It's Easy — After all the Hard Work is Done

 

There is no doubt that preparation makes a job flow much more smoothly. If I had any doubt that planning and preparation had any place in working through the thousands of DNA matches I've received, I'm a firm believer now. Building out a "bushy" family tree, including collateral lines—and all their descendants—may have been a lot of work, but it paved the way so I wouldn't get swamped with all the matches that piled up in my family's accounts over the last twelve years.

Right now, as I work my way through the ThruLines list of the forty—no, make that thirty eight as of today—DNA matches descending from Nicholas Snider's son Peter, I'm finding it to be a smooth process if I had already attached that line of descendants to my mother-in-law's tree. See? It's easy, at least after all the hard work has been done.

There are other descendants of Peter Snider whom I had missed the first time I did the preparation work on this tree. That meant, of course, that I had to stop and hunt for documents to verify the assertion being made by Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool. After all, a mistake repeated in hundreds of family trees would still be a mistake, so I don't just want to copy what everyone else had said, even though ThruLines picked it up, too. I want to see some verification that the connection is so.

Yes, it all adds up to hard work, but that is an investment in time well worth the effort. Now, when I receive a new DNA match, especially one outlined on Ancestry's ThruLines or at MyHeritage's Theory of Family Relativity, I've already got the basic structure laid in place, and can just follow the map the genealogy company has outlined for me.

The whole point behind using DNA for genealogy is not just to build a bushy tree, of course. It's to help us figure out a way around those brick wall ancestors who have us stumped. I've already seen that while working on other lines in our family, and I'm hoping that will stand me in good stead for this pursuit of Nicholas Snider's roots. He was my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather. While I am testing her son's DNA for these purposes, a third great-grandfather's descendants are still somewhat within reach to hopefully glean helpful information about the Snider roots. More than halfway through the process of examining all these Snider DNA matches, we should have the verdict on this project soon.

Meanwhile, Looking Ahead . . .

 

What happens when eight children of eight siblings go on to have multiple children of their own—and those are just the grandparents of the current generation? That's what has got me wrapped up this week: connecting the DNA matches of Nicholas Snider's descendants to the right places in my mother-in-law's family tree. 

It hasn't been a smooth ride. And looking ahead, I see many more hours of work before I even get close to finishing out the nearly eighty DNA matches for just Nicholas Snider's oldest son Jacob.

While I realize that looking ahead won't necessarily produce information on the founding immigrant ancestor's origin, I keep hoping these strands of DNA will lead to a family line which did preserve some of the oldest stories. A family Bible, perhaps, or an heirloom passed down from the passage from Germany—or wherever it was that Nicholas and Elizabeth originated.

True, some of the shared stories can turn out to be family myths. We've already seen that with one great-grandson's biography. Out of the thirty six DNA matches I've reviewed so far from son Jacob's line, no one else has come up with any stories—but I'm less that halfway done with just that eldest son. But if any descendants would yield the hoped-for stories, it would likely be either that eldest son's family, or perhaps the lone daughter who did marry and have children.

The task is admittedly tiresome. It involves not just laying down links to DNA matches in the family tree, but verifying connections by attaching records—not just one record, but whole series of records, such as each decennial census record. Work on some family lines turns out to proceed smoothly, but other lines hit snarls and tangles with unexpected deaths, trauma, and tragedies. You get a sense of a family's wellbeing, just going through the brief documentary overview of each member's life. I may not know where Nicholas Snider came from, but I'm getting a clearer sense of where his family headed to over the ensuing generations.

While Nicholas spent a few years of his life living in Pennsylvania and eventually settling in Ohio, where my mother-in-law's family remained, I am now following subsequent branches of Nicholas' son Jacob's descendants who saw fit to migrate further to Iowa, and ultimately to Minnesota. Some, even, continued the move westward to arrive in California, not far from where I live now. To think that third and fourth cousins live within a commute drive of our home here—while sharing roots that reach back to Ohio and Pennsylvania almost two hundred years ago—does boggle the mind. Those winding migration pathways possess a fascinating pull of their own. 

Revisiting Old Resources

 

When stuck on brick wall ancestors, sometimes I find it helpful to revisit old resources to see if perhaps I had missed a detail from the record the first time around. This month, I'm focusing on one particular brick wall ancestor: my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather, Nicholas Snider. Since nothing from his records in Perry County, Ohio—this German immigrant's final home—helped me trace his origin, perhaps documents from his previous home in Pennsylvania might be worth a second examination. For that, we need to direct our attention to Adams County, Pennsylvania. 

