About Catharine

 

Some family stories progress predictably. From the earliest stage of boy-meets-girl to marriage, then children, then grandchildren and beyond, the history plays out in a logical manner. The family, perhaps, has lived in the same town for generations. No one died prematurely. Or changed their name without confirming it legally. The play-by-play details have been laid out publicly for all to see in retrospect, the kind of predictability appreciated by genealogists.

George and Catharine Miller were not, apparently, such a couple. At first, I was elated to discover a biographical sketch about their son Solomon which seemed to provide key details about the family's roots. Once I began reconstructing the story via documentation, though, the path to their past became a bit bumpier.

As I had mentioned yesterday, I saw that the narrative in the 1907 publication, History of Whitley County, Indiana provided three particular guiding details about Solomon and his parents:

• Solomon's parents, George and Catharine, had moved from Pennsylvania to Perry County, Ohio.
• George and Catharine were parents of ten children.
• When Solomon moved west to Indiana about 1843, he was accompanied by his wife, his daughter, and his widowed mother. 

My first clue about reliability, in tracing those details, was when I tried to follow Solomon's mother, Catharine, in records. While the published narratives mentioned that Solomon's move west was in a group of travelers including his mother, that could only be true if she had accompanied them for only a short while. In today's world, that sort of arrangement might be feasible, but when I checked the 1850 census for Catharine's name, it led me to a different indicator.

There, as predicted, in 1850 in Whitley County, Indiana, was Solomon and his family: his wife Melinda and six children, five of them born in Indiana. The one glaring omission from that growing family was the widowed mother who supposedly had made the journey westward with Solomon.

Where was Catharine? Back home in Perry County, Ohio.

Catharine's 1850 census entry showed her in a small household including two other people: seventy seven year old Catharine Humberger, and a six year old girl named Ann Boyer. Though I have yet to figure out how young Ann Boyer might have been related to the two women, we already know that Catharine Miller's maiden name was Humberger, thus leading to the conclusion that after Solomon's departure, Catharine was still living in Perry County with her own mother. Plus, in this census, Catharine was living in Thorn Township, where we had seen her before, after the 1822 death of her husband George Miller.

In fact, in Catharine Miller's appearance in the 1830 census, my hopes had been lifted by the fact that her household included two boys and a girl between the ages of ten and fifteen. The Miller child we've been pursuing this month, my mother-in-law's brick wall ancestor Lydia Miller, born in 1820, would have fit perfectly in that category. After all, the Whitley County narrative mentioned that Solomon was one of ten children. But now I'm not so sure that biographical detail was correct, either.

The reason for my doubt? Another discovery about this Catharine and who those other children in her household might have been.

Nothing is Ever Easy

 

I've said it before. I'll say it again: nothing is ever easy. In research, this limiting factor gives rise to warnings such as "don't believe everything you read" and other sayings. In the case of Solomon Miller and his parents, George Miller and Catharine Humbarger, we are about to see that sentiment played out for us. This, I discovered while congratulating myself on perhaps solving the puzzle of just where my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother Lydia Miller might have originated. It's time to think again.

Thanks to a distant DNA match to my husband who directed my attention to Solomon Miller, I had found two biographical sketches regarding this man. Looking more closely at the more detailed sketch from Whitley County, Indiana, I thought I'd use the details to point the way to Solomon's roots. 

According to the narrative in the 1907 publication, History of Whitley County, Indiana, I gleaned three particular guiding details:

• Solomon's parents, George and Catharine, had moved from Pennsylvania to Perry County, Ohio.
• George and Catharine were parents of ten children.
• When Solomon moved west to Indiana about 1843, he was accompanied by his wife, his daughter, and his widowed mother. 

As I began tracing those details, it became obvious that those three hallmark details from the Whitley County biography were not entirely correct. There were, apparently, missing parts of the story involving not only what happened after Solomon married Malinda Anspaugh, but also what happened before Solomon's own birth.

Those missing parts may turn out to embed key details of an untold story, if what I'm finding in documentation turns out to tell a fuller version of the same couple's history. George and Catharine may both, for instance, have come from Pennsylvania, but they may not have migrated at the same time. Also, between the two of them, George and Catharine may have claimed ten children, but not all from the same marriage—a detail which will take some research to not only confirm but clarify. And the widowed Catharine may not have been her son's constant companion in his journeys westward to Indiana.

Knowing that Miller was such a common surname in Ohio back then as it is today, we'll need to tread carefully through the archived details pertaining to our couple's life story. There may have been much more than what was told in that handy published biographical sketch. Then again, those details could have been a story reserved for another couple by the name of George and Catharine Miller. It's up to us to uncover the full report.

Solomon's Timeline

 

In pursuing Solomon Miller's life story as genealogists do—starting from the end, then moving toward the beginning—it might not have become immediately obvious that this man would fit into our Perry County, Ohio, Miller network. Perhaps if we had the luxury of perusing any saved letters from Solomon, sent home to family left behind as he moved to Whitley County, Indiana, we might have realized we were on the right track. At first glance, however, the Ohio connection for this Indiana settler was not evident.

In such a case, it might be helpful to lay out a timeline, from start to finish, concerning Solomon's life story. As it turns out, he did, after all, make a significant appearance in the very spot in Ohio—Perry County—which supports the connection we've been keen to discover.

The information came first from two small biographies published about the history of Whitley County, Indiana, where Solomon, son of Pennsylvanians, had settled and raised his family. Equipped with those brief narratives, it was easier to follow the trail and locate supporting documentation.

Here's a brief outline, gleaned from that material, concerning what we can find so far.

Before 1822: Solomon's parents, George Miller and Catherine Humbarger, arrive in Perry County, Ohio, from an unidentified location in Pennsylvania.

In 1822:

• George Miller dies in Perry County about April
• Solomon's future wife Malinda (Anspach?) is born June 19
• Solomon Miller is born on July 22

Skipping to the 1840s:

• June 9, 1841, Solomon marries Malinda in Perry County
• In 1842, the couple moves to Thorn Creek in Whitley County, Indiana
• Solomon's widowed mother Catherine moves with them
• A daughter named Lucinda, born in Ohio, moves with them
• Malinda's parents David and Sarah "Auspaugh" move with them

Indeed, a quick look at all the Millers in the 1840 census in Perry County revealed one household headed by a woman listed as "Katharine" Miller. Included in that household were two young men between the ages of fifteen and nineteen, one woman in her twenties, plus another woman in her forties, likely the widowed Catharine, herself. An encouraging sign, in examining the other surnames listed on that page of the 1840 census, was to see the name John Humbarger listed—possibly a close relative to the widow.

Though the biographical sketches list Solomon's wife's maiden name as Auspaugh, looking back to the handwritten marriage record in Perry County, it appears her name was rendered in one place as Anspaugh. We'll look further into Malinda's origin, as well, before the month is out. 

By the time of the 1850 census, Solomon and Malinda claimed six young ones living in their new household in Indiana. All told, the couple eventually boasted seventeen children, of which at least nine married and raised families of their own, giving us plenty of opportunities to find possible DNA matches to connect us to our goal, finding brick wall ancestor Lydia Miller's roots.

We haven't yet, however, sealed the deal on whether each Perry County Miller was connected to each other—or how. A look further back in time, however, may help provide some supporting documentation. We need to do a bit more exploration through local records.

Add Another Name to the Miller Network

 

Sometimes, we need to broaden the circle when searching for a mystery ancestor. In the case of Lydia Miller, my mother-in-law's brick wall second great-grandmother, finding the identity of her parents has been a process of building an ever-expanding network of possible Miller relatives. This week, we'll add yet another name to this Miller network, and hope it leads us closer to an answer.

One DNA match linked to my husband's line stretches back to someone possessing a given name which seemed to be favored by the other Ohio Miller families I've already been researching: Solomon. How could I not check out such a family line with a clue like that?!

