There Were Three Brothers. . . or was that Four?

 

Looking for the history of the properties mentioned in various wills connected to the family of Elizabeth Plummer Ijams—Dodon and Bridge Hill—I thought the name of the one estate, Dodon, was unusual enough to try my hand at an online search for more information. That attempt led me quickly to an entry on Wikipedia which involved generations of an entirely different family. Sorting out the actual narrative meant searching even farther down a convoluted path.

Inevitably, the tale led me to one of the banes of genealogy: that legendary opener, "there were three brothers." Or was that four? Even that story line had me confused.

The chase started with an entry in Wikipedia. According to that article, Dodon—also spelled Doden in some documents—is currently a 550 acre farm in Maryland near a village called Davidsonville. The farm, still in operation, is said to have been in the hands of family members descended from the Scottish immigrant who originally obtained the land in 1669.

That the ancestor, called James Stewart in one descendant's memoirs referred to in the Wikipedia article, was the original owner of Dodon was countered by another report in that same Wikipedia page. The second version noted that a doctor, Francis Stockett, had owned that very land in 1668.

The Stockett version of the property's history was thankfully footnoted in the Wikipedia article, so I jumped to the identified source, Joshua Dorsey Warfield's 1905 history, The Founders of Anne Arundel and Howard Counties, Maryland. 

The Warfield account did provide some helpful details, yet at the same time gave off the air of legend with its genealogy trope, "there were three brothers."

The information referred to by the Wikipedia article was contained in a section of the Warfield book headlined, "The Stockett Brothers." There, the author explained that there were four Stockett brothers, naming them: Thomas, Lewis, Henry, and Francis. These brothers had first obtained land grants under the Calverts in Maryland in 1658.

The book then provided some background information on each of the Stockett brothers and their involvement in the early years of the province. Following that brief history, the author picked up the timeline ten years later, stating, "In 1668, all three brothers removed to Anne Arundel." No explanation for what became of brother number four, making my confidence in the account diminish.

Despite that glitch, Warfield noted the names of the properties obtained after the Stocketts' arrival in Anne Arundel County. Familiar property names surfaced with this note. For Henry Stockett, there were 664 acres of land called "Bridge Hill." To his brother, Dr. Thomas Stockett, an equal portion of land was designated, "Dodon."

With that explanation, we're now left with our earliest sighting of land called by those two estate names, and the explanation of who obtained those two parcels in 1668. The next goal is to find documentation to map out how those estates came to be part of the inheritance passed down to Elizabeth Plummer's Ijams descendants.

Even after that sequence, though, there are gaps in the explanation of who owned the land. As we noticed yesterday, Harry Wright Newman had explained that brothers Isaac and Thomas Plummer Ijams had inherited both Bridge Hill and Dodon and, in 1796, had sold the properties to someone named James Davidson.

But how did Dodon move from that new owner to the ancestor of Dodon's current proprietary family, George H. Steuart? Steuart, according to a Wikipedia article, had purchased the property in 1747 from Stephen Warman. Could there have been two different properties in Anne Arundel County called by that same unusual name?

The dizzying effect of conflicting narratives is almost enough to make me want to start from scratch and scroll through microfilms of early property records to see for myself—or at least hope to find accessible digitized versions of such records to answer some questions.

 

Dodon and Bridge Hill

 

Yesterday, I had wondered whether it might be possible to simply search the names of tracts of land mentioned in family wills, following the family by following the land. My reasoning was this: if the land was known by a singularly distinguishing moniker, could it help point me to the ancestral origins of its owners?

The two tracts of land mentioned in the wills of my mother-in-law's Maryland ancestors did have identifying names. While the one granted by William Ijams to his son John had the seemingly common name of Bridge Hill, it was often coupled with the mention of another, more remarkable name: Dodon.

Sometimes written in documents as "Doden," that particular tract of land had passed from the Stockett family to the Plummer family and then eventually to the line of the senior William Ijams. While I am still working on pushing the timeline back before the Stocketts claimed the land, in the meantime, I have discovered that the property has, moving forward, had a long history of multiple owners.

Just entering the name of the land—Dodon—in a search engine, either on its own or coupled with the name of the paired property, Bridge Hill, has been informative. While my original attempt to find results through FamilySearch's Full Text Search for those property names in colonial Maryland's Anne Arundel County yielded no land or tax records—material which might better be found through Maryland State archives—taking that question straight to the Web turned out to be a more productive route.

Also, searching the line of inheritance of Dodon in Harry Wright Newman's Anne Arundel Gentry produced seven passages in the book. The land moved through branches of the extended family until two Ijams brothers sold the property in 1796, and, as Newman noted, "thus passed from the family the hereditary estates...which had been in the...family for five generations."

Dodon as a parcel did not entirely disappear with that sale, however. Nor did it simply cease to be part of a family's estate, no longer passed from generation to generation. It was interesting to discover its new identity, once it had been sold out of the Ijams family's possession. We'll take a brief detour tomorrow to explore what can be found, simply by searching online for the name of a family's estate. 

Letting the Land Lead us

 

In reviewing the legacies bequeathed by Thomas Plummer to his descendants, I began to spot property names which seemed familiar. Just to double-check, I returned to the will I had found for Thomas' son-in-law, William Ijams, husband of the baby of Thomas' family, Elizabeth Plummer, to review the details.

