Found on a Roadside Marker: My Fourth Great-Grandfather

 

When we push so far back in our family's history, it sometimes begins to seem as if the ancestors named in the pedigree aren't real people. They are so far removed from us, from our time period, and sometimes even from the places where we live. Though in some ways I do feel that sense of being so removed from him, in other ways, there is no such disconnect with my fourth great-grandfather, Job Tison. There is a marker on a roadside in Georgia which claims his existence for me.

True, Georgia's "Old Post Road" Historic Marker 063-4B spells the man's name as Job Tyson—a spelling switch I've grown accustomed to over years of trying to trace him and his descendants—but the history and the documentation line up with what I've found.

According to the roadside plaque, which I first learned about courtesy of another Ancestry.com researcher, Job Tison's efforts, no matter how small, have gone down in history.

     This road, formerly an Indian trail which paralleled the coast, was used by the Spanish and British. In 1778 it was traveled by Revolutionary soldiers who marched against Fort Tonyn. The first mail service south of Savannah was established over this road in 1763. Later it became a regular stagecoach route.
      At Coleridge, a short distance north of the present Waycross Highway, Job Tyson maintained a tavern for travelers along the post road. It was the only hostel between the Altamaha and Satilla rivers and was a regular stagecoach stop.

There are some problems trying to learn more about the man, though. Just taking a closer look at the text on this historical marker can give an idea of what I mean. For instance, that Old Post Road was used by soldiers who marched against Fort Tonyn. But where was Fort Tonyn? I googled it to learn that either it was "believed by some" to have been located on Amelia Island—wherever that was—or was located somewhere in what is now Nassau County, Florida.

Granted, that doesn't help a researcher discover just where that stagecoach stop might have been. But let's move on to another way marker: "at Coleridge." Right: that detail isn't producing helpful results, either. Google wasn't helpful, and Wikipedia certainly didn't have anything to say about Coleridge. One note on the blog Roadside Thoughts laid it out straight: "So far, we have found very little information about Coleridge." They conceded that the place must have been "historic."

At least they speculated the town was likely in Glynn County, a promising detail, since that is where I've found my Job Tison—supposedly one and the same as the marker's Job Tyson. One of Georgia's eight original counties, Glynn County was established in 1777, in plenty of time to establish the courthouse where Job Tison's estate stood frozen in a messy probate case from the time of his death in 1824 until the close of 1858.

Glynn County was not Job Tison's native home, however, and that is my quest to discover for this month's research goal. There are researchers who say Job was born in colonial North Carolina, and that may well be true. I would like to explore that for myself, and assemble the documentation to trace him back to the place where he was born—and to the as-yet-undiscovered couple who could claim him as their son. We'll start tomorrow by laying out what is already known, and then delve into the unknown after that point.

Putting It All in Perspective

 

In order to trace our ancestors' steps, going back through time, we need to start with their ending point. So it is, in pondering the migration pathway for my mother-in-law's Flowers and Ambrose families, that we start where they ended: in Perry County, Ohio. Since it would be near-impossible for a son to be born without his mother present at the same location, now that we've found the report that Joseph and Elizabeth Ambrose Flowers' son Thomas was born in 1814 in or near what later became Perry County, we can safely assume that Elizabeth—and thus likely her husband Joseph—were in Ohio in that same year.

Although the young Flowers family arrived quite a bit after Ohio achieved statehood in 1803, don't think life in their new home came easily to them—nor was the way leading to their new community easily navigated. When I examine the few tokens of their arrival in the new state, I begin to wonder just what it was which provided the incentive for Joseph to move his young family there. To put this all into perspective, we need to examine what was—and was not—available as incentives for the family to move to the nascent state of Ohio, and what was left behind by the family in the state they had previously called home.

Yes, for one thing, in Ohio, there was land there to be had, but the systems of administering the first federal land grants in Ohio amounted to a patchwork quilt of various programs evolving over time and through different agencies and systems. That said, we can't simply assume that Joseph Flowers came to Ohio to claim land as a benefit of service in any particular war, or that he came as part of a wave of ethnic migration from Pennsylvania, for instance.

