A Mayflower Detour

 

For my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors to research in 2025, the month of February has had one solitary focus: find Delaney Townsend's parents. More than that: find them documented in records, either in her native South Carolina, or in Florida, where she and apparent relatives moved well before 1840. Let's just say I've been riveted to that goal for the entire month—until this weekend, that is.

Weekends are good for setting aside tasks and taking a break, and that is exactly what happened. I'm about to take a detour to research some Mayflower connections. With a text from across the country, my niece informed me that she thinks it is a go for us to apply for membership in the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.

For quite some time, I've known that our family should be eligible to apply. The crux of the matter, however, is whether we can come up with adequate documentation to prove our line of descent from John Aldrich and Priscilla Mullins. The sticking point comes when my fifth great-grandfather William Tilson moved from Massachusetts to the southwestern region of colonial Virginia. While there are some tax records and transcriptions of old land records still accessible, there is precious little else that can be found on this family until the line resurfaces in northeastern Tennessee at the beginning of the 1800s.

In a development which would make any genealogist glad to hear, my niece decided to take the initiative to explore what could be done about that paperwork stalemate. She reached out to the Historian in her state's chapter of the Society, with initial paperwork in hand, having gleaned the names and dates from my tree, to see whether this representative thought our application might work. The key was whether anyone else from this line had already presented acceptable research.

Thankfully, there was one applicant from nearly ten years ago who had submitted documentation on this line. I suspect it was a specific third cousin—only genealogists would know these connections—with whom I had been in contact years ago, who I knew had also applied to the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Now, bit by bit, we're forming a multi-generational team to complete our applications. While it will be great to finally be able to complete the process and add our line to the official record, what is even more encouraging is to see the next generation becoming fascinated with all the family stories which years ago had beguiled me into taking a closer look at my family's history.

According to Aunt Fannie

 

Somehow, genealogical verification beginning with the words, "according to Aunt Fannie," just doesn't have the academic ring of a traditional footnote. The truth of the matter, though, is that the Townsend lineage of my third great-grandmother may well be resting on the testimony of a woman named Fannie McClellan Rowell.

I was surprised to see, right there in the midst of a 1948 DAR application, attribution for some facts on the Townsend family credited to a letter written by Fannie Rowell. Yes, the Townsend family Bible was also mentioned in that application, but a DAR file like that is usually chock full of references to vital records, census records, and other governmental documents. Letters from Aunt Fannie? Well, that's different.

I've written about Aunt Fannie before, as early as 2015, when I was trying to piece together her own relationship to my maternal grandmother's McClellan family. She had always been referred to—at least in my family—as Fannie Rowell, not McClellan, and I naturally needed to chart the genealogical connection.

Since then, I've had to refer back to Aunt Fannie's stories in 2019, and again in 2021, while researching the connection between that same McClellan family and the published stories told by a man named King Stockton, who grew up in the McClellan household as the son of an enslaved woman.

Here she was again, this Aunt Fannie, mentioned in an application for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution. While Aunt Fannie may have been old—she was not my aunt, nor my mother's aunt, but my grandmother's aunt—she certainly wasn't old enough to be providing testimony of such family matters as if she had personally witnessed them in her own lifetime. She did, however, provide details about her mother who, in turn, was Delaney Townsend Charles' daughter Emma.

Thanks to details in a letter from Aunt Fannie, cited in that DAR application, the applicant explained that, after the widowed Delaney's death, her orphaned daughters were taken to live for a while in South Carolina by a man named Light Townsend. The applicant also explained that Aunt Fannie, the granddaughter of Delaney Townsend Charles, had sent letters with names and dates of family members to John R. Townsend, grandson of Light Townsend, and thus that information had been preserved by the Townsend branch of that family.

Preserved, that is, as long as it was correctly noted, correctly transcribed, and adequately protected from the ravages of time. Where those original letters are now, I can't say, but at least some semblance of those reports has been preserved through that 1948 DAR application.

In the meantime, the question becomes: who was Light Townsend of South Carolina? Why was he so concerned about the orphaned children of Delaney Townsend Charles in Florida? If he did, indeed, travel to Florida to bring those daughters back to live with him in South Carolina, I'd like to find any records to indicate such an arrangement. But first, let's take the time to examine just who Light Townsend actually was.

Where Cumulative Learning Comes In

 

So, what does cumulative learning have to do with genealogy? Don't let the big words scare you. If you've ever heard folk sayings like "inch by inch, anything's a cinch," or "don't run before you can walk," you are hearing the basics of cumulative learning. Big concepts are built from smaller ideas. The steps we've already taken can point the way to next steps. When we find a way to understand the smaller building blocks first, we can piece them together to better get our head around those big ideas.

Right now, I'm grappling with the big idea of how I'm going to manage applying for membership in the Mayflower Society. It's fairly obvious there are big gaps in the necessary documentation to demonstrate a clear line of descent from John Alden and Priscilla Mullins to the members of my immediate family—and that's a problem. There are books and blog posts saying there is a connection, but a big gap in record-keeping in the murky middle of this genealogical journey has me wondering what to do next.

After purchasing the file of supporting documents for the application of a third cousin to the Daughters of the American Revolution—like me, a descendant of William "Tillson" through his son Peleg Tilson—I was dismayed to see very little references other than a few published genealogies to fill in the gaps in that paper chain of documentation. It seems to me that more actual records—coupled, at the very least with a solid proof argument—would be expected by an organization like the Mayflower Society.

Fortunately—and this is where the cumulative learning comes in—I remembered something from my Broyles research project in January. That something was the discovery of a recently-published book. That book, The Broyles Family: The First Four Generations, had been long overdue, a planned update by the Germanna Foundation which had been delayed by several factors.

Thinking of that, I remembered that somewhere I had read about the Mayflower Society also having plans to update their "Silver Books" and—possibly—add information beyond the first five generations. The key detail regarding those Silver Books is that each line of descent up through those five generations has been carefully vetted by respected professional genealogists. Applicants only need demonstrate direct relationship with that fifth generation, rather than having to document the entire way back to a Mayflower passenger.

Straight to Google I went, trying to find where I had read that detail about the Silver Books. I sure could use a confirmed line of descent stretching further than five generations. I found the answer easily: it was through Heather Wilkinson Rojo's blog, Nutfield Genealogy, where she posted news of a Silver Book Project Update in the fall of 2021. Reading the article once again, I noticed Heather included a further update at the end of last year. Apparently, the index may be out "within the next year" and "the books are all in progress."

Doesn't seem like any time soon.

The virtue of posing such questions as mine to Google is that there is always more than one answer. Studying all the search results led me on a tour of the history of the Mayflower Society's Silver Book projects. Apparently, the books have a long history from conception of the idea to precursor publications in the 1920s and 1930s up through 1956. The first volume of the five-generation concept was due to be published in 1970, but like many such enormous undertakings, suffered delays, making its ultimate appearance in 1975. In 2013—more to my current purposes—the Society endorsed a name change as it expands from the five-generation format to include subsequent generations in future publications.

Indeed, the Society's goal is "to provide clear, well-documented lineages of the ship's passengers through the seventh and eighth generations." That would clearly be of help to me. But when?

My journey through Google's possibilities didn't stop there, though. For a mere $60, the specific Project volume on my ancestor, John Alden and Priscilla Mullins' daughter Elizabeth, could be shipped to my door. But wait! Google had more to say on the topic.