In William's 1734 will, for three particular sons he had named specific properties in Anne Arundel County, part of colonial Maryland. To his son William, he had bequeathed a one-hundred-acre parcel called "Cheney's Resolution." To his son John, he had designated one hundred acres which he had called "Bridge Hill." And to his son Plummer, he had mentioned sixty four acres of land adjoining Bridge Hill, "the said parcel of land called Doden."

Upon stepping back another generation to review William's father-in-law's will, I began to see familiar names given to some of the properties that Thomas Plummer gave to his own children. While "The Seamas Delight" might not have been a familiar name for that hundred acre parcel Thomas gave to his namesake son, nor the parcel "Scots Lot" which went to Thomas' daughter Mary, wife of William Jackson, when it came to the part of Thomas' will mentioning his daughter Elizabeth (and his wife, also named Elizabeth), I started recognizing some property names.

To his daughter Elizabeth, Thomas Plummer had granted all 164 acres of his current dwelling and property known as Bridge Hill. And until his wife's passing, that land was first meant for the elder Elizabeth.

After Thomas appointed his wife Elizabeth as his executrix, he explained that the land granted her was "part of Bridge Hill and Doden." Thus we see how those property names became repeated in the next generation's wills.

There it was: those same parcel names as we had seen in the Ijams will. Those parcels may have been passed along from previous relatives to Thomas Plummer, then to the Ijams family. I wondered if there might be a way to let the land lead us: to simply follow the history of the land itself to learn more about the families. 

No, Not That Michael Jackson

 

There are some names which just catch the eye and make one wonder: is it that one? But in this case, the answer would be no, not that Michael Jackson—though he was his grandfather's namesake.

Then, again, that Jackson family had a habit of reusing favorite names. That, of course, made researching my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandfather Lyman Jackson's family more challenging. With Lyman himself being son of someone named Michael Jackson, it was predictable that he would name one of his ten sons after his own father. Nor did it keep those ten sons from wanting to echo that same pattern for the next generation.

Suddenly, the need to become wary of name twins escalates, which makes me doubly regret that Lyman Jackson apparently chose an alternate route to the traditional last will and testament. Rather than having one handy document which listed each child by name (hopefully), in Lyman's case, we'll need to scour the deed books of Erie County, Pennsylvania, for mention of any indentures of land prior to his 1835 passing.

That's where Michael Jackson comes in. Apparently in Erie County on May 2, 1825, Lyman and his wife, Deidamia Jackson, for the payment of several hundred dollars from one Michael Jackson, transferred ownership of one specifically identified tract of land. The whole document was witnessed by two additional Jackson sons, David and Royal, and entered into the Erie County deed books on July 27, 1824.

With that one legal transfer, Lyman and his wife cemented the likelihood that at least this one son wouldn't be wandering westward like some of the other Jackson descendants. If that were the case for this one son, perhaps the process might be repeated for other Jackson children, a possibility which I need to research several more times, judging from the robust size of this Jackson family.

Ancestor Fatigue

 

It's been back to Pitt County, North Carolina, to put FamilySearch's Full Text Search through its paces. Entering my fourth great-grandfather's surname there by each of the two spelling variants—Tison and Tyson—I had plenty of documentation to consider. It looked like Pitt County might be tipping the genealogical scales in its favor with all the records this search for Job Tyson was providing. 

No matter how convenient it might be that FamilySearch's Full Text Search not only highlights my search terms but provides a transcription of the sometimes difficult to read handwriting, reading through court records of any time period can become wearying. In addition, with the Tyson family doing no differently than any affluent southern family of that time period in the 1700s by dealing in enslaved persons, there were several deeds entailing the trading of specific, named human beings. I was reaching ancestor fatigue in my search for Job Tyson's origin.

Then came two documents which were worthy of further consideration. One was an indenture drawn up on February 4, 1790—the same year in which we had found Job Tison listed in the census in South Carolina. The indenture named the two parties: John Tyson of Lincoln in North Carolina, and Job Tison in Pitt County, where the document was recorded. The purpose of the document was to record the exchange of property from John to Job for land on the north side of Black Swamp, for which Job paid what looked like 250 "Spanish mill'd dollars." 

The record noted that the land was originally patented by a man named John May on October 8, 1754, and apparently willed to his daughter, Elizabeth May. While the indenture was drawn up in February, the record noted that it was signed "in April Court" in 1790.

This caught my attention because 1790 was supposedly the year in which Job Tison married Sidnah, daughter of West Sheffield. Perhaps it was time to make arrangements to set up housekeeping.

A second document was of even more interest. Dated November 19, 1785, once again in Pitt County, this record was initiated by John Tison, with his residence this time listed as Pitt County. The record began, "for natural love and affection I have unto my grandson John Tison, son of Job Tison...." 

This line had my attention. Was this John Tison the answer to my research question for this month?

The record went on to detail a specific tract of land, lying on the east side of Black Swamp, originally patented to a Thomas Tison in 1738. The document also mentioned a second tract of land, granted to John Tison by "the Earl Granville."

This record, though drawn up toward the end of 1785, was presented in January Court in 1786. The names of two witnesses also caught my eye: Frederick Tison and Benjamin May. I was beginning to wonder whether names of the Tison collateral lines were unfolding before my eyes with these two documents.

