Wrapping up Loose Ends

 

When the close of a month approaches, it's time to gather up the loose ends still remaining untied after weeks of struggling with the month's appointed research target. Since June was the month to focus on my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather Simon Rinehart, I can easily say there were several loose ends to attend to. Today and tomorrow, we'll see what remains—and what can be noted and carried forward for the next time I tackle this brick wall ancestor.

The most significant discovery this month was finding the two court records in Perry County, Ohio,  outlining which of Simon's children belonged to each of his two wives. I am just now reorganizing those two sets of descendants in my mother-in-law's family tree. With that done, I can see how his children's dates of birth seem to align in a much more reasonable fashion with the second court record than what we were left with after Simon's will had been contested.

The result now leaves me with only three children descending from Simon's first—and unnamed—wife. Though I still can't properly identify his son Samuel—there may be a name twin back in Greene County, Pennsylvania, Simon's supposed origin—it appears all three of those children were born prior to 1800. 

As for the children of Simon's second wife, Anna, the oldest was born about 1803. This date becomes the place marker suggesting a possible wedding date for Simon's second bride, as well as a latest possible year of death for the unnamed first wife, back in Greene County—each far earlier than I had previously anticipated.

Finding any records in Greene County, however, has still been a challenge. There are simply too many Rineharts in that county—especially name twins—to make it easy to find the right ones. However, for one of Simon's daughters—Nancy, who married an Ankrom back in Pennsylvania—it may be possible to identify a likely candidate from the 1830 census onward.

What about Simon's supposed time spent in Kentucky? After all, his oldest daughter—Sarah, my mother-in-law's direct line ancestor—was said to have been born there, possibly in Bracken County. If Simon did live there for a while, it would have been before 1800. Sarah was said to have been born in Kentucky in 1795.

Looking at county records from FamilySearch.org's Full Text search, I can find a Simon "Rineheart" mentioned in Bracken County records in 1798 and 1799. Whether this detail will be key in finding Simon's first wife, I can't yet say—if, indeed, we even have the right Simon Rinehart and the right Kentucky county.

For now, though this month's exercise didn't result in the goal I was seeking of identifying Simon's parents, I did manage to get a clearer picture of who belonged in his immediate family. Tomorrow, we'll take stock of what we accomplished, and where we need to go from here for the next time I tackle this one of my Twelve Most Wanted from my mother-in-law's family lines.

Abraham's Grandson

 

If Abraham Kenyon took special care to name a grandson in his will, could we locate any other indications  telling us more about that same grandson's history?

We can quickly see what one genealogist reported in the 1912 publication, The Descendants of Capt. Thomas Carter regarding my fifth great-grandfather John Carter's son William. We are already leery of trusting that source wholesale, due to some discrepancies which we have already noted. For instance, William, the son of John Carter according to Joseph Lyon Miller's book, may not have been a descendant of John Carter's listed wife, Elizabeth Armistead.

However, I couldn't help but notice, in author Joseph Miller's book, two of William Carter's sons mirror names we have gleaned from the will we examined yesterday, which named one William Carter as Abraham Kenyon's grandson. According to the book, among William Carter's many children are two with names that resonate: a son named Abraham, and another son named Kenyon. Granted, those two choices could be a coincidence, but it seems a promising sign in considering Abraham Kenyon's grandson William Carter and our John Carter's son William as one and the same.

Just to make sure, though—errors in books being a risk—let's take a look at our William Carter's own will. Sure enough, among the seventeen items delineated in William Carter's 1802 will, there is mention of sons by those names. In fact, we can glean further information: some of the inherited property to be given to Kenyon Carter was to be held in trust for him by his older brother Rice. In addition, some of the inherited land given to Abraham Carter and another brother—William Aylett Carter—was in the state of Kentucky, pointing us in a new direction for tracing descendants for any possible DNA matching purposes.

At least within Spotsylvania County, where William Carter's will was drawn up in the state of Virginia, I did not see any indication of a second man by that same name, leading me to tentatively conclude that William Carter—whose will did mention his "mother-in-law" Hannah Carter (actually his step-mother, the former Hannah Chew, last wife of John Carter)—was one and the same as Abraham Kenyon's grandson William Carter, who was mentioned in Abraham's will in neighboring King George County.

That leads to the conclusion that the Miller book was in error in asserting that William's mother was Elizabeth Armistead. Instead, I'll be noting that William, son of our John, was also son of Abraham Kenyon's daughter Sarah. Remembering, too, that John Carter's daughter Elizabeth had named a daughter of her own as Sarah Kenyon Thomas, we need to conclude that Elizabeth was also a child of John Carter's wife Sarah Kenyon.

There may be more of John Carter's children who were born to his wife Sarah Kenyon. As yet, I haven't been able to identify their names, based on court documents, but that may come in due time. In early Virginia legal records, there were certainly many mentions of Carter family names. It's just a matter of sifting through them all to see if any further patterns emerge. 

What Happened to Elizabeth

 

Sometimes, there are family stories so horrible, so painful, that those who lived through the trauma cannot bear, even years after the fact, to pass the tale along to the next generation. I wonder whether Elizabeth Fenley's story might have been one such example.

Elizabeth was a young six years of age when her family planned a delightful summer outing. The plan was for the extended family to take the train from their home in Louisville, Kentucky, to a favorite summer vacation spot in New England: Nantucket. From there, they planned to stop in Boston before returning home at the end of the summer.

While the vacation at the seashore may have been lovely, especially for Elizabeth, her sisters, and her cousin, the short train ride to Boston didn't end quite as well. The flurry of news reports about the train derailment near Quincy, Massachusetts, included mentions of the tragic outcome for the extended Fenley family—but apparently in the rush to get the "scoop" on the story, journalists confused the many Fenley names among the casualties.

Though several newspapers across the midwest published lists of the deceased passengers, it appeared that Mrs. Oscar Fenley was listed as the grandmother, for instance, when she was actually the mother of the three Fenley daughters. The confusion was never so obvious as when the Indianapolis newspaper published—on the same date and page—two articles regarding young Elizabeth Fenley.

After stating that "Elizabeth Fenley, four years old, died at the hospital," only inches below that column, the paper reported that "Elizabeth Fenley, aged six" was not at the hospital—where space was limited due to the immense number of injuries after the crash—but at the home of one "Mrs. Carr on Hancock street." Furthermore, "the little girl is badly scalded, and the doctor says her condition is such that he does not think she can live."