If Nicholas Snider came to Ohio from Pennsylvania, what makes me so sure he came from Adams County? It is thanks to one particular record set that I find indications of this possible stopping point: the baptismal records preserved from a Catholic Church known as Conewago Chapel. Officially called the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the church was built in the mid-1780s.

Fortunately for our purposes, transcriptions of the baptismal records from Conewago Chapel preserve some of the information I'm seeking. In addition, thanks to the work of institutions like the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and their partnership with Ancestry.com, I not only have a searchable resource which includes the digitized version of the actual Conewago Chapel baptism entries, but an index by county of all Pennsylvania churches included in Ancestry's collection, "Pennsylvania and New Jersey, U.S., Church and Town Records, 1669-2013."

 Thus, I can find the record for Aloysius Josephus "Shnider" who was baptized there on March 25, 1810, and for his sister Maria Augusta "Schneider" on June 20, 1812. I've noted each child's sponsors—for Joseph it was Joseph and Mary Hildebrand, and for Maria, Catherine Gibbons—in case those surnames become important clues in the future to possible family connections.

As for the Adams County connection for the Snider family, I want to dig deeper, in case I can find other records which might reveal further details on Nicholas and where he originated. After all, though we have the family listed in the 1810 census there, reaching back another decade leads me...nowhere at this point.

Don't Believe Everything You Read

 

It began with a hint from Ancestry.com for my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather Nicholas Snider. Whether he actually spelled his surname that way—or Schneider, or Snyder, both of which I've also seen in records—I can't tell. But sometime during the year of his death, according to this hint, his heirs appeared in court to make a claim based on his Revolutionary War service.

Keeping in mind the Revolutionary War story I had already encountered from the biographical sketch of another descendant of Nicholas, I was all eyes to read the faded and blurry text of this handwritten court entry. Who wouldn't have appreciated a hint like that?!

Taking a first glance at the documents, I spotted some details which agreed with what I already knew about this ancestor: that by the 1855 date of that document, Nicholas was already deceased, as was his wife. Encouragingly, his wife's name on the court record was listed as Elizabeth—a detail which didn't initially disturb me, for the 1850 census had entered her name that same way, despite her full given name being Anna Elizabeth.

Even the son named as heir in this record, who was bringing his petition to court that day, was Jacob, same as our Nicholas Snider's eldest son. That, however, was where the similarities ended.

I've learned long ago that, despite the ease of genealogy websites' habit of providing the breadcrumbs of "hints" to guide us along our research path, one must always—repeat after me, "Always. Always. ALWAYS"—look at the document. With this instance, though, I'll provide an addendum: look at the entire document, not just the first few paragraphs. There are other families out there, believe it or not, who named their children the same names your own ancestors preferred.

I didn't need to read much further when I realized that having another son named Nicholas, while a likely choice for a father by that same name, was not in the records for our Nicholas. Yes, he had many sons—eight that I can find so far—but none of them became his father's namesake.

Furthermore, while our Nicholas did live in Pennsylvania at one point—the location where this petition was brought to court—he certainly didn't die there. As far as I can tell, of his sons who lived to adulthood, all traveled west with him to Perry County, Ohio.

So, the two sons of Nicholas and Elizabeth, who filed their complaint in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, on March 22, 1855? Though they claimed that their father was a soldier in the Revolutionary War, their father was certainly not our Nicholas Snider of Perry County, Ohio, even though he also once lived in Pennsylvania. 

How did that Ancestry hint find its way to my family tree? I suspect it's because several other Ancestry subscribers saw that same document and did the easy thing: click to add it to their tree without reading the thirty six pages of documentation appended to the case file inspecting the original pension claim.

Since I did take a look, I discovered a few interesting points. First discovery was that the Nicholas in question, who died in 1828, was neither of the Snyder Patriots listed in the DAR website. However, even in the packet of documents in the rejected pension file, it seemed that sometimes the applicant was confused with the DAR Patriot who died in 1786.

More to my current question was a letter in the pension packet written in 1916 to the Honorable Halvor Steenerson. At the time of the letter, Halvor Steenerson was a member of Congress representing Crookston in Polk County, Minnesota—the very place where Louis Edward Gossman of that 1897 biographical sketch which prompted this search also lived and worked. Apparently, at the time of the letter, Louis Gossman was then serving as judge.

The letter in response to the congressman's query on behalf of the judge confirmed the same details I had found by reading the entire pension packet: that the Nicholas whose rejected application was on file was a man who died in Pennsylvania in 1828. Apparently, by 1916 Judge Gossman had had second thoughts about that family tale as well, and was seeking some verification—long after, I might add, he had offered that family story for his published biographical sketch.