But wait a minute. I had to think this thing over a bit. Maybe this ancestor fatigue was getting to me. It might have been great to discover a record which mentioned Job Tison, the very ancestor I've been looking for, but was it my Job Tison?

Hauling my mind back to reality, I looked up records I already had for Job Tison. Question number one: did my Job Tison have a son named John? And question number two: was he alive by 1786?

While my Job Tison did indeed have a son named John—John Mason Berrien Tison—he was born long after that record was drawn up in court in Pitt County, North Carolina. Indeed, if Job and Sidnah were married about 1790, there would not have been any children of this couple as early as 1785, let alone a grandson old enough to gain his grandfather's favor. 

While these two documents, to bleary, search-wearied eyes, may have seemed tempting, they simply do not work with the scenario already unfolding for the family of the Tison man who spend his adult life in Glynn County, Georgia. Perhaps a better approach would be to repeat the same exercise, only this time focus on the Beaufort District in South Carolina.

Finding the Perfect Match

 

Finding verification for family relationships among our ancestors of the 1700s can be challenging. For those hearty souls willing to wade through legal documents—and ancestors also of such an intrepid bent—the ability to locate that perfect match of names in court records is facilitated by one helpful tool: the FamilySearch Full Text Search.

Puzzling over just how many women named Lucy our James Heslop may have loved—as we've seen, it was more than one but court records must have included some late filings—I took my search question to that specific tool. Of the many hits resulting from my search terms, there was one item filed in the deed books of Spotsylvania County, Virginia, which seemed a useful addition to the records.

The document was an indenture, a basic land transaction protocol used in Virginia for transferring the ownership of land when it involved more than simply two parties. This indenture, dated March 14, 1825, was between both James Heslop—one of the Carter descendants I had been following—and his brother Horace Heslop, and, for the second part, a man by the name of William Hart.

Two gifts from this deed, which I at first had considered bypassing since it wasn't a document I was expecting to outline family relationships. The first gift was realizing just how many ways the name "Horace" could be misspelled. In this case, "Horris" will now be added to my list of possibilities for future searches regarding this grandson of John Carter.

The second gift was a phrase inserted into the provisions of this court document. The brothers wanted to specify that, among other stipulations in the deed, this one unexpected provision needed to be heeded: 

...on which land Mrs. Ann Heslop the mother of the said Horris + James at present resides + the use of which she is entitled to so long as she may live....

That same Ann, wife of William Heslop, was a daughter of John Carter. However, in reviewing the death register for two of her children—Sarah Kenyon Heslop and James Heslop—the clerk had entered a disappointing "Wm + N Heslop" for the names of their parents, rather than the expected mother's name, Ann. This unexpected entry, found buried within the details of a random property exchange, provided the assurance needed that "N" of the later death reports should actually have been "Ann."

Bit by bit, I'm piecing together the documents reflecting the Carter family constellation. Some are obvious, such as the wills left by the patriarchs in each generation of the family's line. Others are unexpected gifts, worth noting and saving as additional support in tying together those family connections in an era lacking the records we've become accustomed to using for more recent relationships.

The Lay of the Land

 

It may seem an abrupt jump to leave Chicago and head straight to Ireland in our quest to discover more about the extended Flanagan family of my father-in-law's roots, but there is a method to this meandering: eventually, I hope to explore some collateral lines. To do this, though, we first need to zero in on the lay of the land, back where William Flanagan and his sister Anna, deserted wife of Stephen Malloy, once lived.

Though there were many key Irish documents destroyed in political struggles of the early 1900s, there are enough left us which, combined with that precious saved personal letter to Anna, may point us in the right direction for research in the Flanagans' Irish homeland.

Stephen's letter to Anna, for instance, was addressed in care of a man named John Mason in the townland of Cappanihane. If we pull up records from Griffith's Valuation, which was completed in County Limerick in 1853, we can see, first, a John Mason listed as the holder of several plots of land in that same townland. More helpful to us, though, is the entry above that listing on the same page, where William Flanagan himself is listed on land in the townland just to the west, known as Cappananty (see line entry 7f).

In the property valuation, William's property is listed as a house, office, and garden. It is doubtful the edifice was of much value; driving by the location during our visit to Ireland, of what little we saw still standing in that area, all were modest—and decrepit—structures. But what is beautiful about that discovery is that, if you fast forward through time by visiting the Valuation Office in Dublin to consult the property records from that time onward, you can see one occupier's name lined out and replaced by another, then another, over the course of time.

The first line which replaces William Flanagan's name was that of someone named Catherine. After that point, the next name was lined out and replaced by yet another name as the property changed hands again.

Is this mention in Griffith's Valuation naming our own William Flanagan? I can't yet be sure. However, what is curious about that progression of names seen in the valuation records is that it is echoed by the ancestors named by some of my husband's DNA matches. While we have yet to figure out the Flanagan DNA connection, it may be worth our while to revisit this puzzle once again.

Exploring the Map

 

Now that we have several possible Miller names swirling about in this month's posts, it's time to take a different look at the possibilities: by exploring the map of Perry County, where those Miller relatives of my mother-in-law's brick-wall ancestor Lidia once lived. Geographic proximity can lend a sense of genealogical connection, and that's exactly what a plat map can provide.

