Finding the Perfect Match

 

Finding verification for family relationships among our ancestors of the 1700s can be challenging. For those hearty souls willing to wade through legal documents—and ancestors also of such an intrepid bent—the ability to locate that perfect match of names in court records is facilitated by one helpful tool: the FamilySearch Full Text Search.

Puzzling over just how many women named Lucy our James Heslop may have loved—as we've seen, it was more than one but court records must have included some late filings—I took my search question to that specific tool. Of the many hits resulting from my search terms, there was one item filed in the deed books of Spotsylvania County, Virginia, which seemed a useful addition to the records.

The document was an indenture, a basic land transaction protocol used in Virginia for transferring the ownership of land when it involved more than simply two parties. This indenture, dated March 14, 1825, was between both James Heslop—one of the Carter descendants I had been following—and his brother Horace Heslop, and, for the second part, a man by the name of William Hart.

Two gifts from this deed, which I at first had considered bypassing since it wasn't a document I was expecting to outline family relationships. The first gift was realizing just how many ways the name "Horace" could be misspelled. In this case, "Horris" will now be added to my list of possibilities for future searches regarding this grandson of John Carter.

The second gift was a phrase inserted into the provisions of this court document. The brothers wanted to specify that, among other stipulations in the deed, this one unexpected provision needed to be heeded: 

...on which land Mrs. Ann Heslop the mother of the said Horris + James at present resides + the use of which she is entitled to so long as she may live....

That same Ann, wife of William Heslop, was a daughter of John Carter. However, in reviewing the death register for two of her children—Sarah Kenyon Heslop and James Heslop—the clerk had entered a disappointing "Wm + N Heslop" for the names of their parents, rather than the expected mother's name, Ann. This unexpected entry, found buried within the details of a random property exchange, provided the assurance needed that "N" of the later death reports should actually have been "Ann."

Bit by bit, I'm piecing together the documents reflecting the Carter family constellation. Some are obvious, such as the wills left by the patriarchs in each generation of the family's line. Others are unexpected gifts, worth noting and saving as additional support in tying together those family connections in an era lacking the records we've become accustomed to using for more recent relationships.

Double Checking

 

While puzzling over the will of Sarah Kenyon Heslop—and reviewing the links provided in a comment by fellow genealogy blogger Patrick Jones of Frequent Traveler Ancestry—it occurred to me to double check the hints I had found for Sarah's apparent brother James Heslop, both of whom were descendants of John Carter.

I'll admit: yes, I want to focus on the female descendants of my fifth great-grandfather John Carter, but let's just say I got sucked into a beguiling rabbit hole. Finding James Heslop's will right next to Sarah's slapped my curiosity upside the head. I had to piece together this family line of a man who, dying at age seventy nine, was still waiting to see whether his wife would bear him an heir.

The story, as I'm sure you suspected, involved a marriage later in life for James. Over at Ancestry.com, looking at hints provided ample choices for wives' names, making me wonder whether any of them referred to our James Heslop in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. Fortunately, the transcription at Ancestry.com offered for the 1851 marriage of James Heslop and Lucy Ann McCalley gave a film number for the digitized record, held at FamilySearch.org. 

Sure enough, signing in at FamilySearch and heading straight to the catalog to perform that search led to an entry labeled "Marriage Books 1795-1970" for Spotsylvania County, Virginia. The bad news: the actual entry bearing that film number was a collection of "photostat copy" records. I'd have to poke my way through the thumbnails to find the right entry.

First step was to find an index, which told me that I could find James Heslop on page thirty one. Poking my way through the thumbnails once again, I located the page number and began scanning the entries to find any mention of James Heslop.

At the bottom of the righthand page, I found him. Only in this entry, James was listed as marrying someone named Lucy Brown—and the date was far from the 1851 date I had expected from the Ancestry entry. This entry was, unfortunately, undated, but it followed an entry dated January 30, 1813—not anywhere near 1851.

 

This, I'm presuming, could be James Heslop's first marriage. This first Lucy might have been the mother of William, James' heir according to his will, should the second Lucy Ann have failed to give her aging husband any children. This first Lucy may also have been the mother of the other son mentioned in James' will: Isham. Of either of those suppositions, though, I'd need more information before I can enter them as fact.

I did, after much more wandering, locate the promised marriage record for James Heslop and Lucy Ann McCalley in 1851. Let's just say the ministers in Spotsylvania County must have entered their marriage records when they got around to it. This Heslop marriage was part of a list of several line entries of such ceremonies.

There are so many gaps in the life story of James Heslop and his wives. To fill in the blanks, I'll need to locate a few more court documents—if, that is, I don't first haul myself out of this tempting rabbit hole and get back to business as promised.

Doubts and Doubling Up

 

The more a family's lines of descent engender doubts, the more we need to double up on documenting the actual history. I'm finding that to be the case as I search for the descendants of John Carter's daughters.

Right now, I've been reviewing records of the daughters of John's first wife, Sarah Kenyon. At this point, my focus is on his fourth child, Ann, who had married William Heslop before supposedly dying in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, in about 1829. 

Genealogist George Harrison Sanford King had used Ann's daughter Sarah as his poster child for consideration that Ann's mother—and John Carter's first wife—was actually Sarah Kenyon and not Elizabeth Armistead, as had been claimed by another genealogist, Joseph Lyon Miller, in his book, The Descendants of Capt. Thomas Carter of "Barford." The King argument was clear: that it was significant that daughter Sarah's full name was Sarah Kenyon Haslop—hardly a family name that would have been expected if Sarah's maternal grandmother and namesake had been an Armistead instead of a Kenyon.

Since the King manuscript mentioned that Sarah Kenyon Haslop—or Heslop—had died testate in Spotsylvania County, I decided to take a look. There, in the county's court records for September 7 of 1857, was Sarah's will. Two details to notice with that will: that Sarah apparently died unmarried without children of her own; and that immediately following the recording of that will in Spotsylvania County records appeared the will of one James Heslop.

So who was James Heslop? Could he have been her husband, and I had misunderstood the contents of Sarah's own will? Or could he have been her father's relative? To resolve these questions, I took a look at the county's death register for that year of 1857.

