance in census records was in the household of Nathaniel Boothe in 1860. Not having any confirmation of family connections at that time—the 1860 census gave the names of each resident in the household, but not the relationship—all I could do was note the occurrence. 

Now, we'll focus in on Andrew himself, finding him in each decade's records in hopes of gaining a brief sketch of his life story, at least the part indicating any possibility that my Alexander might have been related to him.

Unlike our exploration of Kinchen Boothe, one of the other Boothe residents in Nansemond County, I was not able to locate Andrew in the 1820 census. This likely meant that Andrew was still living in the home of his own parents, possibly still a minor. The younger the person was, the less likely it would be that he was father of my Alexander, who was reported to have been born in 1816.

Jumping ahead a decade to the 1830 census, I located Andrew Boothe's household. Showing as a thirty-something male along with a woman in her twenties, Andrew's household was completed by two possible sons under five years of age. We can guess that Andrew was married sometime after 1820 but by 1825—but unless marriage records can be found for that time period in Nansemond County, we'll never know for sure.

The 1840 census revealed a growing family for Andrew, but prompts questions about whether he had the same wife. Predictably, Andrew had aged by ten years, but indications were that his wife was more than ten years older than the wife showing in the 1830 census. Of course, that could have meant that his wife was at the top of the range for the previous age bracket given—twenty to twenty nine—and for the 1840 census, she had just passed a birthday moving her from, say, thirty nine to forty to fit into that forty to forty nine year bracket.

Or, Andrew was a widower who married a woman slightly older than his previous wife. Hard to tell from such broad age brackets, given how so many people seemed to estimate their age.

The 1850 census was our chance to get a less fuzzy snapshot of the family constellation, keeping in mind that some of the children noted by tick marks in previous enumerations might now be married and in their own households—or possibly had met a premature death. There at the head of his household was a sixty year old Andrew, said to have been born in Nansemond County. Along with him was his forty five year old wife, Priscilla, and two daughters. One, aged fifteen, was listed as Amelia, while the younger, named Elizabeth, was ten years younger. None of the sons from previous enumerations was showing in this 1850 Boothe household.

A far different story was revealed by the 1860 census, as we've already noted. Andrew was living with Nathaniel Boothe. Both men appeared to have lost their wives, though Nathaniel's son Joseph was still in the household. Not much later, on October 25 of that same year, sixty year old Andrew died of "paralysis." In the county's death register, Andrew's parents' names were given as Abram and Cherry Booth. The reporting party was listed as brother Nathaniel Booth.

Thus, that reasonable guess that the two men were brothers was confirmed by one line in the younger one's death record. Looking a bit further, an 1856 marriage record for Henry Skinner and Andrew Boothe's elder daughter—under the name Permelia—confirmed her mother's name was Priscilla. Fast forwarding even further, a 1913 death record for Mrs. Mary E. Brinkley—likely the five year old Elizabeth in Andrew Boothe's 1850 census readout—gave us the maiden name for Andrew's wife: Spivey.

Seeing that Andrew's death record gave his specific relationship to Nathaniel—as brothers—can we now assume the other Boothe men in Nansemond County were also part of the same family? It seems tempting, except for one snag: I've run into an old genealogy book which indicates otherwise. Let's take a look at that report tomorrow.

Daniel and D N A

 

One use of DNA testing for genealogy is to help point us beyond brick wall ancestors to their possible parents. With my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe, I need that sort of help. Stuck as I've been with records from his birthplace in Nansemond County, Virginia, I thought this weekend might be a good time to jump to this other mode of research. After all, once the weekend is over, we do need to return to our search through early 1800s census records for the rest of the Boothe men mentioned in that federal enumeration.

One of the "helpful" tips at Ancestry.com's DNA ThruLines tool pointed me in the direction of possible parents for Alexander: a man named Daniel and his wife, the former Mary McAlexander. Sure enough, on ThruLines I had one DNA match said to have descended from their daughter Eveline. If, however, rather than looking at the matches for that daughter of Daniel Boothe, I looked at the ThruLines result for the proposed mother of my Alexander, there were actually matches from descendants of three children of Daniel and Mary: one match descending from Tamar, one from Sarah, as well as the one from Eveline.

Could any of this be correct? After all, though all DNA matches to descendants of a third great-grandparent will be slim,  they still could be viable connections if supported by reliable documentation.