Though finding such a map for Perry County in the 1840s—the point at which Lidia's family met with so much misfortune—would have helped, there was a plat map available online at the U.S. Library of Congress for 1859. Fine. I'll settle for that.

We've already seen that one property belonging to Jonathan Miller was described as the northwest quarter of section twelve in township seventeen and range seventeen. Based on the Public Land Survey System, which was historically a way to divide and describe public lands in the United States for eventual distribution, such a numbering system should make it easy for us to locate the property.    

Since Ohio was designated as a Federal Land State, a series of congressional laws established the process for doing so, eventually involving a rectangular survey system which divided and numbered land into a system of "townships," each township containing thirty six square miles. From that point, each township was divided into thirty six "sections," each containing 640 acres.

From that point, each section was numbered in a specific order, beginning with the northeast corner section, then proceeding across the six sections of the top row of the map's grid to the northwest corner section, then dropping down one row and snaking back in the opposite direction to continue the numbering system. 

Visualizing that sequence may seem complicated, until you view a diagram like this one at FamilySearch,  which makes everything much clearer—and should help me find Jonathan Miller's property in section twelve. 

Well, let me interject one caveat to that crystal-clear diagram: it helps to know that, when Perry County was established in 1818, the land system required the neighboring county of Fairfield to give up two rows of sections to complete the township of Reading, the precise place where Jonathan Miller's property ended up being designated after the reorganization.

Looking at the 1859 plat map I found at the Library of Congress, you can follow the PLSS numbering system across the northernmost row of sections, from right to left, section one through six. After section number six, though, there are two more unexpected sections continuing in that same row, oddly numbered out of sequence from section seven to what appears to be another section two. Drop down one more row from that additional section two, and we snake around to the other direction, beginning with what was obviously another added-on section, numbered section eleven.

Following that, in logical sequence—but only for that one section—is the section twelve we've been seeking for Jonathan Miller's property. Indeed, in 1859, the 139 acre parcel of land was labeled "J. Miller." Along with the label of his land, we see familiar names among his neighboring land owners: Anspach and Spohn, a surname which eventually married in to the Miller line.

From that point, the numbering system reverts to the usual PLSS system: sections 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and—strangely—another section 12.

If I hadn't found that explanation of the aberration when setting up Perry County's original land holdings upon the county's founding, it would have been puzzling to try and locate the Miller property. Likewise, finding Jonathan's other property, listed as the southwest quarter of section one, should have been directly above section twelve, if we followed the established numbering system.

Sometimes, despite such orderly systems for naming and describing land, it helps to know a bit more of what the locals already knew. 

Tracking the Tract

 

Some research processes take time, and this month's pursuit of possible relatives of my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother Lidia Miller has led me to unexpected resources—which requires time to unfold the winding trail.

The trail follows a tract of land more than it does the person who owned the land. We first found that land described in Jonathan Miller's precise stipulations included in his 1866 will. That document pointed to the southwest quarter of section one, and the northwest quarter of section twelve in township seventeen and range seventeen in Perry County, Ohio.

We first traced that land back to the original owner through the Bureau of Land Management's General Land Office Records, a man identified as Adam Onsbaugh but likely one and the same as Adam Anspach. Now, it was time to see what other mentions could be found for that land description in other legal documents. Since not every document has been digitized and placed online, I first tried my hand at a collection of will abstracts from the old book, Gateway to the West, which is now online at Ancestry.com.

I searched for entries for the surname Anspach without any success, and was about to look for the alternate spelling of Onsbaugh, when my eye caught an entry for Adam Ausbach. Most likely the result of a transcription error—the book did mention something about the text being in German—"Auspach" could merely have been the result of a more European style of writing the letter "n" like the letter "u."

The abstract outlined the names of the will's legatees. The sons included Anspach names I had found in the 1840 census, helping to tie the family unit together. The more helpful part, though, was identifying the daughters by their married names, including the given name of each daughter's husband.

Right away, I spotted one name: Elizabeth Dupler, wife of Philip. It was not lost on me that Jonathan Miller—the possible relative of Lidia Miller who had first gotten me started on this chase—had married a Dupler. Any relationship? You bet I'd go following this trail.

My next step was to turn to FamilySearch.org's Full Text search, where I entered "Adam Anspach" as my search term, adding a keyword "Dupler." Because the Gateway to the West book had given 1833 as the date Adam Anspach's will was drawn up, I set the date parameters rather narrow, to limit the results.

Without including the description of the tract of land I was tracing in my search terms, almost immediately a search result popped up with that precise property description. In that document, Adam Anspach sold that specific property to Elizabeth Dupler for one hundred dollars.

This, of course, caused me to wonder whether Jonathan Miller's wife, Catherine Dupler, might be daughter of Elizabeth Dupler, who in turn was daughter of Adam Anspach, the likely original owner of that parcel. Nothing is ever easy, though. It sounded like a reasonable premise, but you know I had to do some additional checking to see what other documents could connect the two Dupler women.

Think Phonetically

 

The search for Adam Onsbaugh was on. I had found him in the Bureau of Land Management's General Land Office Records as the 1806 owner of a parcel of land which bore the same township, range, and section number as the property which, years later, Jonathan Miller was bequeathing to his two sons. Could I find any other records on this man?

