Disappearance of the Children

 

At first glance, comparing the wills of William Ijams and his wife Elizabeth gives us two different lists of heirs. Not that the names of their children do not match between the two documents, but that the heirs listed in the later will comprise a much smaller list of family members. Why the disappearance of all those Ijams children?

When William Ijams drew up his last testament in 1734, his was a large family. William named five sons and four daughters when he filed that will in Anne Arundel County, Maryland: John, Plummer, William, Richard, Thomas, Ann, Elizabeth, Mary, and Charity.

Granted, William included so many contingencies in his will that it left me wondering whether he knew some of his sons might not outlive him—or at least not produce heirs of their own to whom they could pass their inheritance, should tragedy strike son as well as father. So when I saw the reduced list of heirs named in his wife Elizabeth's own will in 1762, I assumed that was indeed the case: tragedy surely had struck the extended Ijams family.

Not necessarily so, I'm realizing now as I rethink this list from Elizabeth's own will.

Filed in the same colonial Maryland county, Anne Arundel, Elizabeth's 1762 will mentioned only three sons: John, "Plumer," and Thomas. Of the four daughters only one was named—thankfully with her married named, Ann Williams. An additional name, Ruth Ijams, was noted to be Elizabeth's daughter-in-law, but the will did not identify which son had married Ruth, though I presume it would have been one of the three sons mentioned in Elizabeth's will.

Yet a stipulation added at the end of the document mentioned, "if any one of the rest of my children," seeming to indicate that there were indeed other surviving children. For those others, Elizabeth seemed to indicate that she felt, according to her husband's will, that those other children were not entitled to anything else.

Nor are we, the silent witnesses two centuries later, entitled to know their names, unfortunately. The rest of them may have all survived—or at least some of those descendants. But which daughters married, if any, and what their married names might have been, Elizabeth's will won't be informing us. Nor will that document explain what became of William or Richard Ijams, the two sons left out of their mother's listing.

There likely were other ways to trace those descendants, should any Ijams descendants wish to do so. Other than our curiosity regarding Elizabeth's will, I likely won't do so, either. My interest would solely be in pursuing Elizabeth's son John, who would be in my mother-in-law's direct line.

More to my point would be to push back yet another generation to see where Elizabeth might have been mentioned in the documents drawn up by her own parents.