There was a lot to learn about this particular Miller man. Fortunately, there were two resources which had published details on his biography. One was shared by a subscriber to Ancestry.com. The other was embedded within the biography of a man who turned out to become one of Solomon's many sons-in-law.

Both biographies, however, were published concerning the early history of Whitley County—a location in the state of Indiana, not Ohio. Fortunately, the narrative in each entry provided a trail back to the very place in Ohio where I had been left, stumped, with Lydia.

About this Solomon, he had one other detail going for him: it turns out that he apparently was born in Perry County, Ohio, the same location of Lydia's birth and first marriage.

Finding details on Solomon's parents became my next step. Each of the two biographies identified his parents as George Miller and Catharine Humbarger. Each story also included another detail: that Solomon's father had died in Ohio—in fact, three months before he was born.

Solomon, according to these resources, was born July 22, 1822, not long after Lydia was born. That his father George left Solomon an orphan at birth also meant that any other children born to George and Catharine would have been orphaned, as well.

Such a scenario also would have provided an explanation for someone like Lydia, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, disconnected from any parents or other siblings before her marriage in Perry County at a young age in 1838.

Whether Lydia was connected to Solomon and, by extension, his parents, will be challenging to confirm. We'll first need to explore what further details can be discovered on both George Miller and his widow, the former Catherine Humbarger. Then we'll need to see whether there are any additional records which can help us piece together the story of Lydia's early years in Perry County—and the rest of the story about the widowed Catherine and the possible other Miller children she may have left behind when she moved with her son to Indiana. 

Remembering

 

Today, folks in the United States observe the national holiday known as Memorial Day. Rooted in the observance once followed in the aftermath of the American Civil War as Decoration Day, when people would visit cemeteries and mark gravesites with flags and flowers, the purpose has been to honor military personnel who died in the line of duty.

Remembering those who have passed, whether in service to their country or to their own family and community, holds a special place for historians and especially genealogists. I can't, however, think of the task of remembering without having another memory come to mind, a comment I hear far too often.

That comment, coming from my relatives across the decades, has been a regret that they never thought to ask questions of their elders until it became too late. Questions which—whether simple or detailed, piercing or generic—could only be answered by the living, not those who have gone on before.

This holiday weekend, as I spend time with extended family which includes two generations younger than I am, I wonder how many of them will experience that same pang of regret in twenty or thirty years. What questions will they wish they had asked their grandparents? More to the point, what is it about all of us that we don't think to ask those questions until it is too late to receive the answer from those who matter the most?

I think, in particular, about one woman in my mother-in-law's line named Lydia Miller. Married not once but twice, matriarch to two family lines: what was her story? Is there anyone left to know the explanation of what became of her memory or even where she came from, back in the 1820s?

I think, also, of my own mother's ancestors. Some of them experienced big changes in the 1820s. The difference was that one of those relatives, back then, thought to share that family's story, which was heard, then repeated by someone in the next generation, who then shared it with her grandchildren, who then repeated it to their children. Some of that same story lives today because someone thought to tell it—and someone else thought to preserve it and deliver it to someone else who would pass it along.

Remembering is important. But we also need to realize that memories are a vapor which can vanish in a moment, if we don't pick up the refrain and sing it again through the ages, generation by generation. 

On the D N A Trail

 

Looking for a way to connect a brick wall ancestor with her parents will hopefully lead to answers through DNA testing. I've been on that DNA trail for Lydia Miller's ancestors for weeks now. While nothing positive has shown up yet, it's surprising how many possibilities lead me down different paths, all pointing to different Miller progenitors.

This coming week, we'll look at yet another family branch claiming Miller roots. In the meantime, we'll take today for another biweekly count of tree-building progress.

Tracing the lines of various Miller descendants has indeed inflated the count on my mother-in-law's tree, which contains Lydia's potential relatives, so far listed in floating branches. In the past two weeks, 255 more documented relatives have been added to that family tree. In total, the tree now contains 43,176 individuals.

In the meantime, since I took the opportunity while traveling to meet a distant cousin from my own side of the family, somehow I added one more name to that tree, too, so it's time to up that total to 41,939 relatives. Though my research generally follows a plan and schedule, sometimes life presents opportunities which simply can't be missed. I'm glad I did reach out and meet a cousin in this case.

This coming week marks the last full week of the month, and I'm hoping to be closing in on an answer concerning Lydia Miller's roots. Tomorrow, we'll start following a possible branch of this same Miller family who took a detour from the usual Ohio route to migrate to Indiana. 

Reaching Out

 

The connections we can gain from DNA testing gift us with the ability to reach out to strangers and meet them as family. This weekend, I had the opportunity to do just that. 

Most of us might have had the opportunity to meet first cousins once removed—those family connections some of us, before genealogy, might have called "second cousins." Some of us actually do know our second cousins. Beyond that, though, very few have a personal relationship with third cousins or beyond.

One member of our local genealogical society has found a way to break through that barrier—he simply reaches out to distant DNA matches, strikes up a conversation online, and eventually makes plans to meet up with them in person. We've been regaled with his stories over the past few years. Whether that has proven to inspire anyone else's action, I don't know. But when I had a chance to fly to a distant city this weekend, I couldn't bypass the opportunity: I asked a third cousin, once removed, if she would be interested in connecting in person.

On the surface, it took not much more than a twenty mile drive to a unique coffee shop halfway between our two locations—well, after a four hour flight cross country—but beneath that simplicity was months of email exchanges, comparing notes on cousins in common, placing mutual DNA matches in their correct position on the family tree we share. We are, after all, both researchers keen on uncovering our mystery ancestors.

When we realize the power of the tools we have at hand for building our family trees, it is sometimes lost on us that that same ability can draw us closer together, personally. In my case, this relative connects to my paternal grandfather's mystery Polish roots—the back story of the life of a relative I never met face to face, a man intent on keeping his ethnic origin a well-concealed secret.

This was a chance to share observations of what details we knew about family, discovering in conclusion that perhaps those ancestors simply had no desire to ever think again about the life they left behind in their choice to emigrate. Unlike, say, the Irish who could never forget the beautiful—though ravaged—homeland they left behind, the Polish in our roots left a life perhaps deemed not even deserving of remembrance. At least for our family's journey to a new world, that consideration was left by the wayside.

Granted, any such meet-up between two strangers, even those who share genetic connections, can turn up full of energy—or lacking any compulsion to continue the relationship. In our case, we could have talked for hours longer.

In retrospect, though, this was a conversation begun months ago, just a chance to move the interactions to a different venue. Thinking back to the role model of my fellow genealogy society member—someone we've dubbed everybody's cousin—that was not a bad example to follow. In this case, it was certainly worth the time to make this connection, and to hope for many more to come.  

When Favorite Names Keep Appearing

 

While seeking the right Miller ancestor for our Lydia has led us into a maze of possibilities, one DNA match who pointed us to an ancestor named Joseph Miller came with a bonus: a son whose name has appeared often in Miller households. That favorite name was Solomon. 

From the Miller families we've already examined, the given name Solomon has been part of the household of Jonathan Miller, as well as that of someone named Michael Miller. This Michael Miller happened to marry a woman whose surname—Binkley—had surfaced when I considered this Miller puzzle a year ago. I'm beginning to see the formation of a family cluster. 

Yet another Miller had the fingerprints of being part of a set of extended relatives in Perry County, Ohio. And here was this other family, also preferring to name their son by that same name, Solomon.

Seeing the selection of a specific name repeated over generations in households of the same surname, living in the same location may be telling us something. Or maybe that's just the kind of "something" that I've been hoping to listen to more closely.

This new DNA match, though, was connected to someone named Joseph Miller. There was one more problem with that: from all indications, his residence was not situated in the usual spot in Perry County. In fact, he was said to have been a long-time resident of Whitley County, Indiana.