Just in case the Honorable Steenerson's status wasn't sufficient to round up some solid evidence, I did further reading on Revolutionary War pension applications and bounty land warrant records. A quick and easy index to applicants by state revealed no Nicholas Snyder mentioned from the state of Ohio—especially none from Perry County, home of our Nicholas Snider. But I suspect that even if the judge himself, a descendant of our Nicholas, came to seek verification of that family story in later years, perhaps it would serve us well to remember that old advice: don't believe everything you read—or hear. It may just be a family myth.

Plotting the Path to the Past

 

One way to connect our ancestors to their past is to literally trace the path they followed through life—but only on rewind. We need to plot that path backwards through time.

For my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather Nicholas—whose surname in America eventually came to be spelled Snider—that means starting from the spot of his last days in Perry County, Ohio. We can see from the 1850 census—the last enumeration in which his name appeared—that he was a resident of Hopewell Township, one of the three northernmost townships in the county. He presumably had remained there ever since paying full price in 1820 for the southwest quarter of section twenty two of the land he and his son Jacob had acquired as tenants in common, thanks to the Harrison Land Act of 1800.

Before that, according to another one of those biographical sketches published over a century ago, Nicholas had arrived in Ohio from Pennsylvania, but apparently first by way of Maryland. This report I obtained from a book published in 1902, A Biographical Record of Fairfield and Perry Counties, Ohio. The sketch was actually concerning Nicholas' grandson, William Snider, who was 

a son of Peter and Eleanor (Dean) Snider. His father was born in Maryland in 1816 and was a son of Nicholas Snider, who about 1818 removed from Maryland to Ohio, entering land from the government one mile north of Somerset, in Reading township.

But was this really true? Right away, we can see a conflict in reports again, having just viewed the census record identifying Nicholas' home as having been situated in Hopewell Township. Perhaps by that time, Nicholas' age had warranted his releasing the land to his son Jacob—or perhaps he had simply sold one property to purchase another. Land records can help resolve that discrepancy, but the bigger question is: where did Nicholas and his family live before arriving in Ohio?

To answer that question, we'd need to reach back to the 1810 census. One possible candidate might be the "Nicholass Snyder" whose family resided in Adams County, Pennsylvania. There, his household was composed of two sons under ten years of age and another one between the ages of ten and fifteen, along with a daughter under ten. These could easily be our Nicholas' eldest son Jacob, born in 1799, and younger brothers Joseph and Lewis, plus his oldest daughter Catherine. The ages given for the two adults in the household also fit Nicholas and his wife, Anna Elizabeth.

Could there have been a stop in Maryland before moving onward to Ohio? Very likely: Adams County in Pennsylvania bordered the state line with Maryland. The family could have sold their land in Pennsylvania too close to the date of Peter's birth, and decided on an interim stop in Maryland before heading to their intended destination.

The discovery of that 1810 census does pinpoint a location for Nicholas' family in Pennsylvania. While that seems to be helpful, it also dropped a pin on the Pennsylvania map which caused some conflict with another record I found for a Nicholas Snyder—this one in Cumberland County, just one county to the north of Adams County. We'll need to take some time to evaluate whether that was our Nicholas or not. 

Looking for Answers

The good thing about finding a relative in one of those old genealogy books is that we can always double-check the book's assertions. We have the tools for that now, unlike the limitations authors faced in those previous centuries, when all they had was wood-burning genealogy websites. When we're looking for answers to questions about brick wall ancestors, there's no need to shy away from publications from a previous age of genealogical research. It's okay; we can do this.

Thus, when I spotted a hundred-twenty-plus entry for a cousin on my mother-in-law's Snider line, there was no need to reject it out of hand. First, I could look up each of the assertions in the report. After all, the article spoke of Nicholas Schneider, my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather and the focus of this month's Twelve Most Wanted—and I did want to know something more about this founding immigrant on the Snider/Snyder side of her family.

The entry in question was a biographical sketch concerning Louis Edward Gossman in the 1897 book, Progressive Men of Minnesota. In that entry, we can find the assertion that Mr. Gossman's great-grandfather—called Nicholas Snyder—had come to America with a company of German immigrants in 1778, when he was just fourteen year of age. According to that narrative, Nicholas joined "Washington's army" in Pennsylvania as a drummer boy, and served for the remainder of the war, after which he returned—though only briefly—to Germany.

Well? Could that be so? That's when I started looking for those answers. The National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution happen to host an online resource for looking up such details, so my first stop was to hop on over to their website. One sticking point about such a search was the variety of spellings used for this family's surname—I've seen Schneider, Snider, and Snyder—so I made sure to search using each of those versions.