I probably wouldn't have launched such a search, if it hadn't been for the unknown roots of my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother. Also bearing the surname Miller, Lidia had become the wife of William H. Gordon; after the couple's untimely deaths in Perry County, Ohio, their orphaned son Adam was raised by his paternal grandmother, herself a widow by that point. To connect Lidia to her past meant exploring any possible connections through the friends, associates, or neighbors surrounding the unfortunate young family. Searching Miller neighbors was one approach to this cluster research method.

Land owner Adam Onsbaugh, I reasoned, must be somehow connected to that Miller F.A.N. Club, and I needed to at least examine who he might have been. Could the Millers and Gordons have migrated en masse from Pennsylvania with Adam Onsbaugh? Did they know him in the past, and thus get inspired to follow his migration trail west to Ohio? I had to at least find him in the census records in Perry County to learn a bit more about this pioneer settler.

Searching for Adam in the 1810 census—the first enumeration after he acquired his land in Ohio—presented a problem. Perry County itself was not a county until 1818. The county was formed from portions of Fairfield, Washington, and Muskingum counties. Thus when the Land Office Records identified the location of the Onsbaugh property as Perry County, they were apparently identifying that land by current jurisdiction, not the county in existence in 1806. So I wouldn't have been surprised if no  Adam Onsbaugh showed up in the 1810 census in Perry County—but there was no one by that name listed in the entire state of Ohio.

No matter; let's fast forward to the 1820 census. There, I did find an Adam Onsbaugh in nearby Hocking County, but no one with that spelling in Perry County. However, there were two other listings: one for Adam Onspough, and another one for someone named John Onspough, both in Reading Township where our Jonathan Miller eventually lived.

I moved further on to the 1830 census, where I found several others with similar spelling variations. All in the same Reading Township, I found someone named John Anspaugh heading up one page of the census, and several others listed two pages earlier. All with that same surname spelling, they were David, Christian, Adam, and Benjamin.

Could Onsbaugh be the same as Anspaugh? I barely had time to consider that, when the 1840 census brought me more discoveries. There was a Benjamin and an Adam Anspach listed, again in Reading Township—in fact, on the same page which launched us on this journey when I discovered William Gordon's listing on the same page as "Johnathan" Miller. 

If you think about this morphing surname situation phonetically, it seems quite possible. We started with Onsbaugh. Realizing that several languages pronounce the letter "a" more like an "ahh," it could be possible that an "Onsbaugh" could also have been spelled "Ansbaugh." Then, too, the guttural ending, "gh" could seem similar to some ears as the German rendition of the ending "ch" and thus be substituted in spelling. Thus, we could move from Onsbaugh to Ansbaugh to Anspauch—and possible even to Anspach, as we saw in the 1840 census, all by thinking phonetically.

I couldn't help but notice the Find A Grave memorial for one Johann Adam Anspach, buried in Somerset—the town in Perry County surrounded by Reading Township—in 1838. The sponsored memorial includes a listing of his many possible children, including married names for the daughters. Though this list would represent descendants from a generation removed from our Jonathan Miller, I couldn't help but notice some similarities from names listed in a previous page of another document I had already been reviewing: Jonathan Miller's own will.  

Searching for Seventeens

 

I admit: searching for Millers in Ohio can be a challenge. Even searching for Millers during the earliest years of Ohio statehood can overload a researcher with too many search options—more specifically, with false leads. Yet, here I am, armed with the description of the land in Perry County which Jonathan Miller willed to his two sons at the end of 1866, trying to find a record of how, years before, he himself had received the land.

My thinking was rather straightforward. If Jonathan Miller did happen to be a sibling of the brick wall ancestor I've been seeking—Lidia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother—then discovering how he obtained his property might reveal his relatives. And possibly hers.

Jonathan Miller's will identified what appears to have been two parcels, one on the northwest quarter of section twelve, the other on the southwest quarter of section one. Both were identified as being in township seventeen and range seventeen.

My first thought was to check the records at the Bureau of Land Management's General Land Office Records. Just in case it wasn't a laughable idea, my first search there was for any land in Perry County obtained by someone named Miller. There were plenty of options—two pages of listings, in fact, none of which belonged to someone named Jonathan Miller. 

Remembering Jonathan Miller's mention of one parcel of land having once been where "Shelly Dupler had resided," I wondered whether that was the former owner of the Miller land, and searched for the Dupler surname. After all, Jonathan's wife was born a Dupler. Though Dupler was a surname far less common than the overwhelming Miller surname, that search for land records brought up absolutely zero results.

I noticed that the Land Office search results had some columns which, by clicking on the heading, could be sorted in number order. Township and Range were both sortable. I clicked, looking for seventeens. Nothing came up, except for one parcel registered to a man named John Miller in 1809. Though it might have been possible that our Jonathan Miller could have identified himself as "Jon" Miller for short—and thus be mistakenly transcribed as John—I already knew from his entry in the 1840 census that he would have still been a child in 1809.

Rather than manipulate the spread sheet aspect of the file, I tried something else. The Land Office records could also be searched specifically by location. Keeping the main "location" state entry as "Ohio," I scrolled down on the "search documents" landing page to the section labeled "Land Description," and entered my information there. For township, I entered seventeen; likewise for range. For section, I entered twelve. And clicked on "Search Patents." That was it.