While the two reports contained discrepancies on not only her condition but her age, there was only one child involved in that train wreck by the name of Elizabeth Fenley. That she did not die immediately after the crash can be corroborated by Elizabeth's Find a Grave memorial, which was dated years later. However, the 1915 date on her headstone reveals yet another tragedy for the Fenley family.

A Find a Grave volunteer posted an explanation of what had followed for Elizabeth after she survived the horrors of the Quincy train derailment. Though badly scalded on the lower half of her body—injuries which took two months to resolve before she was able to travel back home to Kentucky again—she did return to Louisville with her father, who had not been with the Fenley family for that summer excursion, but came north to be with his daughter during her two-month-long recuperation. Only after their arrival home again was a memorial service conducted for the six Fenley family members who had died.

After the November funeral, it was said that Elizabeth never fully recovered from the effects of the train wreck. Her father, then president of the National Bank of Kentucky and a board member of the United States Regional Reserve Bank, provided for her in every way he could, including arranging for private schooling in Philadelphia and New York, and attendance at Bryn Mawr. Despite all that could be done for Elizabeth, by about 1912, she had been in bad health and was said to have been "on the verge of a nervous breakdown" when she traveled to New York, seeking treatment from a "nerve specialist."

From a headline in the New York Tribune on September 15, 1915, stating "Woman Killed in 8-Story Leap," the sad story of the culmination of Elizabeth's anguish was detailed. Wearing a blue taffeta dress and a hat with an ostrich plume, which she laid at the top of the stairway before her jump, Elizabeth made her irrevocable choice.

An unnamed aunt had been the last known person to have been with Elizabeth, as Elizabeth had seen her off at the train station that very afternoon before her tragic decision. Receiving the news by telegram, Elizabeth's father Oscar Fenley "collapsed and required medical attention throughout the night." The burden of what the Tribune had noted as an "appalling" tragedy of years prior which the Fenley family had suffered through had claimed yet another victim so many years later.

So many times, when we learn of tragedies borne by our ancestors, we may telescope the events into points on a timeline, rather than see them as the ongoing burden borne by those who survived. But those who remained had to continue living life with the pain of the experience. It is experiences like those which change us, point our life's trajectory in a different direction. Though such stories may have been too painful for our ancestors to tell, that is the stuff that became their reality—and a lens through which we can only attempt to understand them by.     

Asking Questions to Find the Rest of the Story

 

It was Mary Elizabeth Carr Fenley whose sudden death in Quincy, Massachusetts, plagued me with questions. Though I only this week had found the woman's name and family constellation, it seemed odd that a woman in 1890 would have died so far from home. I had to find the rest of that story.

Seeing her name on the death register, listed for Quincy as was often done during that time period—line by line on one page for the same month and year—revealed that Mary was not the only Fenley who had died on the same day. Delving further into the records, I could see there were others with different surnames among the dead that day who had also come from Mary's home in Louisville, Kentucky.

Despite having the help of archived newspaper collections to learn more about the cause of Mary's sudden death—and that of the other Fenley family members who lost their lives in that horrific twenty four hour period—there were some challenges to piece together who was who. Newspaper reporters, as we've seen in the past, can make mistakes.

Especially considering the sheer numbers of dead and injured in the train wreck which precipitated the loss of their lives, I certainly understand how the surrounding circumstances might have mangled reporters' ability to keep lists of casualties straight. It was back to the genealogical drawing board for me, after reading as many news articles as I could find, to sketch out the true relationships of the Fenley family members involved.

Mary, herself, was widow of John Norris Fenley, and mother of traveling companion Mary Fenley Abbott, who was accompanied by her husband, William. The party also included Mary's daughter-in-law Alice Short Fenley and her daughters, Mary's grandchildren Elizabeth, Mary Catherine, and Alice. Rounding out the party was another of Mary's granddaughters, Susan Fenley, daughter of Mary's son William.

All but son-in-law William Abbott and granddaughter Elizabeth died in the Quincy train tragedy within twenty four hours of its occurrence in August that year of 1890. Even so, both William and his niece Elizabeth were badly injured, marks which they bore through the rest of their lives and which, apparently, brought the young girl Elizabeth much anguish over the remainder of her brief life.

Before answering the question of exactly how—and why—I stumbled upon this family's unbearable loss, we'll first need to take a closer look at Elizabeth's story, tomorrow.  

The Quincy Horror

 

The end of summer was drawing to a close, and nine friends and family members from Louisville, Kentucky, were wrapping up their vacation at Nantucket with a quick train ride to Boston on the appropriately named Old Colony Railroad.

Among those in the traveling party were Judge I. W. Edwards, and the wife and family of Oscar Fenley, then president of the National Bank of Kentucky, who was to join the group shortly.

While the train was en route to Boston that August in 1890, unbeknownst to the passengers—and likely, the train's engineer, as well—some section hands had been working on the tracks beyond a curve in the route. They were using what was called a "track jack" which, left in place as the train approached—having received no safety warning from the workmen—caused a derailment ejecting passengers from their seats. 

The immediate derailment caused the steam engine to rupture, sending steam into the passenger compartment, further injuring those who had not been killed upon impact. Those passengers who could assisted the injured others outside to safety, and eventually help arrived to attend to the medical emergencies.

The local hospital in nearby Quincy, Massachusetts, was overwhelmed with the amount of medical care which needed to be provided. One newspaper report remarked, "No tongue can describe the scene at the city hospital."

Meanwhile, news wire services had picked up the story, as many of the travelers were from homes hundreds of miles from Quincy. Reports of the train catastrophe kept adding to the count of dead and injured at the scene—newspapers carried the story, dubbed The Quincy Horror, across the midwest, like Erie, Pennsylvania, and Indianapolis, Indiana. Many newspapers focused their reports on victims of the crash who were residents of their own city, such as this report from Cleveland, Ohio. Continued stories updated the count of the dead. To add insult to injury, some stories revealed that pickpockets worked the scene of the crash as well, lifting watches, jewelry, and money from victims too dazed to respond.

I wouldn't have known about this train wreck in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1890 if it weren't for one detail: my search to outline the descendants of one woman from colonial Maryland. Among those many dead and injured, one family stood out in news reports for their collective losses that day: the Fenley family from Louisville, Kentucky, the very family I had been researching from my mother-in-law's colonial roots. We'll piece together that list of casualties tomorrow, and see how they fit into the family constellation.