Disappointingly, for Sarah's entry, her parents were listed as "Wm + N Heslop"—not quite the name I was hoping to see for Sarah's mother Ann. Could it have been the result of sloppy writing or misheard information? Perhaps I was looking at a record for the wrong person.

But then, once again, I noticed the entry right next to it: for James Heslop. Digesting all the information entered, it appeared that James died at age 79, while a month later, Sarah Heslop died at age 80. Parents were listed as the same couple for both Heslop death entries. James' death record included the listing of a wife's name, though in those frustrating initials: "L. A. Heslop." And the reporting party for both entries was the same person: "W. Heslop," said to be son of James and nephew of Sarah.

Obviously, that was a helpful clue—although whether it applies to our Sarah Heslop, I can't say for sure yet. However, returning to Sarah's will, there was more to muddy the waters, requiring further doubling up on documents to verify whether we are on the right track. For with Sarah's will, she named specific nieces and nephews to receive her property—and wouldn't you know it, but some of those details also don't seem to line up with what had been reported previously.

When in doubt about records, double up. 

Logging the Digital Research Trail

 

Problem: what to do when building a family tree using one genealogy service, yet the digitized document verifying the connection is only available on a different genealogy website.

As I take that long slide down to the present from John Carter's own daughters, I'm running into many cases where applicable digitized records are found at FamilySearch.org, yet not at Ancestry.com where I'm building my main family tree. Granted, the most likely place to find records from the 1700s is either through government archives or at a specialized website like FamilySearch, so that is usually the first place I look. Yet I don't want to lose track of all the other places where I've searched for records. I want to find a way to keep a research log on my main tree even though the resource found originated at another location.

Although I have caved and started building family trees at several other genealogical services—that's one way to resolve this dilemma—I also decided, when possible, to simply harvest the specific web address for the document. From that point, I paste the URL into my main tree, at the appropriate date in the ancestor's timeline, using the "edit" function for inserting notes. I want to be able to go back and double-check a document, the next time I pick up my work where I had left off. 

As long as the website at which I first found the document enables researchers to harvest a specific web location for that precise document page, this has become my go-to method for inserting documents from a different online source into a relative's profile page in my main tree. It's often as simple as cut and paste. It simply needs a consistent system to keep applying such discoveries to that family tree.

Now, as I begin the tedious work of adding the identities of John Carter's daughters' children, this will become even more important. I'm finding records from additional online resources, and I don't want to lose the ability to replicate the search by letting a document location slip through my digital fingers.

Right now, by virtue of the argument provided by genealogist George Harrison Sanford King, I've been focusing on the descendants of John Carter's (likely first) wife, Sarah Kenyon. By virtue of their daughter Elizabeth Carter marrying Owen Thomas, but then dying, widowed, when her daughter Sarah Kenyon Thomas was still a child, it was easy to see that situation noted in the wills of both the child's own father and her maternal grandfather, both of whom made provisions specifically for her. 

I've been working my way from the lifetime of that child—Sarah Kenyon Thomas—down through six generations to our current times. The closer I get to the present century, the easier it is for me to find records on Ancestry.com, where I'm building my tree—from birth and death records to census records and the other resources we use to confirm an ancestor's lifespan. But for those earlier generations—particularly that time period prior to the 1850 census—the go-to documents were court records. And for some of those records, we need to broaden our search parameters to use resources outside the Ancestry universe.

I have learned that one-stop shopping is not the most effective model for many tasks in life. I've lately added genealogy to that list. We can get a broader picture of our ancestors' life story when we expand our search to utilize records and resources from more than one website. Just as I had discovered last fall and winter when wrestling with my father's Polish forebears, I am now seeing the same apply to tracing these descendants of my fifth great-grandfather, John Carter of Spotsylvania County, Virginia.

However, no matter where we find those necessary records to piece together an ancestor's life, we still need to draw up a record tracing our research wanderings. We need to find a way to retrace our steps if necessary.

Progress on the Carter Count

 

In this month's attempt to build out the Carter branch of my family tree, it turns out that the last two weeks brought as much progress as anticipated. That's to be expected for the descendants of a man who lived in the 1700s. After all, my fifth great-grandfather had several children by at least two wives, if not three—many of whom lived to adulthood and raised families of their own. Let's see how the count went for this two week period.

When I began, I had 40,824 in my family tree on the fourth of January. I had just come off a holiday season where I was vainly trying to trace my father's Polish ancestors, and I was not making anywhere near the level of progress that I had hoped. Then, I switched focus with a new year and new research goal.

Two weeks later, I'm closing my biweekly count with 41,037 researched individuals in my tree. That shows an increase of 213 names, almost all from January's research project for my Twelve Most Wanted: John Carter of Spotsylvania County, Virginia.

Though I don't usually report it on this blog, I also track my increase in DNA matches. For this past two weeks, the increase in DNA cousins definitely was showing the first results of winter holiday sales: at least at Ancestry DNA, I had eight additional matches who are fourth cousins or closer, bringing my total of those "close" matches to 2,710. Usually, my "close" match count edges up by one or two per biweekly report.

Granted, not all—maybe not any—are DNA connections to the Carter line. Still, I'm looking forward to exploring those in my matches who do connect to that Carter line.

Since my focus this month is on my mother's ancestors, there was no activity logged on my in-laws' tree, which remains at 41,737 individuals. I'll return to researching that side of the family when we shift to my mother-in-law's roots next April.

This coming week, I'll be back to building out the lines of John Carter's children, particularly his daughters. The goal is to continue outlining the matrilineal descent for the children of his wives, based on available court records and other documents.

Research Synergy: Where Collaboration is Key

 

When it comes to researching distant ancestors with umpteen children, grandchildren, and beyond through five generations, it takes a team of researchers to keep it all straight. That's why I'm an advocate of reaching out and connecting with other researchers tracing the same family lines. Whether that means a teamwork approach—you tackle this child's line of descent; I'll take that second-born child—or sharing in the mad scramble to analyze documents found, having someone else to bounce ideas off of can not only make a difference, but add a bonus of a shared victory dance at the end of the line.