Result? Schneider yielded nothing. Trying Snider generated a message directing me to use an alternate spelling, which the website handily suggested: Snyder. And for that third attempt, I was rewarded with two possibilities, both from Pennsylvania.

The only problem was that neither man was of the correct age. One was born in Lancaster County in Pennsylvania—rather than my Nicholas' birth somewhere in Germany—and the age was a bit older than the Progressive Men narrative had suggested. The other possibility was a man born in Germany, but my hopes were dashed when I saw the year of birth: 1732. That Nicholas' date of death in 1786 was sure to nix the possibility entirely.

So much for the tale of Revolutionary War service for my Nicholas, at least if we are relying on currently confirmed records of service. But what about the fact that Nicholas Snider eventually obtained land in Ohio, where he settled with his growing family? Could he have received Bounty Land? Checking for General Land Office records at the Bureau of Land Management, I noticed that Nicholas obtained his 160 acre parcel not by service in the war, but by the authority of the Harrison Land Act of 1800.

The ground-breaking virtue of that legislation was that it opened up settlement in "western" territorial locations by allowing people to purchase land with a credit feature: one-fourth down, with the remainder to be paid over a four year period. A subsequent change in that arrangement in 1804 reduced the minimum parcel size that could be purchased to 160 acres, which is what Nicholas and his son Jacob acquired as "tenants in common." Payment in full was made by March 27, 1820.

So was that drummer boy story a family myth? I wouldn't discount it entirely at this point. There may be more to the story, or it may have shreds of truth embedded within that more wobbly context of a fourteen year old marching to war. No matter what the eventual determination might be, as we proceed with this search for Nicholas' story in those early years, we need to be open to unexpected possibilities. After all, he didn't show up on American shores with a clearly marked itinerary for all to see. We likely will need to piece that story together through the shreds of documentation we can locate along the trail which brought him to Ohio from Germany.

Nicholas: Patriarch of Many

 

With the beginning of a new month, we not only move on to researching another ancestor, but we shift from pursuing those ancestors from my mother's family to those from my mother-in-law's roots. For April, that selection is a man who was not only my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather, but also her third great-grandfather.

If you are scratching your head over that seeming contradiction, let me explain. My mother-in-law's family came from central Ohio, where several branches of her family had lived since the earliest days of the 1800s. Over the generations in that relatively isolated community, the branches of her family intermarried until many in that county could say they were related to each other in several ways. So in my mother-in-law's instance, she could claim one patriarch, Nicholas Schneider, as her second great-grandfather through her paternal grandmother's line, while he was her third great-grandfather through her maternal grandmother's line.

That family name, though likely originating as Schneider from his native German homeland, was spelled as Snider for those who settled and stayed in central Ohio, but for those who moved on—first to Iowa, then in some cases beyond to Minnesota—the name was eventually spelled Snyder. Regardless of the spelling variations, I have traced many of these descendants, thanks to DNA testing, to confirm their relationship.

For this fourth selection of this year's Twelve Most Wanted, I would like to push back another generation—or at least find records from wherever he emigrated in the earliest years of the 1800s. That search will be my main challenge, but I have another goal: update work on the 268 DNA matches reported by Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool as descendants of Nicholas to ensure those matches are all connected to my mother-in-law's family tree—a mammoth task, indeed.

For this patriarch of so many, we'll begin tomorrow with a brief overview of what I know already about him and the young family he brought with him from somewhere in Germany. Following that, I'll spotlight the two branches of Nicholas' family from whom my mother-in-law descends. Eventually, we'll discuss each of the other siblings I'm currently aware of, then begin the study of where that DNA leads us in the subsequent generations. Bottom line, though, is to seek out any further records that can point us to his passage to America, and the place he left behind on his trip to this fledgling country. 

Three Boothe Ancestors

 

When brick wall ancestors have brought research progress to a dead stop, DNA testing can provide the bypass to reach an answer. In my case, I have three DNA matches who each claim a different Boothe ancestor. At least two of those matches' ancestors were children of Daniel Boothe, the Ohio resident who some people claimed to be parent of my brick wall ancestor Alexander Boothe. Let's start today by taking a look at one of them.

Unlike the other two DNA matches, this one's ancestor was listed in ThruLines results for both Daniel and his wife Mary. The match's progenitor was the couple's daughter Evelina. According to ThruLines, this match would be my fourth cousin once removed, a distant cousin indeed. Perhaps that's why we share only one segment of nine centiMorgans, a slim sliver of genetic material indeed.

Since we had already found Evelina's supposed parents in the 1850 census, living alone as an elderly couple in Lawrence County, Ohio, the search was on to find this Boothe daughter listed elsewhere for that census. That required an additional step, for by that point Evelina was already married. The date of their marriage had been back in 1837, still in Lawrence County, so by the time of the 1850 census, Evelina and her husband, Shadreck Ward, were already proud parents of four daughters.