Yet, following the trail of other researchers—especially those generous ones who share their path so that others can check out their conclusions—I discovered some helpful supporting narratives. While I have yet to find an online resource for the particular biographical sketch this researcher provided, reading the century-old narrative told me Joseph wasn't as far removed from the Perry County Millers as I might have expected.

It was worth checking out those details. First, of course, I tried replicating the search this researcher had shared on Ancestry.com, but without success. There was apparently more than one book called History of Whitley County, Indiana. I did, however find information on Joseph Miller in a similarly-named publication, embedded within a biography of someone named Benjamin Hively.

Gleaning the basics of Joseph Miller's family history may prove helpful. Using these publications as guide, we may learn more about a collateral line to the Jonathan Miller we've already been examining. If families of that era migrated in family clusters, that might indeed be helpful in sorting out the puzzle of this month's focus, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother, Lydia Miller. Whoever her parents were, they surely migrated westward to Ohio in the company of many others—likely, members of an extended Miller family. We'll take a closer look at these details next week.

Yet Another Miller

 

Among the DNA matches isolated to point solely to a Miller ancestor connected to our Lydia in Perry County, Ohio, some linked to an ancestor named Joseph Miller. A cursory glance at this Joseph Miller showed a man born in 1801. Hmmm, I thought: a year of birth close enough to perhaps link him as a brother to the Jonathan Miller we've been watching.

So much for numbers. Even if this Joseph were born in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, as we had suspected for Jonathan, he certainly didn't die in Ohio. A link in the DNA match's tree led to a Find A Grave Memorial for a man who died in Fulton County, Indiana. Not the same story as what we've seen for Lydia or Jonathan.

One tiny detail in a life story doesn't provide the full picture, of course. As it turns out, this Joseph may well have made a stop in Ohio on his way to Indiana, after all. Joseph Miller apparently married his wife, Barbara Overmyer, in none other than Perry County. Surprisingly, the entry for their wedding is displayed on the same page as that for Jonathan Miller and Catharine Dupler, occurring just one month before the other Miller ceremony, on March 18, 1824.

That was enough to beguile me into following more of Joseph Miller's story. After all, there was a promising Joseph Miller listed among those thirty five Miller heads of household listed in Perry County in the 1830 census. Perhaps this was the one.

Many Millers

 

Continuing the quest for a possible Miller father for our Lydia, we have many Millers from which to choose. And I don't mean a choice from among the many Millers resident in the state of Ohio—although the Miller surname does happen to be one of the top three surnames in that state. Back in 1830, the first census taken after Lydia was born, there were at least thirty five heads of household in Perry County, Ohio, claiming that surname.

Although it was possible that Lydia's immediate family might not have stayed in Perry County—after all, as we've already seen, some Millers came from Somerset County, Pennsylvania, and could just have kept on traveling—I'm hoping that gleaning information from this one snapshot of 1830 might give a chance at discovering members of Lydia's immediate Miller family.

In tandem with a search through the Perry County Millers of 1830, I am reviewing the rest of the DNA matches tying my husband to candidates with Miller roots. To continue this search in a way that would yield meaningful results for our search for Lydia's parents, we need to remember some details:

• The Miller DNA match must represent a line which is not intertwined with the many other surnames in Perry County which have, over the centuries, intermarried with my mother-in-law's family.
• The potential match would need to be someone who could be identified, placed within the context of a family tree, and verified by documentation—thus, no enigmatic labels replacing match names.
• The tree needs to convey a reasonable story: no wild migrations over hundreds of miles of rough terrain in a matter of days; no births to teenaged couples barely old enough to parent children; no unexplained surname changes or other fingerprints of confused identities.

I have already found six DNA matches at Ancestry who all descend from Jonathan Miller and his wife, Catharine Dupler. Since then, I've located almost as many more Miller matches satisfying my prerequisites, but who descend from a different Miller ancestor. The challenge now is to build out trees for those matches, confirm the assertions, and watch to see where the Miller nexus might occur between our Lydia and the DNA match's ancestor.

This, as you can imagine, will be a time-consuming process.... 

Supposed Siblings and Their Possible Patriarch

 

I confess: I cheated. This wearying search for possible siblings and parents of my mother-in-law's brick wall ancestor Lydia Miller has nigh worn me out. So when I spotted an Ancestry hint that perhaps Lydia's possible sibling Jonathan Miller was son of a man named Henry Miller, I decided to check it out. 

Since Jonathan was said to have been born in Pennsylvania—at least, according to his Find-A-Grave entry—it made sense to look for such a father both in Jonathan's home in Perry County, Ohio, and for his supposed home town back in Pennsylvania.

Checking the 1830 census in Perry County, Ohio, however, led me nowhere. That was the first census in which Jonathan had appeared in Ohio after his 1824 marriage to Catharine Dupler, but the significant number of Miller residents in 1830 in Perry County told me the search might be challenging. Besides, the lone Henry Miller in Perry County that year, himself a man under forty, turned out to be far too young to have been father of Jonathan, himself born in 1802.

The suggestion at Ancestry, however, was to check out a Henry Miller still residing in Pennsylvania. While on its surface, a card transcribed from Mennonite Church records, offered up as documentation of Henry Miller by Ancestry hints, seemed plausible as father of Jonathan—and thus, possibly, of our brick wall ancestry Lydia Miller.

Plausible, that is, until a closer look revealed that that Henry Miller couldn't possibly have been father of Lydia. If Lydia's own burial record contained the correct age, her date of birth would have been in 1820. Pennsylvania Henry, according to the card gleaned from Mennonite records, had died by 1812. Indeed, one Henry Miller, dying intestate in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, became subject of a court appointment of administrators late in that same year.

While this Henry might well have been father of Jonathan Miller, he certainly couldn't have filled those same shoes for Lydia. It's back to the drawing board for another hypothesis on just who Lydia's father might have been.

Six Miller Descendants

 

Six DNA tests reveal a distant cousin with a connection to a Miller ancestor from Perry County, Ohio. Each of those Miller connections shares a slight match with my husband's DNA test at Ancestry.com. But rather than leading back to Lydia Miller, my husband's direct line ancestor, each one of these matches points in a different direction: to someone named Jonathan Miller.

This Jonathan Miller, said to have been born in 1802 in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, spent most of his adult life in a different Somerset: in Perry County, Ohio. There, in 1824, he married Catharine Dupler, and began raising his family.

It was not lost on me last year as I explored possible family members related to Lydia Miller that Jonathan Miller was a close neighbor to Lydia and her first husband, William Gordon. Now, discovering that six direct line descendants of Jonathan Miller are DNA matches to my husband, a descendant of Lydia Miller, seems to confirm my hunch that those two ancestors must have been closely related. I just can't tell yet how close that relationship was.

Five of those six DNA matches claim Jonathan Miller as their fourth great-grandfather. The additional match is one generation closer, showing Jonathan as a third great-grandfather. None of the matches shares more than twelve centiMorgans of genetic material with my husband—a tiny one-segment match, indeed. 

The six matches descend from three of Jonathan's daughters. Two descend from eldest daughter Belinda Miller, two from Barbara Miller, and two from Catherine Miller.

There are three more DNA matches connected to Jonathan Miller for which I am still building out their line of descent. I suspect there will be more yet to find, as I build out Jonathan Miller's tree over multiple generations.

The obvious next question is: how is our Lydia related to Jonathan Miller? There is obviously some sort of family connection. Since Jonathan was said to have been born in 1802, and Lydia in 1820, my guess would be that the two were siblings. Despite the wide spread between those years of birth, it is not uncommon to see siblings in a large family with such a disparity in ages.

The next task, then, is to discover what can be found to confirm the identity of Jonathan's father.

Avoiding "Endogamy Lite"

 

If there is any difficulty in comparing DNA matches from my mother-in-law's family, it is that the folks claiming a heritage in Perry County, Ohio, can often be related to each other in several ways. Far more closely connected than one would expect from pedigree collapse, they are not exactly poster children for endogamy, either. That's why I like to call this scenario a case of "endogamy lite"—only about half the calories, er, connections you'd expect in any endogamous population. And in this month's research case, I need to avoid those "endogamy lite" relationships like the plague.

