Learning About the Step-Family

 

Some families are difficult to trace. The distance of generations, even centuries, is not the only impediment; some family dynamics are simply challenging to navigate. Tracing Simon Rinehart's family has been one example, due to the contentious nature between the children of his first marriage and those of his widow, Anna, who was his second wife. But even though we've found court records to guide us through the twists and turns of Simon's family, it looks like the continuing story of one daughter, Nancy, will require us to repeat that step-family examination through yet another iteration.

We've already learned that Nancy was married at least twice: once to a man surnamed Ankrom, then to a widower named John Colborn. And yet, the question remains: did Nancy, herself, have any descendants? Searching for Nancy Ankrom yields very little, other than her 1855 marriage record to John Colborn in Perry County, Ohio. Records showing a woman's own name were rarer before the 1850 census mark, and so far, I've come up empty-handed for that enumeration. Yet, pursuing the court records for Nancy's step-children might be more informative—something that will become more obvious as we continue this quest over the weekend.

Fortunately for us—though not for yet another squabbling family bringing their argument to court—digitized Perry County court records became just the guidance we need to sort out the tangles in that family. John Colborn had died intestate, and one of his sons decided to petition the court for division of John's land.

While we can find John Colborn in the 1850 census, that document was recorded after the death of John's first wife. Because the 1850 census did not include any explanation for how each person in a household was related to the others, we can't just presume that those others listed were his children—though they could be. That's why the discovery of the Colborn court case became so helpful—if, of course, the document correctly represented what was affirmed in the proceedings.

The 1850 census entry for the Colborn household listed twenty year old Martha, then twenty one year old Ephraim and eighteen year old Elizabeth, followed by six year old Alfred. The odd order of ages made me question whether each of these younger Colborns were children of John and his first wife. Ephraim and Elizabeth could also be a couple, although given their ages, Alfred would be too old to be their son.

Perry County court records following John Colborn's May 1866 death spelled out the details for us completely. The plaintiff's name was given as N. B. Colborn, one of John's sons. Also named was another son using initials: E. S. Colborn—Ephraim from the 1850 census? Apparently, Alfred J. Colborn from the 1850 census was actually John's grandson, from John's deceased daughter Mary. Another daughter, Lydia, was listed as wife of Samuel Feigley. Daughter Sarah was listed as wife of—oh, groan, another research challenge—John Brown. (Fortunately, the couple was identified as living in Pickaway County, Ohio, helping to eliminate the thousands of other John Browns who are out there.) Rounding out the list of surviving children was daughter Martha, who was by then wife of Henry J. Trout.

There were other family members included in the court listing of John Colborn's legal heirs. Another deceased Colborn daughter, Charlotte, had surviving children James P. Colborn and Mary Hare—later surnamed Dick—listed in this same readout. And deceased daughter Euphema had left heirs Francis M. Wright, Margaret Wright, and Elizabeth Eddington, wife of Perry A. Eddington.

It may seem odd, while I'm researching the extended family of Simon Rinehart, to take this detour to list another family's descendants. There is, however, a reason for this: I want to discover whether Simon's own daughter Nancy had any children of her own. The document instigating this question is the census following John Colborn's death, after his second wife Nancy had given up her dower rights in the process of dividing the Colborn property.

In 1870, sixty seven year old Nancy Colborn appeared in the household of a man named David Hull. More to the point of this question, Nancy's entry under the column heading "occupation" was a curious—and hopefully helpful, rather than misleading—statement: "lives with son in law." Was David's wife Eliza part of the extended Colborn family? Could the enumerator—as I've sometimes seen happen—have confused step-family for in-laws? Or was Eliza actually Nancy's daughter from a previous marriage?

That's the next step in this twisting family history trail—a step I wouldn't have been able to take without this clue, and certainly one I couldn't take without being equipped with the full listing of Nancy's second husband's children.

Finding Nancy

This month has become one deep dive after another into court records regarding the extended family of Simon Rinehart, my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather. After Simon's 1852 will was disputed in court in Perry County, Ohio, we've since discovered not one, but two separate listings of the names of his children, itemized specifically by each of Simon's two wives.

One task this month has been to identify and trace each of those sets of Rinehart children. While some of his heirs have been easy to find—especially those married daughters whose husbands were specifically named in the court documents—one child, Nancy, had kept me stumped.

Stumped, that is, until I noticed that her married name in the earlier lawsuit was different than that of the second court case. With this additional clue, it's time to find Nancy in whatever additional documents she might have appeared.

The listing in the earlier lawsuit named Nancy's married name as Ankrom. Since the record didn't provide a name for her husband, I presumed he was already deceased.

I presumed correctly. By November 4, 1855, there was a marriage record for a Nancy Ankrom, who had married John Colborn. And that new surname, Colborn, was exactly the one which subsequent court records concerning Simon's widow Anna Rinehart had labeled their daughter Nancy.

Since I hadn't been able to find Nancy Ankrom in any Perry County records, I checked to see whether I'd have any better luck with this new information. Sure enough, there she was in the 1860 census as we would expect, living in Pike Township with her husband John Colborn and a sixteen year old named Alfred Colborn—too old to have been Nancy's son by this second marriage.

By the time of the 1870 census, Nancy Colborn was living in the same Pike Township, but in the household of one David Hull. As for any entry in the 1870 census for John Colborn, there was none that I could find.

Sure enough, John Colborn had died—intestate—by January of 1866, launching another volley of court reports recording the arguments between John's children. Though none of those Colborn children were Nancy's own descendants, in hopes that this might point another researcher in the right direction, we'll take a look at those documents tomorrow—as well as consider whether Nancy had any children of her own from her first marriage.   

When Eight Becomes Seven

 

Sometimes, the only way to learn the rest of the story is to hunker down and read the entire text of court documents. 

Whenever the Rineharts took each other to court, they apparently kept coming back for more litigation. We saw that after Simon Rinehart's death in Perry County, Ohio, back in 1853. Discovering mention of another court case—this time, brought by Simon's son-in-law, Isaac Brown—I went back to look at the details of this subsequent case. That litigation, in turn, brought up arguments between some of the children of Anna Rinehart, Simon's second wife, and his son Jesse. The contention centered around whether Simon had, before his death, given his son Jesse a certain additional piece of land.

Meanwhile, to complicate the matter following the death of their mother, who died intestate, Anna's remaining eight children squabbled over whether her land should be divided eight ways or seven. But don't think we'd arrive at the end of the story with a simple legal decision. During the time those Rinehart descendants' case worked its way through the court system, other events occurred.

