Taking a Different Perspective

Staring down a longstanding research roadblock, somehow hoping this time it will reveal the answers it kept secret last time, surely doesn't work. Sometimes, the problem requires looking at it from a different perspective. Granted, I'm still stuck on Lydia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother, despite looking at her from both the perspective of her second marriage and the early years of her first marriage.

There is, however, a different approach yet to take. That attempt at problem solving I had begun last May, when mulling over the neighborly connection between another Miller family and the young family of Lydia and her first husband William Gordon.

Knowing that the Gordons had a neighbor named Jonathan Miller, last year I had used the Ancestry.com ProTools to form a "network" to examine what could be found about Jonathan Miller and his family. That was when I ran into the additional surnames I mentioned yesterday, of the Dupler marriages and the Anspach line.

Today was the time to review those notes—not only that, but to pull up what I had entered in the floating branch in my tree to add those mystery Millers as a potential connection to Lydia's own roots. From that point, I examined DNA matches among my husband's results who had any connection to the lines including those additional surnames, Dupler and Anspach.

While I am a long way from confirming any possible Miller matches, I am mapping out those several DNA matches' lines of descent from their founding Miller ancestors. Granted, each of those matches shares a tiny percentage of DNA with my husband—wobbling on unreliable, in the estimation of some experts—but I'm tracing them, just in case something does reveal itself in the examination. We'll take a closer look at the proposed connections tomorrow. 

Finding Family History's Pivot Points

 

Following a family's history seems to radiate the aura of tracking a straight line. Pedigree charts do seem to confirm that idea of a straight line: from self to parent to grandparent to greats and beyond, we're taken step by step back through history. The simplicity of that concept can be deceiving.

In Lydia Miller's case—that second great-grandmother of my mother-in-law—the relationship seemed almost close enough to reach out and touch. She seemed to have been born about 1820 in Perry County, Ohio, where she married William Gordon and gave him two sons. But an unexpected swerve in the family history road set her on a path that I—and several others descended from this woman—totally missed finding. Unbeknownst to us, we had stumbled upon a pivot point in her family history.

That was where I had lost her—until I reviewed her case this very month a year ago.

Though I had started work on "Lidia Miller" at the beginning of May last year, laying out all the details I had found on her life in Perry County, it wasn't until the twenty seventh day of that month that I asked the question, "What if that was all wrong?"

Sure enough, Lydia's marriage to Benedict Palmer had surfaced, and pointed me in a new direction. That, however, may not be the only pivot point we'll need to navigate as we complete the story of Lydia's life. Turning to the other side of her story, we may be in for surprises there, too.

I had already mapped out a few possibilities. Using the friends and neighbors concept, I had examined the likelihood of relationships with nearby Miller families, such as the Gordons' neighbor Johnathan Miller. From there, I discovered that Miller family's connection with another Perry County family, the Duplers. Then, following Johnathan Miller's will, and then the land records associated with his property, I ran across another linked surname, which originally appeared as Onsbaugh, but later morphed to Anspach.

Though I had—literally—mapped out the Miller property and examined names of neighbors back in Perry County, nothing definitive had popped up. It was at that end of the month when I hit the research pivot point: I discovered the information that Lydia had been married a second time. Adding that information to the family tree, complete with documentation, took up the last few remaining days of that month. I did my best to add all the descendants of this new Palmer family, then to trace all their descendants down to the current time. I'm now in the process of reaching out to these descendants to compare notes and collaborate on discovering Lydia's roots.

Now, a year later, I've finally completed that documentation process for the Palmer line of descent, but I can't say I've made any further discoveries. Still, it is important to keep track of the work already done, and to build on those discoveries. This calls for a revisit to the FamilySearch Full Text Search tool to see if anything further can be uncovered from documents on hand at that website.

Making the End Run

 

When hitting an impasse—something in genealogy akin to a "brick wall" ancestor—it is now possible to make an end run around such research roadblocks. That, in Lydia Miller's case, is what I hope to do this month with the luxury of one tool genealogists of past centuries never had: DNA testing. 

Now that I've discovered the sizable family descended from Lydia and her second husband, Benedict Palmer, I've been watching for signs of DNA matches who claim that Palmer heritage. But finding any results has, so far, been a disappointment. Just using Ancestry.com, one of five DNA companies where my husband, Lydia's descendant, has tested, I can already see that ThruLines currently lists twenty seven DNA matches for him. However, when I look to the corresponding count for William Gordon, Lydia's first husband, the match count is that same exact number.

Just to be sure, I've checked each of those twenty seven matches to ensure that they descend from both Lydia and William. Yep, that's the case, for every one of those matches. Over the weeks, no matter how many Palmer descendants I've added to my mother-in-law's family tree, that DNA match count has remained the same. I would have presumed, if anyone from the Palmer side had tested at Ancestry, that the count would be lopsided between Lydia and William Gordon, with the high score going to Lydia on account of Palmer matches. Not so, despite adding multiple Palmers to my tree.

Of course, rather than only relying on Ancestry's ThruLines tool, I can also search for matches with the Palmer surname included in their family tree—but considering how many Palmers there are out there, that search might yield more work than it's worth. 

There are other options, too. Ancestry is only one of several testing companies, and I will be scouring the data at the other DNA companies, too. In fact, one collaborator with whom I'm already corresponding actually is a DNA match through 23andMe. There may be more at MyHeritage or Family Tree DNA, too.