I started looking for that paper trail. I began by searching for someone named Daniel Boothe with the dates provided by the trees of these DNA matches—though keeping in mind that ThruLines is a tool based not only on shared DNA but also a preponderance of subscribers' family trees which include this couple as their ancestors.

The dates for this Daniel Boothe showed a birth year in 1785, certainly nothing unreasonable. That would be an expected date for a father of a man born in 1816, like my Alexander. The date of death for Daniel was given as 1853. Again, nothing beyond a normal lifespan.

It was when I began looking more deeply into records associated with this Daniel Boothe that I ran into problems. With a given name like Daniel combined with a not-rare surname like Boothe, there were bound to be multiple possibilities. The further I looked, the more documents I pulled up, the less certain I was that my Alexander would be son of Daniel and Mary.

The bulk of the details convinced me to write up what I found, in hopes others might join in the conversation about whether we should collectively assert this as fact when the records don't seem to support the notion. Following the paper trail, though, will take more than one post—and will need to get in line behind Monday's focus on the one remaining Boothe man in Alexander's native Nansemond County. After Andrew on Monday, we'll take the requisite time to turn our attention to this other puzzle about Daniel.

Zooming Out

 

It has been a long five years since the pandemic caused our local society to abandon in-person meetings and exchange them for live online sessions. The funny thing was, though, once the restrictions were lifted and people were no longer required to remain isolated, our organization stuck to the status quo.

There were several reasons for that, first among them being that even our most tech-phobic members discovered the relative convenience of not having to drive somewhere on a blustery evening for the sheer reason of showing support to one's organization. Bunny slippers and hot chocolate or not, staying home is far easier than going anywhere.

Other reasons stood in our way as a group, as well. The onslaught of rising prices everywhere—from a cup of coffee to the gasoline to drive to the meeting—eventually conspired against us. When we used to see multiple offers of free space to use for our meetings, now we see dollar signs. And yet, our budget is constrained, too. It's far cheaper to maintain our website and host online meetings than it is to pay a rental fee for a year's worth of monthly meetings.

The down side to all that, I noticed, was perhaps something other groups might not experience: when we zoomed in to these handy online meetings, everyone sat still and listened to the speaker. Rare was the too-talkative member's interruptions (yet again) of the speaker; everyone was on mute. Even attempts at encouraging discussions among members seemed stilted, mostly a function of the technology, I suspect. The give and take of normal, everyday conversation just doesn't play well over online delivery.

For that reason, our board had been entertaining the idea of finding a way to meet again in person. If only occasionally, we wanted our talkative bunch to get together face to face once again. 

A few months ago, that reality began taking shape. One of our society's members had connections with the people who run our local FamilySearch Center, and asked about the possibility of their co-hosting one of our meetings. This week's meeting was the result of that open house gathering.

What happened at this in-person gathering, as the speaker's presentation finished, was that she recommended our members download the FamilySearch "Family Tree" app to their phone. On that app, she explained, was a section called "Relatives Around Me." Since I already knew there were several members who had already downloaded the app, I asked if we could all pull out our phones and try it during the gathering.

Almost immediately, people began calling out, "who's John?" or "who's Nancy?" We had several visitors for that meeting, so it became a time for people to meet each other—especially those people who, unbeknownst to them, might actually be distant cousins with someone else in the same room.

Of course, such calculations are only as good as the trees from which they are gleaned, but it was a great ice-breaker. Even more than that, I can't imagine any such form of interaction occurring, had we held a meeting like that online.

The electric energy level that carried through the next half hour, people sitting around computers, comparing notes on family trees, or sharing stories about research conquests or battles to overcome brick-wall ancestors—I can't imagine that happening online. Spontaneous life happens best in, well, real life. We can approximate it through technology. Make meeting easier through technology. But technology can't make life real. That comes with people reaching out to people, face to face in real life. 

The Ups and Downs of Unusual Names

 

Looking, as we have, for a given name as unusual as Kinchen might seem a positive for finding Kinchen Boothe's family history in Nansemond County. After all, when he lived there in the 1850s, the county's census record only counted twelve thousand residents. Surely there couldn't be that many Kinchens among that group.