So it's been with the discovery of a fellow genealogy blogger, Patrick Jones of Frequent Traveler Ancestry, who had made similar discoveries two years ago about a wife of John Carter—Sarah Kenyon—not mentioned in published genealogies. It was two years ago when Patrick posted about several court records from which can be gleaned information to partially reconstruct family relationships between the Carter half-siblings. We have since been sharing information and observations about what we are finding. And we both have discussed how the use of mitochondrial DNA testing may sort out the centuries-old mysteries of John Carter's wives.

Patrick is currently tracing the line of John Carter's daughter Frances through her marriage to Rice Curtis, their children and grandchildren, as revealed in—what else?—court documents. He's sharing what he is finding in his own blog, sorting it out from Frances Carter Curtis' own will, detailing her family's relocation from her childhood home in Virginia to Davidson County, Tennessee, where the will was filed. 

While I've been spending my weekdays scouring court documents regarding my fifth great-grandfather John Carter this month, behind the scenes I'm still catching up on the unsolved mysteries of last winter, when I wrestled with my father's Polish ancestors. On that line, too, I have met up with a distant cousin—coincidentally a DNA match—who is also researching that particular family. That is a good thing, for there are many descendants yet to find, including missing ones in Poland whose disappearing trail may actually have wandered across an ocean to America. Sometimes it's hard to reconnect the two parts of one person's life trajectory when it involves migration across an ocean.

Two sets of eyes are better than one when it comes to spotting details, or unearthing a record that hadn't been considered before. Even more comes into play when those two sets of eyes can claim two different sets of DNA matches, and can compare and contrast the lines of their respective DNA cousins. When one team member doesn't have key matches, but the other one does, that fuels research synergy.

The Long Slide Down to the Present

  

After wills and deeds and, yes, even squabbles among family members aired in the district court room, I've amassed enough names to begin the next formidable step. From that lofty perch atop the pedigree chart of my fifth great-grandfather John Carter, I envision my next task to be tracing a long slide down the lines of descent to our present time.

I've already begun the process with some of the names recently discovered—or, to put it more accurately, those names more recently amended, based on convincing arguments. I have a patterned way to navigate those lines of descent: from one Carter child, I then document the marriage, then find listings of that couple's children. Beginning with the oldest child of that couple, I then chart that child's eventual marriage and children, then do the same for the next generation in that line, then the next generation, until I've reached the present time.

Once I've taken that long slide down to the present—or for as far as I can keep going—I rewind the process for the second-born child, then third. Eventually, all lines of descent for all John Carter's children will be documented in like manner in my family tree—at least those for whom documentation is available.

As we have already seen in this case of John Carter's family, some of those early discoveries were buried in court records for extended family members, whether parents of in-laws, or half siblings, or others who felt they righteously had a slight which only the court system could right.

Sometimes, this process simply can go no farther than court records can guide us. That realization may seem discouraging, considering the war-torn history of Virginia, home to this Carter family for generations, but I'm actually looking forward to checking the numbers when I do my biweekly count this weekend. I think seeing the numbers will be encouraging.

Then, too, the estimate via ThruLines calculations of my DNA matches linked to this Carter line will undoubtedly change as I add more names to this line of descent on my tree at Ancestry.com. After all, ThruLines is not only based on DNA results, but is partially guided by other subscribers' information on their tree. But in which way, I'm not yet sure.

Keep in mind: mistaken input, mistaken output. And yet, with so many people opting to use the old Carter genealogy book compiled by Joseph Lyon Miller in 1912 to build their tree—declaring Elizabeth Armistead, but not Sarah Kenyon, as wife of John Carter—I may actually see my number of Carter ThruLines matches drop. (I revised my tree to follow the argument in the George Harrison Sanford King paper which supports that Sarah Kenyon was mother of at least John Carter's first four children.) With all these adjustments and additions, both my biweekly count and the ThruLines count will be something to watch as we close in on the end of this month's research goals. 

When (Half) Siblings Squabble

 

"Long ago and far away" may sound more like lyrics for a 1970s love song, but right now in real life, that's my problem as I research the children of my fifth great-grandfather John Carter. Apparently, the passage of centuries—not to mention wars and courthouse fires—can make vital documents disappear.

While John Carter and his family may irk us with nagging questions—such as the true identity of his wives—absence of explanations or even documents in such sources as marriage records or wills is not always the roadblock at the end of the research tunnel. If we are fortunate, those half-siblings of different mothers may grow up to see their squabbles grow to full force and erupt in a subsequent generation.

Much as I had discovered last summer when researching my mother-in-law's Rinehart ancestors in Ohio, the disposition of property, or even how a will was drawn up, may spark a smoldering anger that takes years to burst into a flaming legal battle. Though unfortunate for family peace, the resulting court records may clearly draw the lines between the children of one mother and those of the other.

In reading the research report of John Carter's family by one genealogist, fellow of the American Society of Genealogists George Harrison Sanford King, I spotted word of such a possible legal battle. After listing the names of each of John Carter's children, this researcher mentioned,

Several long and tedious suits arose in the chancery courts over the estate of Robert Carter...and several of these reached the Fredericksburg District Court where the voluminous papers are now filed.

A list of the several case names were then provided:

File #139: Hamilton versus Samuel

File #144: Hamilton versus Sutton

File #194: Marshall versus Samuel

File #195: Marshall versus Garnett 

The best detail about this King report is his observation that "these papers clearly separate the two sets of children." Granted, since the suits involved Robert Carter, son of John Carter and his final wife Hannah Chew, the separation was between the specific children of Hannah Chew and all other children as half-siblings, so there is still the question of whether there was one other wife or two. But at least one subset of the Carter children was now clearly identified by their mother.

Discovering this new set of court papers requires us to look further into that realm of blurry copies of handwritten reports, in the hopes that it will lead to more clarifying information. In this trek through those legal records, I am thankfully not alone. Just as I had mulled over what could be found on John Carter's family two years ago, fellow genea-blogger Patrick Jones had also done so, two years ago. In his case, access to what he calls "extensive files" in the Virginia chancery records sheds light on his branch of the Carter line.