I found a brief glimmer of possibility with this connection. Despite the family's residence in Ohio, the two oldest daughters, May and Martha, were reported to have been born in Virginia. Since May was born in 1839 and Martha in 1840, I looked for a family with that composition in the 1840 census. There they were, living in Cabell County, then part of Virginia (though now in West Virginia), one county removed from Lawrence County, which was across the state line to the northwest.

This was not near Randolph County, where I had found another Daniel Booth living in earlier years—Randolph County being nearly two hundred miles away—so I dismissed any thoughts of Evelina moving to be closer to grandparents. At any rate, the Ward household had apparently lived in Virginia only briefly, as both the 1850 census and 1860 census showed them back in Lawrence County, Ohio. Evelina died in 1886 and was buried in Lawrence County, indicating what likely was a lifelong residence in that location, other than that brief move across the state line. Indeed, that 1860 census had reported her own birthplace as Ohio, a possible sticking point, considering her 1818 date of birth would have been only two years after my Alexander was said to have been born in Nansemond County, Virginia, hundreds of miles to the east.

With only nine centiMorgans shared between myself and this descendant of Evelina, such a slim margin could be attributed to other reasons. We both could be related through another, as yet undiscovered, family line. Or we could simply share more distant relatives—or merely the fact that our ancestors were from the same regional origin, sharing history from centuries previous to this Boothe family puzzle.

Considering that the other two ThruLines Boothe matches, descended from supposed siblings of my Alexander, shared even less genetic material, they too could be considered identical by state, rather than identical by descent. Looking at the records showing various men named Daniel Boothe, as we did yesterday, causes me to doubt the fact that we're even looking at one specific individual—let alone a man who could have been my Alexander Boothe's father. In the next few days, we'll wrap up this exploration, noting possible next steps for continued research in future years.

Deconstructing Daniel

 

March has been a month of negatives. In pursuit of my candidate for this month's Twelve Most Wanted, my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe's unidentified father, the bulk of this month's exploration has been devoted to finding documents to signify why possible choices would not be the right man. In this process of elimination, there is one more candidate we need to consider: the suggestion given by Ancestry DNA's ThruLines tool, Daniel Boothe.

It's time to deconstruct that proposal about Daniel Boothe. Let's start with the information gleaned from family trees of the few DNA matches I have who are linked to that supposed ancestor. According to ThruLines, this Daniel was born in 1785 and died in 1853. Plugging in those dates, coupled with his name, I almost instantly was led to the Find A Grave entry for someone with that same information.

Unfortunately, that entry did not include any photographs of the headstone or supporting documentation. While I appreciate information provided by Find A Grave volunteers, documentation trumps mere hearsay masquerading as genealogy. Despite the lack of the usual headstone picture, though, one other detail stood out to me immediately: unlike my Alexander, native to Nansemond County in Virginia, this Daniel was born in New York and died in Ohio. This was a far different narrative than Alexander's own migration story from Virginia to Tennessee.

Digging deeper into Daniel's story, only three years earlier than his death—but in the same Ohio county of Lawrence—I could find Daniel's entry in the 1850 census. There, along with his wife Mary, these two aging parents lived alone in their home, with no sign of any children whose descendants could some day discover that they share DNA with my Alexander's great-great-granddaughter. 

Though the 1850 census would be the last census where I could find this couple with all family members named—not just counted—I checked for previous records on the couple. The 1840 census revealed that Daniel was still living in Lawrence County, Ohio, along with his wife, two sons in their later teen years, plus a daughter between the ages of ten and fourteen. Daniel's family was even living in Lawrence County in 1830, according to that decade's census.

The only ray of hope from that more recent 1850 census was the sign that Daniel's wife was born in Virginia. Sure enough, there was a Daniel Boothe who married a Mary McAlexander in Patrick County, Virginia, on April 24, 1806, so it was back to Virginia I went to see if I could trace Daniel back to that temporary stopping place before his move to Ohio.

Success came with an 1820 census entry for the young family in Randolph County, then part of Virginia, and again in 1810. In fact, there were census entries for three Boothe families in Randolph County, suggesting the reasonable argument that while Daniel might have married his bride in Patrick County, following the wedding in the home county of Mary's parents the couple might have moved to Daniel's own home county.

It was there, however, that I ran into trouble: court records from Randolph County reported an estate sale for one Daniel Boothe, deceased, which was appraised on May 12, 1827. Among the purchasers listed in the sale's inventory report were Isaac Booth and Sarah Booth.