The beauty of these tiny DNA matches I've recently discovered is that they are isolated to only one surname matching my mother-in-law's inter-related family lines. That name is Miller. With many of our other Perry County DNA matches, a closer look almost always reveals connections to several shared surnames, making it difficult for me to answer my research question for this month concerning Lydia Miller's roots. Those multiple surnames have been intertwined into this family for generations—but not, thankfully, in the case of these newly-discovered Miller DNA matches.

This opportunity gives me a chance to view Miller connections, isolated from the other intermarried lines. So far, I've found six such matches, and I'm working on confirming three more. Unfortunately, since these are all matches found on Ancestry.com, I have no way to extract the raw data and paint the chromosomes, unless I encounter six very willing strangers who are game to allow me to deeply explore their test results—something I'm not even going to attempt.

According to one Miller collaborator I've been working with—someone, by the way, who is related to my husband through multiple family lines, thanks to "endogamy lite"—there are several more Miller DNA connections to be found on the other testing services. Another task for me to do will be to explore what this collaborator has found at those other sites.

I suspect, however, that my husband's test yields more Miller connections than does my collaborator's test. Using Ancestry.com's ProTools, I checked for shared matches between the six Miller tests I've identified and my collaborator's test. There are no matches in common. Granted, this collaborator could have inherited totally different strands of Lydia's DNA than my husband has, yet another reason to continue comparing notes.

Looking at the trees of these six Miller matches found so far is informative. We'll explore a bit more of those connections next week.

Discerning the Distance

 

There's already been a lot of exploration done on the question of Lydia Miller's parents. Just in this month, I've outlined the eight children of her second marriage to Benedict Palmer and sketched out each child's line of descent down to the current generation. Of those many descendants from that second marriage, I've yet to find any DNA matches linked to my husband's own test.

While I realize the connection would have been distant—Lydia would be my husband's third great-grandmother—it is not beyond reach. Actually, any two resultant fourth cousins could share up to 139 centiMorgans, but they could also share absolutely nothing. With the children of Lydia's second marriage being half-siblings to my mother-in-law's great-grandfather Adam Gordon, Lydia's firstborn son from her first marriage, any potential DNA matches would share even less than that amount.

There are, however, some other surprising DNA matches showing up in our results. Very small connections, hovering around ten centiMorgans, belong to people whose pedigree chart points straight back to a Miller ancestor.

While they do reach back to a Miller connection, it is unclear just how their ancestor—Jonathan Miller of Perry County, Ohio—was related to Lydia herself. One collaborator I'm working with has hypothesized that Jonathan was actually Lydia's father. Right now, I'm tending to lean towards a scenario where Lydia may have been Jonathan's much younger sister.

To test out those hypotheses may mean employing some specialized DNA tools. "What Are The Odds" (WATO) comes to mind here. Before I make that jump, though, I'll be working on a few more Miller DNA matches, as there are actually two different Miller lines showing up in my husband's matches. But the bottom line is that, for a DNA match as small as some of these connections, there may be no way to pinpoint a relationship. Just looking at, say, a ten centiMorgan match could mean seeing a third cousin or a fourth or fifth cousin—or beyond. There is no way to differentiate.

Still, to find any DNA match in our list leading back to Jonathan Miller is encouraging. In tandem, maybe they can both point us to the identity of Lydia's parents, and his, too.

Revisiting the Miller To-Do List

 

It's always a good idea to leave yourself notes about where a research task left off. Last year, I closed off my May research project—looking for the same Lydia Miller we're working on this month—with several undone items remaining on my to-do list. It's time to reopen that file and get back on track while there's still time this month to make some progress.

I had two separate files left with unfinished business. One came from a ProTools Network I had opened up on Miller neighbors mentioned in various research collections. The other came from DNA matches harvested from my husband's results which showed a connection to Millers who might possibly be related to Lydia.

The first to-do list, the names in the Miller network I had set up last year, contained three possible ancestors for Lydia. The first name, Jacob Miller, represented a possible ancestor according to Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool. With no dates suggested for this Jacob Miller, I admit it was a relief to see that the ThruLines list eventually dropped that name from the list of my husband's possible ancestors.

The second and third names in that Miller network are still ones to follow this month. One was Michael Miller, a man who died in Perry County, Ohio—home of my mother-in-law's roots—in 1896. The other candidate was Jonathan Miller, born in 1802 in Somerset, Pennsylvania, and dying in Somerset, Ohio—in that same Perry County—in 1868.

I had already begun tracing each of those two men's lines of descent last year, and I'll continue the process behind the scenes this month. Don't think that's simply because I like the dull dry routine of building family trees for strangers; it appears there may be a second type of connection which will provide more guidance in this endeavor.

That other connection comes from DNA testing. As it turns out, the connection with one of those three people mentioned earlier—Jonathan Miller, Lydia and William Gordon's neighbor—may also be borne out by DNA matches. At this point, I'm hypothesizing that Jonathan Miller and Lydia Miller may have been siblings; a second possibility might have been cousins. Either way, though, that would make a very distant relationship between any two matches related now to that family—a connection so distant that some such cousins might not show up in DNA matches at all.

The fact that there are a few DNA matches showing this promising sign helps me narrow that search to specific Miller lines as I map out the family connections. Rather than complete a full complement of all lines of descent from Jonathan Miller's family, for instance, I'll be looking at the connections with specific DNA matches who already show up in my husband's results. Hopefully, that will streamline the process enough to allow us to come to a conclusion by the end of this month. It may be possible to figure out mystery ancestor Lydia Miller's roots, after all.

Taking a Different Perspective

Staring down a longstanding research roadblock, somehow hoping this time it will reveal the answers it kept secret last time, surely doesn't work. Sometimes, the problem requires looking at it from a different perspective. Granted, I'm still stuck on Lydia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother, despite looking at her from both the perspective of her second marriage and the early years of her first marriage.

There is, however, a different approach yet to take. That attempt at problem solving I had begun last May, when mulling over the neighborly connection between another Miller family and the young family of Lydia and her first husband William Gordon.

Knowing that the Gordons had a neighbor named Jonathan Miller, last year I had used the Ancestry.com ProTools to form a "network" to examine what could be found about Jonathan Miller and his family. That was when I ran into the additional surnames I mentioned yesterday, of the Dupler marriages and the Anspach line.

Today was the time to review those notes—not only that, but to pull up what I had entered in the floating branch in my tree to add those mystery Millers as a potential connection to Lydia's own roots. From that point, I examined DNA matches among my husband's results who had any connection to the lines including those additional surnames, Dupler and Anspach.

While I am a long way from confirming any possible Miller matches, I am mapping out those several DNA matches' lines of descent from their founding Miller ancestors. Granted, each of those matches shares a tiny percentage of DNA with my husband—wobbling on unreliable, in the estimation of some experts—but I'm tracing them, just in case something does reveal itself in the examination. We'll take a closer look at the proposed connections tomorrow. 

Finding Family History's Pivot Points

 

Following a family's history seems to radiate the aura of tracking a straight line. Pedigree charts do seem to confirm that idea of a straight line: from self to parent to grandparent to greats and beyond, we're taken step by step back through history. The simplicity of that concept can be deceiving.

In Lydia Miller's case—that second great-grandmother of my mother-in-law—the relationship seemed almost close enough to reach out and touch. She seemed to have been born about 1820 in Perry County, Ohio, where she married William Gordon and gave him two sons. But an unexpected swerve in the family history road set her on a path that I—and several others descended from this woman—totally missed finding. Unbeknownst to us, we had stumbled upon a pivot point in her family history.

That was where I had lost her—until I reviewed her case this very month a year ago.