Even better—though old news now—among the events included in the year-long 2020 celebration of Mayflower's four hundredth anniversary was an announcement at that year's RootsTech of the collaboration between the Mayflower Society, American Ancestors, and FamilySearch.org to make available online what is being called the Mayflower Database.

The database contains material from the thirty volume set of the five-generation project plus member applications submitted from as early as 1896, with information provided through 1910 on applications submitted as recently as 2019.

Sure enough, there is a "Mayflower Descendants Search" page at FamilySearch.org. I decided to test it out by entering William Tillson, the same name (and spelling) I had used yesterday to research the Tilson Patriot at the D.A.R. website. And there he was in the new display at FamilySearch.org, showing William Tilson's tree connecting all the way through to the Mayflower passengers I had anticipated. Better yet, the tree stretched in the other direction as well, showing me the lines of descent which included successful Mayflower Society applicants descending from Peleg Tilson's line.

Following that line of descent led me through two more generations of my direct ancestors, then branched off to a collateral line. After having studied the D.A.R. application yesterday for my third cousin's paperwork, I recognized that Mayflower line as the same one I had been reviewing yesterday from the D.A.R. application.

If the Mayflower Society handles their membership applications the same way D.A.R. does, that may mean I only have to provide verification of my connecting line up to the point of Thomas D. Davis, my second great-grandfather. How's that for a step-by-step process?  

   

Ancestor #5: A D.A.R. Pairing

 

I've heard it said that it is not unusual to find not one but several Patriot ancestors for those who demonstrate eligibility for the Daughters of the American Revolution. The operating principle behind such a claim lies in the relatively small European-American population in the North American British colonies toward the end of the eighteenth century. Those D.A.R. members' ancestral families intermarried.

Thus, for Ancestor #5 of my Twelve Most Wanted for the new year, I'd like to follow with John Jay Jackson, the spouse of Ancestor #4. Just like his wife Sarah Howard Ijams' mother, Sarah's husband John  also had a father who served in the Revolutionary War. My only problem at this point is that I base that statement upon mere hearsay. I haven't actually documented that connection for myself.

This coming May, we'll take care of that tiny oversight for good—hopefully. Of course, I've already taken a sneak peek at the authoritative resource for that service, the website of the National Society of Daughters of the Revolution, where there is indeed a listing for John Jay Jackson's father, Lyman Jackson.

My task, this coming May, will be to collect all the resources I can find on John Jay Jackson's father—everything from noting the father-son relationship using appropriate documentation to recording Lyman's role in the war and, for that matter, during the rest of his life. It's high time to correctly and completely add this Patriot line to my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather, John Jay Jackson, and hopefully use the addition as a bridge to generations even further removed. 

If No One Had Told Us

 

It is at times when I research ancestors like my fourth great-grandfather Job Tison that I become most aware of the fragility of family history. At some point, but for some weak link in the nexus between public history and the private nano-history of the common individual, if no one had told us the story, we would never have any way to know it. That thin line connecting generations can be so easily broken and disappear.

This is when I become so aware of how beholden I am to the other family story-tellers who heeded that calling to record what they personally knew. Whether they realized it or not, they became the nodes in this tenuous line who spoke up enough to be heard, who wrote down what they knew so it could be passed on.

Much of what I already know about Job Tison comes from such reports. If I'm lucky, some of the written material will come with scholarly footnotes and bibliographies—but I doubt it. Barring such academic road maps, I'll be left to rummaging through whatever archival material has not been burned in courthouse fires or blown up through the ravages of war, or washed out by the storming furies of nature.

In the meantime, I'm happy to trust what other researchers have passed along—a clipping shared by an Ancestry.com subscriber, or an enterprising blogger or an avid local historian. That, at least, is what I will start with, as we take this journey backward through time, beginning with the 1824 end of Job Tison's life in Glynn County, Georgia.

One such local historian compelled by the inner drive to "pass it on" was Margaret Davis Cate. Whoever she was—the website WorldCat provides her life timeline as 1888-1961—she was the writer to whom we can attribute the snippet an Ancestry member linked to the hints gleaned at that website for Job Tison.

The article shared at Ancestry continues the conversation we began yesterday about the Old Post Road in Georgia and the historic marker placed there in 1932 by the Brunswick Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. As it turns out, I was able to find a transcription of the article, which ran in The Brunswick News on July 7, 1933, shortly after the plaque was placed in a ceremony at the Old Post Road. (Though the transcription is freely available, after accessing the hosting website, glynngen.com, you need to perform your own search by pressing the Control plus F keys, then entering the surname Tison to locate it.)

The article, entitled "Old Post Road Historic Path," was indeed credited to local writer Margaret Davis Cate, and provided a history of the road and its surrounding area. From the column, we also learn that the tavern established by Job Tison and his wife, Sidnah Sheffield, was a wooden structure which, according to the author, was "perhaps the oldest wooden structure in this section" and, at least as of Ms. Cate's 1933 article, still standing.

While it was Job Tison's wife, Sidnah Sheffield, whose Patriot father West Sheffield gained more attention in the Brunswick News article—perhaps also the instigation for the DAR chapter to place the historic marker—the article did mention that Job Tison was from Pitt County, North Carolina, and that he arrived in Georgia about 1785. How the author substantiated that detail, I can't tell, but despite the lack of any scholarly attribution, I'm grateful for yet another one of those tenuous links and the desire of that one lone voice to be an instrument to "pass it on." These are the way-markers pointing us in at least a possible direction.

I realize through that Sheffield-Tison connection that there may be more to that link between Job's new home in Glynn County and his origin in North Carolina. We'll take a look at Job's in-laws tomorrow to see what we can learn. 

Twins in the Family

 

If you stumbled upon the given name Mariet in your family history wanderings, and thought maybe, just maybe, that might be a hint to look for a twin sister named Harriet, you might be on the right track. That, at least, turned out to be the case when I tore through every resource I could find online concerning the roots of Maude Woodworth Bean's paternal grandfather, Civil War veteran Eugene Williams.

It had been easy enough to locate Eugene in the 1860 household of his father, Martin M. Williams, since he had mentioned upon enlisting in 1862 that his home was in Marcellon, Wisconsin. It was a snap to deduce that the Martin Williams household in the previous census, despite being in New York rather than Wisconsin, showed the same family embedded within the extended family of one Solomon Williams.

But what about Martin's wife, Eugene's mother? Unfortunately for our search, her name was mangled in the 1850 census by an enumerator with a frustrating scrawl and a hurried attempt at correcting what might initially have been a spelling error. No matter what the entry was in reality, the name provided in the 1860 census—Mary—certainly was not the same as what was noted in 1850.

With no marriage record online that I could see—presumably occurring in the state of New York, even though the woman was noted to have been born in Vermont—we're left to poke around every other possible detail we can find. This is where search engines like Google become our best friend.

This is also, as you'll see shortly, why I never flatly discard family traditions as mere hearsay. You never know when a story might turn out to have some shred of validity to it.

Let's look first at the problem spot which left me stymied with yet another contradicting report. A death record told me that a woman by the name of Mariet Williams had died in Woodbury County, Iowa, in 1887. At that point, her age was given as sixty four, which would put her year of birth around 1823. Her place of birth was reported to be Vermont.

All that would have led a researcher to think we were moving along swimmingly, except for one tiny detail: the death report indicated that this Mariet Williams was a single woman, not married.

Granted, Mariet is not Mary, and certainly not the same as "Margett"—and keep in mind the wildcard entered into this search of the detail of a "second wife" for Martin Williams—but we need to see what we can find on this death and burial information for Mariet Williams.