Nor can we assume the way there was easy or convenient. For those leaving homes in Pennsylvania—Joseph's likely former residence—the main route preferred by fellow immigrants of the time was a pathway known as Zane's Trace. This was an overland route leading from Pennsylvania to Kentucky, cutting through the very region around Muskingum County and what eventually became Perry County, the location where the Flowers family settled.

Though Zane's Trace was, up to and after the War of 1812, considered the main route through portions of what became Ohio, disabuse yourself of any concept of this route as a wagon road. In its earliest years, Zane's Trace was a trail through wilderness, barely wide enough to allow passage of settlers on foot, or on horseback, or perhaps traveling with a pack animal. It was only after Ohio achieved statehood that tax money was used to "improve" Zane's Trace and make it wide enough for wagon access. Even then, the road had hazards—though not quite as many as might be faced by those choosing to migrate via the waterways connected to the unpredictable Ohio River.

It is likely through understanding the immigrants' perspective that we can allow their motivations to guide us from the place where they settled, back to their origins in Pennsylvania—or, perhaps, even farther than that location. Next week, we'll take a close look at the few documents affording us a glimpse of where Joseph and Elizabeth might have originated their rough journey to the new state of Ohio.

Rollin' on the River

When we research our families from the early 1800s in the nascent United States, we can easily see when they came from one location and, eventually, landed in another, more western location. But how much thought do we give to the consideration of how these people moved their families hundreds of miles? It is not hard to stumble upon references in history books about the lack of roads or, in the case of their existence, how awful those trails could be. In the case of many of our ancestors as they faced such conditions in their migrattion westward across the North American continent, they did have an alternative: river travel.

In puzzling over my mother-in-law's great-grandmother, Elizabeth Stine, I can see from historical records that she was born somewhere in Pennsylvania, yet she lived her adult life in Perry County, Ohio. Of course, my main question is: with whom did that young, unmarried woman make that wilderness trek of hundreds of miles? It helps, in delving into that question, to see what options were available to her migrating family.

The same scenario likely played out in the case of her husband-to-be, Jacob Snider, whose family also came west to Ohio from Pennsylvania. I have it from other Stine and Snider researchers I connected with, decades ago—back when online genealogy was in its infant stages—that the Stine family may have come from Franklin County, Pennsylvania, and that the Sniders removed from neighboring Adams County. With both of those counties pressed firmly against the southern border of the state, and facing the challenging route of crossing the Appalachians to their west, one option for migration in those early years was to hit the road.

The road, however, was often a co-opted ancient trail used by native populations long before the arrival of European settlers, and certainly not built to accommodate the wagons or stagecoaches preferred by the emigrants. Such would be the "road" leading through the land which eventually became Perry County. Known as Zane's Trace—after Ebenezer Zane, from whom nearby Zanesville took its name—it afforded a westward-bound settler one route to central Ohio.

A more reasonable route, in those days before established roads in the Northwest Territory, was to take to the waterways. With this choice of transportation, a migrating family need only haul their earthly belongings westward on the less-than-desireable roads of central and western Pennsylvania until they could reach Pittsburgh or another suitable jumping-off place. From there, they could purchase a flatboat to move their goods down the Ohio River.

The Ohio, being a tributary of the Mississippi River yet possibly the main stream of the whole Mississippi River system, could move people and their goods down river to lands in Kentucky and beyond—eventually, even to the Gulf of Mexico, if one wished. Our families migrating to the Perry County area, though, need only travel the Ohio River as far as the newly-established town of Marietta, where the Ohio met the mouth of the Muskingum River.

From there, the Muskingum could—depending on the season and the year's level of rainfall—bring a family northward to tap into a system of rivers and creeks circling the north and east of Perry County.

No matter which way the Stines or the Sniders chose to travel from south central Pennsylvania to the middle of the new state of Ohio, there were, indeed, options on how to arrive there.

But the key question to ask is not just how they got to Perry County, but why they decided, in those early years of our country, to go through all the trouble to get there.

On the Streets Where we Live

Not many people give much thought to how the street where they live received its name. While some street names—notably those in sanitized suburban settings—may reflect the unimaginative sameness of tree-themed names, there are some street signs revealing a glimpse into a road's history.

Curious about the name of a major road near me, after discovering that the farmland once adjacent to what is now a city street bore the same name, I've tried to find sources to confirm any connection. Though I can find a biographical sketch touting the many civic contributions of that property owner, there is no mention of just how the street passing by his property managed to acquire the very same name as this man's surname.