Though I had started work on "Lidia Miller" at the beginning of May last year, laying out all the details I had found on her life in Perry County, it wasn't until the twenty seventh day of that month that I asked the question, "What if that was all wrong?"

Sure enough, Lydia's marriage to Benedict Palmer had surfaced, and pointed me in a new direction. That, however, may not be the only pivot point we'll need to navigate as we complete the story of Lydia's life. Turning to the other side of her story, we may be in for surprises there, too.

I had already mapped out a few possibilities. Using the friends and neighbors concept, I had examined the likelihood of relationships with nearby Miller families, such as the Gordons' neighbor Johnathan Miller. From there, I discovered that Miller family's connection with another Perry County family, the Duplers. Then, following Johnathan Miller's will, and then the land records associated with his property, I ran across another linked surname, which originally appeared as Onsbaugh, but later morphed to Anspach.

Though I had—literally—mapped out the Miller property and examined names of neighbors back in Perry County, nothing definitive had popped up. It was at that end of the month when I hit the research pivot point: I discovered the information that Lydia had been married a second time. Adding that information to the family tree, complete with documentation, took up the last few remaining days of that month. I did my best to add all the descendants of this new Palmer family, then to trace all their descendants down to the current time. I'm now in the process of reaching out to these descendants to compare notes and collaborate on discovering Lydia's roots.

Now, a year later, I've finally completed that documentation process for the Palmer line of descent, but I can't say I've made any further discoveries. Still, it is important to keep track of the work already done, and to build on those discoveries. This calls for a revisit to the FamilySearch Full Text Search tool to see if anything further can be uncovered from documents on hand at that website.

Reviewing and Re-Reading

 

Sometimes, as I mentioned yesterday, a research proposal needs a Plan B. With Lydia Miller, my mother-in-law's brick wall second great-grandmother, we've tried our hand at looking to DNA testing, to no avail so far. It's time to review my research from last year, which means re-reading almost thirty posts on my research process recorded when I last visited the problem of finding Lydia in May of 2025.

The problem with my approach last year centered around one mistaken assumption: that Lydia had died young, at about the time she lost her first husband. It wasn't until nearly the end of last May's research project when I realized that error. Re-reading last year's posts on Lydia kept shining that glaring light in my eye, and I wince to think of all the time I lost with that limiting concept.

Still, there was much to glean from what I found last year. I'm in the process of reviewing all that exploration. The best approach now would be to recap the key points briefly, so we can launch from that position to wrap up our exploration this year.

While many details on this Miller case have changed year over year—including some assumptions originally provided in last year's ThruLines estimates, not to mention my assumption that Lydia was a young mother who died early—we'll use last year's explorations as our launching point to renew our exploration of just who Lydia's parents might have been. Tomorrow for our Miller Plan B, we'll start by laying out the main discoveries from last year's posts, so everyone can get up to speed and prepare ourselves to jump to the next step before the close of this month is upon us.

Mission (Almost) Impossible

 

After a wonderful holiday weekend—not to mention celebrating a blogiversary—it's time to get back to work, focusing on the May candidate for this year's Twelve Most Wanted. As we return to researching Lydia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother, my strategy is to look to DNA testing for some guidance. I'm hoping to find DNA matches who relate to our family solely through Lydia, not in tandem with her first husband William Gordon.

That, as it turns out, appears to be mission impossible. Well, almost. Theoretically, it is possible to locate a match who is fourth cousin to my husband, the designated testing subject. But considering the relationship will technically be fourth half-cousin, based on Lydia's second marriage, the chances of finding a match vanish to very small odds.

Keeping in mind that a DNA match is exactly that—two test-taking cousins for whom DNA segments at least overlap—the more distant the cousinship, the smaller the probability that those two cousins will share genetic material. We can see that situation impacting results beginning with third cousins. And in this Lydia Miller case, we step beyond that, not just to fourth cousins, but fourth half-cousins, cutting that probability in half. Even though some of the Palmer family descendants may have tested their DNA, on average, the matches for fourth cousin would share only 0.195% of their DNA. The probability that they share genetic material with my husband could be below fifty percent at some companies—though a better chance exists at Ancestry.com, which reports a 71% probability.

Since no Palmer descendants seem to be part of our ThruLines readout, I tried a different approach. I pulled up the "Charts and Reports" option on Ancestry's ProTools, and for Lydia Miller's entry in my tree,  I drew up a descendancy report. From that, I harvested all the surnames appearing among the five generation readout. The end result: twenty nine additional surnames to research.

With that list, I'll next do a search through all DNA matches to find those who have at least one of those surnames in their tree. Granted, searching for matches with the surname Palmer in their tree might not produce anything worth following, considering how common this surname actually is. But for others, such as Eineman, Cencebaugh, Schaadt, Burdge, or Hoenie, I may have better luck—although a search like that might take far longer than the remainder of this month to complete.

Keeping that in mind, we may need to develop Plan B for finding a solution to this research problem—not to mention, finding a way to determine the identity of Lydia's own parents.   

A Mother-Daughter Remembrance

 

On a day such as this, people will display photographs of mothers, proudly posting them on social media. Some people might even share a three or four generation photo: baby, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. Me? I never had the fortune of knowing my paternal grandparents, let alone any of my great-grandmothers.

Thankfully, I have an older cousin who is prone to unearthing family records and periodically sending them to me. In the most recent package from this cousin, I found a few photos he had sent me before. I guess I can forgive such oversight; this cousin is now well into his nineties. What's important is that he knows so much about a family whose habit in past generations was to keep quiet about their origin. This cousin is indeed the relative who, if anyone did, would know the telltale details about those long-gone (and tight-lipped) ancestors.

Sure enough, this latest package inspired me to confirm those duplicates. Double-checking with some previously-sent photos located during my spring cleaning stint earlier this month, I pulled up a picture of two women with a label which, after some reflection, seemed to be slightly off.

The subjects of the picture were barely visible in this time-ravaged photograph. Thankfully, my cousin had labeled the two women, but in thinking it over, I suspect he got it wrong. He marked the younger woman, Aunt Rose, indicating in his notes that she was standing behind her sister-in-law's seated mother. But that couldn't be, I thought; now that I think about it once again, that older woman would have to be Aunt Rose's own mother.

That's when it hit me: I've had a photograph of Anastasia Zegarska all along—and I hadn't even realized it.

Viewing the photo again meant actually seeing the picture for the first time. Suddenly, I saw the lines of my dad's face in the dim outline of Anastasia's own. The forehead, the chin, the full lips—in my father's case, put to work playing the trombone for a living during the big band era. I've seen that face before. I just never realized it came from Anastasia.

Anastasia is now long gone, tragically dying by her own hand nearly a century ago. Aunt Rose, too, was a relative I never knew personally. But I can remember them, both through the age-worn photo I've encountered of them, and seen through the faces of the family I have known.

Above photo enhanced from original (but still showing darkened condition) by edits via Claude (AI) then MyHeritage. Seated is Anna Zegarska (holding a doll) with daughter Rose standing behind her, undated but taken before 1928.

  

Wouldn't Want to Count on a Holiday

 

Tomorrow is Mother's Day. But it would also be time for my biweekly count. Who wants to count names on a holiday? So I'm checking my research progress one day early.

Working on a family tree like that of my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother Lydia Miller means finding lots of collateral lines and descendants to add to the count. In addition, I'm on the hunt to find any of Lydia's descendants from her marriage to Benedict Palmer who might also have tested their DNA 

While not as robust a count as we saw in the last two-week period, I managed to find 296 more relatives to add to the snapshot of Lydia's second family. That brings the full count for my in-laws' tree to 42,921 documented individuals.

That wasn't the only family tree I worked on this month. Behind the scenes, I've been talking with a distant cousin on my own side of the family, a DNA match on the paternal side who also happens to be a thorough researcher. Together, we've been comparing notes and assigning the right spots in the family tree for each of our shared DNA matches. In the process, I added twelve more distant cousins to my own family tree, so the count there edged up to 41,938 people.