Moses Broyles: Matching DNA and Paper Trails

 

Three DNA matches, two ancestral lines, one double relationship: all this plays out over two different states as the British colonies emerge into the nascent United States. From my Broyles connection—my fifth great-grandparents Adam and Mary Broyles—it turns out those three DNA matches all descend from their son Moses and his wife Barbara Carpenter. In turn, for the next generation, one of the DNA matches belongs to the line of Moses' son William. The other two descend from William's brother James. And while James remained in the Virginia hometown where his parents raised him, William moved far from it. 

Though it may be more difficult to prove the line of descent for William's side—he moved from Virginia to Kentucky, home of courthouse fires bemoaned by so many genealogists—that is exactly the line we'll focus on today. And that is for one reason: William's children owe their double relationships to their father's choice of a bride.

William married Elizabeth Wilhoit in January of 1800 in their home county of Madison in Virginia. If you remember, we've run across that Wilhoit surname before, in realizing that William's mother, Barbara Carpenter, was herself a daughter of another Wilhoit woman.

That, however, was not the only way Elizabeth and her husband were related. Elizabeth also descended from the Broyles line through her grandmother Catherine Broyles, Adam Broyles' aunt who married a Wilhoit man.

William and Elizabeth left Virginia about five years after their wedding. An 1805 transaction in which they sold land in Madison County probably signaled completion of their last bit of business before moving to Jefferson County, Kentucky. Tax records in that Kentucky county picked up William's name by 1807.

The difficulty in researching William lies mainly in his death in the mid-1820s, likely in Jefferson County. His wife Elizabeth, fortunately, lived until the early 1850s, according to Cathi Clore Frost's recent book, The Broyles Family: the First Four Generations, though I have yet to pinpoint her in the 1850 census. Because Elizabeth was part of the first four generations of Broyles settlers at the Germanna colony, she has her own entry in Frost's book, including the listing of all the children of Elizabeth and William.

Frost lists seven children for William and Elizabeth, with one—daughter Lucy, the fifth entry—marked as a "probably child." The others, in likely birth order, were Malinda, Washington, John, Catharine, Madison, and Mary Elizabeth. 

As for my DNA matches, the one lining up with William Broyles supposedly connects through his son John, according to projections by Ancestry.com's ThruLines program. Yet John is a hard one to trace through documentation. I can find mention of him through records for which his siblings are the primary focus, such as this 1822 marriage bond concerning his sister Malinda and her intended, Thomas Grant. It will take a bit more work before I gather all the documents to assure myself that this is the right connection.

And that is merely for one DNA match. We'll see what can be learned about the other matches descending from Moses Broyles, son of Adam, next. 

Getting the Right Isaac Brown

When one particular name keeps appearing in the important papers of an ancestral family for whom little else is known, it pays to ask a few questions. Like: who is this guy? And why was he in my ancestor's life?

That is exactly the task we'll embark upon, now that we've seen the name of Isaac Brown mentioned in the wills of both James Gordon and his wife's father, Simon Rinehart. We'll take some time today to see what can be found about this Isaac Brown of Perry County, Ohio—and then continue next Monday to follow up on the clues we've found.

Just as a review, we've already discovered that while James Gordon met and married his wife Sarah Rinehart in Greene County, Pennsylvania, she was actually born, in 1795, somewhere in Kentucky. We've also learned that several of the folks who lived in Greene County in the early 1830s all decided to make the move to the central Ohio location of Perry County. That Ohio county was the scene where, in 1840, Sarah's husband James Gordon drew up his last will and testament, and where her father did the same in 1853.

In both instances—and for unknown reasons—both men chose to include someone named Isaac Brown in their proceedings. Since inclusion of a name in a will is not a trifling matter—there is likely an important connection to be discerned here—it may be helpful for us to follow this trail. After all, we still don't know who Simon Rinehart's parents were, despite the well-known story in Tenmile Country of one pioneer with that same name—Simon Rinehart—who tragically lost his life at an early age. Furthermore, we have been unable to confirm the maiden name of our Simon's wife, thanks to conflicting information from different sources.

Of course, seeking an Isaac Brown in Perry County won't be as easy as it seems. In 1850, for instance, the county contained over twenty thousand residents, and stepping back a decade won't help our search much, as the population was barely one thousand residents less in 1840. Finding the right Brown—even if his given name were Isaac—will be a challenge.

And that, as it turns out, is what we are presented with: the challenge of finding the right Isaac. In the 1850 census for Perry County, there were no less than seven men with the name Isaac Brown in Perry County: three in Harrison Township, two in Salt Lick, and one each in Clayton and Pike Townships. Added to that was the eighth possibility: a gentleman going by the initials I.S. Brown, who might also be an Isaac.

However, if we consider that, in 1850, Simon Rinehart lived in Pike Township, we can start our hunt-and-peck procedure with this one candidate: the Isaac Brown whose census entry was listed not far from the page in which Simon's own entry was written.

Of course, nothing is ever easy. This particular Isaac, whom I thought would so conveniently fill the bill as brother to Simon's wife Ann—whoever she was—turned out to be born, not around Tenmile Country in Pennsylvania as would fit nicely with our plot line, but in Virginia.

Hint: Virginia does not fit the preferred narrative.

Moreover, pushing our tree-building luck ahead ten more years doesn't do much for any discoveries. While there was an Isaac Brown in the 1860 census, that Isaac's wife was not the same as the Catherine listed in the 1850 census—if, indeed, the abysmal handwriting was trying to communicate that message to us. In 1860, the wife was listed clearly as Cassa, not Catherine.

I tried pushing forward yet another ten years, selecting the older children, in case Isaac himself was no longer living, but I realized yet another roadblock standing between that questionable 1860 census and the decade beyond: the Civil War. That oldest son likely served in the Union Army by that point, and may have been lost to all by 1870.

Still, I took the children one by one, to see what I could discover about this Isaac Brown family, and followed the trail. It wasn't long until I discovered a middle name appended to one of those children which made me nearly shout out loud: it wasn't a connection to Simon's wife at all. It wasn't a Wise. Nor was it a Wiley. It was a Rinehart connection. With Simon, himself.

When That Name Keeps Showing Up

Today, there are quite a few unanswered questions about Simon Rinehart, the man who was my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather. Though we know he was likely born in southwestern Pennsylvania about 1774, we don't know who his parents were, and thus have no idea of any possible siblings, either.