Other cities have street names which reveal a glimpse into their history. I tried my hand at a search at GenealogyBank, repository of many archived newspapers, to see if anyone wrote an article about such a topic. Sure enough, there were a few choices. One writer expounded upon the "history and significance" of street names in South Trenton, New Jersey, for the Trenton Evening Times in a Sunday article on October 12, 1913. For some strange reason, the Portland newspaper, The Oregonian, ran a column called "Origin of Street Names" on April 14, 1900—only it was about the history of street names in New York City.

Delving into a theme I brought up yesterday, the Encyclopedia of Chicago explained the challenges behind coordinating street names in a city which, as it expanded, swallowed up smaller towns in its perimeter, resulting in several different streets sporting the same name, but different locations. For those hoping the fire department arrived before their house burned down, this would understandably cause some consternation, which city fathers hoped to rectify.

This, of course, brings up another challenge to finding the story about one's street name: street names have changed, over the years. In searching for how Hutchins Street got its name in Lodi, California, I ran across a Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of the downtown area from 1895, which provides an example in its "County Road" label for one particular street. Today, residents would recognize that street as Lodi Avenue. Very possibly, the road past the Hutchins property may at one point had a generic designation much the same as this.

Working with other researchers attempting to discover more about the area where their ancestors lived, I have been made aware of other streets in our county which have been called by names other than what we call them today. Between that challenge, plus the re-numbering of house addresses in the early 1900s in many cities in the United States, inquiries into the history of the street where our ancestors once lived can encounter many twists and turns—even concerning some of the major routes of our cities. Whether these are causes concealing the elusive reason for the naming of Hutchins Street in Lodi, I can't yet tell.

Above: Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Lodi, San Joaquin County, California, showing "County Road" designation to the right of the map. Sanborn Map Company, Mar, 1895; map courtesy United States Library of Congress; in the public domain.

Not West 196,841st Street : Decisions About Street Names*

Asking why a street received the name it has might not be among your top research priorities, but in my case, I can't help but wonder. I've already uncovered paperwork revealing that a relative by marriage was the namesake of Shields Avenue in Fresno, California. And discovery of a road in my adopted California hometown bearing the unusual surname of another distant relative prompted me to trace that property owner's pedigree back to our most recent common ancestor—someone living over two thousand miles away. So you see, I come by this curiosity naturally.

Now, my attention is turned to John Hutchins, a Canadian who traveled the distance of a continent to land in Lodi, California, right after the state's gold rush. Perhaps owing to success in mining endeavors—or possibly because the land was so cheap at the time—John Hutchins acquired much property in the Elkhorn Township area which eventually became the city of Lodi. Even more so, his influence on the growth of the area in its earliest years may have landed him one tiny nod in the form of the area's current cityscape.

It just so happens that there is a major north-south artery in Lodi named Hutchins Street, now the location of the city's cultural center bearing that same Hutchins name. I'm curious how the street got its name. According to a timeline of the city's early years (see page 22), Hutchins Street was listed as the city's western limit in 1906, only seven years after John Hutchins' passing. Though his biographical sketch included in George Tinkham's History of San Joaquin County was glowing, perhaps his wasn't the most illustrious claim to the Hutchins surname.

It's fascinating to learn the process of just how municipalities decide upon names for their streets. Some cities are quite upfront about their requirements, such as the city of Buellton in Santa Barbara County, which posted its street naming procedures online. As associate professor of law Ann Bartow observed in her article in the law review of the University of California at Davis in April, 2004:

Few people are likely to want to live on a thoroughfare named 198,457th Street because such an address lacks personality and interest. When public amenities are accorded more colorful denominations, however, complications can ensue.

It is those "complications" which have precipitated precise local government procedures on who can name streets and just how they are to do so. One review of the situation by Fox News detailed the complexity of a process which might take weeks from start to finish, shepherded by the planning department with vital input from not only engineering and public works departments, but also police, fire department and even the post office.

While it may seem as if streets are bestowed their names through a scientific process—above all, avoiding "monikers that might be unappealing to residents," though, as one New York Times reporter found, such are in abundance despite being "unappealing"—there is also a certain politic nature to the granting of honorific designations. National heroes often become the focus of naming committees, with examples drawn not only from national history—every name from George Washington to Martin Luther King—but from significant hometown developments, as well.