Another option I am taking is to look for researchers who are already demonstrating diligence in researching the same Palmer line I'm interested in. I just found one Ancestry subscriber who has been quite consistent in uploading photographs and personally-acquired documents to his tree to share with other researchers. Getting in touch with someone like that can lead to a fruitful collaboration. You can be sure I'm also keeping an eye out for anyone like that to ask to take a DNA test—especially leading up to a holiday like this weekend's Mother's Day, filled with sales offerings from testing companies.

Next week, we'll take a look at what possibilities can be out there for piecing together a family tree through DNA—but keep in mind there are caveats, as well. Still, DNA may be the best way to clarify just who Lydia Miller actually was, and at least to confirm that Lydia Gordon of Perry County, Ohio, was one and the same as Lydia Palmer of Mercer County.

What we Still Don't Know About Lydia

 

The challenge about researching Lydia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother, is that her 1820 origin is unclear. While we do know much about Lydia and the details of her later life, the time period of her early life lies within that murky era in which women were often invisible, and pioneer families might slip through the cracks in governmental record keeping. In short, there's a lot yet to learn about Lydia—but hey, that's what this month's focus for the Twelve Most Wanted this year is all about.

Granted, Lydia would have been included in her family's appearance in census enumerations dating before 1850, but only as a tick mark within a broad age range category. Get that birthday wrong, and that unnamed female could suddenly be in the wrong slot, throwing us off the chase. But then, the question becomes: which family would we be seeking her in? Lydia would be in plenty of company with a popular surname like Miller in Ohio. We don't even know which Ohio county would have been home to this Miller family; all we know is that she married her first husband, William Gordon, in Perry County.

Even her date of birth could be called into question, except that we don't really have a primary source to rely upon; the date I'm working with—October 15, 1820—is extrapolated from the age at death given on her headstone.

Given that I've yet to locate an obituary following Lydia's 1895 death in Mercer County, I'm at a loss to even say whether her first son, Adam Gordon, kept in touch with his mom after her move across the state of Ohio with her second husband, Benedict Palmer. Considering that, I doubt that any obituary, if found, would mention any of Lydia's surviving siblings, despite their usefulness to us in pinpointing Lydia's own birth family.

With so little that has been found on the personal history of this woman, it's been a struggle to determine her parents' names. There is, however, one option available to researchers now that hadn't been part of the strategy for previous generations of family historians: DNA. Thus, genetic genealogy will become part of my strategy for discovering Lydia Miller's roots with this month's research effort. We'll consider the possibilities there, tomorrow.

What we Do Know About Lydia

 

There are several details which I can affirm are already known about Lydia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother and my focus for this month's Twelve Most Wanted. Knowing at least these few points will be helpful for pressing forward with the search for Lydia's family—but many of the details didn't quite fall into place until after discovering one major fact: that she had married twice.

"Lidia" had married William H. Gordon in the Catholic Church in Somerset, Perry County, Ohio, in April of 1838. Soon afterwards, her oldest son Adam was born, followed by another son who died in infancy. By the end of 1840, Lydia's husband William had also died.

Meanwhile, one county to the west, another man had just repeated a similar scenario. In Fairfield County, Benedict Palmer had married Catherine Hovermill in February of 1839. By March of 1840, the Palmers both welcomed their son Jerome into the world and bid a final goodbye to his young mother, only nineteen years of age at her death.

Widow and widower found each other and pledged their troth in Perry County on May 1, 1842. For whatever reason, Lydia placed her son Adam in the care of her recently-widowed mother-in-law, yet brought Benedict's son Jerome with them, as the newlyweds set up housekeeping back in Fairfield County.

By 1842, the couple's eldest son, Edward, was born. Between that point and the 1850 census, two more sons and a daughter were added to the household. By 1860, the family had moved westward, though still within the same state of Ohio. By then, Lydia had given her husband two more daughters and a son, with one more daughter yet to come in 1862.

By then, the family was settled and farming in Montezuma in Mercer County, the location where much of the family remained through the next generation, and even beyond that point. So far, I've been tracing the Palmer family's lines of descent, observing that over the generations, many of them remained in Mercer County.

That is pretty much the extent of what I do know about Lydia at this point. There is, of course, much that I don't know. We'll take an inventory tomorrow of where this family chase may lead us with the exploration yet to come through the rest of this month.

When we Last Left Lydia

 

It was May 31 just one year ago when I had to close the books on my search for Lydia Miller's parents. Lydia had been May's focus for my Twelve Most Wanted last year, simply because she had evaded detection for more years than I care to recall. But what was more difficult than simply calling off the chase for yet another year was the fact that, only days prior, I had discovered that Lydia hadn't died a young mother, after all. In fact, as a young widow, she had remarried—not only that, but she had moved to a new county on the far end of the state to become mother to eight more children.

That unexpected discovery made me wish I had found out at the beginning of the month, not the end. Behind the scenes—while I was supposed to be researching yet another brick wall ancestor—I kept building out the tree for Lydia Miller and her new family in Mercer County, Ohio.

Eventually, though, I had to set the task aside and focus on the work at hand for June, then July, then...well, you get the idea. This is one month I wished I could have kept at the research trail, but I had made myself the promise that I would keep rotating through research challenges as a principle to help keep from burning out on one information dead end.