Not only that, but the only details we do know about him are that he had a wife (or perhaps two) named Ann, and children named Sarah, Jesse, Hannah, Lucinda, and Charlotte. With those children's dates of birth spread over twenty three years and the family's travels spanning three states—Pennsylvania, Kentucky (where Sarah was born in 1795), and Ohio (where Sarah and her husband, James Gordon, settled, along with the rest of her father's family)—you would think a record somewhere would answer more of my genealogically-oriented questions.

Not.

I won't rehearse all the attempts I've already made on this puzzle; if you're curious, you can read the posts tagged Rinehart from the last couple weeks' work. There is, however, one last-ditch attempt to be considered: to look at the will of Simon Rinehart, which was presented to the probate judge in Perry County, Ohio, on March 8, 1853.

This is the will which, frustratingly, neglected to actually name Simon Rinehart's "beloved wife." The will was brief, consisting of three directives, plus the usual legal terminology. Signed by the testator's mark, as he couldn't sign his own name, it gave the name of the two witnesses as Peter Long and Matthew Brown.

The interesting point about this will, though, was that Simon named not one but two executors. One, of course, was his only son, Jesse, who at the time of his father's death would have been about forty six years of age. Despite Jesse's mature age, his father deemed it best to appoint a second executor, a man named Isaac Brown.

Now, if you recall, there has been no mention of a surname like Brown in all the wanderings I've made through the Rinehart family history, as well as that of the two possible maiden names for Simon's wife Ann. And yet, we know by experience that those names which appear for executors—and even witnesses—are not pulled out of thin air. Very few men trawled the neighborhood—or queried the guys hanging out, for example, down at the local pub—to see who might be up for executor duties, come reckoning day. Most men named in an ancestor's will were chosen for a specific reason, and that reason oftentimes was a family tie.

What was curious about one of the names presented in Simon Rinehart's 1853 will was that I thought it was vaguely familiar. Though it wasn't a name I recalled seeing in my mother-in-law's family tree, I did remember seeing a name like that in another recent will I had reviewed. I went back to look, retracing my research steps until I found it: the name of a witness to the 1840 will of Simon Rinehart's son-in-law, James Gordon.

The Gordon name, you might recall, had been one of those surnames showing up first in the colony of Maryland, then moving to Tenmile Country in southwest Pennsylvania about the time of the Revolutionary War, and, finally, on to Perry County, Ohio, by the early 1830s. Though Simon Rinehart's oldest daughter Sarah was born in Kentucky, her family had moved back to Greene County, Pennsylvania before the birth of her brother Jesse in 1806, thus situating Sarah to meet James Gordon and marry him there by the end of 1819.

Sarah and James Gordon had a large family, with seven of their children born in Pennsylvania before their move to Ohio by 1832. Though their eldest son, Bazil, had barely reached the age of majority before James passed away in 1840, James appointed him to be executor of the Gordon estate, along with Sarah as executrix. However, that document also included the names of two witnesses, one of which was, as I suspected, Isaac Brown.

Whether the two documents identify the same person when they name this Isaac Brown, I can't yet tell—though given that the dates of the two testaments were only thirteen years apart, it is quite possible they both refer to the same man.

The trouble is: we are now researching a man by the surname of Brown. While, agreed, we are not talking Smith or Jones, we are still challenging ourselves to identify who this Isaac Brown of Perry County, Ohio, might have been—furthermore, to see if we can figure out why both James Gordon and his father-in-law might have called upon this Isaac Brown to interject himself into the most personal of their financial affairs. That is a question which may take some time to unravel.


Above two insets are excerpts from, first, the 1853 will of Simon Rinehart of Perry County, Ohio, and second, the 1840 will of James Gordon, also of Perry County; images courtesy FamilySearch.org, free to access, following completion of sign-in for permission to log on.

What to do When That Brick Wall Really IS a Brick Wall

You have this brick wall, but you are determined to figure a way to research around the roadblock and get your answer on just who this ancestor really is. You try umpteen techniques to noodle your way beyond any mental blocks. You check all the latest updates on digitized records. Perhaps you even send a snail mail inquiry to a local repository, seeking advice. But not one clue surfaces. What do you do next?

While I have been stuck on the identity of the Simon Rinehart in my mother-in-law's tree for far more years than I care to recall, even my best attempt this time didn't shake loose any hints. I did learn quite a few details in this foray back into the realm of the Rinehart residence in Washington County, Pennsylvania—but not enough to securely identify both Simon and his wife (or wives) named Ann.

Of course, I'll keep working on this research puzzle in the background, but there are a few tasks to take care of right away, before letting this puzzle rest for a while and moving on to other projects.

The first, of course, is to broaden my horizons and get a bigger picture of the big picture. For Simon's foray into Bracken County, Kentucky, for instance, I could compose a timeline of county boundary changes, to understand exactly where his property once lay. I could, as well, research the overarching reason for why so many people—including several of Simon's friends and neighbors—seemed to be moving to such a remote place as Kentucky in the 1790s.

The big draw for land in Kentucky originated for many, likely, with the bounty land offer for those who served in the Revolutionary War in the original thirteen colonies. Where a soldier served did not match up with where the lands were awarded. For instance, because this portion of Kentucky was once considered part of Virginia's domain, when Virginia set up its bounty land program, the lands awarded were situated, for the most part, in the area which became Kentucky. Confusingly, though the paperwork may have been drawn up in Virginia, the records for these land warrants are now held in Kentucky, not Virginia.

As for my Simon, his wife (or wives) named Ann, his daughter Sarah and his son Jesse, what is imperative is to be sure to write down all the records I attempted to find, and what the outcome was for each one. I need to document why each attempt failed so I don't repeat the same steps in the future.

On the flip side of those failures, I need to note any records I was not able to obtain, and state the reason why I think those would be helpful resources if I could find them. I also need to write out a research plan to take me from this point onward, when and if any additional documents surface—or when I have the opportunity to travel to where I can conduct research personally. After all, not everything is online...yet. I need to be prepared both for that eventuality and for alternate courses of action in case my dreams do not come true quite when I'd hoped.

Obviously, Simon did have a wife, and she did have one specific identity (unless, as we've guessed, he had two wives). Whether there are documents showing that identity clearly, I can't yet tell. I haven't found any. But another task is to keep an eye on any other names which do seem to surface on a regular basis when researching this family.