Just as Patrick had stumbled upon documents regarding the woman who was likely the true first wife of John Carter, reaching even farther down the related lines of John Carter's extended family may provide us the answers to the questions those original documents had prompted. Just as family members had squabbled in court over property distributions in one generation, there are surely more such disputes to lead us to a clearer picture of the Carter family's true composition.

 

  

 

 

 

 

Exhibit A versus Exhibit B

 

It seems an easy way out to depend on published genealogies of our ancestors, especially those whose life span stretched over that century mark crossing from United States records to colonial British North American records. Exhibit A in that case might be said to be the Joseph Lyon Miller volume, The Descendants of Capt. Thomas Carter of "Barford," Lancaster County, Virginia, published in 1912, which includes a chapter on the "Descendants of John Carter of Caroline and Spotsylvania."

That volume, as has long been noted, contains information on two wives of John Carter. All well and good, you might think—until we reach the part about wife number one being named Elizabeth Armistead. 

The last time I had focused on John Carter's family as part of my annual Twelve Most Wanted, I stumbled upon wills of extended family members which had indicated that John Carter's first wife was not named Elizabeth Armistead, but Sarah Kenyon. Yet the Miller genealogy seemed to make no reference to that possibility.

Enter Exhibit B. Thanks to some exploration at FamilySearch.org using their Full Text Search option, I stumbled upon a typewritten manuscript drawn up by genealogist George Harrison Sanford King. Among other details, this report was concerned with the identity of John Carter's first wife.

As I read through this particular manuscript, I could see George Harrison Sanford King's painstakingly careful outlay of details in support of Sarah Kenyon as John Carter's wife. Let's just say that, in the case of Exhibit A versus Exhibit B, in the first ten pages, he had me convinced—although I admit, I was already partial to that point of view, having found some of those court records, myself.

However, pages one through ten of this manuscript are only skimming the surface of the legal paperwork drawn up concerning this extended family. We've only just begun learning the full story. By page ten it's too soon to draw up a judgment regarding the wives of John Carter just yet. Besides, as the manuscript reveals—and the court records bid me to observe—things are about to become rather messy in the Carter family's story.

Cheering for the Girls' Team

 

With a goal this month to research the matrilineal descendants of my fifth great-grandfather John Carter, I'm beginning to feel like the cheerleading mom of a family large enough to field two teams for a softball tournament. Do I cheer for the boys' team? Or the girls' team?

This month, the answer—genealogically speaking—is: I'm cheering for the girls' team. 

I started out, finding what documentation I could for each of John Carter's daughters. This is not easy, considering the time frame we are working with, spanning much of the eighteenth century. I jump-started my search by selecting as my first attempt the granddaughter mentioned in John Carter's own will: Sarah Kenyon Thomas, whose mother was John's daughter Elizabeth.

Keeping in mind the risks inherent in relying on published genealogies, I nevertheless defaulted to using some of these to guide in discovering names of potential husbands for each of these female Carter descendants. Sure enough, there was a mention of Sarah Kenyon Thomas as second wife of a Virginia widower named James Frazer—this, according to genealogist John Goodwin Herndon's privately published 1951 book, The Herndons of the American Revolution.

From this union, fortunately, I found three daughters to trace, and began my long slide down to the present era, document by document, daughter by daughter. I began this next iteration by focusing first on the Frazer daughter with a sure-bet given name: Sarah Kenyon Frazer, whose own marriage and family yielded four daughters.

Onward I searched, until I reached the present time, and a daughter born in 1939. I had made it to the brink of the generations of our own memory, and was poised to uncover the identity of someone eligible to  participate in a Carter matrilineal project, should it ever become a reality.

As often happens in these attempts, that was where I ran into a matrilineal roadblock. Unfortunately, that daughter tragically died in an automobile accident as a teenager. Her only sibling: a brother.

There are some families we research which, over generations, clearly present as families of sons of sons. Thankfully, what I'm seeing of the Carter family history shows me that there were several daughters in the branches extending over several generations who may still permit us a chance at this mtDNA experiment.

At this point, to be able to launch such an experiment will still involve much preparatory work simply building and documenting each line of descent, from each of John Carter's wives forward in time to living matrilineal descendants.  

When Family Stories are Nice — but . . .

 

Family stories are nice but they usually have little to do with fact. 

~ George Harrison Sanford King 

In searching for the actual documents supporting the assertions published about my fifth great-grandfather John Carter of Spotsylvania County, Virginia, I ran across a concerning mention about resources in one oft-trusted genealogy resource, Joseph Lyon Miller's 1912 book, The Descendants of Capt. Thomas Carter of "Barford," Lancaster County, Virginia. Within the book's sketch about John Carter, sources credited included two manuscripts drawn up by one of John Carter's grandsons, one in 1845, the other in 1858. The grandson, in turn, owed the authority of his statements to his "mother, a daughter of Capt. Carter, and of an old uncle of his...who said that he had served in the Revolution with Capt. Carter."

Obviously, those of us who are serious about pursuing our family's history know to rely on the documents that support assertions. Family stories can lead us to the records, but they can never become the sole substitute for such support.

In researching the Carter roots which connect me with dozens of DNA matches, I've noticed that some of those stories in the Miller publication don't line up with documents I've subsequently found—the question of John Carter's wives being a prime example. However, it is apparent that I am not the first to have found the book's assertions questionable. As I mentioned yesterday, one respected genealogist of a previous generation had written extensively about the Carter family: George Harrison Sanford King.

Thanks to use of the Full Text Search capabilities at FamilySearch.org, I stumbled upon the digitized King manuscripts—a voluminous collection specializing in the histories of early Virginia residents. Not knowing who Mr. King was and upon what basis he had gained such widespread recognition, I decided to take time to learn about this researcher.