Out of curiosity, I checked. Sure enough, there were only two men named Kinchen in the 1850 census for that county: Kinchen Boothe, and Kinchen Butler. That would seem to make my search through other records easier, just from the sheer rarity of that given name.

Think again. The difficulty with searching for what might seem like the gift of a rare name is that record keepers might not know what to do with something so novel as an unusual name. Over the records of the decades, for instance, I've seen Kinchen Boothe's name listed as "Kinchen," "Rinchen," and "Cinchen," complicating the search process with options I might otherwise never have guessed to use.

Still, emboldened by the rarity of that given name, I decided to try the FamilySearch Labs' Full Text search, in hopes of finding Kinchen Boothe's will. Remember, I'm still trying to find some indication of where, among all the Boothe families in Nansemond County, my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe might have fit in.

Did I find anything? You know I wouldn't be complaining if that search had been successful. There were very few hits for men named Kinchen—and most of them were for the Butler family, not the Boothe family. I did find a mention of Kinchen's son Abram in a Deed of Bargain and Sale, dated March 13, 1867. I had hoped that would be the indicator that Kinchen had passed, as his last appearance in a census record was in 1860. But there was no direct mention of Kinchen in the recording of the deed itself—which was to a man named James Henry Brinkley. Nor did I find Kinchen mentioned directly in the following entry on the same date, a Deed of Trust for the same sixty eight acres, this time from James Henry Brinkley to Joseph Boothe, who was listed as trustee for Abram Boothe. On second thought, perhaps this might not be Abram, son of Kinchen, after all. Hard to tell without finding more records.

Granted, searching for a more common name like Abram can have its down side, as well. However, researching the possible family trees of men named Abram Boothe in Nansemond County might help reveal reasons behind this exchange of property.

In the meantime, the trail has gone cold for Kinchen Boothe. Whether the configuration of his family in earlier census records actually indicated a spot for my Alexander, I can't say. The ages of the two sons we did find—Abram and Henry—clustered too closely to the edges of the age brackets given in those early census enumerations. There is, however, one more Boothe man we need to consider before we give up this effort to find Alexander Boothe's childhood family. We'll take a look at records for Andrew Boothe next week.  

Could Kinchen be Kin?

 

If my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe was born in Nansemond County, Virginia, then it would stand to reason that any of the other six Boothe men listed along with him in that county's 1840 census could possibly be kin—better yet, this brick wall ancestor's own father. We've already searched for records on three of those Boothe men—Nathaniel, Robert, and Henry—without finding convincing documentation, though the door is still open for possibilities with either Nathaniel or Robert.

Next, we'll consider another of the older men, in hopes that his records might indicate the possibility of a son the age of my Alexander who, according to his widow's Civil War pension application, was said to have been born in 1816. This man, Kinchen, made his appearance in the same 1840 census where I had found Alexander: in his native Nansemond County. There, Kinchen was listed as a man in his fifties, along with an unnamed wife said to be in her forties.

It was the listing of Kinchen's children which caught my eye. Kinchen reported one boy between the ages of ten and fourteen, another two in their upper teen years, and one man in his twenties. At the time of the 1840 census, my Alexander would have been twenty four years of age—if we can believe his wife's report about his date of birth—but by then, he was already married and showing in his own household. Could he have been reported in two entries?

Rewinding those census reports another ten years, though, would show a household which could have included a much younger and single Alexander. Could Kinchen's 1830 enumeration reveal a spot for Alexander? In that census, Kinchen actually reported five possible sons: one under five years of age, three between the ages of five and nine, and one between ten and fourteen years of age. At that point, Alexander would have been fourteen, putting him in the eldest age bracket for Kinchen's possible sons. Indeed, if we peek back another ten years to the 1820 census—where Kinchen was mislabeled as "Rinchin"—the only child in that household at the time was listed as a boy under the age of ten.

The catch in all this hopeful thinking is the difficulty in pinning ages within the brackets used in those pre-1850 census records. As it turns out, fast forwarding through time to the actual 1850 census, we discover the names of the two remaining sons in Kinchen's household. The younger was named Henry, who by then reported his age as twenty three, making his year of birth approximately 1827. The older remaining son was named Abram. And that is the sticking point: Abram's age was given as thirty, putting his year of birth at approximately 1820.