As it turns out, there was one family name which seemed to show up in a few family documents—a name which has, as far as I can tell, no family connection other than those unexplained appearances in family documents. We'll take a look at that name tomorrow, and determine whether it is a bona fide clue, or a genealogical red herring in the mix.

Finding Fine-Feathered Friends

Oh, woe is me; I'm seeking non-existent ancestors.

How is it that an unsuspecting researcher (me) could be caught up in a quest to find a man who was never recorded in records in the lands of his forebears—or, worse, was mis-attributed as the son of someone who could never possibly be his father? How do you find such a person?

Perhaps I can blame it on my mother-in-law. After all, this is her line. Remember that John Gordon I so swimmingly could trace back to his early days in Frederick County, Maryland? Well, his grandson James can be implicated for his choice of wife: he it was who married Sarah Rinehart, supposedly born in Kentucky in 1795 to proud parents Simon and Ann Rinehart.

How did a man who lived in Greene County, Pennsylvania, find a potential bride who came from as far away as Kentucky?

Granted, Simon and Ann's daughter likely returned to Pennsylvania after their fling in the fledgling state of Kentucky. After all, Sarah Rinehart's younger brother Jesse was said to have been born in Pennsylvania, so they must have returned to their family's hometown before 1810.

Finding Sarah Rinehart, however—or her parents Simon and Ann—is not getting me any traction in trundling back to a previous generation. So, how to proceed when your research gets in a rut?

Since I already have been stymied with the conflicting stories of just who her dad married—was it Ann Wiley or Ann Wise?—I figured that might be an alternate route for my research to take. Birds of a feather, as they say. Or, to put it in more genealogically-friendly words, I could look for Ann's F.A.N. Club. Were there any Wises or Wileys in Tenmile Country?

You know the drill with the F.A.N. Club theory: people often did things in groups, so it pays to pay attention to the names of the folks in those groups. Migrations of long distances, or any other major changes, often were done by people in groups. Communities were built to stay together, especially near the frontier where strength in numbers could mean the difference between survival and those other, more dire, circumstances.

So our task—should we choose to accept it—is now to see if we can find any indication of families in the neighborhood of our Simon Rinehart, whoever he was, and see if their whereabouts harmonize in any way with Simon's own story. Since Greene County, about the time of the Rinehart family's return from Kentucky, only had about 8,600 residents, chances are likely strong that any Wises or Wileys living there would be connected in some way to the Ann who could have been Simon's wife.

Since I've already entertained the possibility that Simon might have been married twice—once to a Wiley and once to a Wise—it will be beneficial for us to check out both possibilities. And that is exactly what we'll take a look at, starting tomorrow.

More to This Story . . .

It all started because someone took the time to write the names on the back of a photo.

And so it is that the story of William and Kate Hopkins' photograph became the story of Alice Sharp Greer, and eventually also the story of Lee, the current researcher who is picking up the pieces passed along of the Hopkins family history.

In reflecting over this whole experience—the photograph in California that connected me with Lee in Minnesota about a couple from Kentucky—Lee made the observation at the beginning of this post.

You may have been wondering about a gap in this story of Alice Sharp Greer's family history records, considering that she died in 1966 and this is now 2018. What happened to all of Alice's carefully compiled records in the interim?

That, in itself, is another story. Lee's mother-in-law was downsizing and needed help with the process of getting everything ready to move into a smaller apartment. As Lee remembers it,

I pulled a large box out of a closet and asked what to do with it. She couldn't even remember what was in it. Opening it was like opening a time capsule. It was a box full of family treasures handed down from another Hopkins ancestor who had no children and each object had a carefully written note attached to it explaining what it was and who had owned it. Lots of names, dates, photos, Alice Greer's 1931 letter and a one-page genealogy of the family were in the box. For someone who loves antiques and old photos as I do, it was a gold mine. This family came to life for me out of the box and I felt it my calling to keep their memory alive.

We gain encouragement from others as we learn their story. We certainly can empathize with Alice's situation, one in which there was no one to whom the treasured family discoveries could be entrusted. As it turned out in Alice's case, there was a gap of years before that treasure was rediscovered—a hiatus enough to make us genealogists hold our breath, if not give up hope entirely for recovery. But somehow, in the end, things did turn out differently and the family's story was rescued.

This sort of experience, once shared, gives us the faith that, in the end, things will work out. As Lee reflected in an email to me after yesterday's post,

I will leave a box twenty or thirty years from now in a closet and hope for the right person to find it.

Some of us already know who will take up our research after we are no longer able to do it. But for those who struggle with the possibility of seeing that life's work abandoned to an unknown fate, it certainly is encouraging to know that sometimes—maybe more often than we realize—there will be someone to take up the call and continue our work.

After all, a family's story is never done.

Being the Bridge to Connect Past with Future

From time to time, I run across fellow genealogy enthusiasts who share their one disappointment with me: that they have no one to whom they can pass their decades worth of family history research. Here they have invested multiple hours of a lifetime, devoting it to the premise that the family's multi-generational story is too valuable to lose—and yet, due to various circumstances, that is precisely what threatens to happen.

There are reasons for the threat of such a loss. For some, no one else in the family is even remotely interested in those relatives of a bygone era whom they had never met and never cared to know. For other, though, there is no family to take an interest in the researcher's life work.

Such was the case of Alice Sharp Greer, niece of the subject of the abandoned family photograph I found in an antique shop in northern California. When I learned about her from Lee, the family history researcher to whom I offered to send William and Kate Hopkins' found photograph from Kentucky, I began to see Alice take shape as an encouragement for all those who are in the same position.

As Lee mentioned to me in our ongoing email correspondence, Alice had no children of her own. Granted, she had some nieces and nephews, but as many of us discover, that is no guarantee that those members of the next generation will take up the mantle we feel so strongly about.

Alice—the "family genealogist," as Lee put it—had a unique opportunity to pursue her calling over the years. It was thanks to her husband's business, coupled with her ability to travel with him on his rounds, while she detoured during business hours to conduct some research of her own. According to Lee,

Alice Greer's husband was a traveling salesman from Kansas City whose territory was western U.S. On his letterhead it says Materials Equipment Engineer—Casters, Trucks, Lift-Trucks, Pallet Lift-Trucks, Conveyors.