When I had started that research goal last May, all I had was the detail that "Lidia" Miller had married William H. Gordon in 1838 in Perry County, Ohio. In a very short amount of time, she gave birth to two sons, the eldest of whom became my mother-in-law's great-grandfather, Adam Gordon.

The other major detail about Lidia—one I thought I knew, given the appearances—was that she, along with her husband and second son, had died by 1840, or at least before 1850, when her eldest son was being raised in his paternal grandmother's home.

How wrong I was. It turns out that Lydia, as a widow, had married a young widower who was then the father of one son, himself. By the time I discovered documentation verifying that turn of events, we were fast approaching the end of the month.

Despite working feverishly to trace that new family's line of descent, the month closed out long before I had done this new task justice. This month will become our chance to revisit Lydia—once Miller, then Gordon, then Palmer—and see what else we can learn about this entirely new family. Hopefully, by the end of this month, we may also look to the opposite direction to close in on the story of just whose daughter Lydia Miller was, herself.  

A New Month, an Old Research Puzzle

 

For the past six years, I've made it my habit to slice and dice through the brick walls of four family trees—my maternal and paternal lines, and those of my in-laws—using a system I call my Twelve Most Wanted. For each of the first three months of the year, I select one frustratingly elusive family member of the bygone generations in my mother's line to focus on per month. For the subsequent quarter, I then move to three brick wall ancestors from my mother-in-law's family tree. The second half of each year is dedicated to the fathers: in the fall, my attention turns to my father-in-law's Irish heritage, and come wintertime, I wrestle with those hard-to-find Polish records on behalf of my own father.

One ancestor to focus on each month sometimes means great research progress. Other times, it means I need to fold up the dossier despite the unanswered questions. Come the end of the month, that can be a difficult choice to make. The only consolation is in writing up a to-do list for the next time I pick up the challenge in a new year.

So it is with this month's challenge, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother Lydia Miller who, at a young age, became the widow of William Gordon in Perry County, Ohio. While in many cases, I return to a previous Twelve Most Wanted's candidate only years afterwards, the last time I worked on Lydia, I could barely bring myself to close the case on her—even temporarily. It was exactly eleven months ago when I needed to make that choice; I could hardly get back to her story fast enough.

The main reason I've been so keen to return to Lydia's story is that, at nearly the close of the month last year, I made a breakthrough discovery—but ran out of time to fully explore the possibilities that that discovery introduced. With to-do list in hand from the end of the month's report last May, this month we'll return to (hopefully) learn the rest of Lydia Miller's story.

Returning to Unfinished Business

 

I said I wasn't going to do this to myself for another year, but then I got an email from a fellow researcher and changed my mind. It just so happens this DNA cousin has been wondering about the same brick wall ancestor as I've been, and sent me a note theorizing why this mystery ancestor—my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother Lydia Miller—might have been a challenge to trace.

I've tackled Lydia Miller before, but despite that recent attempt, the chase to find her roots has remained unfinished business. In fact, last May was my most recent opportunity to ponder the roots of this woman who became wife to William H. Gordon and then, after his premature death, to Benedict Palmer. And yet, we'll so soon again be taking up the question of just who Lydia's parents might have been.

This time, we'll let DNA testing play a larger part in the chase to find Lydia's roots, and also complete a review of her descendants from her second marriage with Benedict Palmer of Mercer County, Ohio. Hopefully, some Palmer descendants will surface from among multiple DNA matches to help guide this quest.

In one way, it's frustrating to think that so little is known about a family relationship so relatively close—after all, Lydia, dying in 1895 in Ohio, is only a second great-grandmother to my mother-in-law. A life history like hers should be so reachable...and yet it's not. Hers may have been a story with twists and turns, with details buried from plain sight. This may take some sleuth work to uncover—if any progress can be made at all.

For this coming month of May as I turn to dig deeper into my mother-in-law's roots, Lydia Miller, her parents and descendants will become our focus as the fifth of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026. As with my research challenge for January, hopefully this May's ancestral discoveries will come through the teamwork of comparing notes with other researchers who have connected with me over the years—specifically with those DNA cousins who share this ancestral line with my husband. As research tools evolve, our ability to push back farther in time accelerates—something for which I am ecstatically grateful.

"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.

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. 

Unexpected

 

This month began with hopes to find information on the parents of Lydia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother. Lydia was my fifth choice among my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025, a goal I have had for not just this year, but a brick wall that has plagued me for decades. While I can't say I accomplished that goal in the past month, I certainly can vouch for a month of unexpected results.

The prime unexpected result was discovering that, after the death of her husband and second-born son, Lydia went on to raise eight children from a second marriage. Since that discovery came late in the month, I am only now working my way through the lines of descent for each of those surviving children from her marriage to Benedict Palmer. My goal with this most recent task is to seek out any possible DNA matches among her Palmer descendants—but so far, no results for that goal. I suspect the time frame has been too short to see results yet.

A second result has been the unexpected disappearance of DNA matches which had formerly been linked to my account at Ancestry.com. Apparently, nobody else knows the identity of Lydia Miller's parents, either, yet at Ancestry, ThruLines had offered up a guess—an entry labeled "Jacob???? Miller." Yes, that's Jacob with four question marks.