With a birth date in 1820, Abram could well have been that first son showing in the 1820 census as a child under ten. Thus, he would have been the one male in 1830 in the age bracket ten through fourteen—in other words, the only son in that category, the same grouping where we would expect Alexander to appear, if he were son of Kinchen.

That is a sticking point—if we could assume that year of birth were accurate. However, pushing ahead just one more decade to the 1860 census, Abram, now listed as head of the household which included his parents, gave his age as thirty nine, thus yielding a birth year of 1821, pushing him down to the second age bracket in the 1830 census.

Could Abram have been Kinchen's second-born son, and Alexander the eldest in this household? It's a moot point, seeing Alexander would have married and moved out of the household by 1840. I'm not too convinced, but it's hard to tell without further documentation. It's a vague possibility we need to keep in mind.

Finding a Missing Son

 

Questions about family composition become complicated, once our genealogical research pulls us behind the curtain of the 1850 census. Before that date, everyone but the head of each household becomes a nameless tick mark on a page in the enumeration. 

As we go through the possible Boothe men residing in Nansemond County, Virginia, during the 1840 census, we've been exploring each household's composition to see where a young man in his twenties might once have fit in before his marriage. The young man in question this month is my second great-grandfather, Alexander Boothe, who was born in Nansemond County about 1816, and lived there through the early 1840s, according to the one census record in which his name appeared.

So far, we've explored the possibility that Alexander might have been part of Nathaniel Boothe's household—but with no solid leads, thanks mostly to Nathaniel's intestate situation at the time of his death, plus a courthouse fire just as his son Joseph was appointed administrator of his estate. We've also begun working our way through the list of the other Boothe men resident in that county, according to the 1840 census, beginning with Robert Boothe.

Up through the 1830 census, it became apparent that Robert Boothe had two sons in his household. One son, as we discovered by pushing forward in time to that precedent-breaking 1850 census, was named Daniel, who was born about 1816, same as my Alexander Boothe, but who, unlike Alex, remained in Nansemond until his death in 1882.

However, Robert also had another son, according to that 1830 census—someone who would have been in his thirties by the time of the 1840 census. Could we assume, by the juxtaposition of Henry Boothe's name after Robert's own entry in the 1840 census, that Henry could have been that son? Or could it have been Alexander, with a vaguely incorrect year of birth? We'll need to take a look.

Just as I did yesterday in following Robert's own appearances in each decennial enumeration, we'll trace Henry's own census track record. Before 1840, as suspected, I couldn't find any entry specifically naming Henry in Nansemond County's results. But in 1840, Henry's household reportedly contained one male in his thirties, one girl under the age of five, and two young women between the ages of fifteen and nineteen.

That didn't paint too clear a picture of the family constellation. Even assuming the youngest girl were only one year of age, if either of the older girls were nineteen at the time—the upper limit of that age bracket—that would have meant a wife marrying at age eighteen. Granted, that was more than possible, but we don't want to assume anything here without checking for other confirmations.

That census, conveniently, was only ten years away from the record which named every member of the household. The 1850 census captured the details that the head of the household, Henry, was born in Nansemond County about 1809. Although this census did not specify relationships, the next entry was for a twenty eight year old woman named Mary J. Boothe—but she was followed by another household member also named Mary. This second Mary—Mary A.—was about fourteen years of age.

Looking to the next census in 1860 in hopes of finding clarification, we can see Henry and the elder Mary in a household which includes another Mary—but this time, the younger Mary's surname is Morgan, not Boothe. Along with this Mary was her supposed husband, Augustus Morgan, and a son, whom they named, predictably, Henry.

With this clue, I looked for any marriage confirmations, and fortunately found one helpful record. On May 24, 1858, this younger Mary from Henry's household married Augustus Morgan, son of a woman named Patsey Morgan. The record also confirmed that Mary's father was indeed Henry, although her mother was not the elder Mary in the 1850 household, but a woman named Amelia, thus calming my suspicions about the two Marys being too close in age to have been mother and daughter.

That resolved the question about the identity of the other son in Robert Boothe's earliest census records in 1820 and 1830, but what about Alexander Boothe? It seems clear that he couldn't have fit in that family grouping unless he had left the home as a young child before the 1820 census—an unlikely story.

With that question about Robert's other son resolved, it's time to move on to the rest of the Boothe men included in that 1840 enumeration. Our next focus: another Boothe man then in his fifties, Kinchen Boothe. 