While John Harry Greer was busy at his occupation, Alice was busy sending out letters of inquiry in that era far removed from today's online conveniences. Relentlessly, it seems, at least from Lee's description:

Alice sent out many letters of inquiry on the family history on her husband's business letterhead—J. Harry Greer. I have one of these letters from 1931 and amazingly enough, a woman found another one from 1951 in her mother's papers and sent it to me, providing me a great deal of new information about the Hopkins [family], which I have been relentlessly researching ever since.

Those letters Alice sent out in 1931 and 1951 were only two examples of the many she wrote in her pursuit of the family's history. Just like the one from 1951 that a woman found and returned to Lee, there are many more of Alice's letters out there—and Lee would love to find them. That plea is even posted on Alice's Find A Grave memorial. (You knew a researcher as dedicated as Lee would include volunteering for Find A Grave in a genealogical to-do list, didn't you?)

Eventually, despite surely still having some questions unanswered, it became time to pass that genealogical baton to someone else. Alice Sharp Greer passed away October 26, 1966, in Concord, California—yes, in Contra Costa County, that place we've got our eye on—and all her research came to a halt.

With no children to step up and continue Alice's legacy, that might have been the end of the story. But whether Alice knew this all along, or whether it was a circumstance that evolved after her passing, there was someone who turned out to be more than interested in taking up Alice's mantle: it was Lee. All the pedigree charts, all the family group sheets—and more important, all those irreplaceable letters from Alice to relatives, and Alice's extended family to each other—were eventually passed along to someone who would take up where Alice left off.

And that is the encouragement Alice gifts us with, too, with her story. There will be someone to preserve our work, and to carry it forward. It just doesn't always come from the direction we'd expect. But however it comes to us, it transforms us—and those who are willing to step up and take our place—from a research dead end to a bridge that connects the treasures of our past with the family members in our future. 

 

Crowdsourcing Our Research: How We Sharpen Each Other's Skills

As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.

There are some things we "know" as researchers—but then go right on, acting as if we had forgotten what we know. That's when it helps to have a fellow researcher gently remind us to reach back into that store of what we need to remember.

That's how it was when I first connected with Lee in Minnesota, the Hopkins researcher who shared the old photograph of William Hopkins' drug store with us yesterday. In piecing together the possible story of how William and Kate Hopkins' photograph ended up in northern California, Lee offered a reasonable hypothesis: look for the connection one generation up and on the other side of the family.

As Lee explained,

We inherited a good deal of info on [the Hopkins family] from Alice Sharp Greer who was the family genealogist. She was the daughter of Adelia Hopkins Sharp who was William Bernard Hopkins' sister. Alice's last known residence was in Concord, Contra Costa County.

The minute Lee mentioned looking at William's siblings, I saw the error of my ways. I had presumed that the only family members who might have passed down a photograph of William and Kate would be relatives from Kate's side of the family. After all, Kate had died young, and William went on to raise a family with his second wife. While I should have known better than to remove anyone from my "suspects" list, I had prematurely narrowed my search—and thus, my results.

If, the minute you saw Lee's explanation that the Hopkins family genealogist Alice Sharp Greer had moved to Contra Costa County, bells went off in your mind, you are on the right track. However, we need not rush to conclusions on just whom the recipient of the Hopkins photograph was; as it turned out, there were other descendants who headed west to the same neighborhood, as well.

I was careful to heed that prompt by Lee, and built out a Hopkins family tree which provided a few other possibilities. Not only had Alice Sharp Greer moved to northern California, but so did her older sister Ruth and their brother William. Admittedly, these were descendants of only one of William Hopkins' siblings, but those nieces and nephew of William Hopkins introduced enough possibilities to explain how a photograph of a Kentucky couple would have made its way to California.

There is only one glitch in that assumption, though: Alice Sharp Greer had no children of her own. If she was the recipient of William and Kate Hopkins' photograph, who kept it between the time of Alice's passing in 1966 and the date, decades later, at which it ended up in the antique shop where I found it in Lodi, California?

What I Learned from Lee

It's always a delight to meet another researcher who shares that passion for genealogy. It's even better when I discover that researcher will truly value the orphaned photograph now being sent on its way home.

In the process of meeting and talking with Lee from Minnesota—the family history researcher whose tree on Ancestry.com convinced me this was the right person to receive the photograph of William and Katie Hopkins—I learned a few things about that Hopkins couple that, with Lee's permission, I'd like to share.

The first time I encountered Lee's tree was through a hint on Ancestry. It was not for the ubiquitous shaky-leaf reminder to look at the other trees on the website, but it led me to a picture of William Hopkins in front of his drugstore.

Let me amend that: one of his drugstores. Thankfully, Lee had appended an explanation at Ancestry.com alongside the photograph (which you can see below):

William B. Hopkins owned drugstores in five states, but I believe this photo was taken in Kentucky around 1923. William B. Hopkins is the portly gentleman standing between the two women. I believe the younger woman on the left is his wife Katie Seeger Allen and the woman on the right is LeNorah (Dixon) Thornburg who became his second wife after Katie died in 1928. The young girl and older boy next to LeNorah are her Thornburg children, Ellen R. & John V.

Drugstores in five states? When I first saw that, I tried to do a search on the newspaper archive services I use, but nothing substantive came up, other than the Merck wedding mention that "Iggy" found for me a few days back. Now that Lee and I have connected, I wanted to ask a few more questions about the Hopkins businesses.

It was apparent from census records that William and Kate moved to locations other than Kate's home in Louisville. Could this have been due to William building his business? According to family members, William may also have had a store in Piqua, Ohio. In fact, at first, Lee was not sure whether the store photo was from Louisville or Piqua, but resolved the puzzle this way:

I got the brilliant idea to check the name (Denhard) on the side of the drug store building with names in Louisville and Piqua, Ohio. No Denhards in Ohio and lots of them in Louisville. Found a court case for Brooks Denhard who owned a surgical instrument company in Louisville. Makes sense to advertise on the side of a drug store. So I've decided the building in the photo is William's drug store in Louisville and not the one in Ohio.

It pays to pay attention to all the "superfluous" details you can find in a photograph. Not to mention, I'm sure it paid—at least in William Hopkins' case—to have those ads put up on the side of his building. A clever businessman, indeed.

I picked up a few more ideas from Lee while we were discussing the Hopkins family—like where to look for the likely nexus that resulted in finding William and Kate Hopkins' photograph in California—which we'll take a look at tomorrow.