For one thing, Anna's three single daughters who had been residing with their parents in the 1850 census—Hannah, Lucinda, and Charlotte—began to experience health problems as they aged. Charlotte, in particular, had been noted in that census to have been "idiotic." Sometime before the death of their mother, Charlotte was in such need of extra care that the Perry County court appointed her brother Jesse as her guardian.

In the midst of the court proceedings due to Anna dying intestate, mention was made of Charlotte's subsequent death in 1861. That, perhaps, might not have been noted, except that in the squabble over division of their mother's land, Jesse brought up the issue of costs borne by him for his sister's funeral and burial expenses, which he felt should be addressed as they considered division of Anna's estate.

There was, however, that one other contention: whether before his death, Simon had given another parcel of land to Jesse, and if that resolved whether Jesse should be included in this later division of Anna's land. 

The resolution of that dispute? I can't say. I'm still reading through pages and pages of court documents. However, one thing is sure: you can learn a lot about a family, just by reading up on all their arguments aired in the public setting of a courtroom. 

When Court Records Get it Wrong

 

One would think court records would be the final authority on what really happened in the cases brought to justice. However, in reviewing the multiple lawsuits ensnaring Simon Rinehart's children—and later, his grandchildren—I've noticed a few tangles. For instance, in one record concerning a guardianship of Simon's daughter Charlotte, the clerk noted an assertion made in a previous record—only he left the date blank, presumably meaning to fill in the correct information later, but never doing so. In another record more to our specific concern, the court record gave a somewhat different list of names for the children of Simon and his second wife.

This complicates things. Which record do I consider to be the reliable one?

We had already seen, after Simon's will was contested in court in Perry County, Ohio, beginning in 1854, that his children from the first wife were listed as Samuel Rinehart, Martha Fordyce, Mary Smith, Thomas Rinehart, and Sarah Gordon. Also, that court case listed Simon's children from his second wife—the surviving widow Anna—as Nancy Ankrom, Jesse Rinehart, Lucinda Rinehart, Charlotte Rinehart, Cassa Brown, and Hannah Rinehart.

That case, and the following counter-suits, went on for pages and pages in Perry County court records, all of which I've read. But then came that discovery, from an old email, that Cassa Brown's husband Isaac had filed another suit after the death of Simon's widow Anna. Anna had died "about" December 18, 1859, and she had died intestate, putting into motion the very land division that Simon's heirs from his first wife had predicted.

What was confusing about finding that subsequent case was that the record included a different grouping of Simon's children. This second petition, which demanded that the Rinehart land be divided equally among Anna's descendants, noted a different listing of heirs. Named in this case were Anna's children and lineal heirs surviving her: Lucinda Rinehart, Hannah Rinehart, Nancy Colborn (wife of John Colborn), Mary Smith (wife of Robert Smith), Martha Fordyce (wife of Jacob), Jesse Rinehart, Charlotte Rinehart, and Cassa Brown (wife of Isaac Brown). 

My first reaction was an "aha!" moment: I was having the worst time trying to locate a Nancy Ankrom in Perry County. I did find one in Greene County, back in Pennsylvania where Simon and his family had originated, but the time period seemed wrong. But now, according to this document in 1860, here she was under a different married name: Colborn. Step number one following this discovery is to return to census and land records to see if I can find Nancy and her husband John—not to mention, check the marriage records.

To my dismay, however, was the regrouping of the children attributed to Simon's second wife, Anna. In the court case following his death, Martha and Mary were listed along with the other children of Simon's first wife, but now they are said to have been children of Anna. None of the others from Simon's first wife (at least according to that previous court listing) were included in this petition to subdivide Anna's land.

I double-checked, just in case anyone claimed that Anna had raised the older children from childhood as if they were her own, or that they were all just one big happy family, despite being step-children. It was clear that missing from this later list were Samuel, Thomas, and Sarah. While I'm still struggling with the true identity of Samuel Rinehart, Thomas and Sarah were both still very much alive when Isaac Brown brought this case to court in 1861, and yet they weren't included in the listing of Anna's children. Should I now presume that Martha and Mary were actually children of the second wife? This brings us back to our original question from the beginning of this post: which court record was correct?

The document also went on to explain that each heir was to get one seventh of the subdivided land of their mother, Anna Rinehart. However, it doesn't require the mind of a rocket scientist to realize that there were not seven, but eight parties listed as heirs. That, however, requires its own explanation, bringing us to a fitting point to lay this lengthy puzzle aside until tomorrow's post. 

Old Mail

 

I spent the weekend re-reading old mail. Not many people send mail anymore, even of the electronic kind, but I'm glad I made a habit over the years of saving the notes which were most noteworthy. 

Among those notes in my old files was a stack of emails exchanged with avid researchers on the trail of Simon Rinehart and his children. Those letters date back to the late 1990s—and it's disturbing to think I'm still stuck with the same questions today. However, bit by bit, I'm unearthing some details and I wish I could reconnect with some of those decades-old correspondents. If they're still as stumped as I am, I'm sure they'd love to see what I've discovered—as I would be to know if they found any answers, too.

While I've discovered—thanks to court records from Perry County, Ohio—that Simon Rinehart had far more children than my fellow researchers and I had been able to find back then, reading through those old emails this weekend told me that Simon's son Thomas also had more children than I have been able to document.

And there are additional court records to unearth, too, apparently. One email from a researcher who could only find two daughters for Simon happened to mention a court case brought by Isaac Brown and his wife Cassa against three single sisters still living at home with Simon's widow.

That case—which I've yet to find—mentioned several more names, some of which I recognize, but others which have me stumped. For instance, one party to the lawsuit was a man by the name of John Colburn who had married someone named Nancy. Can I presume this is the Nancy mentioned in the Rinehart court case I could find? If so, no wonder I haven't been able to find Nancy in other records, based on the different married name given her in the case I did locate.

Another letter mentioned a full listing of Thomas Rinehart's children, containing far more names than I had been able to locate from his entry in the 1850 census. I presume this listing also was the result of searching through court cases, so I'll need to find that record, as well.

It's time to put FamilySearch.org's Full Text Search back to work on these shreds of information I've harvested from those old letters. This week, we'll take a closer look at those old notes and try to replicate the information conveyed over twenty years ago. When we're talking about families who lived in the early to mid 1800s, those records should still be there with the same information. It's just a matter of locating those dusty files—digitally.  

