A Match Takes Two

 

Now that I've found a reliable listing of all the surviving children of Simon Rinehart, my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather who died in Perry County, Ohio, I wondered whether DNA testing would provide any further guidance. I looked at the number of matches—one hundred at this point—and thought I'd find plenty of supporting genetic information...until I looked at the ThruLines breakdown of the lines of descent proposed at Ancestry.com. Surprise: those hundred DNA matches came through only four lines of descent. Seventy matches alone were from my mother-in-law's direct line ancestor, Simon's daughter Sarah. The few remaining others were scattered among two of her full siblings, plus one name I cannot account for. Where were the rest of the Rinehart siblings in this match list?

Granted, it takes two test-takers to make a DNA match, but we are talking about eleven children of Simon Rinehart—five from his first wife and six from his second wife. Aren't there any other descendants from among this eligible group who have tested their DNA?

And where does this other mystery sibling come into play in the ThruLines list at Ancestry.com? Listed as "Reason" or "Resin," this supposed child of Simon was apparently a son, not a daughter, judging from the ThruLines diagrams. While the shared genetic material is admittedly small, the seven proposed matches from this line mostly share only one segment.

The problem may come from one dismaying fact: Simon Rinehart was apparently a popular namesake, back in our Simon's hometown in Greene County, Pennsylvania. He was surely named after an older relative from among the county's pioneer settlers. I imagine we will need to stick very close to both the paper trail and the genetic confirmation in working on this Simon Rinehart's lines, in case we confuse him for a cousin by the same name.

On the other hand, I sure wish more of our Simon's descendants from the list confirmed in the Perry County court case would test their DNA. It might help me trace the rest of those others from that list—some of whom are already proving hard to document in any resources other than the court records themselves.

"Start With What You Know"

 

As we work our way through this month's research problem—confirming the family members directly related to Simon Rinehart of Perry County, Ohio—it would be good to stick with the genealogical principle, "Start with what you know." Now that I've discovered the complaints filed in court by Simon's older children from his first wife, I've learned that there is a lot about this Rinehart family that I don't yet know. No problem; those first steps still need to start with familiar territory.

What I know the best about this family is the name of Simon's daughter Sarah, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother, who had married James Gordon. Even so, I had struggled to find much detail on her life's story. I know from her entry in the 1850 census in Ohio that despite having a father born in Pennsylvania, Sarah herself was born in Kentucky. There is obviously a lot more to her story than I've been able to uncover so far.

That 1850 census also revealed a few other details. One was that, by then, Sarah had reported her age to be fifty two, putting her date of birth just before the start of the 1800s. The other important detail was that Sarah was, by then, a widow living with four of her children, as well as a possible granddaughter.

Rewinding history for a bit to find Sarah's husband James in a census record, we find him in the same location in Perry County—Jackson Township—for the 1840 census. He wasn't in that location for long; his will, which he drew up in July of that same year, was presented in court and noted in a court entry which was, unfortunately, not dated. His headstone, however, bore the date July 15, 1840, two days after he signed his last testament.

Sarah, herself, lived another thirty six years, buried in 1876 in a different cemetery in another part of the county from her husband's final resting place. Thirteen years after that, her eldest son Basil Gordon—the only one mentioned by name in his father's will, having been appointed his executor—was buried in the same cemetery as his mother, Sarah. 

That is what I do know about this one child of Simon Rinehart, the man whose enigmatic will had unwittingly provided me with a complete readout of the names of his children from both his marriages. And that is very little. However, it is more than I had known about any of Simon's other children. One by one, we'll need to visit records for each of these descendants and see whether we can find any further information on their own lives—as well as delve deeper into Sarah's own story.

A Genealogical Scorecard

 

There's nothing like a rousing argument to clearly mark the dividing line between two sides. A court case pitting those two disputing factions can become our genealogical scorecard, when it comes to strife over inheritances. That is exactly what has been granted us when, back in the 1850s, Simon Rinehart's children contested his will.

By the time Simon drew up his will—at least, according to his older children—he was suffering the effects of failing health. Or, to put it in the words of the complaint filed on April 24, 1854 in Perry County, Ohio, Simon had been "greatly afflicted with mental weakness, the result of sickness, extreme age, and physical debility."

That complaint, thankfully for us, began with a listing of the names of Simon Rinehart's children. Even better, the document explained that some of the parties were "children by a former marriage"—and specified their names.

Thus, the meager list of descendants I had assembled prior to discovering this packet of court records suddenly more than doubled. All I had been able to find, prior to this discovery, was Simon's daughter Sarah—my mother-in-law's direct ancestor—his son Jesse, and the three daughters who lived in Simon's household in the 1850 census. 