Through some unexpected digital sleight of hand, Jacob???? Miller has now disappeared from my ThruLines listing for this family. No one else has replaced him, either. That, however, means that the DNA matches which ThruLines had previously proposed—and that I had already confirmed through documentation—have suddenly, poof!, disappeared. So much for the theory that Jonathan Miller might have been a brother of Lydia, or at least a first cousin. Checking on the ThruLines results today showed Lydia with absolutely zero DNA matches linked to her own line.

Where to go from here is my next question. The end of this month means it's a wrap for Lydia—at least for this year's research projects. I will need to revisit her case again in a future year. When that time comes, I will once again rely on DNA connections, if any materialize. In the meantime, my task will be to complete her line of descent from all surviving children, down to the current generation, as I have done for all other lines I've worked on in my mother-in-law's family. With eight Palmer children born from the mid 1840s through the early 1860s, that will be a lot of work to confirm each line with appropriate documentation.

Another task that needs completion is the cluster research approach I've taken to examine the Miller households in Perry County, Lydia's original home where she had married, first, William Gordon, and second, widower Benedict Palmer. Since I've decided to continue my subscription to Ancestry's ProTools, where I can access the beta Networks tool, this will facilitate continuing that rather broad survey of parental possibilities. Again, much repetitive work that may well become necessary if I hope to find any answer to my research question.

Granted, this isn't the first time I've come to the end of a month without an answer in hand to my research question regarding one of my Twelve Most Wanted. But at least I've come close to discovering more useful information about that targeted ancestor. That is the value of at least trying to attain research goals.

Next month, for the last of my Twelve Most Wanted for my mother-in-law's line, I'm afraid we'll be again staring down a decades-long research goal. Whether we accomplish what has been hoped for or not, I'm confident the effort will bring some useful but unexpected results, as well. Though not the target I hope to hit, at least those unexpected bonuses add helpful details to the picture of these long-ago ancestors' stories.  

Nothing to Write Home About

 

It's a day before the end of another month, and I'm feverishly working on last-minute tasks on my to-do list for Lydia Miller's side of my mother-in-law's family tree. Sometimes, though there is a lot of work being done, there's not much to say about it—as they say, "nothing to write home about." 

My task today was to wrap up my exploration of Miller families appearing in the early census records of Reading Township in Perry County, Ohio. That was the location of Lydia's first married home, which she shared with her husband, William Gordon, and her one surviving son, Adam.

To aid in the exploration, I've been using an Ancestry.com beta tool, called simply, "Networks." Early this month, I had set up a network which I dubbed "Miller Family in Perry County, Ohio." One by one, I've been adding specific Miller households to this tool, then locating them in as many documents as possible, before extending each hypothetical relative's line of descent several generations.

On the one hand, I've failed miserably in finding any confirmed connection between these other Millers and Lydia's own Miller roots, but on the other hand, I'm hoping the effort may produce some sign of DNA matches. An additional possible outcome might be to discover patterns, such as any Millers who might have followed Lydia and her second husband Benedict Palmer to their new home in Mercer County.

So far, no such promising signs have emerged. Thus, the repetitive grunt work—with nothing much more to say about it. Some work takes time but, regardless of the proportion of work, yields very little in the way of remarkable results.

Tomorrow, whether the work is done or not, we'll close out this exploration to discover Lydia Miller's roots. It will be time for a recap of the month's progress—including some unexpected discoveries—and an outline of what to do the next time I revisit this research puzzle. And if we are really lucky, perhaps Ancestry's algorithms will catch up with us and be ready to yield some new DNA matches from the descendants of Lydia's second family.

About That Other Lydia

 

Whenever we encounter conflicting assertions about a branch of our family tree, there is no route that possibly can be taken—at least, if we want a tree that reflects documented, correct information—other than to inspect all that can be found, according to each version of the "truth." In the case of that "other" Lydia, wife of Benedict Palmer of Mercer County, Ohio, that is exactly the task we need to attend to today.

Here's the assertion that got me started on this chase: a Find A Grave memorial for someone named Lydia Palmer, who was buried in Ellis Cemetery in Montezuma, Ohio, a tiny village in Mercer County that even today claims a population under two hundred people.

Nestled up against the state border with Indiana, Mercer County is on a road leading from Columbus, Ohio, to Fort Wayne, Indiana. From Perry County, where Lidia Miller lived, to Mercer County would be a trip of almost two hundred miles. If Lidia Miller, the widow of William Gordon, were indeed one and the same as Lydia Palmer, it would help to assemble records documenting the transactions that made that assertion a reality.

Let's check first to see what we can find on Lydia Palmer before her death in 1895. As early as 1860, I could find a census record for Lydia and her husband Benedict Palmer in Montezuma. The household included two daughters and five sons, with the oldest being named Jerome and the youngest, at one year of age, designated as his father's namesake, Benedict. The senior Benedict was noted to have been born in Delaware, while Lydia claimed to be an Ohio native.

The difficulty with the ages indicated for these children—Jerome listed as being twenty years of age in that census, meaning a birth year in 1840—was that "our" Lidia had given birth to her one surviving child, Adam Gordon, only a year prior to that. Not to mention, Lidia's husband, William Gordon, died at the end of 1840, certainly not in enough time for her to have remarried and brought another son to full term in the interim.