About Robert — and His Sons

 

Running down the decennial census results in pre-1850 Nansemond County, Virginia, to assemble a list of Boothe households is my desperate attempt to figure out just who might be the father of Alexander Boothe. Alexander—or Alex, as he often was called after he moved to Tennessee—was my second great-grandfather, and the brick-wall end of the line for that part of my family tree.

If answers don't come easy, maybe the hard work will produce what I'm looking for. I've assembled the names of each of the Boothe heads of household listed in the 1840 census. The next step has been to see how far back I can go for each one of them, first with census records, then with tax and land records (and hopefully a will thrown in for good measure, though Nansemond County hasn't been helpful in the courthouse fire department).

In Robert Boothe's case, going through each decade's census has been informative. Granted, there are a lot of blanks to fill in and not much information to glean from the tick marks on those early census returns, but a possible story does emerge. Here's a brief tour of the findings.

Let's start with 1820, the earliest enumeration in which I could find Robert named. In that Boothe household, there was one man, aged between twenty six and forty four—I would presume that was Robert himself— plus two boys. One (presumed) son was aged between ten and fifteen, and a younger boy was under ten years of age. Rounding out the household was one girl under ten, and another young woman between sixteen and twenty five. The puzzling part was the addition of not one but two women over twenty five years of age, but below forty four—a wife and a sister, perhaps, but hard to tell without further guidance.

Moving ahead ten years, the household showed some predictable changes. The two boys had advanced by ten years for the 1830 census, with the younger one in his later teen years, the elder now a man in his twenties. There are some changes among the women from the last census: the youngest girl is now in her later teens, but in addition, there was only one other woman in her fifties. I suspect the other two girls were by now married, unless having lost their lives to the many diseases and dangers of the time. Robert himself was in the fifty to fifty nine age bracket, and extrapolating from his age bracket given in 1820, that would mean he was about fifty four or younger, possibly with a birth year on or before 1780.

By the 1840 census, this Boothe household had shrunken to three people: the younger son, now in his twenties, plus his parents, Robert and his wife.

The 1850 census provided the big reveal, at least for Robert's remaining son. Judging from Robert's given age, he was born in 1779. However, I am presuming his wife had, by this time, died, as the only woman remaining in the household, though of a right age, was named Honor Brasely. From this census, we also learn that Robert's son was named Daniel, born about 1814, making him the younger of the two male children from Robert's earlier census reports. And sure enough, finding Daniel's October 26, 1856, marriage record, we learn that his mother's given name was Christian, not Honor.

Seeing the big picture on the Robert Boothe family, I'm left wondering: who was Robert's older son, and what became of him? Perhaps that's where the next entry in the 1840 census comes in: the household of Henry Boothe.

Until the Cookie Crumbles

 

As Dennis the Menace once said, "If I can't have a horse, can I have a cookie?" If I can't find the will for Nathaniel Boothe, my second great-grandfather's possible father, can I at least uncover his family circle?

We've already run into the disappointing news that not only did Nathaniel Boothe not have a will—his son Joseph was appointed administrator of his estate—but that a courthouse fire had destroyed what records might have been in existence concerning any deeds in which he might have been named.

So what's next? I've already found a listing of five other Boothe men living in Nansemond County, Virginia, in the 1840 census. That was the last year in which my great-grandfather Alexander was listed as a resident of Virginia before moving to Tennessee. It's just a matter of going down the list to look for wills that bequeathed property to sons.

A likely next possibility might be another Boothe household in Nansemond County which seems to have the same composition as Alexander's own family in 1840: young man, young woman, and child. But when I pull up the enumeration for the first name on my Boothe list—for Robert, another household with three individuals—I immediately notice another tempting juxtaposition. Like Nathaniel and Alexander had been listed next to each other in a 1830s tax record, Robert's listing was immediately followed by the census entry for Henry Boothe.

Could this be another father and son possibility? In researching these two, even if I can't win the "horse" of my quest to discover Alexander's father, could I at least get the "cookie" of seeing a family constellation take shape?

However, rather than finding indications that Robert might be son of Henry, the details reveal a possible second narrative: that Robert and his wife might not only be the sixty-something parents of an unnamed son in his twenties shown in the census, but that he could also have been father to another son, as well. Alexander?