And yet, of all the reports concerning the process of naming streets, most of these resources divulged details about how real estate developers in our current times approach the issue. What I'm searching for is just how street names from our past history were bestowed—and how to learn the stories behind those designations.


*196,841st Street: with thanks to Ann Bartow's April 2004 article in the U.C. Davis Law Review, "Trademarks of Privilege," for the footnote #114 on the absurd concept of naming a street with a number as inconvenient to remember as that example.

In Circles

Sometimes, it feels like a research project takes the researcher along a winding path which, eventually, leads right back to the place where it started. Take my discovery of a connection between my research subject and a man whose surname was significant to his adopted hometown of Lodi, California. I discovered that his biography, included in a History of San Joaquin County two decades after his death, mentioned his role in the establishment of Lodi in much more glowing terms than I was able to find anywhere else. At the same time, I discovered four other men were credited with the very same role—with no mention of the original focus of my attention. Which story was right?

I hoped that, in exploring what could be found about the history of each of those other four men, I would discover any connection between the two versions. Other than realizing that several of the men were connected to one particular fraternal order, I wasn't able to discern the root of the variations in the story.

So, what can be discovered about John Hutchins, the man from Canada who crossed the plains to arrive in San Joaquin County in the earliest days after the formation of the county? George Tinkham reported that Hutchins made his cross-country immigration in 1853. Yet, whether the Hutchins household in the 1860 census in Elkhorn Township includes our John Hutchins, I can't yet be sure. However, John's name did appear in the Great Register, where in at least two editions, he reported being naturalized at the county seat on August 27, 1866.

Almost a year later, John Hutchins married Ann Nevin, an Iowa girl whose family had moved to Stockton, and by the time of the 1870 census, the couple was living in Elkhorn Township, along with their daughter Nellie and son John. Although the senior John died in 1899, we can still find the names of his five children in his widow's household in the 1900 census.

But what of the street through the town of Lodi which now bears the Hutchins name? Was it named for John Hutchins, the one who supposedly donated land to jump-start the downtown area before it even became designated as a city? Or was that honor given to someone else with the same surname?

The ubiquitousness of street signs may dull our inquisitiveness about their origin, but I just can't help myself. I want to know how that street came to receive that name.

The Way Leading to That New Home

It took a long detour through the colonial history of Virginia in the 1700s just to figure out the way my Tilson ancestors may have taken to move from their settlement in southwestern Virginia to their new home in northeastern Tennessee.

Actually, the way wasn't very far—at least, that is, if I correctly identified the modern locations for those three hundred year old geographic identifiers.

The place where the Tilson family had settled, after leaving their parental homes in Massachusetts some time after William took Mary Marcie Ransom as his bride in 1762, was somewhere near a spot called Saint Clair. That, in turn, eventually became part of Washington County—which, as you can guess, has been carved up countless times since that 1763 arrival date.

At any rate, wherever the place was, it was on the south fork of what I've finally figured out must have been the Holston River. Finding all this out has taken several painstakingly tiny steps, of course, but still doesn't answer my question of how the family got from there—wherever "there" actually was—to the family's ultimate settlement in Washington County, Tennessee.

However, wandering around the Internet for the past few days, I've run across some details of the history of colonial migration. I became fairly certain my hunch to zero in on what was called the Wilderness Road might lead to some answers to my research questions.

Even trying to find out more about the Wilderness Road has been challenging. For one thing, the route went by more than one name. According to one resource, the route was also known as the Great Road or the Great Philadelphia Road.

Can you imagine telling people how to find your home—naming the street bearing your address—and then giving the name of two or three other streets, as well? If that sounds confusing, that about explains how I feel, trying to discern exactly where this ancient route once led.

There might be a reason for this confusion. For one thing, one researcher theorized that, depending on the destination of a traveler, the route might be called one thing, while those heading in the opposite direction would call it something else. Kind of like saying, "I'm on the road to Philadelphia" when heading north, yet, "I'm headed west" when traveling to those new settlements in the wilderness.

Or just go ahead and call it the Wilderness Road. After all, that was the point of the route: a way to access the new lands opening up for colonial settlement.