When Surnames Ricochet Through their Surroundings

 

While stumped in my search for Thomas Rinehart, that son of Simon Rinehart who decided to file suit in Perry County, Ohio, against his half-siblings after his dad's death, I cast my search parameters far and wide, and came up with one tantalizing insertion in an 1847 newspaper:

Filed in Monroe County, Ohio, on May 18, 1847, by attorneys Archbold & Wire for the plaintiff, Daniel Clark, the suit named Thomas Rinehart, Simon Rinehart, Arthur Ingraham, William McCarty, and M. Marling. Thomas and Simon Rinehart are names we've already seen, and the Ingraham name—or sometimes spelled Ingrham—has been a surname linked with the extended Rinehart family back in Greene County, Pennsylvania. But why were these names being mentioned in a court in Monroe County, Ohio?

According to the newspaper insertion, a bill then pending in court, 

states in substance that said Arthur Ingraham has two judgments in said Court against said McCarty and Marling, for a large sum, to wit: upwards of eight hundred dollars. That said Arthur Ingraham is in fact the assignee of Simon Rinehart, and that said Simon Rinehart is the assignee of Thomas Rinehart, who is in truth and in fact the real owner of said judgments, and is largely indebted to the complainant; and that the assignment to Simon Rinehart, and through him to Arthur Ingraham, is a shift and device to defraud the creditors of Thomas Rinehart. Said bill prays that the judgment debt due from McCarty and Marling may be applied to the payment of his debt due from said Thomas Rinehart. The defendants Thomas, Simon, and Arthur, living out of this State, are notified to plead, answer or demur in sixty days after the close of next term of said Court, or the bill will be taken as true and confessed.       —Said term will commence on the fourth Monday in June next.

Was that our Thomas Rinehart? After all, I'm not quite sure whether he lived in Ohio or back in Pennsylvania. And Monroe County, Ohio, is a mere seventy miles from Greene County, Pennsylvania, making it close enough for the Rinehart family to have acquired land or done business in that area. (Business, indeed! The eight hundred dollars noted in that 1847 document would be worth at least thirty one thousand in today's dollars.)

Whether this is our Thomas or not, it will likely pay for me to search through court records for his name in connection with that of Simon Rinehart, as well.

Insert above from the Woodsfield, Ohio, newspaper, The Spirit of Democracy, published on page three of the May 22, 1847, edition; image courtesy of Newspapers.com. 

Situation: Stuck

 

Stuck on one clue for that brick wall ancestor? When I run into such situations, I try my best to find the answer—and when I fail, I move on. Research problems can always be revisited at a later date, especially when more resources would be required to resolve research questions.

Finding that memorial marker erected at the final resting place of Robert Smith, just as his daughter's last wishes had dictated, seemed to rip right through all the research progress I had made on tracing just that one daughter of Simon Rinehart. Simon's daughter Mary, at least according to court records after his death, had married someone named Robert Smith. But when I finally caught up with the memorial marker for the specified Robert Smith in Hocking County, Ohio, it contained the name of his two wives. And it appeared that Mary had a different last name than what I was expecting.

The name, although blurred in the photograph at Find A Grave, seemed to be Mary Ankrum or Amkrum. No matter which way it was spelled, it didn't spell R-i-n-e-h-a-r-t. Now what?

I tried looking for marriage records for Robert Smith and Mary Ankrum, including all the spelling permutations I could imagine—with a wildcard symbol thrown in for good luck. Thinking that our Mary might have been married before she married Robert, I tried looking for other marriage records for Mary Rinehart, both in her home, neighboring Perry County, and Robert's residence in Hocking County. Still nothing.

Since Maria Smith, the one whose will stipulated the erection of the memorial for her father, was the firstborn daughter of Mary and Robert, one would presume that she would know her mother's maiden name. I'd say I've stumbled upon the wrong Robert Smith and family—except I've been wrong about being wrong before. So I'm putting that search on hold for now and moving on to the rest of Simon Rinehart's children.

That strategy, however, is not working much better than my quest to find the right Robert Smith, husband of Mary Rinehart. There were two other siblings mentioned in that 1854 court record concerning the validity of Simon's will: Samuel Rinehart and Thomas Rinehart, the one who had initiated the court case disputing the will.

It turns out both of them appear to be as difficult to find as if they were surnamed Smith. But I did find one curious legal notice inserted in a newspaper about seven years before the paperwork for the 1854 lawsuit was filed. While it may turn out to be merely a coincidence that the names appeared to be related, tomorrow we need to at least take a look at who was named in that other court case. 

Burning Bridges

 

Speed-reading the genealogy of an extended family line can help spot patterns. In the case of my second great-grandmother's possible link to the line of William Laws of North Carolina, that pattern seemed to be skipping across the county line before the family's name was called in yet another court of law. Whether that was true or not, I can't yet say. I haven't followed up on the entries I found in Yancey County court records from North Carolina.

"Oh, but that would be the fun part," my daughter remarked when I told her what I had found—but she'll just have to wait until I can focus on solely tracing legal documents which, unfortunately, is not my forte. There is, however, another possibility driving the family's seeming disappearance during the time period I've been studying. For that, I needed to widen the lens to examine a broader view of history—not just the Laws family's own history, but that of the time period in which they lived. To put it in a nutshell, theirs was a time and a place for burning bridges.

So far, I had found William Laws' household in Yancey County, North Carolina, in the 1850s. Then it was  across the state line, first to Washington County, Tennessee, where daughter Sarah Catherine Laws married Thomas Davis in 1856, then onward again to Carter County. Finally, the family—along with my second great-grandmother's Davis household—appeared in Greene County, Tennessee.

All told, the time span stretched from 1850 to 1870, encapsulating a critical period in American history: the Civil War. While I don't know much about North Carolina history, I did know one thing about the counties where my maternal grandfather's line lived for generations: northeastern Tennessee, unlike the rest of the state, was pro-Union leading up to the vote regarding secession.

When the vote did not go the way the local populace wanted, there were enough of those independently-minded locals to take the path of the renegade. Perhaps the Laws family was of that same mind.

After reading several newspaper articles from that time period and region, it was clear to me that northeastern Tennessee might reveal some clues about the point of view of my own family if I dug deeper into the local history of those counties. Prime focus led to Greene County, where I found the family in the 1870 census—and where many of their descendants stayed, long after the close of that time period.