The next line down in the 1840 census shows Henry Boothe's household. The numbers in that enumeration show possibility of a different story than I had assumed, as well. Henry, in his thirties, has only young females in his household: two girls in their later teenage years, and a child under the age of five. Perhaps, as we had previously noted with Nathaniel's entry next to a possible brother, Andrew Boothe, Robert might be the younger brother of Henry, rather than his son, as I at first had surmised. 

Sometimes, we hope for a horse...and get a cookie. Sometimes, even the cookie crumbles. But we won't know until we take a closer look.

Dead Air and the Empty Space Fiend

 

Back in another lifetime, I was an on-air personality when there only were record-spinning DJs at top-forty radio stations. Forget all the FCC licensure requirements, inputs of broadcast readings, or other technical duties, the greatest fear, I think, was that of having "dead air"—silence when there should have been sound waves emanating from our radio tower. That was the kind of technological nightmare which could awaken me in a cold sweat even years later—until I'd realize it was only a bad dream. Radio meant constant sound, whether talk or music. There was no room for silence.

Now that I recall those experiences, years later, I've realized one thing. Perhaps I was built for that: avoiding dead air. I'm learning to see patterns repeated in other areas of life. There was a time, for instance, when I took up painting floral designs. I'd put those designs on walls, furniture, book covers, coffee mugs—anywhere I found an empty space. I became the empty space fiend: have blank wall, will cover it.

Since I've turned to genealogical pursuits, I see that same drive to cover all bases reappearing as I build out a very bushy family tree. Not willing to let go of last month's research goal—finding those Townsend siblings for my third great-grandmother Delaney—I've continued building out those tentative Townsend lines of my DNA matches, even though I've moved on to another month's research goal. And Delaney's husband's Charles line? Same thing goes for that family, every time I realized I hadn't completely brought those lines of descent down to the present generation.

Small wonder, then, that in the past two weeks, I've added another 193 of those ancestral collateral lines—stragglers, mostly, from last month's research project. My project for this month—finding Alexander Boothe's parents—has slowed down that process considerably, so the next two weeks won't seem so robust, although I will, once again, look for DNA matches to augment speculation and theories. Sometimes the call to fill in the blanks brings us face to face with roadblocks, but eventually that drive to conquer empty space will overcome.

Family History is All About Connections

 

Family history can sometimes seem like a solitary pursuit: the lone researcher, sequestered in her office or musty archive, poring over documents long forgotten in search of that elusive brick wall ancestor. That certainly is how it feels, at times. This week, though, one instance of a person reaching out to send a message set in motion a chain of events connecting several people who had never before met each other.

It all started with a message received on my Ancestry account. A genealogist was reaching out from a family association, in hopes I could connect her to a woman I had listed in my family tree. The genealogist wanted to find this woman in order to access photographs the woman had, years ago, written the genealogist to say she'd be willing to share, if ever the genealogist got around to writing the promised book on the woman's own family line.

Well, now was the time to write that book, but obviously, if the genealogist could find that woman's name in my family tree, it meant only one thing: the woman was no longer alive.

Despite her passing years ago, I clearly remember speaking with that woman when she was still alive, because she herself had published a book on my own family's McClellan line. It was a well-researched book, and I was so excited when I had found it that I purchased not only one copy for myself, but several more to give to family members.

Apparently, I gave away one too many copies of that book. Years later, looking for my copy, I couldn't find it. Nor could my sister find her copy—who knows what happened to the other copies. Trying to purchase another copy was unsuccessful; it was long out of print. Besides, by then, the author had passed away.

But then came that message at Ancestry from this other book-writing genealogist looking for the author of my family's story. And here I was, having moved on from my Florida-based research project last month, yet still looking for the descendants of those Townsend and Charles lines—one of which happened to marry a McClellan.

This month, I was still inputting Townsend, Charles, and McClellan descendants into my tree at Ancestry.com when up popped one of those ubiquitous hints: someone else also had that McClellan ancestor in their family tree. Usually, I don't use that hint option, choosing instead to rely on my own document-based research. But hey, wait a minute: the tree's owner was someone with that same surname. I think I found a cousin!