Those numbers won't stay put at that level for long. In the case of my own family, finding an unexpected close relative through DNA testing has inspired me to work further on those close family connections. And as we work our way through the puzzle of Lydia Miller's second family, I'm sure we'll have many more relatives to add to my mother-in-law's tree, too.

What if it was All for This?

 

There are times, in the course of routine work, when we find ourselves thinking, "What if this was all for nothing?" The tedium of repeated effort may lead to discouragement—to say nothing of disillusionment. Wrestling with missing, misplaced, or mangled paperwork can add to frustration as we attempt the impossible task of piecing together a paper trail leading us to the brink of our ancestors' missing stories. Sometimes, it seems to be all for nothing.

And then, some tiny point of significance shines a positive light on the frustration.

This past weekend, I became audience to the recounting of a family tale which, given all signs assumed by prior generations, was never meant to be known.

...but then, DNA...

It was earlier this spring when I alluded to an unexpected DNA discovery concerning a close connection with an adoptee. Behind the scenes, we've been communicating, first through Ancestry.com's messaging system, then by email, then by phone calls. The connection was easy to confirm; then came the stage of personal connection, and eventually this adoptee was able to meet one birth parent, face to face.

Last Sunday, I got to hear the entire story of the parent-child reunion. For me, it invoked, as one of my husband's favorite Irish authors likes to call it, a dewey-eyed moment. There is already something about the awe-inspiring mystery of genetic connection, that in-a-flash instant sensing that this is family, no matter how unknown the "stranger" may be. But to hear that such an even-closer relationship finally consummated the connection which, but for circumstances, would have been a lifelong privilege was moving beyond words.

Just hearing about that meeting left me emotionally fragile. Mulling over the full significance for days. And wondering why the knowing of it could have such an impact, even to those removed from the immediacy of the situation.

Almost instantly, the thought came to me: what if it was all for this? The relentless effort. The struggle to circumvent that abrupt stop when tracking brick wall ancestors. The frustration of paper trails vanishing just when the most-hoped-for answer seemed almost within grasp.

Somehow, that work—all of it, even the aggravating gaps—does leave a trail for others to follow. We researchers and writers throw the crumbs of our work out there—sometimes even for fifteen years at a time—and somehow a passer-by stumbles upon these tiny bits and picks up the trail. And finds an answer that means more than we can tell. 

Maybe yes, it was all for this, after all. And on the dawn of another blogiversary, I tell myself those are the finds that make it all worthwhile to keep on searching for those answers. They may be answers for me, but they may also turn into answers for someone else out there, hoping to uncover even bigger pictures of where they fit in the human family. 

Making the End Run

 

When hitting an impasse—something in genealogy akin to a "brick wall" ancestor—it is now possible to make an end run around such research roadblocks. That, in Lydia Miller's case, is what I hope to do this month with the luxury of one tool genealogists of past centuries never had: DNA testing. 

Now that I've discovered the sizable family descended from Lydia and her second husband, Benedict Palmer, I've been watching for signs of DNA matches who claim that Palmer heritage. But finding any results has, so far, been a disappointment. Just using Ancestry.com, one of five DNA companies where my husband, Lydia's descendant, has tested, I can already see that ThruLines currently lists twenty seven DNA matches for him. However, when I look to the corresponding count for William Gordon, Lydia's first husband, the match count is that same exact number.

Just to be sure, I've checked each of those twenty seven matches to ensure that they descend from both Lydia and William. Yep, that's the case, for every one of those matches. Over the weeks, no matter how many Palmer descendants I've added to my mother-in-law's family tree, that DNA match count has remained the same. I would have presumed, if anyone from the Palmer side had tested at Ancestry, that the count would be lopsided between Lydia and William Gordon, with the high score going to Lydia on account of Palmer matches. Not so, despite adding multiple Palmers to my tree.

Of course, rather than only relying on Ancestry's ThruLines tool, I can also search for matches with the Palmer surname included in their family tree—but considering how many Palmers there are out there, that search might yield more work than it's worth. 

There are other options, too. Ancestry is only one of several testing companies, and I will be scouring the data at the other DNA companies, too. In fact, one collaborator with whom I'm already corresponding actually is a DNA match through 23andMe. There may be more at MyHeritage or Family Tree DNA, too.

Another option I am taking is to look for researchers who are already demonstrating diligence in researching the same Palmer line I'm interested in. I just found one Ancestry subscriber who has been quite consistent in uploading photographs and personally-acquired documents to his tree to share with other researchers. Getting in touch with someone like that can lead to a fruitful collaboration. You can be sure I'm also keeping an eye out for anyone like that to ask to take a DNA test—especially leading up to a holiday like this weekend's Mother's Day, filled with sales offerings from testing companies.

Next week, we'll take a look at what possibilities can be out there for piecing together a family tree through DNA—but keep in mind there are caveats, as well. Still, DNA may be the best way to clarify just who Lydia Miller actually was, and at least to confirm that Lydia Gordon of Perry County, Ohio, was one and the same as Lydia Palmer of Mercer County.

What we Still Don't Know About Lydia

 

The challenge about researching Lydia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother, is that her 1820 origin is unclear. While we do know much about Lydia and the details of her later life, the time period of her early life lies within that murky era in which women were often invisible, and pioneer families might slip through the cracks in governmental record keeping. In short, there's a lot yet to learn about Lydia—but hey, that's what this month's focus for the Twelve Most Wanted this year is all about.

Granted, Lydia would have been included in her family's appearance in census enumerations dating before 1850, but only as a tick mark within a broad age range category. Get that birthday wrong, and that unnamed female could suddenly be in the wrong slot, throwing us off the chase. But then, the question becomes: which family would we be seeking her in? Lydia would be in plenty of company with a popular surname like Miller in Ohio. We don't even know which Ohio county would have been home to this Miller family; all we know is that she married her first husband, William Gordon, in Perry County.

Even her date of birth could be called into question, except that we don't really have a primary source to rely upon; the date I'm working with—October 15, 1820—is extrapolated from the age at death given on her headstone.

Given that I've yet to locate an obituary following Lydia's 1895 death in Mercer County, I'm at a loss to even say whether her first son, Adam Gordon, kept in touch with his mom after her move across the state of Ohio with her second husband, Benedict Palmer. Considering that, I doubt that any obituary, if found, would mention any of Lydia's surviving siblings, despite their usefulness to us in pinpointing Lydia's own birth family.

With so little that has been found on the personal history of this woman, it's been a struggle to determine her parents' names. There is, however, one option available to researchers now that hadn't been part of the strategy for previous generations of family historians: DNA. Thus, genetic genealogy will become part of my strategy for discovering Lydia Miller's roots with this month's research effort. We'll consider the possibilities there, tomorrow.

What we Do Know About Lydia

 

There are several details which I can affirm are already known about Lydia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother and my focus for this month's Twelve Most Wanted. Knowing at least these few points will be helpful for pressing forward with the search for Lydia's family—but many of the details didn't quite fall into place until after discovering one major fact: that she had married twice.

"Lidia" had married William H. Gordon in the Catholic Church in Somerset, Perry County, Ohio, in April of 1838. Soon afterwards, her oldest son Adam was born, followed by another son who died in infancy. By the end of 1840, Lydia's husband William had also died.

Meanwhile, one county to the west, another man had just repeated a similar scenario. In Fairfield County, Benedict Palmer had married Catherine Hovermill in February of 1839. By March of 1840, the Palmers both welcomed their son Jerome into the world and bid a final goodbye to his young mother, only nineteen years of age at her death.

Widow and widower found each other and pledged their troth in Perry County on May 1, 1842. For whatever reason, Lydia placed her son Adam in the care of her recently-widowed mother-in-law, yet brought Benedict's son Jerome with them, as the newlyweds set up housekeeping back in Fairfield County.