Only one result came up for my search: not a property owned by anyone named Miller, but a parcel obtained in November of 1806 by a man named Adam Onsbaugh.

My next question was: could it be worth my while to search for this new surname? Would it lead me to any helpful information about Jonathan Miller—or, more importantly, to my brick wall ancestor Lidia Miller? While it seemed strangely similar to one of those wild rabbit trail diversions, it was worth a try to check it out.

Last Wishes — With Precise Details

 

When Jonathan Miller drew up his will in Perry County, Ohio, on December 7 of 1866, he provided a small gift to future generations of curious genealogists by the insertion of one particular stipulation. He wanted not only to leave a specific piece of property to two of his sons, but to personally ensure that the boundaries of each split portion be designated precisely as he wished.

To that end, Jonathan not only provided the verbal description of each surveyed lot, but sketched in the lines of the perimeter for each parcel: the north section to his son Andrew, and most of the southern portion to his son John, with the exception of a small section alongside John's portion also designated for Andrew.

The gift to us—particularly for our purposes in finding the roots of this Jonathan Miller, and hopefully his connection to my mother-in-law's ancestor, Lidia Miller Gordon—is the description of the property. Not so much the landmarks—the surveyor's notes running from a maple tree to a hickory tree, then to a beech tree, then ash, and finally elm—but the legal description is what I'm seeking. 

Just from the fine print in this document, I can see mention of possible family connections. Before I had even found the marriage record for Jonathan and Catherine—she was formerly a Dupler—I had spotted one mention in Jonathan's will. Noting Jonathan Miller's mention of a particular acre of land "on the north side of the Columbus road" which once had been "the same lot on which Shelly Dupler had resided," I had wondered even then if this was a sign pointing to a relative.

With the land described as being part of the northwest quarter of section twelve, and also part of the southwest quarter of section one in township seventeen and range seventeen, I now have some details that might help trace the ownership of this parcel back through the years. If I'm fortunate, this could reveal the name of the owner from whom Jonathan originally obtained the land. Better yet, it might reveal another relative from a previous generation—maybe even help us discover the identity of Jonathan's father.

Diagram above from 1868 will of Jonathan Miller of Perry County, Ohio, illustrating property subdivision; image courtesy FamilySearch.org; in the public domain. 

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.

All About Allen

 

When we are stuck on a "brick wall" ancestor, it's time to chip away at any bit of information we can find on the family, and that includes exploring collateral lines. While I don't yet know that the Townsend men who moved from South Carolina to settle in Madison County in territorial Florida were Delaney Townsend's brothers, I'm thinking my third great-grandmother Delaney—unmarried at the time of her arrival in Florida—could possibly have hitched a ride to the Florida panhandle with one of those Townsend men in town.

This week, we'll start off by focusing on everything we can find on the older of the two Townsend brothers in Madison County: Allen. Since Allen is easily found in the 1850 census, we can see he was born in South Carolina about 1801. Along with Sarah, his presumed wife and mother of his six named children, all but one family member were also born in South Carolina. After a daughter they named Florida—a telltale sign of their intentions—their youngest child, Josephine, was born in Florida in 1840, marking the approximate end of their journey southward.

Since many people of that time period moved for the purpose of seeking suitable land, I checked the General Land Office Records at the website for the Bureau of Land Management. Sure enough, there were entries for someone named Allen Townsend who had acquired several parcels of land in Madison County, Florida. Earliest of those entries was dated July 28 of 1838.

It was from Allen's death in Madison County that we gain our best clue about his origin. His 1880 headstone, placed in the Townsend Family Cemetery in Madison, Florida, informs us that he was born on November 21, 1801, in Marlboro County, South Carolina. While that headstone looks a bit too pristine to trust it to be contemporaneous with his passing, it is still worth our while to consider that information as at least a hint.

Now that we have a date of death for Allen Townsend, the next stop will be to search court records for a will and probate procedures, in the hopes that perhaps a witness to his will might be one of his own brothers—a handy clue for our purposes.

In the meantime, as I've done for so many others whose family connection still stirs lingering doubts, I'll make an entry in my family tree for Allen, but mark it with a big yellow triangular warning sign. In this case, being unsure of the connection, I'll also make Allen's entry in my tree the start of a "floating branch," cutting him off from any indication of relationship to Delaney until I've found documentation to assure me of the connection. The sooner we can find trustworthy records, though, we'll hopefully be able to reconnect Allen Townsend to the correct spot in the Townsend family tree. 

Forsaking the Faith

 

I'm not sure why, but it is always surprising to me, when researching the story of a family which staunchly supported one particular religion over the years, to discover that that belief was not as resolutely adhered to by one's ancestors—nor by one's descendants. As I wander through the generations in my mother-in-law's decidedly Catholic family, I've been surprised to learn that her fourth great-grandfather, William Ijams, was more likely an adherent to the Methodist way of John Wesley. Yet, now that I've traced William's ancestors from his father John to his father William, I now find a new twist: a wife who married into the established Church of England, forsaking the faith of her Quaker parents.