Newspapers would publish comments about "the whisky war at Greeneville," the county seat of Greene County, and other reports that gave an impression far removed from the bucolic ambience I might otherwise have ascribed to Tennessee. Greeneville, home of soon-to-be president Andrew Johnson, apparently had a long history of independent action, and was a hotbed of activity for a number of movements, such as the abolitionist movement of the early 1800s and, during the start of the Civil War, an effort to secede from the Confederate state of Tennessee to form a separate pro-Union state.

It was from that fertile ground that a Civil War era plot was hatched to—literally—burn bridges. The idea was shared by residents across several counties of northeastern Tennessee, and the nine bridges targeted were located along the eastern border of Tennessee, stretching from Bluff City near the Virginia border down to Chattanooga and even into Alabama. Among those targeted was one bridge in Greene County, as well as another in Carter and Washington Counties, home to Laws' relatives.

While I have no idea whether any of William Laws' sons were involved in the bridge-burning plot, just reviewing the history of the area points out the mindset that undoubtedly made the Laws family feel quite at home in the region during that era of American history.

Granted, I still want to pore over the original North Carolina court records to see just what incident inspired the Laws boys to step across the county line—and as a genealogist, I certainly am not appreciative of their history's shenanigans which have led me on such a paper chase. But this discovery about history's lesser-known local episodes aptly reminds me that we all are a product not only of our genes, but of our environment and culture, and it can sometimes help to take a step back and explore the headlines of our ancestors' own newspapers. 

That One Certain Thing

 

Benjamin Franklin's pithy remark that "in this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes" has come to mind lately. Sometimes, we make a family history search such a struggle that perhaps we omit the one certain thing that could provide the answer we seek. After all, despite my quandary about the identity of one Clinton Metzger—one and the same as Cornelius, or a different sibling?—there was one sure thing I could do to determine Clinton's connection to my mother-in-law's Metzger family. Son of Joseph Metzger or not, I could check for his death certificate.

Of course, going solely by the information provided on the Metzger family from census records, the name Clinton never appeared as a son of Joseph and Rachel Walker Metzger. It was only working from the other direction—from DNA matches backwards in time to their parents, then grandparents and beyond—that I encountered the assertion that there was a son named Clinton Metzger.

Clinton, whoever he might have been, was said to have died in 1933. I may have my doubts about the dual entities claiming that 1860 approximate date of birth, but I know where to find instant gratification on my desire to locate his death record: his entry on FamilySearch.org.

Sure enough, just like his Find A Grave entry indicated, Clinton Metzger had died on September 15, 1933, in Delaware County, Ohio. It was so easy to find, I wondered why it didn't occur to me to reach for it sooner. The clincher: his parents were listed as Joseph Metzger and Rachel Walker, just as those DNA cousins had already predicted. Never mind that the closest of those Clinton-descended DNA matches only share twenty one centiMorgans or less with my husband, the document settles that question. He's from the same Metzger family as my mother-in-law.

I may never be able to determine what became of Cornelius Metzger. It could be that this was merely a case of a careless census enumerator—though yes, I know, Cornelius would have been a more fitting name than Clinton for the child of a devout Catholic. And don't forget that, even in the early 1900s, his mother named him in her will—and was strangely silent about any child named Clinton—so not only was there such a person as Cornelius, but he was not one of those unfortunate children who die young and leave barely a trace. Despite whatever may have happened to the disappearing Cornelius, I can still proceed with more confidence in adding Clinton to the family tree—and thus, all his descendants so I can link those three more DNA matches to my mother-in-law's tree.

For now, we'll set aside that question about Cornelius for another year. There are more Metzger siblings to explore before this month's research project is completed.

"Blended" Families: Tracing the Names

 

When it comes to "blended" families—his, hers, and theirs, in the 1800s often thanks to early deaths and remarriages—it is important, but sometimes difficult, to trace the names descended from each spouse. In our case, reckoning the two sets of children, each by their mother's name, it turns out that a small insertion in the legal notices of The Mount Vernon Republican may help us at least confirm that both sets of children belonged to the same father.

The case in question was a result of Joseph Metzger dying intestate in 1885 in Knox County, Ohio. The county court appointed Joseph's namesake son as administrator of his estate. The younger Joseph, as we've already seen, decided to put in a claim for work he had done on his father's farm. The legal notification was addressed specifically to four men, all of the same surname and presumably all of the same family. Let's take a look at how those four names seem to connect—and, at the same time, see how the list brings together the two sides of the deceased Joseph Metzger's family.

The first man named in the legal notice was Henry Metzger, said to be resident of Terre Haute, Indiana. Looking at the Metzger family's entry in the 1850 census, we can see the household included a five year old boy by that same name. By the time of the 1870 census, there was indeed a resident of Terre Haute by that same name. Though the name morphed to Harry for the 1880 census, that same family was still in Indiana for the census closest to the 1886 legal notice back in Knox County, Ohio.

The second man listed in that 1886 legal notice, Charles Metzgar, was then said to have lived in Grand Forks in Dakota Territory. While that information was something I didn't know about Charles before, I can see that the senior Joseph Metzger and his first wife did have a son they named Charles, according to that 1850 census.

Thus with those first two names in the 1886 legal notice concerning the administration of Joseph Metzger's estate, we see a list tying together sons from his first marriage with that of his second, for the third name in the list, James, did not make his appearance in census records for the Metzger household until the 1870 enumeration.

But Clinton? If the names presented in that legal notice went in birth order, then Clinton would be younger than James, and along with him, a son of the second wife, Rachel.

If our assumption that these names represent a listing of the sons of the deceased Joseph, they provide us with a rough outline of age order, as well as a guide to finding the missing Charles, geographically. As for Clinton, I still want to look further before deciding whether he was indeed a son of Joseph. We've got more work ahead of us before we reach that point.

Saint Clinton?

 

Clinton Metzger may have finally made his appearance somewhere within the radar of Joseph Metzger's family circle, but just how was he connected to that family? Just because he was mentioned in a legal document naming him along with others concerning the estate of the late Joseph Metzger doesn't necessarily mean he was Joseph's son. He could have been a legatee for other reasons—or perhaps merely a creditor who coincidentally possessed the same surname. To try to resolve this question, let's return to the census records for both Clinton Metzger and his supposed father, Joseph Metzger.