The death record in Iowa indicated burial would be at Elk Point in Dakota Territory. Looking at the cemetery information on Find A Grave for the location of Martin Williams' own burial, I did a search for Mariet Williams. There was indeed a burial for a Mariet E. Williams. Though the memorial didn't include any photograph of a headstone, it provided the location for the burial: "Grave 5, Lot 59, Block 4, Section 2." 

Location for Martin Williams' own burial? "Grave 4, Lot 59, Block 4, Section 2."

Granted, I can't vouch for that particular cemetery's layout scheme, but just on general principles, I'd say the two of them were buried next to each other. I'd call that husband and wife, wouldn't you?

Of course, there still is the question of whether this was the first wife or the second wife. Tracing Martin's daughter Frances to the end of her life to see what was noted for her mother's name doesn't really help. If Frances Williams Beggs had died in the county where she had last been living with her husband—Will County, Illinois—there still wouldn't have been a digital image of her death certificate, but at least the transcription would have been as thorough as it was when Charles Beggs had died on March 1 of 1931. By the end of that same month, Frances had apparently moved into the city of Chicago to be with her daughter Mima during her period of mourning. She died before that same month was out.

Cook County also provided transcriptions of the certificate information, but not as thorough a recounting of the deceased's life history as that of Will County. At least it included the name of the deceased's parents. According to the reporting party, "Mina" Beggs Neef, Frances' mother's maiden name was Elizabeth Morse. 

Not what we were expecting.

Could Mima have gotten her mother's information wrong? Might that have actually been the name of Frances' father's second wife? I won't say this is the first time I've seen a death certificate which included errors. But we can't just presume without a supporting argument, and that takes documentation.

First, let's reconstruct Martin Williams' timeline. According to his 1896 obituary, it reported that though he had died in Hand County, South Dakota, he had come to that location "a year or so ago" from Iowa, not directly from his former residence in Union County in Dakota Territory. Furthermore, he—but not any wife—was noted to have traveled from Sioux City to attend the 1890 wedding in Chicago of his granddaughter Addie Beggs. Sioux City, by the way, is located in Woodbury County, Iowa. And the 1890 occasion in Chicago would obviously have occurred after Martin had lost his wife, since Mariet died in Woodbury County in 1887.

What I'm lacking, in the face of this possible error in reporting on Mariet's daughter's—not to mention her own—death record, is any further information on who Mariet was. It would have helped to retrieve Martin and Mariet's marriage record, for instance, or any detail on Mariet's maiden name, but online resources were not providing what I was seeking.

Though I am death on copying other people's family trees, I certainly am not averse to exploring the way markers on someone else's well-documented genealogy. That is exactly what I did, looking for Martin and Mariet Williams as a family grouping. Someone had posted a link to a page in the 1888 publication, The Earle Family: Ralph Earle and His Descendants which, incredibly, included just what I was seeking: details on one Mariet Earle who had married a Martin M. Williams in 1844.

And yes, she had a twin sister named Harriet Earle.

The funny thing is, I'd known about that Earle surname for almost as long as I've done family history research. It all goes back to a story told to me by Marilyn Sowle Bean, the woman whose rescued photos prompted this month's research project. In one of the first successful genealogical interviews I ever conducted, years ago, Marilyn had told me that her husband's name was actually Earle Raymond Bean, but that he felt awkward about what seemed to be the pretentious spelling—Earle instead of the more common Earl—and had informally dropped the "e" from his given name.

What Marilyn never mentioned, but I suspected, was that "Earle" was actually a family name—in other words, a surname from somewhere back in the family's history. I had no idea it would take this long—so many losses before that one win at the antique store last spring—before I'd be prompted to actually find where that family name fit into the picture.

Now, though Marilyn and her family are no longer here for me to share this victory, I can see that the Earle surname would have provided eligibility to join the Daughters of the American Revolution through the patriot Thaddeus Earle, Mariet Earle Williams' paternal grandfather. It turns out that Marilyn's own mother-in-law Maude Woodworth Bean's Earle ancestry had a long heritage in this country. All I can do now is wonder if she ever knew.    

Family Bibles, D. A. R. and Other Pathfinders

 

Before I forsake further recounting of this month's research goal—confirming information on Elizabeth Ambrose Flowers' parents—as slipping into the realm of genealogical sausage-making, there is one more observation to make. In the face of a dearth of accessible records for Mathias Ambrose's late-1700s time frame and final residence in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, I am certainly grateful for those "pathfinders" who have shared what records they were able to assemble.

One of such pathfinders is the group of families who were dedicated to keeping records of their own family's births, marriages, and deaths in the form of a family Bible. Sometimes passed down through the generations, such entries may turn out to be the only record of these events. The willingness to share what essentially is a gift passed down through generations qualifies as a genealogical kindness, in my opinion. Tax records or census records may show us who lived where and when, but they don't necessarily demonstrate relationships; they don't connect generations. Barring wills—complete with explicit identifications not only of names but relationships—documents from that early era of national history lack the very essence of what we family history researchers seek. I so appreciate those families conscientious enough in their care of the family Bible to benefit future generations.

Another group we seldom think of as pathfinders is the Daughters of the American Revolution. While we rightly recognize the D.A.R. as a lineage society—perhaps the most recognizable name among such organizations—due to their willingness to share the one hundred and thirty years worth of genealogical documentation of which they have become caretakers, they, too, have become valuable pathfinders. Their stewardship of this national treasure has made it possible for any researcher to find records—often privately held, such as the family Bibles I mentioned earlier—from an era in which ancestors' life trajectories might not have come to the attention of the catalog-keepers of life we've become accustomed to in our more modern time frame.

There are, of course, other pathfinders who have done their small part to make a difference for the rest of us researchers. I think here of the many volunteer posts, ever since we've had computerized communication: from the days of media such as "listservs" and electronic bulletin boards, to the more widely-organized websites such as the erstwhile Rootsweb or the GenWeb network. Even the more official establishments, such as FamilySearch.org, have been inventive in the ways they can share resources of yesterday's pathfinders—for instance, in their digitizing of both published and unpublished genealogy manuscripts, which can be found through their search mechanism online under "books."

It is through these scattered mentions online of the Ambrose family that I've been plodding, over the past several days. It's likely that that process will continue for the rest of this month—hence, the risk of falling into the realm of "genealogical sausage-making." Besides this, thanks to the documentation at D.A.R. for the lines of two Ambrose descendants, I'm checking the lists and verifying what's been listed with supplemental documentation from other website resources.

For one thing, I'm hoping the process will reveal potential DNA cousins who are not doubly-related through the Flowers line—in other words, not descendants of either Elizabeth or Susannah, Mathias' daughters who married Flowers brothers. But, just like my exploration into the collateral lines of the Ijams family last month where we found that tell-all will of the rich uncle, I'm hoping to find some cross-referencing documentation within the Ambrose family, as well. We can look, but of course we can't guarantee that looking will lead to finding.

I'll spare you all the details while I grind through that genealogical sausage-making. In the meantime, an unexpected genealogical adventure has found its way to my door, and I'd like to take the next few days to explore that story. The tale will lead us, thanks to the discovery of some photographs in an antique store, to review and augment some stories I've shared at A Family Tapestry from several years ago. 

Which William?

 

It's been a long month of research on the Ijams family of Ohio. Though we began the month exploring the family as they settled in Fairfield County in the earliest years of Ohio statehood, my original research goal was to connect my mother-in-law's third great-grandmother, Sarah Howard Ijams Jackson, with her parents. Some reports had indicated that Sarah was daughter of William Ijams, a settler from Frederick County, Maryland.