Looking for marriage information on Benedict Palmer, I did find a marriage record dated in February of 1839—the same time as our Lidia's son Adam was born—not from Mercer County where I had found the Palmers in 1860, but from Fairfield County, not far from Perry County. Benedict's wife's name, however, was listed as Catherine Hovermill.

Thinking this might have been a different Benedict, I went looking for someone by that name in Fairfield County. When I located him in the 1850 census, Benedict Palmer was indeed living in Fairfield County—but his wife's name wasn't Catherine at all. Despite the scrawl of the enumerator's handwriting—and his propensity to use abbreviations for names—the resultant entry for "Benidic" Palmer's wife looked far more like Lydia than Catherine.

It was time to branch out to more recent records—hopefully, those of the type which would include names of parents, such as death certificates. Remember that youngest son from the 1860 census, the one named after his father? I found what might—or might not—have been his death record. However, this Benedict Palmer died in Iowa, not Ohio. The informant, his wife, stated that her husband was born in Iowa, not Ohio. To complicate matters, she also reported that his father was born in Ohio—not Delaware, as we had seen from census records. 

The biggest problem, however, was that while this Benedict's death record noted his mother's name to have been Lydia, her maiden name, according to her daughter-in-law, was Barker.

Wrong Lydia? Don't be too sure. I kept looking—thankfully. Among the marriage records turning up in searches was one for a wedding performed in, of all places, Perry County, back where we had left our own Lidia Miller Gordon. On May 1, 1842, Benedict Palmer and Lydia "Gorden" stood before a Justice of the Peace, who solemnized their marriage.

To complete the tale, I'll need to look for any record of what became of Benedict's first wife, Catherine, who was evidently the mother of the oldest son, Jerome, whose burial was also noted with a Find A Grave memorial in Montezuma.

And that youngest son Benedict? Though he died in Iowa, he was indeed buried back in Montezuma—and, despite her provision of incorrect information on her husband's death certificate, so was his wife Rachel.

Thanks to an unexplained entry at Find A Grave—one which, without that documentation, seemed to make no sense at all—we now have the rest of the story, as far as Lidia Miller's life went. The birth dates for the sons of each husband, while seeming to contradict assertions about this marriage, made much more sense, once we followed through to find documentation to tell the full story.

Now, I'm left with far more to do on this month's research project. Besides documenting these discoveries for the family tree, I'll need to add the line of descent for children of Lidia's second marriage. Then, because those descendants may mean additional discoveries among perplexing DNA matches, I'll need to pursue that angle, as well—all before the close of this month, if all goes well.

What if That was All Wrong?

 

The month-long chase to discover the parents of Lidia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother who seemed to materialize out of nowhere, is almost over. Only four more days remain to work on this month's selection for my Twelve Most Wanted, but while I feel I've made headway on this brick wall puzzle, I haven't come to any solid conclusion.

I feel good about the progress I've made—especially the discovery of DNA matches linking to Jonathan Miller, a Perry County, Ohio, neighbor whose descendants may be telling a story I couldn't find through the traditional paper route. There is, however, one nagging question: what if that discovery—and all the documentation it led me to—turns out to be all wrong? What if Lidia Miller's story was far different than what we've discussed so far?

There's a good reason for asking—perhaps one you have noticed too, if you followed the links I've included with this month's posts. Notice the 1840 burial information for Lidia's husband, William Gordon, as presented by the volunteer posting his memorial on Find A Grave. As is often done by these volunteers, memorials are linked with those of family members, a helpful gesture—as long as the connections are correct. In this case, I'm not so sure the information is right, but I can't just not check it out. 

William Gordon's memorial has the usual listings for his parents, children, and siblings—and in William's case, his half-siblings, as well. As is often the case, volunteers also link a memorial with the burial information on a spouse. However, in William's case, information supposedly about his wife Lidia was cross referenced with the burial information of someone named Lydia Palmer.

This Lydia was born about the same year our Lidia's birth was estimated to be: 1820. That's where the similarity ends. Lydia Palmer was the wife of someone named Benedict Palmer, and she was buried with him in 1895, not in Perry County, the location where we'd expect to find Lidia in Ohio, but in Mercer County, a county halfway across the state on the Indiana border.

True, it could be possible that our Lidia, widowed with a young child in the early years of Ohio's statehood, might have sought out an eligible bachelor to fill her departed husband's shoes—but I can't just take anyone's word for it, not even that of a dedicated Find A Grave volunteer. This brings up a possibility that we need to take our due diligence to inspect for ourselves.

Not the Usual Five Hundred This Time

 

It takes a lot of collateral relatives to put a DNA match in the proper place in the family tree. As I search for clues about my mother-in-law's brick wall ancestor, Lidia Miller Gordon, there have been a lot of DNA matches connected to one growing branch of that family tree. And that means the numbers keep growing for every biweekly count—just not at the usual five hundred per fortnight rate experienced in the last two counts.

Still, in the past two weeks, my mother-in-law's tree has grown by an additional 416 relatives, mostly from known Gordon lines and those proposed Miller relatives whose descendants have turned out to be DNA matches. Granted, that falls short of that five hundred rate of the last two session, but my mother-in-law's  family tree now has 39,287 documented individuals included in the records.

In addition, this past two weeks brought in another seven DNA matches, including at least one related to my mother-in-law's Gordon line. As I work through the DNA results with my recent addition of Ancestry.com's ProTools assist, I'm connecting more and more of those Gordon and Miller collateral lines. Eventually, there will be enough information to figure out Lidia's connection to her own roots—and thus push back the curtain obscuring her origins at last. Someday.