While it was one article mentioning the quote above which instantly endeared him to me, there were other notable accomplishments attributed to this genealogist, who died in 1985. As a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists, Mr. King was posthumously inducted into the National Genealogy Hall of Fame in 2019. A card index of his more than one hundred thousand papers is kept at the Virginia Historical Society, and both the card index and the actual papers themselves have been digitized and are available at FamilySearch.org. 

Just taking a look at one index of the subjects and surnames covered in Mr. King's scholarship, drawn up as a finding aid at University of Mary Washington in his lifelong home in Fredericksburg, gives an inkling of the prolific magnitude of his life's work.

For one thing, I felt vindicated when I discovered the Carter article among the King papers at FamilySearch.org. It was clear that at least this researcher was quite aware that one of John Carter's wives was named Sarah Kenyon.

The beauty of discovering this researcher's work, though, comes in the fact that his writing becomes the road map to lead Carter researchers to the many legal records involving this extended family over decades—some records which apparently have been hard to find. But that, as it turns out, was one of George Harrison Sanford King's strong suits: he was known to specialize in complex family relationships among historic Virginia families, especially reconstructing histories in "burned counties" through other sources of documentation.

In looking at the King report about the Carter family—a typewritten document I've just begun scouring—it's apparent that he has noted several legal proceedings among family members which may help spell out the construction of that extended family for us. Keeping in mind my goal to find the names and dates for John Carter's wives—and each wife's specific children—this exploration may help speed the process. 

Stuck in the Murky Middle Again

 

There is a familiar pattern that appears every time I launch into new research waters. I dive in to the work, sinking deep into the middle. Surrounded by piles of documentation, the sheer number of files I still need to read seems to drown out the daylight. Right at the start, before I even know it yet, I'm stuck in the murky middle. Again.

When it seems there's no light to guide me—not even that ominous light at the end of the tunnel—by now I know to just keep plugging. So it wasn't dismaying this weekend when I pulled up my DNA matches and discovered that my seventeen suggested John Carter matches among my DNA cousins at Ancestry's ThruLines tool seem to connect through lines of descent that, well, wobble more than I'd like. Things are still murky; I can wait until that shaft of explanatory daylight makes its way through the thickness.

Not to be undone in numbers, those fifty nine DNA matches attributed to John Carter's last wife, my fifth great-grandmother Hannah Chew, have also kept me stymied. Most of them descend, as I do, from Hannah's daughter, Margaret Chew Carter. But do you think the Carters were aiming to keep things simple when they named that daughter? Of course not; papa John Carter had already named another daughter by that same first name, Margaret. Granted, she was daughter of a different wife—whoever that woman turns out to be—but that fact has seemed to evade detection by several family historians, including those who are my DNA matches.

When I face such research conundrums, I've learned that to conquer the murkiness, I first have to research my way through that messy middle. It will take wading through pages and pages of court records to organize them into categories, and by relatives, before I can comprehend how the pieces of the family story fit together. 

I admit: actually finding the records necessary for this sifting process can be headache job number one. For that heavy lifting—at least, as soon as I have reliable names, dates, and locations—I head first to FamilySearch's Full Text Search. After wandering through some wills and deeds for a few Carter family members—mostly men, not helping my goal to search for the daughters—the Full Text Search led me to a paper written by a fellow of the American Society of Genealogists. 

This typewritten report from the 1960s, though admittedly long past the 1700s of John Carter's lifetime, referred to several court records which I am keen to inspect. Yes, here comes more of the murky middle, as I pull up digitized copies of those records which haven't been lost to courthouse fires and other catastrophes, but as each document gets placed in its logical order in the timeline of the Carter pedigree, I'll hopefully begin to see a glint of that far-off light.

The Family Genealogists Meet

 

There is likely no one else in the world other than those of us who care about our family history who can say that news about a distant cousin would have an impact on us. How many people even know who their third cousins are—let alone meet them? And yet, earlier this week, my mother's cousin called to tell me that her third cousin had just died, and I not only knew exactly who she meant, but felt a sadness over the loss. After all, I had met this third cousin before.

Perhaps this sense of connection is for those of us who also know where our families once lived. Those of us who know the story of our ancestors, the key features of their lives, may relate to this feeling more closely. After all, this distant cousin of mine still lived in the same small town where his second great-grandfather—my third great-grandfather—had settled shortly after his marriage. The family has lived there for a long, long time.

I had met this cousin, thanks to an introduction by my mother's cousin, who made it a point to keep in touch with the descendants of those original settlers. I had asked for that introduction, and afterwards, I was so glad I did. Walking the land where those ancestors lived and farmed is an experience I can't match in words. I guess that's why people value what's meant by the term "heritage."

Mulling over that phone call this week sparked many other thoughts. I realized we live in an age in which we have the ability to reach out to those who were previously mere strangers but whom we now realize are family. Granted, there is an element of relationship required before we can bestow that term "family" upon those we've never met before, but that relationship can grow more quickly than we'd assume. Meeting this cousin for the first time, spending hours talking about the people important in his branch of the family, sharing what we knew about those who have gone on before—that becomes fertile soil for growing that family relationship with yet another cousin whom we'd never known before.

While I'll miss being able to visit this distant cousin in his hometown again—and certainly his treasury of family anecdotes and insights—the thoughts his passing sparked make me realize how blessed we are to be able to reach out and connect with those strangers who are willing to explore the "familyness" of our relationship.  

Not All Daughters Lead to Matrilines

 

It seemed like such a straightforward, streamlined solution: to determine which of John Carter's children belonged to which of his wives, start with the daughters. Then, since my fifth great-grandfather John Carter lived and died in Virginia in the 1700s, trace the descendancy of his many daughters, seeking to focus specifically on the daughters' daughters' daughters, on down to the present time, at which point we could find willing Carter descendants of those matrilines to take a mitochondrial DNA test and help us compare results.

There's a problem with such an approach. Yes, of course, there is that one issue of finding eligible descendants who would be willing to participate in such a DNA project. But that is not the problem which concerns me. Where I'm stuck is this: not all ancestral daughters would eventually lead to matrilines. Somewhere in that long line of generations, John Carter's descendants could experience the exact opposite of what genetic genealogists call "daughtering out."