One of the stumbling blocks was the sense that, in reading those old local history books, there might have been more than one William Ijams in Fairfield County. If you recall, we had read one passage stating that three Ijams brothers had come to the area from Frederick County, Maryland: Isaac, William, and Thomas. Other passages from century-old books seemed to indicate otherwise, leaving us with more than one William Ijams.

Now that we're closing out the month and moving on to another research goal, I decided to inspect one more resource to see whether following anyone else's trail could shed some light on this puzzle. Because I already had seen that William Ijams was listed as a Patriot in D.A.R. records—and that his father was listed, as well—I pulled up the records for John Ijams to see what documentation might be provided.

That led me to references for what turned out to be a series of books written by Harry Wright Newman on early families in Anne Arundel County. While that, too, had me puzzled—those old Ohio history books mentioned the Ijams brothers coming from Frederick County in Maryland—I looked at FamilySearch.org to see if any of the books might be available online. After all, the books' description did mention the Ijams family name.

Though I had disappointment in my quest to locate the first two entries in FamilySearch's books category—the volumes were not publicly accessible there—going to the catalog category online gave me the option, with one of the books, to view it online. Eureka!

There, in the book Anne Arundel Gentry, published in 1933, author Harry Wright Newman laid out the genealogy and family history of several early settlers of the Maryland county, including not only William Ijams' roots, but also those of his wife, Elizabeth Howard. Of course, I'll have to confirm the specifics of that book's report for myself, but I take it as a guide, a trailblazer. And I'm most grateful for the assistance, at this point.

Within those 668 pages of Anne Arundel Gentry, I also found the explanation for why the Ohio books reported the three Ijams brothers as arriving from Frederick County, not Anne Arundel: when their father died about 1782, his widow moved, with some of the family members, to Frederick County. It was likely with the sale of land inherited from their father that the three sons, William and his two brothers, funded their move to Ohio.

Back in Maryland, those three brothers were not without relatives, including some by that same name of William Ijams—not a surprise with a place called Ijamsville, founded by one of William's relatives. To keep each William properly identified will take a diligent examination of each one's ancestry. But that, along with the task of sending for appropriate documentation, will be a continuing pursuit kept in the background. We are, after all, moving into a new month, with a new research goal to pursue, starting tomorrow.

Discoveries With Drawbacks

 

It's been an enjoyable month of research discoveries as we've pursued the genealogical Bright Shiny Objects associated with the William Ijams family after they left Maryland to settle in the fledgling state of Ohio. Despite that, we need to remember our research mission for the month of May: confirm the parents of my mother-in-law's third great-grandmother, Sarah Howard Ijams Jackson.

Sarah had, unfortunately, died within thirteen years of her marriage to John Jackson. Since she had given him four children, I had hoped that Sarah's early death in 1829 would not cause her life story to be obliterated, at least in part because of the human legacy she left behind to keep her memory alive. Thankfully, we did have one token to confirm her relationship to the Ijams family through her generous brother Isaac Ijams, who mentioned her heirs specifically in his will.

That, however, was not the strong documented link I was hoping for to connect Sarah with her father, William Ijams. While yes, William himself did leave a will, and while we can infer from that will that William had three daughters, he never named those specific children in the document. Some research challenges can border on messy.

However, as Wendy mentioned in her comment earlier this month, we are not left without recourse. It so happens that William Ijams, Sarah's father, was of an age to have lived through the Revolutionary War—better yet, was listed as a Patriot in the Genealogical Research System of the National Society of the Daughters of the Revolution. Sure enough, as Wendy had told us, William Ijams has an entry among the D.A.R. Patriots.

That, of course, seems a wonderful discovery—until, that is, we take a closer look. As you may have noticed, D.A.R. Ancestor Searches come with an additional benefit: Descendants Searches. For the entry for this particular William Ijams, there is a descendant line listed through William's daughter Comfort Ijams, wife of Edward Stevenson.

You can be sure I have passed this way before. Not only do I add all collateral lines—down to their descendants for DNA purposes—but I also have worked on Sarah's research problem from the direction of her widower husband's history. So right away, looking at the Descendants List for the line of William Ijams' other daughter Comfort Ijams Stevenson, I could spot two drawbacks.

One of those drawbacks was that William Ijams' date of death was given only as before the date when his will was presented in court. That, of course, is minor, as we've already discussed this month.

The second problem I could spot right away in the D.A.R. descendant's generations was the information given for William's wife, Elizabeth Howard. Her date of death was listed as "p 27 Dec 1815," which was the date when William signed his last will. Elizabeth's story is not only messy, but complicated by the fact that, even though I researched this in the past, some of the records are no longer accessible online.

Take, for instance, the Find A Grave memorial for William Ijams' widow, Elizabeth Howard Ijams, eventual wife of John Whistler. When I last researched that connection, I had saved the link to the memorial showing her burial, along with her second husband John Whistler, in Missouri. When I go to retrace my research steps now, all I get is: "This memorial has been removed."

Certainly a most unwelcome sight. Such disappearances make me want to rush to copy such obscure entries as the thorough notes of one researcher posted on the erstwhile Genealogy.com site now overseen by Ancestry.com, lest they vanish, as well.

In about 1816 or 1817, John Whistler married his second wife, Elizabeth (Howard) Ijams. She was the daughter of Joseph and Rachel (Ridgely) Howard of Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Elizabeth married first, William Iiams (Ijams) of Frederick County, Maryland and had ten children. Sometime before 1806, the family moved to Fairfield County, Ohio near the present-day town of West Rushville. William Ijams died probably in late 1815.

The only other indicator of Elizabeth's last days is a transcribed summary of a passing note in the Columbian Centinel regarding a Mrs. Whistler, "consort of Maj. John Whistler" in the May 10, 1826 edition, found in the collections at Ancestry.com.

Such few details clue me in on one thing, though: the estimate of death given in the D.A.R. record for Elizabeth presents yet another token that relying on old D.A.R. applications may not produce the full picture to guide me any further in my own research challenges.

Still, as I've always maintained, such resources become trailblazers for those of us who pick up the trail afterwards. It's up to us to verify what we can and improve the trail even further by adding our own discoveries in the hopes that such documentation—and proof arguments—will amplify the next few steps beyond what has already been found. 

A Real Daughter

 

What to do when finding oneself, as a family history researcher, on the far side of a rabbit trail? 

In the case of our discoveries while examining the "F.A.N. Club" of my mother-in-law's possible fourth great-grandfather, we can't quite yet vacate our precarious position. After all, in our research wanderings yesterday, we not only learned something about the Guseman family of Monongalia County, but their possible connection to the Cobun family for whom Anthony Carroll's property was named.

It's on account of that Guseman discovery that we can't quite yet leave this topic.

Granted, the Susan Guseman we found was not the same person as the Susan, sister of Godfrey Guseman, mentioned in his will. That Susan, by the time of Godfrey's death in 1838, was already married to someone else. But it is not beyond possibilities that the name Susan was a significant namesake in the extended Guseman family—in other words, perhaps a cousin to the Guseman who married Anthony Carroll's daughter Margaret.

Because I had to check that out, it presented the opportunity to learn a bit more about what the Daughters of the American Revolution refer to as a "Real Daughter." And this particular Susan—or Susannah—Guseman certainly qualified as a "Real Daughter," revealing to us a bit about her roots in the process.