In the past two weeks, I think the only reason that rate of increase on the tree has slowed has been because I've been traveling. It is, after all, Memorial Day weekend—not to mention graduation season. Hopefully, in the next two weeks, the celebrations and socialization will slow to a normal summertime pace, and I can get back to the typical five hundred additions for the next biweekly count. After all, it will only be a few more days, and we'll be on to a new research target for June's ancestor in my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025.

Notes From Long Ago

 

Sometimes, the old trumps the new. In the case of reading nineteenth century headstones, I'd take a seventy-two year old transcription any day, so when I found just that, I sat down for a good read.

My question lately has been, "Where was Lidia Miller Gordon buried?" It was not with her Catholic husband and in-laws, apparently. When I discovered a number of Miller family members buried in a humble, farmland-based burial ground in Perry County's Reading Township, I thought I'd take a look around.

While Find A Grave has photos of many of the still-legible headstones in the Binkley Cemetery—like Lidia's possible brother, Jonathan Miller—the earliest burials have suffered the ravages of time, weather, and unkind trespassers. Fortunately, while I was looking online at FamilySearch.org/labs for any documents to resolve my research dilemma about Lidia, one search result produced a transcription of Binkley Cemetery headstones.

The beauty of this discovery was that, though they are mere typewritten transcriptions of the engraved headstones, they represent work done in 1953—a full seventy two years ago. Granted, 1953 is a long time after the first burials occurred in that cemetery in 1810, but it is still a vantage point much earlier than our present day.

I thought I'd take a look, line by line, page by page. Job number one was to keep an eye out for any mention of Lidia Miller Gordon, my mother-in-law's brick wall second great-grandmother. There were indeed a number of Millers recorded in that transcription, so now that I've created a Miller Network through my Ancestry ProTools, I'll be careful to add those entries into the appropriate places as I build out the Miller Network. Every bit of detail helps.

The FamilySearch entry continued for several pages. While organized alphabetically by surname, it appeared to cluster information pertaining to family plots. Thus, I could find the cluster for Jonathan Miller's family, and, just below that on the same page, a grouping for Michael Miller's family, another family which might be considered relatives to Lidia. In addition, there was a set of burials listed for the Dupler family, likely a connection to Jonathan Miller's wife Catherine, who was herself born a Dupler.

No matter how helpful it was to find this seventy two year old cemetery transcription, there was one detail missing: any sign of a burial for Lidia Miller, wife of William Gordon.

Taking a Cue From the Cemetery

 

Sometimes, assumptions can sneak up on us. That was what was fixin' to fool me in this process of seeking Lidia Miller, the young mother who died in 1840. Unable to find any further information on her, I reached outward to the rest of her possible family relations in search of clues to solve Lidia's riddle.

Lidia's husband, William Gordon, died at the end of the same year in which he had lost Lidia: on Christmas Eve in 1840. As would be expected for a member of the Gordon family, William was buried in the Catholic Cemetery in nearby Somerset, a village within the Reading Township where we had found him listed in the 1840 census. Likewise for William and Lidia's baby, also named William—and, unsurprisingly, so were William's own parents, the senior William and his second wife, Mary Cain Gordon. From that, a natural assumption would be to take a cue from these burials and assume that younger William's wife Lidia would be buried in the same cemetery.

Wrong.

Well, at least it seems to be a wrong assumption. I can't find Lidia's final resting place, as of this point. But what I did find was surprising—surprising enough, that is, to make me doubt the connection between Lidia and her supposed Miller relatives, Jonathan and his wife, the former Catherine Dupler. You see, with all the family burials at Holy Trinity Cemetery, it was easy to assume that Lidia would also be Catholic. Perhaps she wasn't.

Now that we've found Jonathan Miller, a possible brother or cousin to Lidia, according to DNA matches, I followed him to his final resting place, a cemetery in New Reading called simply Binkley Cemetery. With a name like that, it would be easy to assume this was just a family's private burial grounds within their farm property. Perhaps that might have been true at one point. However, Find A Grave now notes over one hundred seventy memorials posted for this cemetery, with burial dates ranging from the namesake ancestor Johann Jacob Binckley's burial in 1810 through the most recent burial noted in 1947.

Not surprisingly, included with several of those burials in the Binkley Cemetery were headstones for the Miller surname. Perhaps seeing a couple by the name of Binkley—Samuel and Elizabeth—residing in Jonathan's household in the 1860 census may have been my first hint, though at the time I discovered that, I hadn't yet made any connection between the two families.

In addition to Jonathan and his family, however, the Binkley Cemetery's burials included another Miller family, that of Michael Miller and his wife Mary. Mary, if we can rely on the notes posted on her Find A Grave memorial, was born a Binkley.

Michael, according to the age given on his headstone, was likely born in 1812. That year of birth would put Michael too young to have been Lidia's father. Considering Jonathan Miller's burial in the same small cemetery and the fact that Binkley family members once lived in Jonathan's home, I'd consider that a suggestion that Michael and Jonathan might have been brothers.

That makes one useful cue gleaned from this burial discovery. But the final clue I gained from discovering this burial spot was the reminder that at least Jonathan and Michael Miller were not practicing Catholics. If Lidia turns out to have been their sister, despite her marriage to a Catholic resident of the same township, that means I would have to look elsewhere to find those useful documents we rely on for genealogical information prior to itemized census records and civil birth records.

