Messy or Not, it's Time to Move on

 

Despite a messy research detour while puzzling over Lydia Miller's roots, at the end of the month, it's time to move on. My mother-in-law's second great-grandmother will have to remain a mystery for another year.

Still, there are several observations gleaned from this month's meandering research trajectory. Most helpful was the realization that my husband, the designated DNA tester for this line, had matches reaching back to ancestors bearing that same Miller surname. My goal this month was to isolate those DNA matches who, while related through a Miller line, were not connected through any of the other intermarried lines from my mother-in-law's "endogamy lite" family.

This process yielded DNA matches whose founding ancestor—at least as far as we can tell at this point—was either Jonathan Miller (of unknown parentage) or Solomon Miller, son of George. 

While I wore myself to the bone searching for ancestral connections preceding those Miller men, in retrospect, it occurred to me that perhaps seeking Miller roots might have been the wrong approach. There might have been a second way these Millers were related: through their wives. Jonathan Miller, for instance, had married Catharine Dupler. Solomon Miller, while marrying a woman whose maiden name has seen various spelling permutations—Auspaugh or Anspaugh—may actually have been the son-in-law of David Anspach of Perry County, Ohio.

If that were the case, David's sister Anna Elizabeth Anspach would actually be mother of Jonathan Miller's wife, Catharine Dupler. In other words, Catharine Dupler Miller and Malinda Anspaugh Miller would have been first cousins. The grandfather they shared in common would be Johann Adam Anspach.

Whether that means my mother-in-law shared that Anspach ancestor, I can't yet say, though it is now obvious that these two Miller wives whose descendants ever so slightly match my husband's DNA must be in the picture for future research. Finding Lydia Miller's roots will need to be an ongoing project for next year, but finding that connection through their wives, not the Miller husbands, is at least an encouraging discovery to reference the next time we return to this research puzzle.