When the D.A.R. speaks of a "Real Daughter," they are not simply referring to any member of the organization—after all, every one of those members are addressed as "daughters." However, the designation of a "Real Daughter" signifies those women who joined the D.A.R. through the Revolutionary War service of their own father.

Although that designation represents a very special—and quite limited—category of members, there were more than a few who were recognized for that unique relationship. D.A.R. chapters in states such as New Hampshire, as you can imagine, have commemorated several "Real Daughters." Susannah herself, not long after her death, was included in a 1912 publication listing the D.A.R.'s "Real Daughters."

Susannah Guseman Cobun happened to be the daughter of a Patriot named Abraham Guseman. A soldier serving in the Berkeley County, Virginia, militia after enrolling at Harper's Ferry at the age of seventeen, Abraham served for seven years, over which time he was injured three times, including being struck with a bullet which he carried for the rest of his life.

This I first discovered while searching for Susannah's obituary, in an attempt to see whether she was the "Susan" connected with Godfrey Guseman, our Anthony Carroll's son-in-law. As often happens when we get lost on rabbit trails, I eventually discovered the answer was no—at least, as far as I can tell. But the obituary led to helpful information for creating a quick and dirty pedigree chart on this branch of the Guseman universe. Keep in mind that we are researching the cluster of friends, associates, and neighbors situated in a sparsely-populated wilderness emerging from a struggle for freedom with the world's current superpower. Where there was one Guseman family member, there likely would be more.

According to Susannah Guseman Cobun's obituary—dated March 23, 1910, and published in both the Baltimore Sun and the Washington Post—she lived to be one hundred and one years of age. In both articles, it was mentioned specifically that she was a "Real Daughter" of the Revolution, naming her patriot father.

Susannah Cobun was a member of the Elizabeth Ludington Hagans Chapter of the D.A.R. in Morgantown, West Virginia. In 1924, the chapter placed a commemorative marker at her grave in the city's Oak Grove Cemetery. (Interestingly, while the marker spells her married name correctly, her entry as a descendant in the national D.A.R. records carries the oft-used alternate spelling we encountered yesterday, "Coburn.")

While it was exciting to discover a small vignette of our country's early history—and to see how close it came to connecting to my mother-in-law's own heritage—the Cobun and Guseman sagas did not specifically provide us the answers needed to connect Anthony Carroll's son-in-law, or the Cobun namesake for the property he once owned, to my mother-in-law's own line.

There is, however, another possible Guseman connection—but whether to believe the source of that information, I can't yet say. What that resource does promise, though, is another possible wild ride down yet one more rabbit trail.

Intimations

 

When pieces are missing from the documentation of your family's story, then what? We learn to read between the lines.

I'm struggling with connecting the dots between my third great-grandmother in Florida, Delaney Townsend Charles, and her Townsend roots back in South Carolina. There are plenty of assertions that her parents were John and Keziah Hays Townsend of Marlboro County, but there are scant references to any paper trail which would confirm such statements.

Still, given what we've got—right now, I'm reading between the typewritten lines of Annie Florence Kinney's D.A.R. membership application, which inexplicably details Delaney's tangential line to her own Kinney lineage—there may be some stray comments which prove helpful.

The main research issues are lack of any death record, probate record, or other final words on the death of Delaney or her husband, Andrew J. Charles, and lack of much of the same for Delaney's supposed father. We can find Delaney and Andrew and their children in the 1850 census, living in Madison County in northern Florida. By 1860, all we can find are their children—living in someone else's household.

That household, as we've already seen, was headed by the second husband of Andrew Charles' sister Drucilla, so theoretically, there should be some documentation specifying the guardianship arrangement that surely was established. But without documentation, we are only guessing.

The assumption is easy to make that some great misfortune befell the couple, causing their death and leaving their children orphaned. Although that leaves us a wide gap of time for our conjecture—anywhere from the date the 1850 census was taken to just before any mortality schedule would be drawn up for the 1860 census—the diligent approach would be to scour any available records, not only in the location of their 1850 residence, but including the counties lying between Madison and the home of their children's guardian in 1860.

In the meantime, there are some aspects of usefulness to the quandary of re-reading and re-reading the same sorry details we've already collected. Take, for instance, this passage, gleaned first from a website featuring the Townsend genealogy and then from the source document referenced in that website, a copy of Annie Florence Kinney's D.A.R. application (note brackets indicate handwritten correction entered in the original application):

After the death of Andrew Jackson Charles, Mr. Light Townsend ([grand]father of John R. of Blenheim) went to Fla. and brought his two nieces back to Marlboro County with him and reared them in his home.

In providing this explanation, applicant Annie Florence Kinney provides us a clue as to what became of my second great-grandmother's parents. It's a small clue, of course, but it helps paint a scenario of how events unfolded.

Note the narrative states, "After the death of Andrew," not "after the death of Andrew and Delaney." The text is intimating that Delaney died before her husband—possibly from causes unrelated to Andrew's own death. Continuing this examination further, as there seems to be confusion over how many sons Delaney had, this scenario might have intimated that Delaney could have died following childbirth, possibly of that second, unexplained son mentioned in the same D.A.R. application.

Of course, nothing explains—yet—just why the death of the second parent prompted the relatives of the first parent to come claim the children. Nor does that help us understand why those relatives, living a greater distance from the Charles children, superseded the guardianship claims of the nearby relatives, who also lived in northern Florida.

Another clue to help pinpoint a timeline of these unfortunate events might be that Andrew Charles' sister—Drucilla, the one who, after her second marriage, did take in the Charles orphans—could have been otherwise occupied with her own tragedy at the time of Andrew's death. Drucilla's last daughter with her first husband was born in January of 1858, and her next child, with the second husband, was born in April of 1860, hinting at the possibility that she would not be in a position to take in three additional relatives any time around 1857 until the time of their actual arrival before June 22, 1860.

Still, dissecting the wording on a D.A.R. application only fuels our conjectures about what did actually happen. To know for sure, we'd need to see documentation—the very thing we are now lacking. Though a solidly constructed proof argument can work wonders, that only stands if we can weave a web of reasoning with enough indisputable data points to connect the dots logically. At this point, those dots are too few and far between to draw up the argument that the patriot John Townsend was Delaney's father.

Yes, She Was Listed

 

First, let's get to the punchline: yes, my third great-grandmother Delaney Townsend Charles was included in the listing of "Children of Revolutionary Ancestor" in the D.A.R. application of one descendant of patriot John Townsend. The unfortunate difficulty with that application, though, is that it might seem unclear just how Delaney's connection was verified.

The 1948 application of Annie Florence Kinney for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution linked her, generation by generation, to John Townsend by providing various documents for the required verification. On a page in the 1948 D.A.R. application labeled "References for Lineage," the instructions stated,

Proofs for line of descent are wills, administrations, deeds, church, Bible, census and pension records, tombstones, histories, genealogies, old newspapers, etc.

For the most part, Ms. Kinney provided certified lists from two family Bibles (a Kinney family Bible and a Townsend family Bible), as well as citing the will for John Townsend's son (Light), the 1850 census, and the unfortunately vague J. A. W. Thomas' entry on the Townsend family in A History of Marlboro County. The Townsend family Bible, despite sounding like a promising source, was printed in 1839, missing the mark for being a contemporaneous record for births dating back to the earlier part of that century. Likewise, the Light Townsend will wouldn't necessarily provide us a resource for identifying his siblings. 