That's when the thought hit me: what if there were still a man named Daniel Boothe residing in Patrick County, the Virginia location of the Boothe-McAlexander wedding? 

To check for that possibility, I located two likely indicators. The first was an entry in Find a Grave. Again without a photograph of any headstone, the memorial gave this Daniel's dates as 1776-1857—dates quite different from those supplied by ThruLines for my DNA matches. The second record was this Daniel's entry in the 1850 census. Showing his wife's name as Susan, not Mary, that aberration might be explained by the death of the previous wife, as suggested by the volunteer who created the Find a Grave memorial—or could be advising us that this wasn't the right Daniel.

With the three possible Daniels found in records, much more research would be needed to follow what became of the children of each possible candidate, in hopes that at least one document would provide an explanation of where my Alexander might have fit into that family constellation. Right away, though, I can think of three possible candidates among those said to be children of Daniel and Mary: the three who were named as ancestors of my DNA matches from that original Boothe couple in Ohio.

Ancestor #4: A Patriarch of Many

 

As we move through the selections for my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025, we are bound to find some repeats from prior years' selections. Ancestor #4 is no exception. Exactly three years ago, I had decided to focus on my mother-in-law's ancestor Nicholas Schneider, and this coming April, I will do so again.

With the selection of Ancestor #4, we shift from selecting ancestors from my mother's line to that of my mother-in-law. In many ways, working on my mother-in-law's tree is comparatively easy. For one thing, some of her ancestors were residents in this country from among the earliest of immigrants. Those ancestors, most of whom were devout Catholics, had many children, and for the most part, remained in the same rural areas for generations—either in Ohio (spelled Snider) or onward to Minnesota (spelled Snyder).

On the other hand, there is a twist to my mother-in-law's tree. For example, Nicholas himself was both my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather and her third great-grandfather. He was her second great-grandfather through her father's line, while he was her third great-grandfather on her mother's line. Perhaps that was thanks to the close-knit community where her family settled in the earliest years of Ohio statehood that her family intermarried over the generations. Whatever the reason might have been, I've learned to proceed carefully to make sure I'm following the right surnames in the right order.

That, in fact, is part of the reason I've decided to work on Nicholas Snider's line once again. While I would like to know more about where in Germany the man once known as Nicholas Schneider originated, the most pressing goal now shifts from ancestors to descendants, thanks mostly to the 262 DNA matches who claim him as their ancestor, according to Ancestry's ThruLines tool. It's time to update that list of matches and ensure that I've gotten each of them placed on the correct line in this Schneider/Snider/Snyder family tree. While I have some already linked to their rightful place, I have a long way to go.

Weaving the Strands Just a Bit Longer

 

What do you do when you can't reach back far enough in the DNA cousin's pedigree to confirm the genetic connection? In one case I've been tackling for the past couple months, it appears this DNA match connects through an immigrant descendant of my Olejniczak ancestors in Poland. This is one of those DNA problems that may require following an assumption just to reach any verification. Thus, I'm weaving the strands of this family line forward in time, in hopes of discovering the connection.

The potential DNA cousin is supposedly a descendant of Jan Olejniczak, born in Michałówo, a tiny village near Żerków where he was baptized in June of 1869. His father Bartłomiej was brother of my second great-grandmother Franziska Olejniczak, wife of Franz Jankowski. Jan—or Joannes, as he was baptized—eventually disappeared from the region in Prussia where he had grown up. Could he have emigrated? Was this Polish immigrant in the United States named John Olejniczak one and the same as Jan?

To determine the answer, I've started by accepting the assumption that Jan or Joannes were one and the same as this American immigrant. From that point, I've been working my way through Jan's American descendants, bit by bit. There are, of course, many questions still unanswered, but to know just what I'm working with, I need to have a documented tree.

So far, I've worked a few lines of this possible Jan Olejniczak down to the level of fourth cousin once removed. The strategy is to build out that line of descent to see whether I can find any other DNA matches connecting to this strand. So far, I've picked up a few more DNA matches whose trees include Olejniczak surnames, but none of those family lines seem to connect with my Jan.

Some research questions take time to weave together the strands. This line of descent seems to be one of them. Jan—or John Olenzak, as he eventually was called in Ohio—had several children, some of whom had children and grandchildren. While I can always be hopeful and say from progress that this looks like a possible connection, I'm still far from finished. Questions still lurk in the outer reaches of this wandering adventurer's journey, and this exercise will take far more time to complete—and even then, the conclusion may be that I've followed the wrong name twin's line.

But at least I'm still working on it. 

