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.