While I'm still stymied with actually documenting the genealogies of all of John's children, I did find one way to do a quick and dirty assessment of such a situation. I turned to the ThruLines tool at Ancestry to see whether, even at the level of fifth great-granddaughter, my autosomal DNA test could reveal genetic connections to this distant Carter ancestor.

At the level of fifth great-grandparent, that is the most distant level the ThruLines readout will extend. Sure enough, there in my results was an entry for my own DNA matches who join me in linking back to John Carter. 

There were seventeen of those Carter DNA matches. The closest of them shared a puny nineteen centiMorgans with me—an understandable amount, considering the distance of the relationship—and the smallest shared amount registered at only six cMs, hardly a measure generating confidence.

Still, my purpose was to do a quick assessment of my theory that finding matrilines direct from the current generation back to the Carter wives might be a challenge. Looking at the proposed lines according to ThruLines, here is what I found: 

• One match to Mary Beverley Carter, through her son Richard C. Stevens
• Five matches to Margaret Carter (half sister), all through her son Carter Marshall
• Six matches to Sarah Carter (half sister), four through son John Sutton, two through son Norborne Sutton

As you can see, none of those matches came strictly through a matrilineal line of descent, foiling our project's purpose. 

Looking even further, checking the ThruLines entries specifically for the wife of John Carter from whom I'm descended, Hannah Chew, there are a total of fifty nine DNA matches currently entered in this category. For one of them, Carter daughter Judith showed six matches to me, but three come through Judith's son Joseph Sutton, two from son Stephen Sutton, and one more from son John Sutton. Not even among these can I find lines of descent from any of John Carter's granddaughters. I, myself, am such an example, as the matriline leading from Hannah Chew to me stops with my second great-grandfather, Thomas Taliaferro Broyles.

In a general exploration of all of John Carter's grandchildren, I spotted further problems from documentation. Some daughters did have daughters of their own—but of those I've found so far, some died young, or, having survived and married, had only sons. I did find one daughter who had a daughter—but I find no record that she even married, let alone had daughters of her own.

Granted, ThruLines relies on the trees of those who tested their DNA at Ancestry. There can be mistakes. But even the old published genealogies some people rely on contain errors, too. Seeking actual documentation, as we've already discovered, can reveal details not included in some genealogies.

To complicate matters, researching ancestors from the 1700s is far easier when we are looking for ancestral grandfathers than when we are looking for their wives. Women from earlier centuries seemed almost invisible, adding this one challenge to our quest to trace the matrilineal descent of John Carter's wives. Still, if someone doesn't build the tree, we'll never arrive at the answer we're seeking.

Finding Daughters of Daughters

 

Problem: how to find whatever became of daughters when looking at the descendants of a colonial Virginia ancestor. That's the task I'll be facing this month when I ask that very question regarding my fifth great-grandfather John Carter.

More to the point: I'll specifically be looking for daughters of John Carter's daughters. Beyond that point, I'll extend the search to those granddaughters' daughters, and then some.

If you sense a matriline pursuit here, you are on to what my goal will be for this month. The problem is, first, determining just how many wives John Carter actually had. If you look at a privately-published genealogy book written by the husband of one of my distant cousins (also a Carter descendant by virtue of John's daughter Margaret Chew Carter, wife of Zachariah Taliaferro), you'd read that there were two wives: Elizabeth Armistead and Hannah Chew. Another published genealogy asserted the same.

There are other documented indications suggesting that the spousal count was actually three. That, as it turned out, was one of the questions I grappled with the last time I dug into the Carter family history in 2024. The mentions of grandchildren in some key extended family members' wills points to a third wife, who also had a daughter. But which daughters belonged to which mother? Records from that time period in the 1700s are scarce.

There is, of course, a modern research tool now available to us, especially suited for use in specific questions such as mine. If we want to determine which Carter children belonged to which of John Carter's wives, we can simply follow the genetic record. But which genetic record becomes key.

In a case like mine, where John Carter was my fifth great-grandfather, it would be difficult to isolate a genetic segment of reasonable size and confirm that that strand was specifically inherited from that ancestor—and shared with distant cousins in my own generation. Worse—as is the case with one Carter descendant I know—the relationship could be more distant than even my own, hampering the use of autosomal DNA testing even further.

There are other DNA tests with a more powerful reach, of course, and they are beginning to come into play in questions such as that of our John Carter. When I last explored questions about John Carter's line two years ago, I mentioned one study using Y-DNA to examine his own relationship to other Carter men in colonial Virginia. This study I became aware of, thanks to that Carter descendant I just mentioned, Patrick Jones, who included findings about this Carter family in his blog, Frequent Traveler Ancestry.

Thanks to Patrick's discovery of wills and legal documents on this Carter family, it has become quite clear that there was a wife whose name had not been included in those old Carter genealogies. And with the apparent question concerning which Carter descendants belonged to which of John Carter's wives, there is another powerful DNA test which can be called into play: the mitochondrial DNA test (mtDNA). 

In a post last August, Patrick outlined the possibility for such a project, and shared an example of a similar study which was reported in the Spring 2024 edition of the Journal of Genetic Genealogy.

In order to explore use of such a test project for our research question, it would require willing subjects who could claim one specific line of descent: a daughter of a daughter of a daughter reaching back to John Carter's wives. Proposing specific matrilines through documentation would be a first step in isolating possible project participants. Though piecing together that sort of pedigree may prove difficult, I certainly would like to see such a study become a reality.

Launching into January Research

 

Now that we've outlined research plans for 2026, it's time to launch into our January focus. Selected for the first of my Twelve Most Wanted for this year is an ancestor with an admittedly plain name: John Carter. Fortunately, there are additional details to help fix him within time and place. My fifth great-grandfather was born in the early 1700s in colonial Virginia and died there about 1783. Fortunately he left, as a family history road map, a will—and, thankfully, a codicil in 1783, adding baby of the family Elizabeth Matilda Carter to her father's written wishes, as well as helping pinpoint his own actual date of death.