Nevertheless, in Ms. Kinney's D.A.R. application, on that same page, under "References for Lineage," was a second section labeled "Children of Revolutionary Ancestor." Ms. Kinney had provided the names, dates of birth, and—sometimes—name of spouse for the thirteen children of John and Keziah Hays Townsend. In order, they were:

• Jessie
• James A.
• John
• Light
• Joel Wilson
• Allen
• Arpie
• David
• Fereba
• Benjamin
• Isham
• Delaney Rosella
• Hester Ann

Underneath that typewritten list of names was the handwritten statement, "children check are from Bible + Cemetery records sent by applicant."

Delaney's name was not checked.

Enclosed with the supplemental records accompanying the D.A.R. application was a section headlined, "Proof of children of John and Keziah Townsend: with births, marriage." The beauty of having a digitized copy of that actual typewritten document is that by viewing the document on my computer (rather than as a printed form), I can enlarge it to see the sometimes difficult to decipher handwritten notes inserted between the typewritten lines.

Thus, here we have the difference between the version I previously wrote about, as it was found in another Townsend researcher's website, and the version updated with the inserted comments as they likely were intended to read.

First, the transcription:

Delaney was the Aunt of Mr. John R. Tow[n]send of Blenheim. Delaney Rosella Townsend married Andrew Jackson Charles.... The daughters of Mrs. Delaney Rosella Townsend Charles were Emma and Fanny and she also had two sons. After the death of Andrew Jackson Charles, Mr. Light Townsend (father of John R. of Blenheim) went to Fla. and brought his two nieces back to Marlboro County with him and reared them in his home.

What was added by hand to the original typed document is now added in bold:

Delaney was the great Aunt of Mr. John R. Tow[n]send of Blenheim....

That, of course, puts the relationship in clearer perspective—and causes me to wonder what other errors were not corrected.

There were more notes of interest. (This time, I'll include the handwritten corrections in the text, again indicating the additions by boldface.)

Names, births and to whom married when known were sent to Mr. John R. Townsend, Blenheim, S. C. (a direct descendant of John Townsend, Revolutionary soldier) (and grandson of Light) by the granddaughter of Delaney Rosella Townsend, Mrs. Fannie Rowell, Welbourne, Fla.

This was the same section in which the applicant explained,

After the death of Andrew Jackson Charles, Mr. Light Townsend (grandfather of John R. of Blenheim) went to Fla. and brought his two nieces back to Marlboro County with him and reared them in his home. They were Emma and Fanny.

After that point, the applicant explained that Emma and Fanny returned to Florida and were married. Emma's husband is referred to only by his surname, McClellan. The text then explains that Fannie Rowell was Emma's daughter.

Dissecting this unclear passage—let alone the reason for its inclusion—may make it seem to indicate a less than stellar source of verification. The narrative seems to indicate that the names, along with dates of birth and marriage details, were actually supplied to John R. Townsend by Fannie Rowell.

Keeping in mind that John R. Townsend was Light Townsend's grandson—and thus the patriot's great-grandson—and that Fannie Rowell was born at the end of 1882, long after her grandmother Delaney's departure, it seems less than reliable to accept the one feeding the other dates gleaned not by documentation, but by oral report. It is not the entry in a family Bible which makes the record certifiable, but the contemporaneous entry of the details—in other words, entered at the time of each occurrence—which lends it authenticity.

While I still haven't been able to locate a will for John Townsend, and now also feel shrouded in doubt over the reliability of the listing of his children in the post-1838 Townsend family Bible, the wording provides some food for thought regarding other details about Delaney and her husband, Andrew Charles. After all, there is no denying there was some connection between the two families. Let's take a deeper dive next week into what the wording on this application might have tangentially revealed to us.

Meet the Applicant

 

If I can't, by myself, find the documentation I'm seeking to connect my third great-grandmother to her parents, perhaps I can benefit from the research of others—taking great care, of course, to ensure that every assertion is referenced appropriately before I accept it. But first, before we examine the paperwork, let's meet the D.A.R. applicant whose membership request I'm now inspecting so closely.

During the fall of 1948, Annie Florence Kinney began assembling the many documents required to verify her connection to Revolutionary War patriot John Townsend for her application to join the lineage society. The line of descent was clearly laid out in the copy of her application I purchased through the national organization's website.

Annie, who was born in 1907—and has subsequently died in 1995 in the same South Carolina county where her ancestor once lived—was the daughter of Townsend descendant John Frank Kinney. He, in turn, was son of William Frank Kinney and Annie Townsend. 

Now, we see the trail opening up clearly to the patriot ancestor. That Annie Townsend was daughter of Light Townsend, born in 1798, who in turn was son of the patriot, John Townsend. The patriot himself was born about 1760 and died in Marlboro County, South Carolina, in 1843.

In assembling her application for membership to the Daughters of the American Revolution, Annie Florence Kinney used several sources to verify the names and dates connecting her with her second great-grandfather, the patriot John Townsend. Though at the time, no one had access to photocopying equipment, sources were verified through a system of sworn statements given in the presence of a notary public or, in some cases, a statement signed by a judge of probate for Marlboro County (who just happened to have the same name as the applicant's father).

Many of the records used to verify Ms. Kinney's application were typewritten transcriptions. Typewriting being typewriting, such was prone to, um, typographical errors. For instance, in one section of the application, "Children of Revolutionary Ancestor," my own third great-grandmother, Delaney Townsend Charles, was listed—but with her year of birth given as 1915, not only one hundred years after her actual birth, but certainly long after she had died, as well.

While I am grateful for the nineteen pages of Annie Florence Kinney's application and attached supplemental statements, embedded within the file were several details which were enough, added up, to leave me still in doubt. But let's save those details for tomorrow—as well as the listing of all those many children of that Revolutionary Ancestor, John Townsend of Marlboro County, South Carolina.  

Checking References

 

Anyone who has dabbled in genealogy at length will stumble upon the imperative to support family assertions with references to actual documentation. In the case of chasing after my third great-grandmother, Delaney Townsend Charles, and her possible parentage, I am still sorely lacking said references—and yet it seems everyone asserts that Delaney's parents were indeed John and Keziah Hayes Townsend.

One particular document has been given as "proof" of that connection. We've already seen that statement posted on another online resource, citing the claims of another family member whom I know of all too well. That document was the D.A.R. application of one particular Townsend descendant named Annie Florence Kinney. The claims included in that application were said to originate from my maternal grandmother's own Aunt Fannie.

Although some people may not be aware of this, it is possible to purchase a copy of such D.A.R. applications—as long as the application's details will not violate the privacy of any living person (generally considered to be any material that is not less than one hundred years old). In fact, such purchase orders can be placed online at the national D.A.R. website and received almost instantaneously as a digital document.

There are, of course, restrictions to such a process. For one, the national Daughters of the American Revolution, as an organization, claims copyright protection on any such materials downloaded through this purchasing process. Furthermore, on its instructions prior to purchasing any download of materials, the organization states that it

prohibits the posting of images of DAR application papers and supplemental application papers online in any form by anyone.

Specifically, the D.A.R. prohibits the posting, online, of any images obtained through this purchase process—which is why you won't see me sharing any images of the original documents. In addition, the organization noted that, prior to widely available access to photocopying services, applicants would often request that the documentation they submitted in the process of verifying their eligibility to join the D.A.R. be returned to them following the application process—thus leaving many applications stripped of the very documents someone like myself might be seeking. Surprisingly, the revoking of that previous courtesy did not occur, in some cases, until as late as 1984.