Now, I also have verification that Simon had been married twice. Though I still don't know the name of Simon's first wife, I can align his sons Samuel and Thomas with that first marriage. In addition, I learned the name of the husbands of that first wife's daughters. Martha Rinehart married Jacob Fordyce, and as of the court case, the Fordyces still lived in Greene County, the Pennsylvania home Simon had left sometime after marrying his second wife. However, Mary Rinehart, wife of Robert Smith, now lived in Hocking County, Ohio, near her father's final home in Perry County. And Sarah Rinehart Gordon, by then a widow, was living in Perry County.

These, as the court record noted, were "children by a former marriage."

The document continued sorting Simon's progeny. The record next noted the descendants of Simon's widow, Anna. Besides his son Jesse and the three unmarried daughters still living in Simon's household—Lucinda, Charlotte, and Hannah—the document mentioned Cassa and her husband Isaac Brown, and another daughter who was also apparently widowed, Nancy Ankrom.

Lest there be any further confusion about Simon's children, the court continued: these were children of his "second and last marriage." Each child from this second marriage was noted to currently be residing in Perry County.

Now that we have this genealogical scorecard so clearly laid out for us, our next step is to see what we can find on each of these Rinehart descendants.

Signs of Familial Discontent

 

Simon Rinehart's will was presented in court in Perry County, Ohio, on March 8, 1853. The document was so sparse of details—it didn't even provide his wife's name, though he bequeathed her the entirety of his possessions—that I thought perhaps the man had taken care of such business beforehand by recording deeds concerning land transactions for his many children.

How wrong I was.

It took a bit over a year for the signs of familial discontent to surface, but in a faded entry in an appearance docket in the spring of 1854, I found my first sign of just who thought they should have been named in their father's will.

The faded entry named Samuel Rinehart, Martha Fordyce, Jacob Fordyce, Mary Smith, Robert Smith, Thomas Rinehart, and Sarah Gordon. Below that listing of names appeared the words, "heirs of Simon Rinehart, deceased."

That wasn't the end of it. That list was followed by another similarly long list of names: Anna Rinehart, Nancy Ankrom, Jesse Rinehart, Lucinda Rinehart, Charlotte Rinehart, Cassa Brown, Isaac Brown, and Hannah Rinehart. The note continued, "also heirs of said Simon Rinehart, deceased."

In between those two groupings of names was a line with the entry, "vs."

The second group of names contained the explanation, which we've already gleaned from an entry in the 1850 census, that Anna—also listed later in the document as Ann—was the widow who had not been mentioned specifically by name in Simon's will. 

Fast forward to January of 1855. In a court document signed by the publisher of a local newspaper, we can see an example of the required insertion in the paper of record, notifying that same list of people that Thomas Rinehart had filed a petition against all of them, for the purpose of demanding partition of the land of the now long deceased Simon Rinehart. And fortunately for us, the newspaper clipping provided the land's precise location: the northwest quarter of section 15, of township 15, and range 15.

That demand was to be presented at the next term of the court of common pleas in Perry County. No matter how the case was eventually resolved, this was sure to provide me far more information on the composition of Simon Rinehart's large family than I had ever expected to learn. 

Image above: Not long after Simon Rinehart's heirs contended for his property, this plat map showed the location of the land—in this 1859 map, labeled as "S. Rhinehart's Hrs"—situated somewhat to the southeast of the town of New Lexington, Ohio, on the northwest quarter of section 15 in Pike Township; map courtesy of U.S. Library of Congress, in the public domain.

To His Beloved Wife, Mrs. No-Name Rinehart

 

Why is it that some men bequeath large percentages of their possessions to their "beloved" wife without so much as mentioning her first name in the legal document granting her the man's parting tokens of love? I know it may be the 1850s we are discussing in following the last wishes of Simon Rinehart, but couldn't he have been just a tiny bit more expressive?

Simon Rinehart, my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather, had lived a good portion of his adult life in Perry County, Ohio, though he had been born in Pennsylvania. Fortunately, I had found him in the 1850 census in Pike Township, though that discovery was hard-won; the enumerator's handwriting made his surname look more like "Phinebot" than the misspelled Rhinehart it was intended to be.

Seventy-six year old Simon appeared in that household along with his sixty eight year old wife. Here, we learn that his beloved's name was Anne—or at least that's how the enumerator spelled Mrs. No-Name's given name. With a flip of the census page, we can see that three younger adult women with the same misshapen surname also lived in the household: Hannah, Lucinda, and Charlotte, all three born in Pennsylvania.

Three years later, Simon was dead.