In the meantime, off that photograph goes, on its way home to Minnesota!

Above: Photograph, circa 1923, of William Bernard Hopkins' Drugstore in Louisville, Kentucky; photograph in the possession of Hopkins family member Lee in Minnesota; used by permission.

Making its Way to California

As I repeat this process of rescuing orphaned photographs once again, I'm beginning to learn the patterns that shape these now-familiar results. First of all, for the three original mystery photographs I found—the photo album from Ireland, the portrait of the Kansas salesman, and now, the picture of the young couple from Louisville, Kentucky—each was sold by the same northern California antique shop. No matter where the item originated, its final resting place was in the city of Lodi, California.

Apparently, the place where the shopkeeper got each of these photographs was also a consistent location. I discovered that fact when I was first puzzling over how the Irish photo album ended up in a place as small as Lodi. The shop owner explained the process: hers was a consignment store, and she kept track of the various sellers through a simple code placed on the back of each item for sale.

Sure enough, looking on the back of the photo album, alongside the price was another entry: "#51." I cropped the image I used on this blog so as to cut the tag off the back of the photo for William and Kate Hopkins, but if you look closely, you can see the top of its slight mark just below the "g" in Seegar. Number 51, as it turned out, was the code for an antique distributor with whom our shopkeeper did business—and that dealer happened to live in the Bay area around Contra Costa County.

The trick is, of course, to find the nexus between the supplier's range of services and the extended Hopkins family's descendants. Somehow, that dealer number 51 needed to have come across an estate sale within (I suspect) driving range of the Bay area in northern California.

The catch is, as we've already mentioned, that William and Kate apparently had no children of their own. Furthermore, Kate's brother William Allen had no children who ventured out west, and it seemed unlikely that her half-siblings' descendants did, either. Since William Hopkins, after Kate's passing, had married a woman with children of her own, it seemed unlikely that that would be the line to cherish and pass down a photograph of William's previous wife. I wasn't sure which way to turn next in unraveling this puzzle.

However, someone popped up over the weekend to remind me that I neglected another obvious resource: the siblings of William Bernard Hopkins, himself.

That someone was named Lee—the researcher in Minnesota whose Ancestry tree contained so much documentation on this entire family line. In addition, Lee passed along a few stories of the family in an email I received on Saturday, which prompted me to do some more searching on my own.

No Children = No Grandchildren

It may seem like a no-brainer of a statement, but the fact that William and Kate Hopkins had no children—at least none that any online documents revealed—meant that they had no grandchildren. In other words, there were no descendants who, upon their passing, had their belongings heaped into a pile which subsequently was disposed of by estate sale where they'd be distributed to those who might purchase on a whim a trifling token like an old photograph.

William did have step-children from a subsequent marriage, and Kate's brother and half-siblings also had children. But in none of their descendants did I find a path from their Kentucky location to any home near northern California, the place where I found the Hopkins photograph.

The easy part, of course, would have been if William and Kate, married in 1899, had children who, by the 1920s, would have had children of their own. These, easily, would have lived until perhaps the last ten years, when a quick search of the many now-online obituaries would have helped pinpoint which grandchild's estate might have included the very family photograph I'm now holding in my own hands. But it isn't working out that way.

Not that I have another ten to twenty mystery photographs burning a hole in my genealogical pocket, but I decided to take the quick-and-easy way out: I looked up the other Ancestry subscribers who are researching this couple. From that resource, I looked at their publicly-displayed trees and selected the one which seemed to evidence the most meticulous research style.

And then, I wrote a letter.

The message was simple: Hi, I'm a fellow researcher, and I found this photo you might be interested in. If it's your family, I'd be happy to send it to you. Just let me know.

Easy. All except for the waiting part. I really want to talk to this particular researcher, who happens to have posted another photograph of William and Kate that I would love to be able to share with you.

Getting Here From There

If the subjects of that photograph I found in a northern California antique store lived and died in Kentucky, how did their picture get here? Before I can find an appropriate (and unsuspecting) candidate upon whom to bestow the rescued photograph, I need to figure out just how William and Kate Hopkins' relatives—or maybe friends—had come to be its recipient.

There are, I have noticed, several Ancestry.com subscribers who include either William Bernard Hopkins or his wife, Kate Seegar Smith-Allen Hopkins, in their family tree. Some, however, use that company's less-than-helpful device of affixing other tree entries into their own, thus preventing me from discovering the true source of their information. I prefer to look for someone who has done their own homework—thus, someone whose paper trail helps me see the documented connection from the present to the past.

Barring enough leads from these other trees to see the connection from Kentucky to California, the next best thing is to build out a tree of our own.

Looking at the Hopkins family from the point of their marriage—in Louisville in 1899—through the rest of their brief lives, one thing was clear: according to census records, they moved at least once every decade. A wedding announcement in a business publication—brought to my attention through the research prowess of one of our readers, "Intense Guy"—mentioned briefly that

William Berbard [sic] Hopkins, a well-known young druggist of Louisville, and Miss Katie Smith Allen, of Lagrange, were recently married at the home of the bride's parents. Mr. Hopkins has opened a store at Smithland, Ky., and the young people will go there to live.

That was according to Merck's Report for December, 1899, one month after the Hopkins wedding. Less than a year later, however, the 1900 census counted them as residents of New Albany, Indiana, just across the river from Louisville, a good two hundred miles from Smithland.

Long commute.

Another interesting detail emerged. William, whose report in the 1900 census appeared on the page preceding his wife's entry, was indeed shown as a "druggist." However, by the time of the subsequent enumeration, William and Kate were living farther away from Kentucky in a boarding home in Seymour, Indiana, where he was shown as merely a clerk in a drug store. Another ten years later, the couple was finally back home in Louisville, where things seemed to be looking up: William was now listed as a pharmacist in a drug store, and Kate was working alongside him as a "sales lady," presumably at the same establishment.

By the time of the 1940 census, neither William nor Kate showed in the records. Kate was long gone by that point, having died in 1928. William, married again by the time of the 1930 census, subsequently passed away in 1935. 

There was one more detail about that sprint through the decades of census records: in none of those reports did the Hopkins couple report any dependents. Scratch that chance to trace any children from Kentucky to California. If the picture arrived in my hands via a family member, it would have to be through a more distant relationship.

