Catching Clues from Collateral Lines

 

If it weren't for curiosity about collateral lines—the descendants of siblings of our great-greats—there would be a lot of useful information I'd miss entirely. Now that we've set aside time to explore a sibling of my mother-in-law's Metzger ancestors, I'm gathering a few encouraging clues pointing toward answers concerning those mystery relatives who had otherwise simply seemed to disappear.

Looking at Elizabeth Metzger, the youngest sister of my mother-in-law's great-grandfather Michael Metzger, we've already seen that she was married in 1852 in the same county in which she had been born: Perry County, Ohio. Digging a bit deeper into her family life, the very next census enumeration reveals the start of her eventually-large family—which included, by 1860, her three oldest children, Vincent, Cecelia, and Raymond—but it also helped tie that same Elizabeth Metzger Clouse with another Metzger relative.

In Bernard and Elizabeth Clouse's 1860 household was a fourteen year old boy named Charles "Metzgar." While Elizabeth had no brothers by that name, I wondered whether the connection between Elizabeth and Charles might have been one of aunt and nephew. After all, Elizabeth's older brother Joseph, whom we reviewed earlier this month, had a son by that name, who would have been about that age.

Charles' circumstances, by the time of the 1860 census, might have been somewhat like that of an orphaned child whose grandparents had also died: after the loss of his mother, by 1857 Charles' father had remarried. Long before that, he had lost both Metzger grandparents. Perhaps it was perceived as better for everyone if the youngest children in Joseph's family were cared for in other households. Thus, Charles showed up in Bernard and Elizabeth Clouse's household in 1860, and his siblings Henry and Catherine were raised by Elizabeth's older sisters, Joanna and Mary Ann in their unmarried brother Gregory's household.

All those would have been details missed if it hadn't been for expanding research to include collateral lines. And since it is impossible to know, ahead of time, just which important discoveries we would have missed by bypassing those collateral lines, I make the effort to pursue the lines of all siblings of direct ancestors.

There is another reason for that relentless pursuit: connecting DNA matches to the correct ancestor. In Elizabeth's case, my husband has seven DNA matches so far with her descendants. Four of those matches descend from Elizabeth's namesake daughter, and three others from daughter Cecelia. The challenge in working with those DNA matches is that both of Elizabeth's daughters married Snider men: brothers George and Richard. Because my mother-in-law also had Snider ancestors, you can see how those DNA matches become even more tangled—all the more reason to trace those collateral lines.

Speaking of collateral lines, this Metzger family had two more sons we've yet to review. We'll turn to them next as we wrap up this month's research project.

About the Daughters

 

We've spent a month exploring what can be discovered about my mother-in-law's Metzger roots, yet not mentioning much about the daughters of immigrant ancestors Michael and Apollonia Metzger. You'd think from all this that the Metzger family was comprised solely of sons, but there were actually three daughters: Joanna, Mary Ann, and Elizabeth. Each was born in a different location, and each can be said to represent a different stage of their parents' traveling life.

Joanna, the eldest, was born about 1813, back in the Metzgers' country of origin, wherever that turns out to be. There are some records asserting that the family's homeland was in Switzerland. Some census records label the family as coming from Germany. I have yet to find any verification of the young Metzger family's passage to America, but whenever the family arrived, Joanna was with them.

Mary Ann joined the immigrant family after their arrival in America, but apparently before the Metzgers settled in Perry County, Ohio, where they eventually raised their family. Mary Ann's entry in census records alerts us to the fact that the traveling family made a stop in Pennsylvania long enough to welcome her birth at the end of 1822.

Neither Joanna nor Mary Ann married. Along with their younger siblings after their parents' death, Joanna and Mary Ann likely lived with their eldest brother Gregory on the Metzger family farm in Jackson Township of Perry County, Ohio. Each lived a fairly long life—Joanna was seventy two and Mary Ann was sixty seven at time of death—and the two were buried together at the Saint Joseph's Cemetery in Somerset, Ohio.

Unlike her older sisters, third daughter Elizabeth married and raised a large family of her own. She likely lived her entire life in the same place where she was born, despite losing her father when she was barely fifteen years of age—and her mother only a year after that. Her 1852 marriage to Bernard Clouse tied her to an immigrant who was alternately said to have been born in either Germany or France—causing me to wonder whether that might signify the oft-war torn Alsace region for both Elizabeth's husband and her parents.

With a family as large as the Clouse family, it is no surprise to see some of their descendants showing up in my husband's DNA matches. Of course, with marriage, a wife's maiden name can become lost to time, and those focusing on Metzger roots may not remember to include the married daughters from the family. However, we can't lose sight of such connections when applying DNA test results to genealogy. I'm convinced it is from those ancestral daughters that some of our many puzzling matches may arise, so I want to keep an eye on these seven DNA matches who descended from Elizabeth, with a brief check tomorrow.

Only a Genealogist Would Know

 

Only a genealogist would be the one to spot the appearance of a name in a family tree and realize it matches one from a relative over a hundred years ago. As I've been planning my Twelve Most Wanted for 2024, behind the scenes, I've been scurrying to complete a year-long project to confirm the relationships in my entire Tilson line—for those ever-present DNA matches, of course.

In the process, what should I run across but a twentieth century woman whose married name became exactly the same as my third great-grandmother's birth name from a century ago. Before she married, this more modern Rachel was a Clouse, but in marrying a Tilson, she acquired a name which has resonated in my ancestral history. What was more curious was that this Rachel Clouse also happened to be a Tilson descendant, herself, as well as a new Tilson spouse. How did that happen?

You know I couldn't resist this rabbit hole. I had to check out her husband's family history. It took rewinding his family's story for five more generations before I found the connection: my fifth great-grandparents William and Mary Marcie (Ransom) Tilson. I descend from their son Peleg and his daughter Rachel Tilson, while this more recent Rachel descended from Peleg's daughter Jennet through her grandson Peter Clouse's line. And that Rachel Clouse married a Tilson named Thomas, who came from a long line of Tilsons descending from—you guessed it—Thomas Tilson, son of William and Mary Marcie.

Whether they knew it or not, that Rachel, born in 1905, married her fourth cousin once removed, Thomas Tilson. They spent their life together in Texas, far removed from either the Washington County, Tennessee, home of my ancestral Rachel Tilson, or the original Massachusetts settlement of her Tilson forebears. Whether removed by distance or time, the familial connection of this Rachel and Thomas was likely one they weren't even aware of when it came time in 1924 for the couple to say "I do." Unless, of course, they—like all genealogists—kept track of their family history.

Building out that branch of the Thomas Tilson line—one I hadn't yet tackled in my year-long project—served to add several new names to my mother's tree, just in time for this first biweekly count of the new year. Make that 388 new names, to be exact. Now my mother's tree has a total of 36,599 individuals documented.

As I worked on plans for the Twelve Most Wanted for this year, I also added names to my in-laws' tree. Though there were only sixty six new names added—I stumbled upon an undone branch of my father-in-law's Kelly line—that tree is starting off the new year with 34,157 people, enough to help connect a few more DNA matches to that line.

Again for this year, I'll be checking back every two weeks to get encouragement from the mounting numbers and research progress. It helps to see the numbers. And it certainly is inspiring to find the stories—even the unexpected little details like discovering that my fourth cousin once removed married her fourth cousin once removed.