By 1842, the couple's eldest son, Edward, was born. Between that point and the 1850 census, two more sons and a daughter were added to the household. By 1860, the family had moved westward, though still within the same state of Ohio. By then, Lydia had given her husband two more daughters and a son, with one more daughter yet to come in 1862.

By then, the family was settled and farming in Montezuma in Mercer County, the location where much of the family remained through the next generation, and even beyond that point. So far, I've been tracing the Palmer family's lines of descent, observing that over the generations, many of them remained in Mercer County.

That is pretty much the extent of what I do know about Lydia at this point. There is, of course, much that I don't know. We'll take an inventory tomorrow of where this family chase may lead us with the exploration yet to come through the rest of this month.

When we Last Left Lydia

 

It was May 31 just one year ago when I had to close the books on my search for Lydia Miller's parents. Lydia had been May's focus for my Twelve Most Wanted last year, simply because she had evaded detection for more years than I care to recall. But what was more difficult than simply calling off the chase for yet another year was the fact that, only days prior, I had discovered that Lydia hadn't died a young mother, after all. In fact, as a young widow, she had remarried—not only that, but she had moved to a new county on the far end of the state to become mother to eight more children.

That unexpected discovery made me wish I had found out at the beginning of the month, not the end. Behind the scenes—while I was supposed to be researching yet another brick wall ancestor—I kept building out the tree for Lydia Miller and her new family in Mercer County, Ohio.

Eventually, though, I had to set the task aside and focus on the work at hand for June, then July, then...well, you get the idea. This is one month I wished I could have kept at the research trail, but I had made myself the promise that I would keep rotating through research challenges as a principle to help keep from burning out on one information dead end.

When I had started that research goal last May, all I had was the detail that "Lidia" Miller had married William H. Gordon in 1838 in Perry County, Ohio. In a very short amount of time, she gave birth to two sons, the eldest of whom became my mother-in-law's great-grandfather, Adam Gordon.

The other major detail about Lidia—one I thought I knew, given the appearances—was that she, along with her husband and second son, had died by 1840, or at least before 1850, when her eldest son was being raised in his paternal grandmother's home.

How wrong I was. It turns out that Lydia, as a widow, had married a young widower who was then the father of one son, himself. By the time I discovered documentation verifying that turn of events, we were fast approaching the end of the month.

Despite working feverishly to trace that new family's line of descent, the month closed out long before I had done this new task justice. This month will become our chance to revisit Lydia—once Miller, then Gordon, then Palmer—and see what else we can learn about this entirely new family. Hopefully, by the end of this month, we may also look to the opposite direction to close in on the story of just whose daughter Lydia Miller was, herself.  

A Sisyphean Task

 

Truth be told, though I left the Jackson family behind at the close of last month, I still can't help but try to complete one task I like to do with each of my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors for each year: I take the collateral lines of each of these Twelve Most Wanted and research their family's line of descent down to our present time. I like to include this task, primarily to help spot possible DNA matches who have also descended from that same ancestral line. 

Now, even though we're into a new month, behind the scenes I've been trying to do so with the Jackson family. There's one problem with such a practice, once we encounter a family like this. Though admittedly, it's a rough go, trying to trace ancestors in America before the mid-1800s, the real struggle is not one of finding elusive court records. It's in dealing with the sheer numbers of this unusual family. I'm afraid I've set for myself a Sisyphean task.

Granted, most families from those earlier time periods had many children. That, in a way, was a plan for survival, given the reality of many children dying before adulthood. In the Jackson family's case, however, each of their thirteen children did live to adulthood. Not only that, but they married and, in most cases, had many children of their own. Multiplying that case by the many generations separating Lyman Jackson's era and our own generation gives pause. 

Just looking at the numbers in this Jackson case tells how impossible that task may be. For Lyman Jackson and his wife Deidama Dunham, they saw ten sons and three daughters live to adulthood, marry, and have families of their own.

Taking a hypothetical number and extrapolating out this case, I asked the AI search engine at Google just how many people I'd be researching if those thirteen Jackson children married and had thirteen children of their own, then repeated the process for another generation. 

The answer: 4,758 people in three generations, assuming all children lived a full life, married someone from outside the family, and subsequently had their own family of thirteen children.

No wonder I feel as if I never can catch up with myself.

A Little Spring Cleaning Detour

 

There is a little wood and wicker three drawer cabinet which I've repurposed to store some of my research odds and ends—you know, the notes-to-self reminders that I'll do when I get a "round tuit." Evidently, I must have recently added one file folder too many, because yesterday, it began creaking. Not long afterwards, I noticed this cabinet was doing its best to imitate the Leaning Tower of Pisa. There are many instances in which history is worthy of emulation but this was not one of them. It was time to investigate.

Among all those notes-to-self in those filled drawers, I rediscovered some records gleaned from on-site research in places that ancestors used to call home. I found records from the Fort Meade Historical Society, from the little town in Florida where my McClellan ancestors once lived, and remembered our family's visit to their museum, which displayed a dentist's chair once used by my great-grandfather. From another long-distance genealogy trip, I rediscovered a map of the Roman Catholic parish in Ireland now known as Ballina-Boher, with the townland of Tountinna highlighted in yellow to draw attention to the place where my father-in-law's Tully ancestors once lived.

There were, of course, many other slips of paper, reminding me to check on specific details of this or that ancestor. From some of my earliest research forays, there were actual photocopies of documents, items which I'll now need to scan and upload to my digitized records.

Fortunately, several of these reminders have made a timely appearance, for I've already planned to work on these family lines in upcoming months. For those notes regarding my mother's family, this is a great prompt to add those maternal ancestors to my Twelve Most Wanted list for next year. There is always more work to do on these brick wall ancestors.

Organized into groups of similar tasks, these odds and ends of notes written to myself in past years are now laid out into a work flow that will hopefully vanquish the paper piles, but at the same time, looking at each one and remembering what first sparked those reminders has been a pleasant trip down my genealogical memory lane. Research may seem tedious at times—and provide me with motivation to move on to the next task when the frustration of dead ends looms—but it is always enjoyable to look back and remember the trip from beginning puzzle to latest stopping point. Somehow, a little spring cleaning detour turns out to provide me with more energy to pick up that trail once again. 

A New Month, an Old Research Puzzle

 

For the past six years, I've made it my habit to slice and dice through the brick walls of four family trees—my maternal and paternal lines, and those of my in-laws—using a system I call my Twelve Most Wanted. For each of the first three months of the year, I select one frustratingly elusive family member of the bygone generations in my mother's line to focus on per month. For the subsequent quarter, I then move to three brick wall ancestors from my mother-in-law's family tree. The second half of each year is dedicated to the fathers: in the fall, my attention turns to my father-in-law's Irish heritage, and come wintertime, I wrestle with those hard-to-find Polish records on behalf of my own father.

One ancestor to focus on each month sometimes means great research progress. Other times, it means I need to fold up the dossier despite the unanswered questions. Come the end of the month, that can be a difficult choice to make. The only consolation is in writing up a to-do list for the next time I pick up the challenge in a new year.

So it is with this month's challenge, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother Lydia Miller who, at a young age, became the widow of William Gordon in Perry County, Ohio. While in many cases, I return to a previous Twelve Most Wanted's candidate only years afterwards, the last time I worked on Lydia, I could barely bring myself to close the case on her—even temporarily. It was exactly eleven months ago when I needed to make that choice; I could hardly get back to her story fast enough.

The main reason I've been so keen to return to Lydia's story is that, at nearly the close of the month last year, I made a breakthrough discovery—but ran out of time to fully explore the possibilities that that discovery introduced. With to-do list in hand from the end of the month's report last May, this month we'll return to (hopefully) learn the rest of Lydia Miller's story.