Tackling an Old Problem

 

Old research problems can be tantalizing and simultaneously frustrating. I thought I'd spend the weekend jumping back to tackle a DNA match's Olejniczak roots from my research project last month. By now, I had reconciled myself to the thought that DNA doesn't lie—and that Polish immigrants to America had good reasons to do their best to blend into the English-speaking background.

Thus, my question: was John Olenzak really the Johan Olejniczak who once had been baptized as Joannes Olejniczak, nephew of my second great-grandmother? Think again if you presumed this would be an easy project. The process of discovering that the Polish Jan Olejniczak was born on the same day as John Olenzak was not that difficult, but moving further into his family constellation introduced more problems.

For one thing, Johan's naturalization record—of which I only could find a transcription—indicated his arrival in New York City in 1905. Yet a passenger listing for a wife, two sons, a daughter, and two unmarried sisters-in-law showed an arrival in 1906. Obviously, Johan could have traveled ahead—his address at the time was given as the town of Neffs in Belmont County, Ohio. But the sticky part was that the names of these family members traveling to join Johan did not match up with later census records for the family, 

Traveling on the Zeeland from Antwerp were Stanislawa Olejniczak and her children Marjan, Stefania, and Stanislaw, plus Wladyslawa and Josefa Pruchniewicz. The problem is that the earliest census where I can find John's family in Ohio includes a son and two daughters—quite backwards from the passenger listing—and a wife names Pelagia, not Stanislawa as had been entered on the passenger list.

Now what? This is apparently not going to be the slam-dunk weekend project I had envisioned. Jan Olejniczak and his immigrant family will have to travel back to the genealogical drawing board with me and await yet another weekend before we can find any answers.

Does Jan = John?It Depends

 

Take a name as common as John—or, if you are researching ancestors in Poland, Jan. Could that ancestor, having emigrated from Poland to an English-speaking country, have changed his given name? Most likely, I'd assume.

If that is so, would he also have changed his surname? After all, our Jan—or Joannes in his Catholic baptismal record in Latin—carried a most unlikely surname for blending into life in the United States. Could Olejniczak have morphed into Olenzak?

That's the type of questions I'm rehearsing in my mind as I trace the ancestor of one DNA match I've discovered. Given the tiny size of the matching genetic segment, the result could simply be telling me, "Yeah, they're both Polish." Or this could be a distant cousin.

Comparing the records doesn't help as much as I'd like. For one thing, the only record I've been able to find in Poland is the 1869 baptismal record giving Joannes' date of birth as June 8.

Looking at the possible ancestral link in my DNA match's tree, I'm starting from the most recent dates and working my way backwards in time. First record I can find is John Olenzak's 1963 obituary, published in the Massillon, Ohio, Evening Independent. 

This does not make for a smooth start. Right away, I notice John was said to have been born in Germany, having emigrated in 1895 to settle in Belmont County, Ohio, subsequently in Harrison County, then eventually settling in Massillon. Our Jan was baptized in the town of Żerków in Poland—not quite the same information. Still, due to geopolitical changes in the European map over the decades, this territory was indeed sometimes considered to be part of Germany. I decided to look further for more documentation.

John Olenzak's obituary provided names of family members. While it is unfortunate that no siblings or parents were mentioned, at least we know John's wife was named Pelagia, and that she died in 1924. In addition, three daughters were mentioned by their married names, as well as two sons, Kazmer and Sigmund.

With that, I was able to find John's entry in the 1920 census—and was encouraged to see the enumerator's handwriting clearly outlined the name as Olejniczak, not Olenzak. At the time, John and his family were living in Harrison County, and both his sons, Kazmer and Sigmund, could be spotted, along with his wife Pelagia and daughters Louise, Lottie, Gladys, and Wanda. I could see from the census that both John and Pelagia were noted to have been born in Poland, but the interesting detail was that all but the three youngest children were born in Germany.

The 1920 census noted that the family arrived in the United States in 1905 and that they were naturalized in 1913. That was good news, leading me to discover, in the citizenship records of Belmont County, Ohio, an index card showing September 4, 1913, as the date of naturalization for Johan Olejniczak.

An added bonus given in that index card: Johan was born in Michalowo, Poland. The bad news? The date of birth given in that record was July 8, not June 8. Worse, Johan's place of birth, given as Micholowo, could have been one of three different towns, all equidistant from our Joannes' baptismal location of Żerków. Granted, the distance, at least in today's economy, would be about a forty minute drive, but that is only provided Johan's birth was in one of those three villages. There is a fourth place with the same name which is, in today's terms, a five hour drive to the east.