This William's wife, born Elizabeth Plummer, was the namesake child of another Elizabeth. A typewritten note signed by Harry Wright Newman and inserted into his book, Anne Arundel Gentry, explained that Elizabeth Plummer's mother, while often listed under the name Yate, was actually George Yate's step-daughter. She was born a Stockett, a detail we hopefully will cover before the end of this month, a surname which made its appearance in another branch of the Ijams extended family.

Elizabeth Stockett's daughter, Elizabeth Plummer, married William Ijams on August 27, 1696, presumably in Anne Arundel County, part of then-colonial Maryland. Two years later, according to the Newman book,  she was baptized as an adult at All Hallow's Church. Her parents, as Mr. Newman noted, had raised her as part of the Quaker community of West River.

William and Elizabeth Plummer Ijams went on to raise a family of at least nine children themselves, as we've already mentioned. But of Elizabeth's own origin, we might not have known much at all, owing to a fire which destroyed many of the documents at the "State House." Thankfully, William and Elizabeth—as well as many other residents of the region—voluntarily brought their own copies of records such as this deed from Elizabeth's father, mentioning the relationship between Elizabeth, her husband William, and her father, Thomas Plummer.

That, at least, is a story conveyed in the pages of the Newman book. You know what the next step will be for us: to locate the document through the FamilySearch Labs' Full Text search. Because now, we can. If it's there.

Until You Know That You Know

 

Sometimes, in shuffling through the myriad stacks of records necessary for tracking those elusive ancestors, we run across documents which we know are significant finds—but somehow the fact doesn't fully register in our minds concerning the importance of what we've found. It isn't until our mind once again comes around full circle and realizes that now we know that we knew that fact that we can proceed to actually put that discovery to use.

That's the case with this month's work on my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandmother Elizabeth Howard, wife of William Ijams. I had been working my way through Elizabeth's daughters, with the purpose of outlining all those who linked to Elizabeth's matriline for mtDNA purposes. I had already examined the lines of daughters Rebecca, Rachel, Mary, and Comfort. The only one remaining was Sarah. 

Sarah was likely the youngest daughter of William Ijams and his wife Elizabeth Howard, but she was also my mother-in-law's direct ancestor, so I had already thoroughly researched the women descending from Sarah—except, apparently, for one detail. That detail was clearly represented in a document which I had seen and known about for years; after all, it was called to my attention by one of those convenient "hints" at Ancestry.com. How could I have missed that?

The document was housed at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's General Land Office Records. If I had ever thought to access that website and conduct a search on Sarah Ijams' own name, the document could easily have been found. But who would go looking for a land record under a woman's name back in 1817? And under her maiden name, too!

Yesterday, in a research tailspin over lack of progress on this month's research goal—finding more connections to Elizabeth Howard's matriline—I decided to celebrate DNA Day by reviewing all my husband's autosomal DNA matches using Ancestry's ThruLines tool. At this point, he has forty eight matches there directly linked to Elizabeth Howard through her daughter Sarah Ijams' descendants. Most of them are linked to our tree, but there are about eight new matches which I hadn't yet added. Hoping for that small chance that an autosomal match might also have connected via that same matrilineal path, I didn't want to miss any details.

Nothing significant materialized. In that dull moment of grasping for "what's next," up popped that persistent hint about the land record with Sarah Ijams' name on it. The property description didn't seem to match the location I had remembered from other court records for her family—I had assumed in the past that her name was on the document due to some land she had inherited—and was stymied by what the hidden story might have been.

Mulling over what that untold backstory might have been, rather than just staring at the document as it was presented on Ancestry, I decided to look at the version from the source. Though the record had stated "Sarah Ijams of Fairfield County," looking up such a document at the BLM website produced nothing. However, if I searched for Sarah's name in Ohio in general, but didn't enter any county name, up popped the record in neighboring Perry County. 

Clicking on the tab labeled "Related Documents," showed clearly that the land was in Perry County, not Fairfield County, Sarah's family home. Interestingly, another document also showed in the list from that second search, regarding an adjoining property. That property belonged to Sarah's brother-in-law, Walter Teal, whom I had also had trouble tracing during this month's research project. Now realizing that Walter's property was likewise in Perry County, that would be a helpful detail to know when searching for any deeds or other documents to trace possibility of daughters for Walter's line, since his wife was also on Elizabeth Howard's matriline.

But what I had failed to remember—this is the part I should have already known—was that Perry County was not established until March 1 of 1818. And since the Ijams family had lived in Richland Township in Fairfield County—which history I had read only a week or so ago—I should have remembered that tiny detail about Richland Township losing two of its sections to form part of Perry County. 

I'm pretty sure I know that I know that—now. That detail has finally sunk into the "working knowledge" side of my brain. That also explains why I had seen some other deeds recorded in both counties, despite being a single transaction. But as to why the land was listed in 1817 under the name of an unmarried woman, that is a puzzle whose answer I have yet to know.

Sisters and Their Stories

 

Though I can't say I've found an answer yet, this has been a month which may have come full circle. I began the month looking for all the women who belong on my mother-in-law's matriline. I eventually settled on researching the daughters of her fourth great-grandmother, Elizabeth Howard, wife of William Ijams. The only problem: it's hard to find stories of sisters born in the late 1700s. Until, that is, I ran across a document identifying two of them, and hinting at a third.