Not Least, and Certainly Not Last

 

The end of the month means time to wrap up April's Jackson project. One final item on the month's agenda is to mention what's been found on one remaining child among the thirteen Jackson children of Lyman and Deidama: a daughter they named Rosanna. 

While this is the last mention of the Jackson children, Rosanna was certainly not the last in order of appearance. She, being the first-born, arrived October 9, 1782, according to letters preserved by the family and recorded in The Family History of Michael Jackson. According to that genealogy, we also learn that Rosanna was married twice: first to someone named John Rudd, then after his death to Robert Morrell.

Though I had read this at the beginning of this month's project, I had quite a hard time finding any records to verify that information. Granted, I've encountered problems verifying some of the other names in the Jackson book, too, but there usually was some clue to help me piece together a more accurate version of the story. Not so in Rosanna's case.

Rosanna, having been widowed by the loss of John Rudd, remarried, but was said to have lost her second husband within a year of their 1842 marriage, according to the book. However, I was able to find a sixty-eight year old woman named Rosanna living in Erie County, Pennsylvania, with her husband, Robert Morrell, in the 1850 census. Perhaps the book meant to enter his date of death as 1853 instead of 1843.

Checking further on Rosanna, by then surnamed Morrell, I did find a woman by that name in the 1860 census. This time, Robert Morrell was not listed in the household, which was headed by Elmina van Riper, who was herself likely a widow at that point. Seeing the name Michael Jackson in the household listed next to the van Riper home, I'm presuming that Michael was Rosanna's own brother Michael—and Michael the father of Elmina, which helps assure we have located the right family group.

There is far more work that needs to be done to verify all the information on the descendants of the thirteen Jackson children. Since today marks the end of this month's project, such efforts will need to take a back seat as we move on to other projects, but that possibility of finding DNA matches connected to this Jackson line still beckons me to occasionally find a slice of time to tuck in this extra effort. For the most part, the Jackson genealogy served as a helpful trailblazer, and I'd like to complete the process for all the collateral lines listed, and attach documents to the book's assertions.

The book, itself, may have saved much work in pushing the Jackson line back another generation, for it included information on Lyman Jackson's father and grandfather, not to mention his wife's father's Dunham line as well. The work is already laid out for us when we return to work on this Jackson line from my mother-in-law's family—just waiting for the addition of some supporting documentation.

With the start of a new month, tomorrow we'll launch into another of my mother-in-law's brick wall ancestors, Lydia Miller. Last year's exploration of this line opened up much unexpected information, and I'm looking forward to connecting the dots that popped up with that discovery, now that we're moving to the fifth of this year's Twelve Most Wanted. 

Number Six for the Record

 

Among the thirteen children of Lyman and Deidama Dunham Jackson, there are two yet to review. One is the couple's eldest daughter, Rosanna, who during this entire month has kept me stumped; we'll acknowledge what still needs to be done in her case with tomorrow's post. The other—number six out of the Jackson thirteen, for the record—was John Jay Jackson, my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather.

It would do us some good to note a few details here from the Horace Mortimer Jackson book we've been using as our trailblazer, The Family History of Michael Jackson. For the record, the Jackson book noted John Jay Jackson to have been born February 7, 1792. This was likely in Otsego County, New York, where many of the Jackson children were born.

From that point, many of the expected details on John Jay's own biographical sketch were lacking. Much like the book's entry for his youngest sister, Lucy, reading the entry became a matter of filling in the blanks for myself. I'll use today's post to fill in a few of those blanks for John Jay from records I've found in recent years.

The first opportunity to fill in the blanks in the Jackson book came with John Jay's own wife's name. The book offered "Miss —— Ames." Some zealous researcher, upon seeing the error, wrote in the correct name in the copy of the subsequently digitized book: Sarah Ijams. And that was exactly the identity of John Jackson's first wife.

As to whether the couple had six children, we need, first, to sort out some details. The book stipulates that there were three daughters, two of whom were named in the sketch: Comfort and Nancy. (The third daughter merited another one of those blank lines.)

While there was a daughter named Nancy—my mother-in-law's direct line ancestor—whether the second daughter was named Comfort, I have yet to verify. The other daughter has been recorded as Elizabeth C. Jackson, who died young and unmarried in 1842. Whether the "C." stands for Comfort, I haven't been able to document. However, since John Jackson's first wife, Sarah Ijams, had migrated to Perry County, Ohio, along with her sister, whose name happened to be Comfort, named after an older relative in the Ijams line, our Elizabeth could have carried her aunt's name as her own middle name. 

And the third daughter? My guess is Rosanna, by 1840 married to Walter Mitchell.

While we might be considered generous in allowing two out of three for the book's effort at naming the daughters of John Jay Jackson, it is not quite the same case with his sons. Robert and Joseph I can find, but William as a son of John Jackson eludes me.

However, as the book noted, John married twice, the second wife, filling in the blanks, being Mary Cecelia Grate. Children of this second wife did indeed include a son named Lyman, as the book affirmed. However, three more daughters joined the family with this second marriage: Mary Cecelia, named after her mother, Caroline, and the child the couple lost at four years of age, Clarissa.

To make sure I haven't missed anything, it would help to make a thorough search for signs of that possible extra son, William. After all, a son with that name would have been his maternal grandfather's namesake. And with the book's details mentioning possible service during the Civil War, it is quite likely that such a son could have been lost in casualties.

To recap, as I've said so many times before, genealogy books can be helpful as way finders, especially now that we have the capability of checking each other's work through documentation. It's been helpful to spend this month verifying facts from the Jackson genealogy as I build out the extended tree of John Jay Jackson's twelve collateral lines. Hopefully, recording all these branches in my online tree will lead to connecting with some DNA matches, as well.

Tomorrow with the close of this month, we'll recap progress made and draw up plans for the next time we revisit this Jackson line, before we jump to next month's feature from the Twelve Most Wanted for 2026.

Drawing Blanks

 

Following the path of a genealogical trailblazer can be helpful—until that guide ends up drawing blanks. In the case of the youngest child in Lyman and Deidama Dunham Jackson's family, that is indeed what happened when we look to their youngest child. 

Using the 1906 book, The Family History of Michael Jackson, we have so far traced most of the thirteen Jackson children. In many cases, the guidance of researcher Horace Mortimer Jackson has pointed us in the right direction. Perhaps in this final case, as so often happens, the baby of the family got shorted. 

Here's what the book tells us about the thirteenth Jackson child. First of all, her name was Lucy Deidama, garnering her mother's given name as her middle name. The author gives her date of birth as February 6, 1808, and indicates that she eventually married someone named Elisha Alderman.

That is the point in the brief narrative where we start drawing blanks. Of her death, the author provides merely a line "——" for the date. No place is given, not for her death, nor for her birth.

There were, however, several children listed. Of the eight named, however, even there we find a blank: the fifth child, a daughter named Calista, was said to have married "——" Clapp. With a given name like Calista, I thought it might not be that hard to determine the first name of Mr. Clapp—until I realized that husband's last name might not even be correct.

If it hadn't been for that old familiar destination for so many of the Jackson children who decided to leave home in Pennsylvania and move westward, I might not have found any further details to round out that scant history in the Jackson genealogy. But it wasn't long before I realized Lucy's family had left Pennsylvania's Erie County for Knox County in Illinois. Elisha Alderman had decided to follow so many of his Jackson in-laws.

While the 1850 census showed only six of the possible eight Alderman children in Knox County, that was enough of a jumping off place for me to trace the family's lines of descent. I started with the name I thought would be easiest to follow: their son who was listed in the Jackson book with the unusual name of Gilderoy. From that point, I've made it down to the current century with some of that son's descendants.

Granted, that makes one line of at least eight in this uncertain readout of the children of Lyman Jackson's youngest daughter. There is much more to still untangle, especially given the blanks left in that trailblazer's guidebook. But no matter how many blanks the author inserted in his narrative, there are still enough clues to enable a twenty-first century researcher with digitized records access to piece together the full story.