Admittedly, I haven't done much family history research on this particular ancestor. I last explored his relationship two years ago, when I was seeking further information on his daughter, Margaret Chew Carter, wife of Zachariah Taliaferro. As it turned out, there were plenty of errors out there in printed material to lead even those with the best of intentions astray. And it also became apparent that Margaret had multiple siblings, especially sisters, thanks to her father's three marriages.

The fact that my fourth great-grandmother, John's daughter Margaret Chew Carter, had so many sisters may turn out to be helpful in solving a research problem: determining which line of descent leads to which of John Carter's wives. For such a question, I've already gotten a jump on this January research project by building out the collateral lines of this Carter family, specifically seeking to document the daughters of these Carter daughters. We'll explore how this may be helpful as we delve into more detail about John Carter in tomorrow's post.

May as Well Make it a Couple

 

We're wrapping up the last selection of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026 as we close out on the traditional celebration of Epiphany, the last of the twelve days of Christmas. Most people have long since returned to work and the routine of their daily schedule, but focusing on these twelve days has always been my way to enjoy the Christmas holiday just a little bit longer each year.

For this last selection of my Twelve Most Wanted, I decided to close out the year with the wife of the previous month's selection. I'll be focusing on researching Franciszek Jankowski in November, so in the following month, we'll step over to research his wife, Franciszka Olejniczak. Each of these two ancestors were among my father's eight Polish great-grandparents.

Not that my father had known any of his great-grandparents. Although he did know their daughter Marianna, who was my father's maternal grandmother, as an immigrant to New York City, she most likely didn't speak much English. I do have one photo of the family, which I suspect included Marianna, but that family's decision to keep mum about their roots has hampered my generation's ability to truly know about the family's past.

Marianna's mother, Franciszka, was a woman she never saw again after her departure for a strange New World. That last moment together happened early in 1889. 

That was only the first of goodbyes. In 1907, Franciszka's second daughter left for New York, as well, taking a second set of grandchildren with her. As far as I can tell, a third daughter remained in Poland, marrying and raising a large family—if, that is, those children survived the harsh conditions that seemed to claim the life of so many children in that rural area of the country.

Hopefully, in exploring Franciszka's story, we'll discover what became of that third daughter and her family. In addition, thanks to the marriage record I had mentioned yesterday, we have a head start in learning the names of Franciszka's parents, allowing us the possibility of learning more about Franciszka's own siblings and their collateral lines. Of course, if we can push back another generation before that point, it will certainly be an added bonus for this last of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026—but we'll have to wait until December to find out how much we can learn about Franciszka Olejniczak this time around.

Revisiting Family Lines

 

Some ancestors need more attention than others. In the case of selecting three of my father's ancestors for my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026, it turns out there was more than one neglected Polish line. Of my dad's eight great-grandparents, I had only spent one month out of the past six years focusing on his maternal grandmother's father—and that was back in 2021. It's about time I revisit that line in the family tree.

This ancestor, born about 1829 in what used to be the country of Prussia, was listed in his marriage record as "Franciscum" Jankowski. That was from a record in Latin. As far as his family, friends, and neighbors went, I'm sure it was more likely that he was called Franciszek. But since government records kept during that time period would have been in German, we'll need to keep an eye out for the name Franz Jankowski, as well.

Thanks to his marriage record, I already have one document naming his parents. In addition, I've already found records naming three children. One, of course, was my own great-grandmother Marianna, who left her homeland for New York City along with her three young children when her husband sent word bidding her to come join him in his new home. Franciszek's second daughter followed a similar path after her own marriage—only in her case, the immigration route led her to upstate New York to settle near Buffalo. For a third daughter of Franciszek, I can find Polish records of her marriage, and documents naming several children, but at that point in the years leading up to the first World War, the trail of Polish records disappeared.

In the years since I last worked on the Jankowski family line, there have surely been more recent records added to sources such as the Polish websites I now frequent. It's time to revisit those foreign resources, check for each of Franciszek's grandchildren by name, and delve into those collateral lines.

The main goal here is to seek DNA cousins whose ancestry shares this same Jankowski root. In addition to that, since I have the names of Franciszek's parents, I'm hoping to see whether I can push back that line yet another generation. If nothing else, I'd like to explore records for possibilities of his own siblings and their lines of descent, as well.

It often seems as if finding one piece of information becomes the key to open another door in these Polish brick walls, so I want to press through in any available direction. After all, Franciszek spent a good portion of his life raising his family in that same Polish village I researched last fall, Żerków, so the record set availability has become more familiar to me. I'm looking forward to expanding this Jankowski branch of the family quite a bit more this coming November as part of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026.

Taking Inventory

 

Looking into the new year, I decided it was time to take inventory on my research progress before making plans for upcoming projects. Much as I had done when I began making selections for the three ancestors from my father-in-law's Irish lines for my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026, as we move into plans for my own paternal ancestors for the last quarter of the year, I thought I'd follow suit with a tally of results for my Polish ancestors.

There is a reason for keeping track of such selections. I tend to lean toward those ancestors who keep me chomping at the bit to continue working on the same line. These are the ancestors for whom ample records keep luring me onward—meanwhile, sucking up all the available research time in my calendar while other branches lie dormant. I want to ensure that no branch is left neglected—especially those brick wall ancestors.

So once again, I drew up a list of the eight great-grandparents, this time from my father's side of the family tree. Fortunately, in some cases, I had broken beyond that generation to find parents' names, but in those cases, I just tallied the parents in the category for that specific paternal great-grandparent.

As had happened when I examined my father-in-law's eight greats, I saw that some lines were weighted with more attention than others. And, just as with my father-in-law's results, there was one of my father's great-grandparents whom I hadn't researched at all.

That glaring exception will become the tenth of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026. That featured relative will be Susanna Radomska, wife of the brick wall ancestor on my dad's patriline, Jan Puchała. Though I am stumped with her husband's line, learning more about Susanna herself may provide some clues about how she met her future husband. We'll examine what we can find about her parents' identity as well as the names of her siblings, so that we can trace collateral lines for DNA purposes, too.

With this research plan for next October, we will move from researching my father-in-law's ancestors in Ireland to puzzling over Polish records for the last three months of the year.