Whether such records are still in existence—or even whether I can discover what faith these families adhered to—remains a big question. The consistency of Catholic baptismal records has certainly been a benefit to me in researching this Gordon family's past. Stepping outside the faith may leave me with no recorded options at all. 

Reminiscing — And Reusing

 

The other day, I ran across an article on Family Tree Magazine about RootsWeb, the "granddaddy of genealogy websites." For those of us who wandered the site frequently in those early days of online genealogy, the forums and information posted could be useful—sometimes essential. Thinking about those old websites launched me into a reverie of reminiscing—but not so long that I didn't heed the article's advice to remember to check it out now.

Even though RootsWeb is frozen in time, due to the evolution of computing leaving this technological dinosaur vulnerable to hacks, there is still much that can be accessed. Remembering those many useful posts I had found there on Perry County, Ohio, resources, I thought it might be worth my while to give it a look, via a site-specific Google search. 

What I remembered finding back then were burial records transcribed from decades ago when headstones weren't quite so faded, and researchers who had hand-entered data from handwritten records. I had saved some of these resources to my own computer, in the prescient fear of maybe someday seeing the site go down, but others which I hadn't saved could have come in handy now, in my current search for Adam Gordon's mother, Lidia Miller, before her untimely death.

I did find some notes readable, including a post reminding me to check out the history of the early Catholic Church in Perry County. One entry pointed to Internet Archive, which now hosts the digitized version of the A. A. Graham tome, History of Fairfield and Perry Counties, with its listing of early church members. Someone named Adam Gordon was listed among those early members of the church, though I doubt it was our Adam Gordon. Still, it was informative to page through the 1883 publication to see what was happening in this ancestral location so long ago. I'm keeping an eye out for any biographical sketches on Miller families, despite there being so many people by that name in Perry County.

Another link I found in my exploration brought me to a site from long ago called Ohio Genealogy Express. There, a page transcribed from another early Perry County history book laid out the brief history of the formation of each of the county's townships. Since Lidia's family and the Gordon family had settled in Reading Township, I took a look at the explanation there. Apparently, Reading Township was originally established prior to the formation of Perry County. When that reorganization took place in 1818, two rows of sections which originally were in Fairfield County's Richland Township were now added to complete Reading Township as part of the new Perry County. Knowing this may help explain the location of the original land purchased by Adam "Onsbaugh" in 1806, long before Perry County was even in existence.

I'll probably continue to search through the potpourri of material still accessible through the old RootsWeb and other old genealogy websites. After all, someone once knew the details that now have me puzzled. You can be sure that someone once knew the names of Lidia Miller's parents and siblings. Sometimes, that F.A.N. Club concept is useful for that very reason: someone out there once knew the answer. The key is finding just where that someone stashed that missing kernel of truth.

A Point of Digression

 

Would you even realize it if you had crossed paths with a fourth cousin? How about a third cousin? Some people aren't even aware of who their second cousins are—but now that some of us are using DNA testing to round out our family tree, we are growing an awareness of these distant relatives.

This weekend, I'm taking a break from the search for Lidia Miller's parents, that seemingly orphaned second great-grandmother to my mother-in-law. Instead, I've jumped to her husband's line, whose parents I do know about, in hopes of discovering even the tiniest hints about their extended family. After all, this being a community of early settlers in Perry County, Ohio—a place known for its many intermarried lines over the generations—there could be another connection to that mysterious Miller family coming at me from a different angle.

My approach right now has been to work off the suggestions at Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool, and trace each descendant listed from the selected ancestor. Working with the line of William B. Gordon, Lidia's father-in-law, I zeroed in on his children from his second wife only, since that is the line from which Lidia's husband was born.

While that may sound particularly restrictive to you, keep in mind that William B. Gordon had eight children, including Lidia's husband William H. Gordon—and that was just the family from his second marriage (he had eleven more with his first wife).

And so the work begins. From each child, beginning with the oldest, I add that child's marriage and descendants to my mother-in-law's family tree. Then I move on to the second-born of William B. Gordon's children, adding each descendant in that line. Eventually, I've laid out a basic working descendancy chart for William B's progeny, from which I can then plug in DNA matches in their proper place in the extended family tree.

Yesterday, I was working on William's daughter Susan, who married David Hewitt in 1846. While the Hewitts had seven children (at least that I can find), when it comes to current-day DNA matches, there were none showing on the ThruLines chart. Curious, I worked my way through the descendants for this couple—and that is where I spotted one of those rabbit-trail-worthy points of digression.

Susan Gordon Hewitt had a granddaughter, Grace Doyle, who was a second cousin to my mother-in-law's own grandmother. This Grace married a man considerably older than she was at the time. For that fifty three year old man, it was his second marriage.

Like so many people from rural Perry County, Grace's parents had chosen to move to a big city. First to Cleveland, where Grace was born, the young family eventually moved to the state capital, Columbus, a city not more than an hour's travel from Perry County. Likewise, Grace's future husband eventually moved from his native West Virginia to Columbus, and there they married.

Looking closely over the details in that 1931 marriage license, an unusual entry jumped out at me: Grace's intended—a man by the name of Harry Westerman—listed his occupation as cartoonist. I thought finding that occupation listed was rather unusual—and that's where the rabbit trail beguiled me.