Elizabeth Howard and her husband, William Ijams, had five daughters. Besides my mother-in-law's direct line third great-grandmother, Sarah, the other daughters were Rebecca, Rachel, Mary, and Comfort. This month has been one continuous struggle to find any records of these sisters' married lives, particularly the details indicating the names of their children—especially their own daughters.

We've found a bit of information on Mary's daughter, Providence Teal, but none of her three daughters had continuing lines of female descendants—they didn't "daughter out." With Rachel, an early census record after her marriage to James Turner indicated that she may have had at least five daughters, but what their names were or whether they lived to adulthood and married, I still can't say.

And then there's Rebecca. With Mary and Rachel, at least I could find some documentation beyond the marriage record to indicate what life had brought them in later years. For Rebecca, I had little beyond a reference to her husband's name in her father's will—William Ijams had named William Wiseman as his executor. I did find a will for someone by that name, living in Fairfield County, but the document didn't specify the names of any descendants. All the will mentioned was three apparently unrelated people with whom William Wiseman had been living at the time of the most recent census before his 1854 death.

In the 1850 census, living in William Wiseman's household were Eliza Noals and her likely daughters Elsa and Catherine Noals. Like William, Eliza had been born in Maryland, though she was almost thirty years younger than William. Her two supposed daughters were both born in Ohio, and were in their twenties. An unrelated eleven year old boy from Germany rounded out the household.

When William Wiseman's will was entered into the court records on February 7, 1854, names quite similar to those appeared as his legatees. Those named were Alicia Ann Noles and Catherine Noles. In addition, a third person of that surname—Leo Noles—was mentioned in William's will. Oddly, though Eliza Noles was also mentioned, she was only indicated as recipient, along with the other women, of support from the estate's executor for "protecting and maintaining" the three women "during their single life." All the rest of William's estate was bequeathed to the Literary Society of Saint Joseph in neighboring Perry County, Ohio, whose director was named as executor of William's will.

With no mention of a wife or descendants of his own, I considered whether the document was written by our William Wiseman. And yet, some details seemed to match. As indicated in his will, William was buried in Perry County. But there was no sign of a wife named Rebecca or any children from that marriage. I began to wonder whether there was another William Wiseman in town.

Fortunately, a land transaction in Fairfield County helped provide another piece of the Wiseman story. Dated May 1, 1831, the record indicated that land purchased by one Edward Stevenson was sold to him by "William Wiseman and Rebecca his wife," and "James Turner and Rachel his wife." With that one document, we are gifted with the names of the wives of those two men. Of course, we already knew from their father's will that Rebecca and Rachel were sisters, but finding their husbands' names in any records has been a challenge. This, at least, gave another verification of the connections.

What is interesting about that document in Fairfield County records is that, immediately preceding it was another document regarding another property exchange, between Joseph H. Ijams and Edward Stevenson. Referring to an original exchange in 1827, the 1831 document revealed that the description of the property in question contained an "incorrect recital of the metes and bounds" of the location.

What doesn't get mentioned in those documents is the other relationships contained within the named parties. Joseph H. Ijams was brother of William Wiseman's wife Rebecca, and James Turner's wife Rachel. In addition, Edward Stevenson had married another Ijams sister, Comfort, in 1811. While the land may have been changing hands, it was all still kept within the same family—but if it weren't for knowing who the sisters were, that fact would have remained invisible.

Too Many Turners in Town

 

It seemed like a really good research plan. To find the names of the Turner children—the unnamed descendants showing in the 1820 census household of James Turner and his wife Rachel—I thought I'd simply look for James Turner's will in Fairfield County, Ohio.

Apparently, that idea crashed and burned far sooner than I ever dreamed would be possible—all thanks to the efficiency of Full Text search capabilities at FamilySearch Labs. On to Plan B: look for signs of any transfers of property in the same county, from James Turner and Rachel, his wife, to any others with that same surname. But that idea isn't working too well for me either. Why? Apparently in a county of sixteen thousand people, there were too many Turners in town for that approach to yield any helpful clues.

Still, I'll keep my eye open for these possibilities. Besides seeing the deed transferring ownership of property from James and Rachel to someone else named James M. Turner, I found another deed mentioning Solomon Turner—another possible son? Among the deeds in Fairfield County during that time period, I also ran across Turners by the names of Isaac, Joseph, and even Bazel. Then again, in later dates, I couldn't be sure whether the Williams I found were sons of James' father William, or sons of another Turner sibling. I had enough tabs open on my laptop to cause a computer meltdown, surely.

But what about the daughters? That, after all, was my original goal for this month's research project. I wanted to find information on the female descendants related to my mother-in-law's matriline for DNA purposes. There certainly were a few land transactions in those Fairfield County deeds which mentioned men of other surnames. What they lacked, though, was any mention of how—if at all—they might have been connected to James Turner. So the 1823 transaction selling land to Herbert Winegardner, or the one naming James Price, provided me no details to give me any traction. Though James and Rachel certainly did have daughters, we're still left not knowing what their given names—let alone their married names— might have been.

In the midst of searching through pages and pages of court records, though, I did run across another curious land transaction, bringing together some of the same names I had encountered while taking that research detour to learn the history of one of Fairfield County's first churches. We'll take a moment to examine that deed tomorrow.

When All the Details Line Up

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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