This month began by listing what I had already learned about my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandfather, Lyman Jackson, in preparation to delve further into that man's family line and history as this month's selection from my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026. Starting from Lyman's birth in Connecticut in 1756, we followed him to his marriage in Vermont and the new family's migration westward, first to upstate New York, and then to Erie County, Pennsylvania.
It's been a lot of years since that time—not to mention a lot of miles—but this past weekend, I finally diagrammed one line of Lyman's descendants all the way to the current decade. Starting with Susannah Jackson Kennedy's move to Knox County, Illinois, and subsequent family lines moving to Kansas, then Nevada, and ultimately to Santa Rosa, California—site of that devastating 1906 earthquake mentioned in one family history book—I've finally finished that long slide down to the present, sticking close to each of those lines of descent.
Imagine my surprise, then, to arrive in our current century and discover that one Jackson descendant married and moved to an address in California which is an easy amble down the street and around the corner from where I currently live. That makes our neighbor my husband's fifth cousin once removed.
Granted, we have yet to meet these newfound Jackson cousins. I'm just in awe over being able to discover such a connection, not simply from a family with origins as far away as Connecticut, but as far removed as an ancestor who lived in the mid-1700s.
Before this month is over, there is still one more task to complete. Lyman and Deidama Dunham Jackson had yet another child whom we need to track. Tomorrow, we'll consider the baby of the Jackson thirteen, Lucy, the eventual wife of Elisha Alderman. With eight children mentioned in the genealogy drawn up by researcher Horace Mortimer Jackson, there's still a lot of missing verification left for us to find.
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