With a quick check at Google, I found very little on the man, but the search did lead me to some illustrations at Wikimedia Commons. For one, there was a line drawing labeled as Harry J. Westerman, attributed to an entry in a 1904 book, The Art of Caricature.

Quick! To Internet Archive to see whether anyone had uploaded the now-public domain book. Yes! There it was, with the same image visible on page 173. Whether that was a drawing by Mr. Westerman or one portraying his likeness, I couldn't tell from the information, but the trail was getting warmer.

Looking for the man's biography—after all, there must have been some reason why he was mentioned in a book, right?—I found very little at first. But each step opened up a glimpse of a possible second step. Moving along the research path can help, even one step at a time.

Since the 1904 Grant Wright book had attributed Mr. Westerman's work to a publication called the Ohio State Journal, I tried searching through the usual newspaper collections we use for genealogy work. With no luck at two different subscription sites, I turned to the Internet search engines again, and found the Journal uploaded to the website "Ohio Memory," a collaboration of the Ohio History Connection and the State Library of Ohio.

There, searching the newspaper collection for the name "Harry Westerman" plus the publication title, I found one example of the man's work as a cartoonist from January 30, 1909. Digital collections at the Columbus Metropolitan Library informed me that H. J. Westerman began his career with the Ohio State Journal in 1897.

Working in a state in which there was "so much political activity and strife," as Wright's 1904 Art of Caricature book observed, perhaps it is no surprise to discover that Westerman the cartoonist targeted political topics. Of course, from my vantage point of having just stumbled across this rabbit trail, I had no idea of the political interests of Ohioans at the launch of the twentieth century, but when I read the report of Harry Westerman's sudden demise—he died of a heart attack en route with his family to New York City—and saw his death covered in newspapers from the nation's capital to rural Iowa, that research excursion led me to find at least one of his books.

Called simply, A Book of Cartoons, the 124-page collection of Westerman's work, now in the public domain, is easily viewed at Hathi Trust.

After exploring this man's life story—not to mention his tangential connection to my mother-in-law's family—I had to take a look. Not that I have any knowledge of the back story for the political commentary flowing from his pen via newspapers of the time, I still was curious to get more of a sense of who this person was, and to imagine what his family must have gone through on that train trip to New York which, unbeknownst to them, was Harry Westerman's final journey.

I think so many times about that "sound advice" to develop research questions and stick with research plans—but then I realize how much I'd miss if I heeded that advice. There will always be tomorrow to look further into Lidia Miller's kin, but when a story unexpectedly presents itself with more questions than answers, I simply can't resist turning aside to chase that target.

Seeking Millers in Ohio

 

The quest I'm on right now may seem a hopeless plight: finding the family of Lidia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother. It doesn't help that Miller has always been one of the three most common surnames in Ohio—not to mention, in much of the rest of the country. But when a Miller shows up in one's family tree, unattached to any relatives at all, what else is there to do?

Having discovered that the entry for Lidia's husband, William Gordon, in the 1840 census happened to be on the same page as someone named "Johnathan" Miller in Perry County's Reading Township, I figured that was as good a starting point as any to find her family. Taking a look at what was on that 1840 census for this other Miller, it seemed he could possibly be an older brother to Lidia. In his thirties while she was likely in her early twenties, that was far more likely than a father-daughter scenario—though the age ranges given for early census records provided plenty of wiggle room for such estimates.

This neighbor, Johnathan Miller, was head of a growing household which included one boy under five, three more under ten, as well as another daughter of the same age, plus two more under fourteen years of age.

Jumping ten years ahead from that 1840 census, we get a bit more detail on Jonathan Miller's growing family in 1850. This time, we find names for those children: Michael, Barbara, Andy, John, Jonathan, Dianah, and Isabel. And we now know at least his wife's given name: Catherine. Again, we can track the family's changing dynamics with the 1860 census, where not only the younger children remain, but a couple named Samuel and Elizabeth "Burkly" are included in the household.

What was interesting was when I reversed directions and looked for signs of Jonathan Miller in earlier records. In tax records for his home in Perry County's Reading Township in 1838—the same year in which Lidia Miller married William Gordon—Jonathan was listed as owning forty four acres. Looking for earlier records, an 1829 entry showed him owning one horse and two cattle. An added bonus: several other Millers' names appeared on the same page in that earlier record, hinting at more possible relatives.

If I could find Jonathan Miller in tax records for 1829, what about the 1830 census? Sure enough, he was listed right there in Reading Township, with a much younger family including his wife and two daughters under the age of five.

That question led to another question: what about William Gordon, the man whose wife had started this exploration in the first place? Had he arrived from Pennsylvania by that point? It's doubtful. Although there were two heads of households named William listed in the 1830 census, the surname was entered as William "Jourdan." While our William would have been seventeen at the time, and thus still living in the home of his father (also named William), both households entered in the 1830 census seemed to represent younger families. William and Lidia's story would not have blossomed until after that point.

All this exploration has done for us, however, is demonstrate that someone named Jonathan Miller lived in Reading Township, Perry County, since at least 1829. That still doesn't tell us who else might have been related to the man, and certainly doesn't provide any clues about a connection with Lidia. We'll still need to dig further to learn more about Jonathan.