Keeping in mind that Joseph Metzger's second wife, Rachel, was a devout Catholic—at least judging by the care she took to specifically set aside a gift in her will for Saint Paul's Catholic Church of Mount Vernon, Ohio—it is no surprise to see that she named each of her children after saints. Thus, it would be expected to see names like James or Joseph, or even an otherwise unusual given name like Cornelius, who was indeed considered a saint. But Clinton? Saint Clinton? Never heard of him.

We can see from the 1880 census the ages of each child of Joseph and Rachel Metzger. Switching our attention to the earliest census in which I can find Clinton Metzger, his statement in that 1900 census declared his birth to have been in June of 1860. Despite there never having been a Saint Clinton—at least that I can find—what are the chances that a son of Joseph and Rachel might have been born at the same time?

Back at that point in 1880, the closest in ages in the Metzger family would have been either son Joseph, aged twenty one, or Cornelius, aged nineteen. Of course, ages in census records were often rounded to the next year, depending on both the month of birth and the month of enumeration. Indeed, Joseph's age in the much later 1910 census suggests a birth in 1859, and his 1926 headstone bears out that date. As for Cornelius though, after the 1880 census he simply disappears. Could Cornelius have become "Clinton"?

Before we settle such an unsupported conjecture, let's first look at all the other names listed in that legal notice published in the 1886 Mount Vernon Republican. It would be helpful to know the relationships—if any—of the other Metzgers named in that claim. 

A Namesake Puts in his Claim

 

Do you enjoy reading through pages after pages of legal documents and court records? If it weren't for an insatiable curiosity about my ancestors, I certainly would have to answer: "No." However, researching with the motto "no page left unturned" came with a payout for all that dull reading, at least in answer to my question about Clinton Metzger. There was a claim filed in court in Knox County, Ohio, by Joseph Metzger's namesake son which may provide an explanation.

Before we discuss that claim, let's first go back to the senior Joseph Metzger, son of my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather, Michael Metzger. Supposedly, Joseph was father of this Clinton Metzger, at least according to three DNA matches of my husband's account at Ancestry.com. Yet, I couldn't find any record to affirm that Joseph had a son by that name.

Joseph complicated matters by dying in 1885—before drawing up a will. That left his wife Rachel and all his surviving children without any legal guidance as to how to divide up his property. Dying intestate presented a further problem for this family, for Joseph had been married twice and there were signs that the blended family might not have been on the best of terms.

Joseph's namesake son was appointed as administrator of his estate. In addition to his duties in that role, the younger Joseph apparently had second thoughts about the agreement set out in the court ruling, for he filed a claim, notarized on May 15, 1886, stating that, prior to his father's death, the senior Joseph had had his son tend to duties around the family farm, for which he ought to have been paid, over and above his portion in the inheritance.

It is in reading the names listed in the suit that I begin to see a clear path to answering my question about Joseph's children. Though the newspaper insertion is hard to read, check the names in the transcription below. We'll need to deconstruct this list further.

HENRY METZGER, resident of Terre Haute, Indiana; Charles Metzgar, of Grand Forks, Dakota; and James Metzger and Clinton N. Metzger, of Kingston Center, Delaware County, Ohio, and all creditors interested in the estate of Joseph Metzger, deceased, late of Knox County, Ohio, as heirs or creditors, will take notice, that I have presented to the Probate Court of Knox County, Ohio, for allowance to me against the said estate, certain claims, one of $36.00 and interest from April 1, 1885, and one of $147.32, in all $183.32, for work and labor done by me for said decedent during his lifetime, &c., at his request, and that the testimony concerning said claims will be heard by said Court, on the 24th day of June A.D. 1886, at 10 o'clock, a.m., or as soon thereafter as the same can be heard.

Newspaper clipping above from the Ohio newspaper, The Mount Vernon Republican, published 26 May 1886; image courtesy Ancestry.com (see image #2025 for notarized claim dated 15 May 1886, and image #2030 for newspaper insertion and publisher's statement).

When All the Details Line Up

 

It's encouraging, when looking for a brick wall ancestor, to finally find the document in which all the details line up and we can say with assurity that we have discovered the name belonging to the previous generation. In some cases, the one court document I found which mentions James Turner assures me of his connections to my mother-in-law's family. In other cases, though, it brings up more questions.

James Turner, if you recall, was son-in-law of my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandmother. And that distant great-grandmother was a matriarch on my mother-in-law's matriline, a potential common ancestor for the three exact matches my husband has on his—and thus his mother's—mtDNA test results. All I need to do is determine just how those female descendants for that matriline might figure into the puzzle.

After discarding the possibility of several of the women descending from Elizabeth Howard, that fourth great-grandmother, due to lack of daughters to pass down that mtDNA signature, we are currently circling the family of Elizabeth's daughter Rachel. Because Rachel was married in 1802, before Ohio had even attained statehood status, it would be a very slim chance indeed for me to find mention of her own name in legal documents—with one exception.

That exception was my hope to find a will for her husband, James Turner—and that her husband predeceased her. That hope, however, was quashed when my search for such a legal document in Fairfield County came up empty-handed.

It was as far as a last will and testament go that I was foiled in my research attempt. In its place, however, I found something else which turned out to be quite helpful—except for one detail.

The document was an indenture dated January 11, 1843. By the time of the 1840 census, James had already declared his age to be in his seventies. His wife was not far behind him. And the document being drawn up in court on that date in 1843 served as an exchange of property between the elderly couple and another man named James M. Turner.

The record was helpful in that it identified Rachel specifically as James' wife. In addition, we could possibly infer that James M. Turner may have had some relationship to the originating parties in that he exchanged a mere two hundred dollars in exchange for the property (worth about $8,000 in today's economy, not a bad price).

There was, however, one glitch in that document which didn't seem to line up. Toward the end of the first page of the court record, in specifically describing this property of James Turner, the wording stated, 

...which lot or section of land was granted by the United States unto the said William Turner by Letters made Patent...

Wait. Which said William Turner? I went back to reread the document—not relying on the AI transcription provided by FamilySearch Labs' Full Text search function, but reading that handwriting for myself. If there was a "said" William Turner previously mentioned, I have yet to find it.

However, the indenture provided some other very specific details, like the date in which that original transaction occurred (August 13, 1805), and the description of the property location (Section 28, Township 17, Range 17). I blasted over to the Bureau of Land Management's General Land Office Records to see whether there might be any record of a William Turner receiving land in Ohio.

There was. In Fairfield County. At that precise location: Section 28, Township 17, Range 17. On that same date: August 13, 1805. 

Don't you love it when all the details line up?