Just as planning for this new year's Twelve Most Wanted works better by taking inventory of research objectives to find the neglected branches of the family tree, today also marks another type of inventory: my biweekly count. Granted, the past two weeks have been filled with holiday activities—not to mention some needed rest and relaxation with family—but I was able to complete some work wrapping up last December's goal, and slip into the new month's project.

Between those two activities, I managed to add eighty more documented names to my family tree, so we will start 2026 with a tree filled with 40,824 individuals. And thanks to those newsy inserts arriving with Christmas cards last month, I was able to add six more names to my in-laws' family tree, where the count is now at 41,737 relatives.

I anticipate the biweekly count will jump back to more usual parameters as we move past the holidays and I launch into January's research focus. But before we do so, there are two more ancestors I need to line up for this year's Twelve Most Wanted.

Finding Family, the Next Generation

 

When it comes to finding family to research, pressing backwards in time to the next generation gets harder and harder. Couple that dilemma with research in locations such as Ireland, and the lack of available records can bring research to a standstill.

Still, as I push through my Twelve Most Wanted for each year, microscopic breakthroughs do happen—occasionally. Even that sense of "getting closer" to a breakthrough is enough to encourage a researcher to press onward.

As I select the last of my three ancestors from my father-in-law's line for research in 2026, I was actually torn between two family lines. Each of these lines represents ancestors for whom I may actually identify the next generation. One choice was the line of my father-in-law's great-grandmother Margaret Flannery from County Tipperary, Ireland. The other choice was his Falvey line from County Kerry.

While I worked on each of these family lines as selections for last year's Twelve Most Wanted, it was on the Falvey line that I experienced more success, tentatively identifying the parents of his great-grandmother Johanna Falvey. 

I say "tentatively" because I'm not quite confident about the records I've found, and whether I haven't simply stumbled upon what might turn out to be name twins. So this coming September, I'll name Johanna's tentative parents, Patrick Falvey and Anne Fleming, as my selection for the ninth of this year's Twelve Most Wanted.

This task will involve three aspects. One will be to scour available records in Ireland, where Johanna was born, raised, and married in County Kerry. The second approach will be to examine all possible DNA matches linked to this Falvey line—especially since I see many more added to the list since I last visited this research question in 2025. And—spoiler alert—since several of those matches currently live in either Australia or New Zealand, I'll explore what can be learned in general about family history research in those two countries, especially as it regards immigrant records.

With this bulging to-do list for September's research project, we'll be quite busy, indeed. Though the task will be international in scope, it will all point back to one small location in Ireland, where the Falvey family once called a rural townland in County Kerry their home. 

Maybe This will be the Year

 

At the dawning of a new year, do you ever get the feeling that maybe, just maybe, this will be the year? Sometimes, that is the case with me, but not this year. When I look through my Twelve Most Wanted for each of the past six years, I see some remaining on my list who have tenaciously clung to that "most recalcitrant" category. They refuse to be found.

Among such a list for my father-in-law's ancestors is his great-grandmother Anna Flanagan. With a compelling story—and the saved ephemera to support it—she is one ancestor who stubbornly resists being put in her place, at least in the family tree.

Since Anna Flanagan's place is on my father-in-law's matriline, how I wish he were still alive to participate in DNA testing. A mitochondrial DNA test could at least provide guidance in this quest to isolate the right Flanagan family back in County Limerick. There is, however, hope that autosomal DNA testing can provide some guidance regarding this woman who was second great-grandmother to my husband—and at least one current DNA match who is a direct descendant of a Flanagan line.

Last year has been the only time I've tried to tackle this Flanagan line. Despite that attempt, I wasn't able to resolve the question of who Anna's parents and siblings might have been—other than her unmarried brother who also migrated to Chicago as she did. However, improvement in analytical tools coupled with possible expanded record availability back in Ireland may provide the tipping point to finally enable me to find the right place in the family tree for Anna Flanagan this coming August, as the eighth of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026.

Targeting Those who Escaped Detection

 

It's a new year, once again. While most people spend this brand new day with forward-looking thoughts, instead, I took some time for a retrospective approach. In selecting yet another year's Twelve Most Wanted to research for 2026, I wanted to target the ancestors who somehow escaped detection in past years so I can focus on them in the coming year.

Not only is today a day we celebrate as New Year's Day, but for my Twelve Most Wanted, today is the day I shift from selecting ancestors from my mother-in-law's line to finding which ancestors from my father-in-law's family need attention.

To do this, I drew up a list, not by date but by each ancestor's identity. For each of my father-in-law's eight great-grandparents, I noted the date for which I had selected that ancestor as my focus for the Twelve Most Wanted research schedule, all the way back to the first year I had initiated this process.

For instance, beginning with my father-in-law's patriline, I noted that I had worked on John Stevens in August of 2022. I tangentially researched that line once again the next month while researching John's second wife, Eliza Murdock. And in July of 2024, I once again poked and prodded around records for John's potential brother, Hugh Stevens. Still, no headway gained.

I repeated this inventory process for the remaining seven of my father-in-law's eight greats. Each one had two or three entries among each year's Twelve Most Wanted along the route from July of 2020 through the completion of last summer—all, that is, except for one. That one lone ancestor lacking in-depth research as one of my Twelve Most Wanted was John Kelly, my father-in-law's paternal grandmother's own father.

Oh, groan, as a good friend of mine used to say. Looking for someone named John Kelly in Ireland? Why not try launching a needle into a large haystack and see what can be found? With one of the most common surnames in Ireland, coupled with one of the most popular given names for Ireland's sons, this quest of seeking John Kelly's roots is surely doomed to failure. However, I can't not at least give it my best go.

This year, I've promised myself to make those Irish ancestors a chief focus. Though I'm still awash in doubts, I'm willing to sail in that direction and make July the month I'll focus on Irish-born American immigrant John Kelly. This time, hopefully there will be some clues over there in County Kerry, where John apparently met and married his wife, Johanna Falvey. If we never try our hand at smashing through those brick walls, we're sure to never make it to the other side.