There was another problem about trying to figure out where this route once was: even academic researchers dispute this road's location. If the experts can't be certain where the route led, how can I determine whether this was the winding road that led my ancestors away from their Virginia door?

According to at least one report, the Wilderness Road leading west began at what is now Kingsport, Tennessee—close to the Washington County area of the state where my Tilsons settled, but certainly not what would convince them to leave their home in southwestern Virginia.

However, there may have been an entirely different route—or possibly just a different name for the same path—forming the basis for the road enticing my ancestors to leave their hard-won settlement in the Virginia wilderness. The foundation for this route, as it turns out, may have been a system of ancient pathways worn by generations of native people, now called by some The Great Indian Warpath.

In an annotated reprint of a 1937 article published in the William and Mary Quarterly containing satellite images on which are superimposed locations from the old trails, an explanation on page 506 of the original text delves into the geographic points on one branch of the Great Indian Warpath which likely led close to the Holston River settlement where the Tilsons had lived.

While this may help me understand just how my Tilson ancestors arrived in Washington County, Tennessee, the rest of this lengthy reprint also helped describe what else might have been happening at the time which might have encouraged people to move to these wilderness locations.

Even in colonial times, the government was offering land grants in the hopes of enticing immigrants to move farther west to form a buffer zone around the more established towns to the east. It would be well worth the research detour to examine just what else was going on in the colonies during the time when William Tilson married in Massachusetts in 1762 and moved to Virginia by 1763.   

If Not Why, Perhaps How

As I'm struggling with the brick wall in my family history research, I've wanted to learn just why it was that the descendants of my Mayflower ancestors would have left their by-then-established settlement in Massachusetts to move to the backwoods of Virginia in 1763—and then pick up once again and relocate in northeastern Tennessee.

Just because I want to know the answer doesn't necessarily mean I will find the answer. After the journey I've been on to seek out that answer, the corresponding trip through local history of that era has convinced me that perhaps a more helpful question might be how those ancestors moved beyond their Virginia settlement to their stopping place in Washington County, Tennessee.

Googling and then following my nose has unearthed several helpful sites in this information gathering stage. I already knew that the area in question was once part of a place in the state of North Carolina dubbed the Washington District. After Tennessee statehood, that same location became the "mother county"—the oldest county—of the new state.

I've located lists that serve as finding aids to guide me to further resources as I try to sift through the details and determine just why—and how—my ancestors from Massachusetts eventually ended up in Washington County, Tennessee. Of course, the FamilySearch wiki for Washington County genealogical resources provides many links. Interestingly, so does the Tennessee Secretary of State's website, with two pages providing a list of resources and a more detailed bibliography.

Shifting my focus—rather than looking at what I could find about my ancestors' destination, checking what is available about the land they left—I found a website explaining the history of the old Washington County region of Virginia which contained the Holston River area where my Tilsons once lived.

Better yet, I located a page which explained why settlement in these far-west locations was urged: the government of colonial Virginia saw it as a great scheme for creating a "buffer zone" between more-established immigrant communities in the eastern portion of the colony and the ancient wilderness domain of native populations. To that end, by the 1740s, the government was authorizing land grants, such as the Patton Grant and the Loyal Company Grant.

Having located those resources, I began adding to my reading list. I've found a couple other online articles to read about the westward settlement, back in that era—one of which focuses on southwestern Virginia, the other on a more general review of settlement west of the Blue Ridge mountains.

But this was back in the 1740s. When I think of what must have been available to settlers back then, that's when my mind demands to know just how they managed to do what they did. How did they get to their destination? How did they even decide on that destination? For my Tilson, Davis, and Broyles ancestors, what brought them down the path they selected? In fact, what was the path?

Wondering about "how" led me to seek out articles on the way those ancestors got to their new home. That's when I started circling the details on one particular route, known by various names, but generally called the Wilderness Road. I decided it might be worth my while to see if that Wilderness Road was the route that might have led my wandering ancestors to the promise of better land that they might have been seeking. 

On the Way From Jacksonville to Tallahassee

There is a state road—I've read somewhere that it was the old stagecoach route—that once took travelers from Florida's most populous metropolitan center (Jacksonville) to its capital, a route stretching from east to west along the northernmost reaches of the state. Sometimes called the Old Spanish Trail—not to be confused with the route between Santa Fe and Los Angeles in the West—the route was also known as Florida State Road 10 until the 1927 formation of U.S. Route 90.