Better yet, if James Turner had somehow received that land from someone named William Turner, perhaps William was James' father, just as James M. Turner, next recipient of that property, might have been son of the elder James.

Of course, that's just a guess on my part. But at least it points me in a possible direction to continue my search. After all, it will take some cluster genealogy to help point out what became of Rachel and James Turner's currently invisible daughters.     

The Farm That Margaret Sold

 

The pursuit of family history can lead us on a chase past both verifiable details and enigmatic situations which seem more fiction than fact. We've all run across unlikely tales which began, "there were three brothers," or talked to great-aunts who insisted on our descent from famous leaders or the proverbial "Indian princess."

In our current project, however, we can't lose too much time puzzling over the possible legend of the "thirteen blooming daughters" birthed by Margaret Watts, my seventh great-grandmother, or we will pass right over the making of another family legend—this one of presidential proportions. It may just be that the cherry tree which young George Washington supposedly chopped down was planted by Margaret Watts' first husband, William Strother. Before we consider that, though, we first need to learn something about the colonial Virginia farm that Margaret Watts Strother sold in 1738.

Actually, I stumbled upon that detail by accident. I was looking for the will of William Strother, father of my sixth great-grandmother Jane Strother, who eventually became wife of Thomas Lewis. I wanted some form of documentation linking the father with his daughter, and during those colonial times, my best hope of finding Jane's name was to look for her father William's will.

The year Jane was born—about 1732—was close enough to the year in which her father died that I wasn't sure whether he had died unexpectedly before even drawing up such a document. I thought my best chance at finding such a record would be to put the Full Text search at FamilySearch Labs through its paces.

I didn't want to use too many filters—thus wiping out any possibility of finding the will by guessing the wrong details about, for instance, the location of his death. So I simply entered William's first and last name in quotes, added a keyword "Margaret" for his wife, set the location simply as Virginia, and limited the time frame to the 1730s. 

And pressed the "search" button.

With a search as wide open as that, I wasn't surprised the result yielded 310 possibilities. I'm still scrolling my way down that very long list. Right at the top, though, was an entry which caught my eye. It was a deed dated 1738, and it was a document filed in court in King George County, not one of the counties I had seen mentioned in my research yet.

Without even asking for the help yet, this proposed document provided me with the answer to my next question: after William Strother's death, who did Margaret marry? The deed clearly laid out the facts: that William had appointed Margaret as his sole executrix in his will dated November 20, 1732, and that Margaret had subsequently married someone named John Grant.

The terms of William Strother's will included a stipulation that two of his properties were to be sold to the highest bidder. One of those properties was located in King George County, and Margaret had found a willing purchaser there: a gentleman by the name of Augustine Washington.

Once the purchase was made, Augustine moved his family to the property by the end of that year. Unfortunately, Augustine died only a few years later—in 1743—leaving the property to the eldest son of his second marriage, who was only eleven years of age at the time. Thus, George Washington's mother Mary managed the property until George became of legal age to assume ownership of the property where he had lived since he was six years old.

Whether the Strother family had planted any cherry trees on their property before George Washington's father acquired that 150 acre site in 1738, I can't say. Nor can I say whether the future president's father had ever gifted him with a hatchet—or lived to rue the day he had misused it. The general consensus now, at least among those historians who have studied such matters, is that the never-tell-a-lie son of Augustine Washington became the subject of a myth perpetuated long after his own passing.

That Margaret Watts Strother Grant sold the Strother family farm to the Washingtons, however, is certainly not a legend. Though the name of the property has changed—it became known as the Ferry Farm—it is still upkept by The George Washington Foundation. Should I ever get curious enough to wonder what the farm of my ancestors looked like, I can still go visit the property, even get a guided tour if I'd like. More than that, I could take a look at the on-site archaeology lab which has reportedly found "thousands of artifacts" on the property—some, perhaps, dating back to the farm's previous owners, as well. 

The Other Husband

 

If George Gilmer had disparaging remarks to make about his sister's husband, Warren Taliaferro, with that commentary he was only warming up. When it came to the other husband, George's sister Mary's second marriage, he likely had far more reason to be critical. While Warren Taliaferro at least had a will, second husband Nicholas Powers apparently did not.

I found that detail—or rather, noticed its absence—when repeating yesterday's search routine using the FamilySearch Labs Full Text search feature. This time, I was on a mission to find the will of Nicholas Powers. There were two reasons I wanted to find this. First, of course, was to confirm the approximate date at which he had passed. The second reason was to get a more accurate listing of Nicholas' children, since I was concerned the count for the Powers children was not correct in George Gilmer's book.

Despite my success yesterday with the search for Warren Taliaferro's will, no will came up for second husband Nicholas Powers. Instead, there were multiple entries for deeds which included the Powers name. To narrow the search, I added his wife Mary's name, which helped reveal part of the story.

From that attempt, I have been able to glean a few indications. The first was that someone named Nicholas F. Powers served as administrator for "Nicholas Powers late of Oglethorpe County" in a document dated May 3, 1853. An earlier indenture, drawn up in April of the same year, identified Mary M. Powers as wife of Nicholas Powers, and listed their children as Nicholas, Sarah, and Thomas—three children hardly being the "six from her last" husband that her brother had reported in his book.

The third discovery I found was somewhat curious. Entered toward the end of a deed recorded in Oglethorpe County, a specific parcel of land was sold "excepting forty feet square in the North west corner of my Garden where my Eldest Child and Nicholas Powers deceased is buried." The document was signed by a W. T. Williams on August 31, 1849.

Our Mary's Nicholas? Hard to say, though in a county of twelve thousand residents, it might have been doubtful that there were two couples by the same names. Without a will, the only way to determine the names of all their children would be to search through the many other deeds listing Nicholas' name in hopes there were further provisions for the fatherless children. As for Mary, herself, we may learn more by focusing on her own siblings—especially the brothers who had been named as executors in her first husband's will.   

A Package Deal?

 

To figure out just how it was that Mary Elizabeth Taliaferro ended up named in a marriage license dated the same day as that of her widowed mother would take some searching for old, old documents. On the face of it, the situation gave the appearance of a package deal: I marry you, if I can also marry off your daughter.

The only problem with that hypothesis was that Mary Elizabeth was not the youngest of her parents' children. That might have been the case for her own future daughter, my second great-grandmother, the orphaned Mary Elizabeth Warren Taliaferro Rainey. But we now have found indications that the mother, Mary Elizabeth, was likely a daughter of Mary Meriwether Gilmer and Warren—or Warner, as he was alternately called—Taliaferro. Thus, the reason why the baby of the Rainey family ended up bearing the name of her older—and tragically deceased—brother, who had been named after his maternal grandfather.