Coming to a Consensus

I'm never quite sure of the information I find on death certificates, so what do I do? Look for other death certificates to verify the details of the earlier ones.

While this doesn't seem to make sense, there is a certain comfort in finding agreement between records that otherwise would have no connection—at least by sequence or by location, for instance. The only connection would be that the two people mentioned in these disparate documents would be linked by common parents.

Remembering that our Kate Seegar Smith-Allen Hopkins (phew, what a mouthful!) had an older brother, that is exactly who I went looking up next. Since the detail I wanted to confirm was that Kate's parents were Charles L. Allen and his wife, Elizabeth—not Addie—her brother William, four years her senior, should likely display the same names for his parents. Right?

We already saw from the 1880 census—provided, of course, that we found the right household of their father Charles Allen—that Kate's brother William was born in Kentucky around 1876. However, when we rush to the other end of brother William's life, we find that his death certificate is of no help in confirming the names of the siblings' parents. For William's father, we do find a reassuring confirmation of his middle initial, if nothing else—L, not A—but perhaps since his mother died when he was so young, it is not surprising to learn that there was nothing on that line for the form, other than "not known."

Ah, the dreaded unknown. I have faced off with that foe before. I'm not ready to quit yet.

And so it was that, poking through every other document I could find, I eventually came across a December 28, 1897, marriage record for young William and his bride, Martha B. Tillman. Listing himself as W. H. Allen, the twenty one year old merchant, by then living in Oldham County, Kentucky, revealed that his father was indeed Charles Allen, and his mother was Elizabeth Smith—yes, Smith without that awkward Smidth spelling that had appeared in his sister Kate's death certificate so many years later.

Just to make sure I really, really, did have the right family named, I swung by the Find A Grave record for Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, where I found there was really no doubt who the parents were for Kate and her older brother. Though the memorial for Charles had a note inserted which explained that his wife's name was "Adelaine," if you look closely at the impressive monument erected in the family plot, it is quite clear which wife was acknowledged there. It was "Lizzie, wife of C. L. Allen." 

On the Far End of a Short Life

Now that we've found a baby Kate Allen in the 1880 Louisville household of one Charles Allen—and discovered his wife's name, at least at that time, was Elizabeth—I wanted to rush to the other end of Kate's life to see whether our Kate, the one now married to William Bernard Hopkins, was the same Kate who claimed these parents. Perhaps I've attended one too many lectures on exhaustive searches, but somehow the research paranoia has become ingrained in me.

It wasn't too far into Kate's future that it took to find my document goal. Kate apparently suffered from hypertensive heart disease and had suffered two bouts of cerebral hemorrhage. The second attack took her life.

She was laid to rest in an unidentified cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky, shortly after her passing on March 28, 1928. She was forty eight years of age.

Fortunately for our search, Kate's death certificate was easily located on Ancestry.com, showing that the informant was her husband, William B. Hopkins. Even so, I've found that the closest of relatives can often make the greatest of mistakes in completing the information to be used in a death certificate—hence, my drive to find additional confirmation of any detail noted in such a record. While I am certainly willing to concede that family members are often under the greatest of emotional stress at the time—and understandably can make mistakes—I still prefer to find supporting records for each assertion built into my tree.

As it turns out, the report on Kate's death certificate provided the mother's maiden name we are seeking—and it wasn't Addie's, as we suspected, but Elizabeth's name. While Kate's mother's maiden name may explain the source of Kate's own hyphenated (or at least appended) maiden name of Smith-Allen, the odd thing was that the certificate provided an unusual spelling: Smidth.

Now I know spelling was not the big deal it is today, and that prior centuries certainly took their liberties with spelling creativity. But Smidth? Really? I mean, after all, what more common surname could you come up with than Smith?!

That may have tipped my concern when I looked up to the previous line and realized that Kate's father wasn't Charles L. Allen, as we had been told in other records, but Charles A. Allen. Frustrating. My future research path was now sealed: I had to look for another confirmation of Kate's parents—just in case I had the wrong Kate or Charles Allen.

Above: Excerpt from Kate Smith-Allen Hopkins' Pike County, Kentucky, 1928 death certificate showing the curious spelling of her mother's maiden name, and the small discrepancy of her father's middle initial; image courtesy Ancestry.com.

An Earlier Glimpse of Kate

In searching for information on the couple featured in a photograph I found in a northern California antique shop, I'm still at the early stages of confirming the identity given on the back of the cabinet card. We can presume the photograph was taken in Louisville, Kentucky, and thanks to someone's thoughtful thoroughness, the names of the two subjects were handwritten on the reverse. We've already located a marriage record which seems likely to belong to that named couple, William Bernard and Kate Allen-Smith Hopkins, including names of the two witnesses.

Those witnesses may have been a husband and wife living in Louisville at the time, named Charles and Addie Allen. They were of an age, according to the 1900 census, to be more likely Kate's parents than a married sibling, except for one detail: Addie had only been married to Charles for twelve years, but Kate was already twenty years of age.

Had I located the wrong C. L. and Addie Allen?

I decided to take the easiest of two possible routes as my first attempt to verify—or rule out—this Charles Allen as Kate's father. I looked for an earlier record that would contain both Charles and a daughter named Kate in Louisville.

Moving backwards in time from the 1900 census, of course, lands us in that murky twenty year gap between two existing federal enumerations. But in 1880—our next option, as well as the very date the married Kate Hopkins declared as the year she was born—there was a household containing a Charles Allen with a baby daughter named Kate. True to the later report, that earlier census record indicated the baby was born in February. And Charles declared the same occupation in both records, that of carpenter.

In the household, besides baby Kate, we find an older brother named William, who was born four years prior.

Most important, we learn that Charles' wife's name, in 1880, was not Addie, but Elizabeth. If we have the right household, that would mean that Elizabeth was likely the one who was Kate's mother.

Genealogy being genealogy—and I being the doubtful researcher that I am—I can't just leave it at that, though. What if I have the wrong C. L. Allen? After all, his name could have been Carl. Or Calvin. There are any number of possibilities. And we all know how perennially popular a name like Kate has been.

With that in mind, as I mentioned the other day, not only was it likely that I would pursue both of my research options, but it is precisely what I will do next. And, that done, I have a funny feeling I might want even more verification than that.

Next step: fast forward to the other end of Kate's life.


Above: Excerpt from the 1880 U.S. Census for Louisville, Kentucky, courtesy of FamilySearch.org.