Looking closely at that tree, I realized the Ancestry subscriber happened to descend from that same specific branch as the McClellan author. Taking a chance, I reached out to that tree owner and told my story about the genealogist from the family association wanting to get copies of those pictures for a soon-to-be-published book. Could this person help? And, oh, by the way, any idea how I could get a copy of that book I lost from the tree owner's immediate family contacts?

There is something magical about posting a message online at night, then waking up the next morning with the answer I'd never expect to receive. I usually give my email address in notes I send via Ancestry's messaging service. What had just happened overnight was that that McClellan contact sent me a digitized version of the book I had long since lost—and promised to work on gathering those family photographs for the genealogist back at the family association, the one whose initial message had gotten this whole search rolling in the first place.

Each one of us sits on a treasure trove of our own family's history: the photos, the keepsakes and memorabilia, the stories. Those details are not just ours, though; they belong to all our cousins, close as well as distant. The blank spot in our tree might be the labeled photograph in someone else's pedigree; the letter passed down to us that was saved by our great-grandparents might have come from another cousin's great-grandmother.

Just as our families intertwined in those past generations of our greats and great-greats, so we can do once again in our interconnected world now. From fun family tree apps like FamilySearch's "Relatives Around Me" or the recent "Relatives at RootsTech," we have quick and easy tools at our fingertips to reach out and touch someone else's life—or at least their family history progress. Connections with cousins can make it possible for us to know the rest of our family's story.  

When Research Hopes go up in Flames

 

There were six men who shared the surname Boothe with my second great-grandfather in the 1840 census in Nansemond County, Virginia. One by one, I'll be looking at each man's household in earlier records in the hope that I'll discover the most likely one to have been Alexander Boothe's father. Because of what may have been an anomaly in county record keeping, I decided to start with one of the six by the name of Nathaniel Boothe.

Finding Nathaniel in other records started out easily enough. A death notice in The Norfolk Virginian on Friday, January 19, 1866, carried the story of his passing.

Mr. Nathaniel Boothe, one of the oldest and wealthiest men in the county of Nansemond, died a few days since. In his death the neighborhood in which he lived and the Christian church of which he was an exemplary member, sustains a severe loss. He was seventy-six years of age.

That article gave me a few helpful signs: that he died in the earliest days of 1866, and that he was of sufficient standing and worth to have left a will. It was that will that, more than any other document, I was keenly interested in viewing, in hopes that it would name all his surviving children. Whether my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe was mentioned in that document or not, finding the record would direct the next steps in my search.

Sure enough, going to FamilySearch.org Labs Full Text search, I located documents pertaining to this Nathaniel Boothe. They weren't, however, what I had hoped to see. 

One entry in the records showed Joseph Boothe appearing in court to signify under oath that he had entered into a bond in the amount of thirty thousand dollars and thus was to be issued letters of administration for his deceased father's estate. Sure enough, double checking on the Nansemond County Fiduciary Bond Book, there was the entry for Joseph Boothe, administrator of the estate of Nathaniel Boothe.

Oh oh. No will. So much for my first hope.

Curious to see the date of this court procedure, I flipped back a page in the record to find the beginning of the entry. Apparently, Joseph Boothe's entry was part of the monthly court session dated the twelfth of February in 1866. First order of business for that day's entries: a report from the clerk of the court that on the night of February 7, a fire in his office had destroyed the court records. The court appointed several men to investigate exactly what had been lost and how complete the damage had been—and I sped over to the FamilySearch wiki for Nansemond County to see the verdict. Yep: that was indeed the case. 

I had wondered why someone of such obvious financial success as Nathaniel Boothe would have neglected the business of recording his own final wishes. Could this have simply been the case of the document, having been drawn up, subsequently being destroyed by fire? But no, witnesses to such a will would have surely had a copy or known where to obtain one, once the testator had actually passed.

I thought, too, of how some people preferred to deed their possessions to family members ahead of time, but again, perhaps hampered by that same courthouse fire, I've found no record of such transactions. I'll still look further for any records of estate sales and distribution of the estate to family members when the case is closed. For now, though, while it looked possible, through the initial census records we viewed yesterday, that Alexander could have been that boy in Nathaniel's household in earlier years, unless we find more records, it would be impossible to say.

Image above from The Norfolk Virginian, January 19, 1866, page one, column three; courtesy GenealogyBank.