Looking through court records to find any explanation for what happened leading up to her mother's second marriage—and her surprisingly early marriage as well—didn't seem to produce any satisfactory explanation, but I did learn more about the entire family in the process.

In the court proceedings in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, one transaction recorded September 24, 1818, served the purpose of posting bond as security for the appointment of one Peachy R. Gilmer as guardian of the children of the deceased Warren Taliaferro. The Taliaferro children named in the document were Lucy G., Zachariah T., Sarah H., Charles, and Sophie, identified specifically as "orphans and minors of Warran [sic] Taliaferro, deceased."

Note the absence of any mention of older daughter Mary Elizabeth. There is a clear reason for that: Mary Elizabeth had already gotten married to Thomas Rainey in June of that same year.

Or was that the reason? After all, in looking at that document designating the guardian of Warren Taliaferro's orphaned children, another possible reason Mary Elizabeth's name wasn't mentioned could have been that this was not even her family. We need more information to confirm that assumption.

To find any further details regarding the deceased Warren Taliaferro, I wanted first to look for his will. And that became my perfect excuse to try out a new search tool which, it seems, everyone is talking about. We'll check out that new way to see what we can find, tomorrow.   

One Last Detail

 

Exploring the court records of colonial Virginia in search of information on my fifth great-grandfather John Carter has been quite the education. The process opened my eyes to the business transactions and family matters of the well-to-do during that era of time. Wills, deeds, guardianship bonds, and other records provided the first glimpse of everyday events, at least at the crisis points of life. But in addition to discovering documentation to support the existence of a previously unrecognized wife of John Carter—Sarah Kenyon, mentioned in her father's will clearly as John's wife—there is one last detail before we close out this month's research, another aspect of life which needs to be examined.

My fellow genea-blogger Patrick Jones of Frequent Traveler Ancestry mentioned it to me as we exchanged notes regarding our discoveries this past month—and included his observations in at least two of his blog posts on the Carter line. The fact of the matter is that John Carter, along with the related families I examined—Kenyon, Chew, Beverley—owed much of their business success to the labor of enslaved workers.

It may not have been quite as evident, when examining John Carter's will, since he did not name any enslaved persons in that document, but the indication is there. Abraham Kenyon, John Carter's father-in-law, was more specific in his will, specifying a man named "Jerey" and a woman named "Jeney" to be given to his daughter Sarah, John's wife. Examining more records from Spotsylvania County where these ancestors lived would provide more details on names and identities—and, at some point, will be discovered to be the ancestors of other people now researching their roots.

Finding a way to share this information has been the thrust of several presentations and articles I've experienced over the years. I had first grappled with the question of "what to do" the same year I heard LaBrenda Garrett-Nelson make the call for genealogists to be a "force for social change" at the 2019 Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy.

I've since run across many suggestions for taking action to share information found in slave-holders' estate papers, the most recent being an article appearing in the online version of Family Tree Magazine, written by NGS Board member and genea-blogger Cheri Hudson Passey. Cheri advises: "Do something positive with the negative when finding out that your ancestors were enslavers." Indeed, she has posted documents and extracted information to share in several of her blog posts to help descendants of the enslaved find their roots.

One of the websites Cheri recommends for guidance in how to follow suit on this process is The Beyond Kin Project. Noting that the descendants of slaveholders are "uniquely positioned to revolutionize genealogy for [our] African American colleagues," Beyond Kin provides introductory explanations regarding the rationale behind the project, details research strategies, and how-to descriptions of the process of sharing the information we are finding on our ancestors. The project's goal is a collective effort to help each other find what we are all looking for: more information on our ancestors.

While finding specific names from the estate of John Carter will be somewhat of a challenge for me—I can't even find any records for one of his wives—I have done research regarding the formerly enslaved individuals from other parts of my family. Hopefully, that will provide one tiny clue to help other researchers advance their own quest to discover the stories of their family's past.

Incomplete

 

Have you ever come to the end of a school semester and somehow realized you were not able to complete the course work? That's how I feel today, facing down this week and seeing the end of the month looming large. Still to do: find any documentation which can either directly or indirectly confirm the marriage of my fifth great-grandfather John Carter and a woman by the name of Elizabeth Armistead. At the end of this month, I'll likely concede I deserve a grade of "incomplete."

Problem: just because everyone says it's so does not make it true. Everywhere I've turned, wondering if anyone else has found what I've failed to find, all I uncover is the same litany: that the couple did get married. How do these people know? Because a genealogy book published in 1912 said so. No documents. Not even any indirect evidence or thorough proof arguments. Nada.

I can see some ways that more research could possibly lead to answers. Prime among those ways is embedded in a likely Elizabeth Armistead's father's will. According to the 1719 will of one Francis Armistead, his daughter Elizabeth was bequeathed eighty five acres of land in Richmond County where her father had been living at the time of his death.

The beauty of that discovery is that Elizabeth, when her father died, was not quite three years of age. It would be a long time before this child would come into her own and possess that land. In the meantime, based on the traditions of the time, she would likely have had a guardian appointed to oversee the care of her property, even if her mother were the one taking care of her personal needs. And those guardianship proceedings would have been noted in court records.

In Elizabeth's case, if that guardianship appointment had been recorded, it should have shown up in Richmond County court documents for us to see. I have yet to find any such mention. I'm still looking, of course. The hope is that, having made that discovery, it might reveal where Elizabeth grew up, and where she was living at the time of her marriage to John Carter—if, indeed, that is what became of her before her untimely death. It's all a matter of completing the process by closing in on the minutiae of her life story, and letting those details lead us one step further.

Tracking any record of that property itself should also reveal some information in our search. For instance, if the land was sold, there would be a court record of the sales transaction. If the land remained Elizabeth's property as she entered into marriage—and then died, likely intestate—there should be some way to trace how the land was inherited, and by whom. Of course, any disputes over the disposition of the land after her passing should also show up in court records. Yet, do I find any? Not yet. That's still an incomplete task, no matter how I've searched so far.

This same search process yielded us information on another wife of John Carter who many researchers had not even been aware of—Sarah, the daughter of Abraham Kenyon who became mother of at least two of John Carter's children, yet whose name was not even mentioned in the Carter genealogy book so many still rely on. And yet, for Elizabeth Armistead, I have not yet been able to find any source to show the disposition of her inherited property after her death.