While I'm grateful to have found the Rineharts in the 1850 census, the first enumeration to include names of each member of a household, there was apparently much I had yet to learn about this household.

Thinking that perhaps Simon had done his due diligence and, before his demise, had deeded property to any other possible family members, I decided to go looking for a more thorough legal listing.

It's a good thing the will's sparse wording prompted me to look further. As it turned out, I found no such deeds bearing Simon's name when I took my query to the FamilySearch labs' Full Text search. But what I did find more than made up for that.

Apparently, Mrs. No-Name was Simon's second wife—I won't speculate on whether the first wife was also his "beloved"—so perhaps I discovered one reason why Simon chose to move from Pennsylvania to Ohio. Evidently, a son who still lived in Greene County, Pennsylvania, as well as a married daughter there, joined forces with several others among their siblings to contest that will.

While that act may have made life difficult for Simon's three (presumed) daughters still living in his household—to say nothing of his wife—the documentation which resulted from that family rift has been most informative for me, a nosy researcher trying to piece together the family picture from a vantage point of nearly one hundred seventy five years removed.

From those documents, I gleaned the names of each of the children from the first marriage, as distinguished from those of the second marriage—in addition to Hannah, Lucinda, and Charlotte. Added bonus: those daughters who were, by 1853, already married had not only their married surnames given, but the name of each husband to whom they had been "intermarried"—if the husband were still living.

One of those daughters, in fact, had already lost her husband, a fact I knew by virtue of that line being my mother-in-law's direct line ancestor, Sarah Rinehart. Sarah's husband, James Gordon, had died in 1840, thus explaining the reason why the mention of her name in the family's court case did not include her husband's name.

That convenient listing of each surviving member of Simon Rinehart's family may have helped me compose a more accurate and complete listing of the family constellation—but it also provided me with an unexpected narrative of the family's contentious dynamics at the point at which their father's last testament was publicly revealed. 

"Uh Oh"

 

Somehow, unexpected realizations can push that grade-school response out into the open when we least plan for it. And "uh oh" was exactly what slipped out of my mouth when I took a look at one of the ancestors I hadn't worked on in years.

You know how it can go. You work on one line of the family, moving backwards in time, but perhaps attack another part of the line from an ancestral vantage point and work forward. However it happened, the end result was that my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather Simon Rinehart was born nine years before his father was.

Yes, I know that is not humanly possible. But that's what ended up in her family tree.

In my defense, there are a lot of ancestors in my mother-in-law's family with the name Simon Rinehart. It was apparently a top-ten hit for naming sons born into that extended Rinehart clan, back in Greene County, Pennsylvania. In fact, there were so many Rinehart pioneers in that region that I'm sure I'll need to rework far more than just this one Simon Rinehart's line.

But, still: a son born before his father? C'mon now. It's a good thing Simon made it to my Twelve Most Wanted list for this year. We've got a lot of work ahead of us this month.

What I do know about Simon, however, is that while he was likely born in Greene County, Pennsylvania, he died in Perry County, Ohio. And while I have yet to find his final resting place there, I have a pretty good idea of when he died: 1853. A date I gleaned from Simon's will—a simple document which barely filled a third of one page in the county's court records—the document was presented there on March 8, 1853, launching the family into a multi-year, contentious struggle over Simon's purported desire to give his entire possessions over to his wife, and no one else.  

Time for a Do-Over

 

Welcome to June, when we move on from Lydia Miller's surprise last month to the next ancestor in my Twelve Most Wanted who needs a do-over for 2025. This month, we will be reviewing my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather, Simon Rinehart.

Up until this point, I had assumed that Simon was born in Pennsylvania just before the start of the American Revolution, and that he eventually migrated to Perry County, Ohio. But the more I look over this man's entry in my mother-in-law's family tree, the less I'm certain I have all his information correct.

Prime among the goals is to seek further confirmation of Simon's parents and siblings. I hope to put FamilySearch's Full Text Search through its paces this month in hopes of finding documentation to either confirm the information I already have, or rewrite it entirely. I have my doubts about what I had previously entered on this man, and keeping in mind the surprise discoveries made in last month's ancestor hunt, it would do me well to pay attention to those hunches.

Tomorrow, we'll review what details I already have on Simon Rinehart, then zero in on the information which causes me the most angst. The main goal will be to confirm each assertion with solid sources. As the month progresses, a secondary goal will be to review the one hundred DNA matches my husband shares with Simon's descendants. A glaring clue there also reminds me that not all is correct in that line. With this month, we have our work cut out for us—but it will only be resolved if I can locate sufficient documentation to shed some light on this muddled mess.