The application I was pursuing was one submitted in 1948, so chances were high that I might not find anything more than the actual form Annie Florence Kinney completed at that date. However, since the D.A.R. offers the option to purchase both the copy of the completed application form and the "supplemental" form, they do provide notice of how many records might be included in the supplemental form. In Annie case, it was noted that there were thirteen additional items included.

Thus, in as much time as it might take for a computer to blink its eye, I had a downloadable copy of each of two documents:  Annie Florence Kinney's D.A.R. application for membership, and the packet of her supplemental information. Tomorrow—and certainly without sharing any images of documents—we'll discuss what I could find within that treasure trove.

Pink Picket Fence

 

Was it in a dream in the hazy dawn hour this morning when I thought I saw a pink picket fence? Perhaps in such an early waking moment, the vision stuck with me in an altered light, but there it was: a picture quaint, but not quite right. That serves well to describe Ancestor Number Five in this new Twelve Most Wanted for 2021: a woman whose story was nearly obliterated with the early end of her life.

Her name was Sarah Howard Ijams, and she was born to a family likely to yield my husband's sisters more than one claim to membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution. Her unfortunate early death in 1829—possibly due to complications of childbirth—yielded very few records. Most important of those records would be that of her marriage to John Jay Jackson, which somehow was supposed to have occurred at a United States outpost in territory near the current city of Saint Louis, Missouri. How others could use the Jackson line for lineage qualification is not clear to me, given the lack of currently-existing records for that marriage. Perhaps, like the pink picket fence in my dream, the picture must have been shaded by a twilight zone of documentation in those earlier days of DAR.

Still, it is not surprising to find that one near relative of a Revolutionary Patriot could have intermarried with others of the same heritage, and that is indeed the case for this same Sarah Howard Ijams—which is why, this year, I want to approach the puzzle from her own family's side, rather than her husband's Jackson lineage. Even if I never find actual documentation for her marriage to John Jay Jackson, Sarah herself can lead my mother-in-law's descendants to DAR membership qualification. It's just a matter of piecing together some solid documentation and submitting the application—sans pink picket fence—a great goal for my fifth family history focus for the coming year.

 

Above: Winter Scene on a Canal, oil on panel by Dutch artist Hendrick Avercamp (1585-1634); courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

 

Gordons Getting Unstuck

There is one hazard which comes with relying on the genealogical research of someone else: that someone might be wrong. Granted, there are many cases in which another researcher's material is correct. When it is well-supported with multiple forms of documentation plus the good fortune of being clear of research landmines—such as cousins all having the same name and age—following another researcher's lead can possibly be safe, once you've tested the line of reasoning for yourself.

But this is the John Gordon family we're talking about. It's not exactly a Smith scenario, but still a fairly common surname—there are 161,833 people with the Gordon surname, according to the 2010 census, placing its rank as 161 out of all surnames in the United States (incidentally, Smith is still hanging in there at number one).

So should I get all jumping-up-and-down screaming when I find a nifty record for a John Gordon in pre-Revolutionary times? If you said—as I did—"Not so fast," you'd be on the right track for some solid research sensibility. But thanks to my Bright-Shiny Syndrome susceptibility, I couldn't help but look, when I found a tempting article on some Gordons recently.

Oddly enough, my Bright-Shiny path this time snagged my unsuspecting self from a safe haven: the hints at Ancestry.com. I kept running into member postings touting information on obscure, privately-created websites—on links which would not connect—which seemed to imply something I'd really like to know more about: the possibility that our John Gordon served in the Revolutionary War. Our John Gordon could have been a patriot!

Of course, looking up such a name on the Ancestor Search page at the national Daughters of the American Revolution website would not necessarily prove anything. After all, it's a case of that common name. There could be dozens of John Gordons coming to the defense of their home. How could I tell which one was the right one? Or if ours was even included in the listing at all?

There was one handy way to differentiate our John Gordon from all the rest that might have been on a potential list: the name of John's wife. Fortunately, there were many assertions that John Gordon had married a woman by the name of Mary—or Mary Hellen—Duke, and that was exactly the entry I found when I went looking for any John Gordons among the patriot files at D.A.R.

Finding another Revolutionary War patriot among my mother-in-law's ancestors—remember, this is the woman who had thought her grandparents had just "gotten off the boat" from Europe—may sound enticing to those who seek membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution, but I found something else to my liking, as well: the possibility of breaking through the John Gordon brick wall to discover the name of his father.

And that leads to another shared document from an obscure website which I would never have found without a mention in an Ancestry.com hint posted by another subscriber. If that article is indeed correct, after years of searching, I now have a tentative name and identity for John Gordon's father.

Ancestor #3: The Most Wanted of the Most Wanted

In a few days, we will begin the new year of 2020. In that year, among other commemorations, will be the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the landing of the Mayflower. On that tiny ship, among all those other significant passengers, was one crew member who turned out to be my tenth great-grandfather. If, by now, you've guessed I'm related to John Alden, you've astutely identified the far side of my research dilemma. However, it's not the beginning of that Mayflower line I'm concerned about, but the distant reaches of his line of descent that teases me by being just out of my grasp.

Here's the reason why: the General Society of Mayflower Descendants provides properly sanctioned resources to trace the five generations stretching from John Alden (and all the other surviving Mayflower passengers) to the level of their second great-grandchildren. In my case, that would lead to Janet Murdock, who married Stephen Tilson (of the well-documented Tilson line). This is all well and good, as long as we stick with those generations in Massachusetts and surrounding areas, but by the time of the next generation—and their son, William Tilson, in particular—the family has removed from those New England colonies to the back end of Virginia.

Ah, you knew Virginia would be showing up somewhere in this saga.

At that point, still during the pre-Revolutionary War era in the 1760s, the line settled in what was then Washington County, Virginia—until some of the family line moved further on. Some family members continued on to Kentucky—or so the report goes—while the branch including my fifth great-grandfather moved only a short distance to settle in the northeastern part of Tennessee by the early 1800s.

Somewhere in all those colonial documents and early church records from the backwoods of Virginia are likely mentions of this family of William and Marcie Tilson, but as far as I can reach from my armchair researcher's spot out in California, I can't seem to put together the necessary paper trail to connect William's granddaughter Rachel, wife of Tennessean James C. Davis, to her rightful place in not only the Tilson line, but also the key line leading all the way back to John Alden and Priscilla Mullins. While I can find hundred-year-old books which, for their own parts, make the assertions which, connected, would lead me all the way back to my goal, I can't find the documentation to bring me clearly from Point A (where I leave off with Rachel Tilson Davis) to Point X, where the Mayflower landed with my tenth great-grandparents.

Hopefully, my strategy to see what resources can be obtained during my January visit to Salt Lake City will conveniently align with my intention to apply for membership to the Mayflower Society before this celebration of the 400th anniversary comes to a close at the end of next year.

 Above: "Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor," 1882 painting by William Formby Halsall; image courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

One Way to Keep That Forward Momentum

I recently read a blogger who mentioned that, unlike others who periodically choose a book to read, he usually kept a collection of five or six volumes on his active reading list. He would bounce between books according to mood. Sometimes, it was fiction that took his fancy. Other times, when he wasn't quite up to industrial-strength intellectual pursuits, perhaps he'd turn to an autobiography.

Eventually, he'd finish the entire collection and move on; he didn't find the segmentation of his reading list to be distracting in the least. That way, he matched his reading interest to his current energy level and point of fascination. It kept him reading through his book bucket list, instead of getting stuck at a boring impasse in the middle of his sole selection.