Searching through court records can be a tedious process, definitely not one that makes for scintillating reports. Though I will likely keep up the process through the rest of the month—and revisit it at a later date—let's move on tomorrow to the next point in my agenda for this month's research goals: to see whether our John Carter had any family connections with someone who was considered the wealthiest man in the colonies: Robert "King" Carter.

The Road Ahead

 

Sometimes, piecing together a family's story involves not only the immediate relatives, or what some people call the direct line. I've found many cases which I could not solve without branching out to siblings—sometimes siblings over several generations. In the case of our Carters, though, those collateral lines (and the records of their property) are leading us on a merry chase through many counties in colonial Virginia. At this point, I need a plan for sorting out each iteration of the research road ahead.

With this month's research puzzle, the closing days have brought me to a point in which I wonder whether my fifth great-grandfather John Carter ever had a wife named Elizabeth Armistead at all. There is no record that I can find of a marriage between the two in colonial Virginia where they lived. 

Logically, there would be no mention of Elizabeth in John Carter's will, simply because she predeceased him—if, that is, she was ever his wife. That has concerned me, ever since we learned that there was another woman named Sarah Kenyon who had been John Carter's wife before his final marriage to Hannah Chew, but who was not mentioned in genealogy books focused on the Carter line. Why no mention of the one, yet no documentation for the other? The only way I can see out of this tangle is to reach further among extended family members for any sign of Elizabeth or other members of her Armistead family.

That prospect brings me to the point of expanding this search far and wide beyond the simple task I originally thought it would involve. Let's take a look at the research road ahead, to see what this effort might require.

First of all, if the possible marriage between John Carter and Elizabeth Armistead ever did happen as the Carter genealogy book asserted, any record of the event might have been filed in a county other than John's final residence in Spotsylvania County. Looking for signs of the Armistead family yesterday, I realized that trail would lead us to search court documents in at least four counties. Besides Spotsylvania, we saw yesterday that a likely father for Elizabeth filed his will in Richmond County. Then, too, John Carter had property in Caroline County, another possibility for a marriage arrangement. Even farther-fetched than that, Elizabeth's young widowed mother Sarah had remarried, bringing her—and possibly her two young Armistead children—to her second husband Joseph Russell's home in the colony of Maryland, giving us yet another location for records regarding a marriage.

Besides that direct search for any indication of a marriage between Elizabeth Armistead and John Carter, we will likely need to find records affiliated with each branch of the respective families to locate any mention of others in the extended family—particularly any additional mentions of Elizabeth, herself. It may be a long, winding trail that leads us to the answer of when—and whether—Elizabeth and John Carter were married.

As these multiple documents become part of our search, it will be even more important to draw up a timeline to help track the dates of each occurrence in the extended family's story. I already find my head swimming as I consider the events in Elizabeth's family history; melding hers with her brother's and with other members of the blended Russell family—not to mention the multiple people on the Carter side of the family—will take some timeline work.

That said, hopefully the court documents which will provide the answers are still in existence and digitized for our benefit. Beyond that, hopefully they will make their appearance before the month runs out at the end of this coming week.

Worth his Weight in . . . Tobacco?

 

Reaching back through time to view the court records of my seventh great-grandfather Larkin Chew, I realize how different than ours that time period had been. Rather than rush through the document chase, that realization caused me to slow down and savor the contrast. Life was so very different back then, not only for manner of dress or speech, but in day to day interactions that comprised the social fabric of the Colonial Virginia community.

In a spate of financial transactions in Spotsylvania County in 1723, for instance, Larkin Chew was mentioned several times in those court records. Most were deeds recording the exchange of property ownership, and one would expect—just as it is now—that such sales would involve the trading of money for title to a specific parcel of land in the county. Not always so; apparently Larkin Chew was worth his weight in, um, tobacco? If that was what the abbreviation "tob" meant in one 1723 entry, that was apparently the medium for at least two business transactions I found concerning this ancestor.

Recorded in Spotsylvania County court records on April 2, 1723, for instance, the exchange of one hundred fifty acres in Saint George's Parish was consummated, if I am right here, with a payout of 2,100 pounds of tobacco. Of course, there were many other deeds bearing Larkin Chew's name which were facilitated by an exchange of money—specifically, so many pounds of sterling silver. But, pushing back far enough in the records, I saw another such exchange involving tobacco show up, linked to Larkin Chew's name.

Moving back in time another twenty years or so, in nearby Essex County on April 11, 1701, a document was drawn up specifying an exchange of Larkin Chew's contracting services for a payout "in the sume [sic] of one hundred and ten thousand pounds of good sound merchantable tobo." This payout was for "certaine proposicons" regarding the building of a new courthouse with "ye exact dementions" as that of the King and Queen County courthouse, which apparently had also been built under the supervision of Larkin Chew. 

That was how the transcription put the exchange: for his services, a certain weight of "tobo." Tobacco? I needed to verify that. The only reason I had found the information regarding that court document was thanks to a transcription posted in the notes section of an entry for Larkin Chew's genealogy found at a website which had been shared in his blog by Patrick Jones of Frequent Traveler Ancestry. I have yet to see the handwritten document itself.

While an abstract of Essex County court records is available in digitized format on some genealogy websites, the earliest date in that collection at Ancestry.com is two years after this business exchange was recorded. However, in the specifications for the original contract in 1701 was a stipulation that the work was to be finished in 1703—the first year of the court records abstracts.

I looked to see what I could find. There, on an entry bearing Larkin Chew's name in 1706, was an entry for a judgment regarding an unpaid debt owed to Larkin Chew. The amount owed? Once again couched in the same terms, the amount was two thousand pounds "tobo." 

So what was "tobo"? I sometimes saw the term coupled with another: "tobo & cask." I took my question to Google, but even then the question stumped the Answer guru...until I found this readout on the first century of interactions between British settlers and the Native population in the region around Jamestown. In a spreadsheet of abstracts of colonial papers, I used the "find" mechanism to look for the abbreviation, "tobo." 

There were 128 instances of that term. And yes, I clicked through them all. Finally, at entry number 67, I located a line which not only included the abbreviation, but then spelled it out as tobacco.

Tobacco as a form of money in the early days of the colonies? I hadn't thought of it that way. That gives an idea of just how many other details about everyday transactions in colonial Virginia we might have missed, as we sift through those old court records, trying to imagine what life was like for our seventh great-grandparents.