The question then becomes: what if this wasn't the right immigrant John Olejniczak? What if our Jan didn't emigrate from his homeland at all? Or, considering another possibility, what if he did leave Poland for the United States, but settled somewhere else? There are actually several immigrants by that same name who arrived in America, including this possible John Olejniczak whose obituary ran in the same year as John Olenzak's—1963—but who settled in a location where others of my father's Polish ancestors also immigrated: to Buffalo, New York. What if my Jan Olejniczak did emigrate, but went to a more likely destination?

In the end, I did find that John Olenzak's Social Security information righted that birth date to June 8, 1869. Was that my Jan Olejniczak? At this point, the answer remains: it depends. If I pick and choose the right records, the documentation can look convincing. But in my case, I won't feel comfortable making that my conclusion until I find more documentation to fill in the blanks in this person's story. A lot more documentation.

Ripple Effect, Genealogy Style

 

Have you ever spent a lazy summer afternoon down by the lake, throwing stones into the water and watching the ripples move ever outward? That has become the inspiration for likening that effect to other observations in life, from economics and sociology to even naming episodes from television series, movies, and video games.

I see things a little bit differently. When I consider the ripple effect, my mind goes rather to genealogy and how the effect makes its appearance there. And there is no better example I can think of than the very brothers I want to discuss in today's post: Jacob and Henry Metzger.

Jacob and Henry were the two youngest sons of my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather Michael Metzger. One son was born in 1831 and the other in 1833—only you couldn't really tell which one was which, judging solely by what you could find online in other Metzger descendants' family trees.

I think I've found the root cause for the discrepancy, too: a genealogical ripple effect, thanks to an editorial error in a hundred and forty one year old history book about Perry County, Ohio. The book, History of Fairfield and Perry Counties, Ohio, included biographical sketches of some of each county's leading citizens.

For the section on Perry County, one of those sketches was supposedly about Jacob Metzger—only the one paragraph about the man included the name of his brother's wife and children. Yes, Mary Elizabeth Snider did marry a Metzger man, but the one she married was not named Jacob; her husband was Jacob's younger brother Henry. The birth date provided in the history book, incidentally, also belonged to Henry—as did the name of each child attributed to Jacob. The only reason the last two sons of Henry weren't mentioned in the book was that they were born after the book's 1883 publication date.

So, what can we find about the real Jacob Metzger? His marriage was to a woman named Martha Ann Hersberger on September 9, 1852. Together, they raised sons William, John, and Francis, and daughters Mary, Florence, and Rose, up until her death in 1878. Following that, he had a son named Brice from his subsequent marriage to another wife who died in 1890, named Lizzie Welch. By the time of the 1900 census, Jacob's household included only that last son Brice, plus third wife Mary.

A story like that might not neatly fit within one paragraph of the 1,218 pages of the History of Fairfield and Perry Counties, Ohio. Nor might one want to read of the misfortunes of this thrice-married Metzger man. But somehow his name got affixed to the story of his brother's far less tragedy-ridden life. And oddly enough, I've seen that same report echoed down through the umpteen copied family trees easily found in online genealogical websites—a ripple effect, genealogy style, thanks to what was at first simply an editorial error. 

Catching Clues from Collateral Lines

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About the Daughters

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

That One Certain Thing

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Minding Many Metzgers

 

Focusing on one ancestral surname plus adding DNA matches to the search can mean lots of research progress for a month's results. As usual, for my biweekly count, the progress continues at about the same clip. This month's focus on my mother-in-law's Metzger family has been productive, despite being challenging. Even though we began with her second great-grandfather, immigrant Michael Metzger, and are now looking at fourth cousin DNA connections, the count steadily moves up.

Ancestry's ThruLines now has our Metzger DNA connections up to eighty one matches, and I am still attempting to chart them all—even that as-yet undocumented Clinton Metzger. For the past two weeks, I was able to document 244 more Metzger collateral connections. That brings my mother-in-law's tree up to 35,590 individuals. Minding these Metzgers has indeed been a productive endeavor, despite our mysterious Clinton Metzger.

I've also managed to add three names to my own family's tree, due to changes in the family that came to my attention in the past two weeks. While my focus for the past three months has been away from my own family's lines, whenever there's news of births, marriages—or even realization that I inadvertently left someone out of the family—adding the information in a timely manner helps keep track of everyone better. After all, it can take a bit of effort to keep track of 38,369 family members.

We've got barely a week remaining to untangle the puzzle of Clinton Metzger, as well as wrap up what else can be found on founding immigrant ancestor Michael Metzger and his descendants in Ohio and beyond. At this point, I doubt I'll have any eureka moments pinpointing Michael Metzger's origin, but at least we have enough time to untie some lesser genealogical knots.

"Blended" Families: Tracing the Names

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saint Clinton?

 

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

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

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

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

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