Perhaps it may seem like my blogging style is matching that person's reading style. While I'm grinding away at making genealogical sausage, I'm flitting from one discovery to another. Then the roadblock looms, and I switch research tracks. Again.

I admit it must seem difficult to follow such jagged story lines. But I also realize how tedious it can be to read the blow-by-blow of the research process. Then, too, stuff is popping up while other stories languish: a text from Ireland brings me a photo of that little lost photo album making its way home after eighty years; a cousin re-surfaces after years to connect over DNA testing. While I'm stymied in the research doldrums, refreshing breezes like these are a welcome change.

And so the pattern continued this past weekend as I received a response to a chance message I had sent by Facebook. In the hunch that this social media site is now where genealogical connections are happening, I had sent a message to a fellow Davis researcher whom I hadn't contacted for years. Maybe decades. Having spotted her name in a book on the very area where descendants of my potential Mayflower connection may have settled in Tennessee, I thought I'd chance connecting by Facebook.

Just a few days ago, my hunch was confirmed: she answered my message. Even better, she informed me that she had completed her application for membership in the Mayflower Society, herself—the very goal I was wanting to discuss with her. The good news was: she was accepted into the Society. What's more, she's willing to help me get all my documentation in order, as well.

This is the kind of stuff that generates a genealogical happy dance. We share a common ancestor just four generations removed from me. Bringing the documentation forward from my second great grandfather Thomas D. Davis, who died in 1892, should be rather straightforward. It's all the twists and turns to carry me from his mother, Mayflower descendant Rachel Tilson Davis in Tennessee, back to John Alden and Priscilla Mullins of Plymouth Colony, that I'm concerned about.

There's always been something about working with a friend on a project of interest. Not that I couldn't do the work alone, but the encouragement of someone who has already been down this road is helpful. Not to mention, it's always fun to meet a new cousin—especially someone who understands just what it is about this genealogical research that makes our eyes light up. Meeting up with a cousin like that is a double bonus.

Genealogical Wandering

Sure, it was Baxter Davis I was targeting in my most recent attempt to figure out just who it was who married my Mayflower ancestor's descendant, Rachel Tilson. James Davis had seemingly come out of nowhere to show up at a pioneer settlement in the hills of northeastern Tennessee—well, more accurately, what would later become part of Tennessee. It seemed there was an early settler in a place called Greasy Cove—later to become the town of Unicoi—who was known as Baxter Davis. Conveniently, I had noticed James and Rachel Davis named their firstborn son that same name: Baxter. Connection?

If you think I was able to come up with digitized documentation identifying anything further on that elder Baxter Davis, think again. The more I try to pursue this line of thinking, the less I seem to accomplish. Other than getting plenty of googling exercise, I haven't found much substance.

Granted, I found many other resources. That's what comes from the "milling about" disorientation from a lack of straightforward research purpose. I only think the Baxter connection will lead me somewhere. It might not. That's the price a researcher pays to experiment with "what if."

In the meantime, I've spent a lot of time wishing I were in Knoxville, researching at the East Tennessee Historical Society's McClung Collection—or at least being able to access the names of settlers included in the society's First Families of Tennessee collection.

I'm realizing, once again, the difficulty of trying to verify facts about ancestors who persistently chose to settle in places where they could maintain their fierce independence. Though my Davis line settled in and around the town of Erwin, Tennessee, claims that their settlement was in Unicoi County are misleading when spoken in the same breath as those 1790s dates. Unicoi, as a county, was simply not a governmental entity until 1875.

In those first-settlement situations, one question concerns the granting of land. Looking back at the last stop in this family's multi-generational migratory process—that spot on the southwestern part of the colony of Virginia near the Holston River—the earlier generation of Tilsons were said (at least by one account) to have moved there to claim land granted for William Tilson's service in the French and Indian War.

How to track records like that? Which would be the governmental entity serving as repository for that? At least, in the case of a paper trail for settlement at Greasy Cove, there are records dating back to January, 1778. But who keeps these records which came into being long before the current governments took charge? This is not going to be a straightforward paper chase.

And yet, stumbling along through those many Google hits, I did find some gems. Of course, I didn't need Google to tell me that the FamilySearch Wiki would provide helpful links for the county. But in my wanderings, I did stumble upon a cool map website providing historic maps of the area. Most importantly, I found a list of publications of local history, thanks to the U.S. GenWeb project for Unicoi County, Tennessee.

Better yet, that list included the option to take a peek at what was inside the cover of several local history books—including one which was apparently written by a distant Davis cousin. Reading the introduction to Linda Davis March's Images of America: Erwin and Unicoi County, I spotted a name in the credits who was not only listed as the author's cousin, but was a woman I had corresponded with, years ago, about our mutual Davis research challenges.

Taking that opportunity to peek at the pages in that book, I found a photograph of my second great grandmother, plus another photograph of her home in Erwin. What a strange experience to open a book at random and find such treasures!

While I wasn't able—yet!—to find anything further on the elusive Baxter Davis, pioneer settler of Greasy Cove, it was reassuring to discover others in the area who are also researching these same lines. It was also informative to find websites and indications of local historical societies for groups which I had no idea were even in existence. It does take some orienting to become facile at the terms of a locality's history, but the more I learn as I wander through this region's history, the better I'm armed with additional search terms.

Be very sure I'll be using that knowledge to my advantage. You will be found out yet, Mr. Baxter Davis!

The Grunt Work of Next Steps

Sometimes, genealogical research flows smoothly and everything falls nicely into place. Other times? Those are the times a researcher wishes for the ability to travel to do on-site research. Sometimes, the wonder of online access loses its luster.

Now that I've reached that third part in my process to connect myself—and my prodding sister, incidentally—to ancestral passengers on the Mayflower, I'm languishing in the lack of documentation for my Davises in Tennessee.

Granted, the Mayflower Society directs applicants to hold off on the documentation part of the process until the original presumption has been properly vetted. But you know me: I can't wait. This is going to be a challenge to obtain the type of documentation I know most lineage societies will want to see. And challenges take time to overcome.

Meanwhile, it isn't every day that I pass through the state of Tennessee. Nor, when I go, do I customarily head to tiny Erwin in the northeastern portion of the state—last time I touched down in Tennessee, I flew to Nashville, a long way from either Unicoi County or its parent county, Washington County. To get there for research purposes would take planning.

At a point like this, it's easy to lose focus on what the appropriate next step might be. When nothing seems to surface, the feeling can strangely be much the same as when everything seems to surface: it's overwhelming.

Time to sit down and draw up a genealogical Venn diagram of what I have and what could possibly be found—if such a document even exists. In that process, a tally of which online resources might produce such documents would also be a handy inventory to keep.

I once had a professor in college who called this disorienting stage of research the "milling about" stage—not really sure which way to head or what approach to take for definitive results. While I'm not exactly preparing to write a term paper, this wandering research malaise has the distinct feel of such a dilemma.

Perhaps, given this uncertainty of the next best step to take, another approach might be to explore that little hint that I unearthed last week, while scouring online resources for any mention of the Davis surname in that little pocket of early settlements in northeastern Tennessee. The discovery of a Baxter Davis named in the generation previous to the appearance of my James Davis might actually help me stumble upon some other helpful records.

Maybe this is the best approach to take, while puzzling over those genealogical Venn diagrams to set my research course for the next step in the process. At least, in retrospect, it will seem to be the "best approach" if I manage to actually find something that connects me with the right Davis line in that early state history of Tennessee.