Considering Some Alternatives

 

When we're staring down brick wall ancestors, in negotiating the impasse, sometimes it helps to consider possible alternatives. That's what I'm ready to explore this week, since I can't find any records revealing much more about my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe's early years in Virginia.

Last week, when we explored tax records for Nansemond County, the Virginia location where Alexander supposedly originated, there was one entry that had caught my eye. The tax list for 1836 contained a litany of names of men in the county who were considered "persons chargeable" with tax, being white males above sixteen years of age. Among the names listed was an entry for someone named Nathaniel Boothe.

Directly below Nathaniel's entry in this tax roll was a note: "Do for Boothe, Alexander." Was that "Do" an abbreviation for "ditto"? No other entry on the page had such an introductory statement—just each man's name in the format of surname followed by given name.

Could this have implied that Alexander was a young man coming of age in Nathaniel's household? Since I hadn't been able to locate Alexander in census records before 1840—when he would have been about twenty four years of age—I thought Nathaniel might be a reasonable starting point for my experiment with all the Boothe men resident in Nansemond County to determine Alexander's likely father.

I've already identified six Boothe men resident in Nansemond County: besides Nathaniel, there were Robert, Henry, Andrew, Edmond, and Kinchea. For no other reason than the hunch flowing from that unusual entry in the tax ledger, I decided to pursue Nathaniel's records first, in hopes of finding a possible place for a younger Alexander at home with Nathaniel.

With that, I did a survey of all the census years I could access online for Nathaniel, beginning with the 1830 census and moving through to the 1860 census, the last one in which I could find his name. Whether Nathaniel was kin to Alexander, I can't yet tell, but this exercise helped draw a picture about the man's own life.

Here's what the numbers looked like. In 1830, Nathaniel's household contained only two free persons: one male between the ages of ten and fourteen, and another male between thirty and thirty nine. My guess: Nathaniel has lost his wife, the mother of the boy in the household.

By 1840, that scenario was rectified. Nathaniel's household now shows him ten years older, a tick mark in the category of male, ages forty through forty nine. Along with him is a woman in that same age bracket, indicating that Nathaniel has remarried. But there are surprises. There is, for instance, another woman about twenty years older than that, in the sixty to sixty-nine age bracket—the woman's widowed mother? And now there is a boy between the ages of five and nine.

Gone by then was any possibility of our Alexander being part of this household, for we've already located him in his one cameo appearance in Nansemond County before his migration to Tennessee. By 1840, Alexander was listed as a male between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine in his own household, along with a woman of that same age range, and a boy under the age of five, a clear indication that whatever household he might previously been a part of, this was the demarcation line.

But what about moving forward? After all, by the time of the 1850 census, we move into the arena of names listed for each member of the household. I had to take a peek at what Nathaniel's household looked like following that change in documentation. 

It will come as no surprise to see that Nathaniel was then listed as sixty years of age, having been born in Virginia. His wife now had a name—Mary—and was said to be fifty five years of age. The elder woman was, by 1850, no longer in their household, but the boy who had been under nine years of age in the last census now showed up as eighteen year old Joseph, having been born about 1832. Nathaniel's household was listed next to another Boothe household—that of a man named Andrew Boothe.

Moving one more decade, Nathaniel was still in Nansemond County for the 1860 census. This time, his age was listed as sixty nine, and he was still listed as born in Virginia. Mary, however, was no longer in the household, presumably having died before reaching the age of sixty five in that census year. Joseph was still in the household, though, as well as that former neighboring Boothe man by the name of Andrew—someone I had also spotted earlier in old tax records. Perhaps this is the beginning of seeing the family constellation take shape.

Could Alexander have fit into this family scenario? Possibly, if his wife Rachel's report of his year of birth as 1816 was correct—which it likely was, given the fact that he appeared in the 1836 tax record when he would have been twenty. If, however, Alexander was that fourteen year old boy in the 1830 census in Nathaniel's home, he would have been a child who had lost his mother at an early age, not the son of Mary.

Eventually, I'll repeat this exercise for the other Boothe men found in Nansemond County. As we've already seen with the appearance of Andrew in Nathaniel's household, this exercise may help provide more detail about the extended Boothe family in Nansemond County.

First, though, I'm tempted to start using the Full Text search at FamilySearch Labs to see if I can find any further information on Nathaniel Boothe, himself. A will, for instance, would make my day.