If you zoom in on a current-day map, close enough to see the details of those spots in the road too small to be called towns, somewhere on that Florida road, between Lake City and Live Oak, you might be able to locate the place known as Wellborn. Now merely called an "unincorporated community," Wellborn belongs to Suwannee County, itself a location called home by barely more than forty thousand people.

While there may not be many people living in Wellborn, it is still a place that is important to me. Why? Though I've never been there, that's where my maternal roots lie—at least on the McClellan side. And that's why we'll be settling in that area—at least, virtually speaking—for the next few days.

We've been following the trail, backwards in time, of my great grandfather, Rupert Charles McClellan, the dentist who once set up his practice in Tampa, Florida, but who, before that, had served not only as dentist but mayor of rural Fort Meade, a small city of now nearly six thousand people, whose municipal well-being experienced the ebb and flow of economic changes over the decades.

Before Tampa, before Fort Meade, and before marriage to his Tennessee bride Sarah Ann Broyles in 1898, Rupert was living in the home of his parents in Wellborn. Second son of William Henry McClellan and Emma Charles, themselves both children of the Suwannee County region, Rupert made his arrival there in Wellborn on July 30, 1871.

His first appearance in the decennial census records was in 1880, where he and his older brother Frank were joined by brothers William Robert, Philip Tyler and just-born baby sister, Asenah Julia—who, for whatever reason, had been entered in the enumeration as "Emily."

Of course, as things went with families of that era, more children were added to the McClellan family beyond that 1880 record. All told, the McClellans welcomed nine children into their household—at least, nine who made it to adulthood. In addition to those I've already mentioned, there were two more daughters followed by two more sons: Fannie Belle, Emily Jesse, George Sterling and Norman Delaney.

While Wellborn was never a boom town, it did have its heyday—between the years of 1890 and 1920, according to Wellborn "lifers" Maurice and Ann Geiger, shared in an interview published in the Suwannee Valley Times. (Maurice, incidentally, claimed descent from my third great grandfather, so contact with this distant McClellan cousin is now going on my genealogy to-do list for upcoming projects.)

Though small and seemingly insignificant, Wellborn has merited its place in at least two recently-published local history books, augmenting the resources to add to my library.

Of course, nothing will replace the chance to travel there, myself. Admittedly, I and family members have discussed this over the years, but never have taken the opportunity. The one chance I've had to travel to Florida, oddly, did not afford me the luxury of making the two hundred forty mile trip farther north to the McClellan property. That trip will have to await another opportunity—and believe me, it won't take place during hurricane season.

Above: 1880 U.S. Census record for the William H. McClellan household in Suwannee County, Florida; courtesy Ancestry.com.

      

Postscript: The Road to the Ijams' Place

Perhaps you have heard of house histories. Just as we do genealogical research on the people in our lives, some people turn their research energy to digging up the history of the house they love.

There is apparently enough interest in the subject to generate a number of books on the topic. One, Sally Light's House Histories promises to be "a guide to tracing the genealogy of your home." You can imagine how the thought resonates with me in the subtitle of another book I noticed—this one by Pamela Brooks—"Every home tells a story."

Not only has the thought captivated enough of an audience to prompt authors to produce how-to material, but it has become the basis for a sub-field specialization among genealogists. Professional genealogist Marian Pierre-Louis, in fact, calls herself a house historian, and includes aspects of that focus in her media presentations.

While house histories may be fascinating, they serve solely as the springboard for today's post, for it is not house histories, per se, which inspired this one follow up project for my Ijams family research, but something quite akin to that. What I want to do is not a house history, but a road history.

Can there be such a thing as a "road history"? Why not? I've already mentioned—in a totally different research pursuit—that I became aware of the history of the name of one well-known street in Fresno, California. Shields Avenue was named for one of ancestors of my first husband—a landowner on the location of that very road—who also happened to have a son in law who served as director of the city's department of highways. It sometimes pays to have connections.

That was the kind of background knowledge that informed me, as I researched my husband's connection to the Revolutionary War era Ijams family of Maryland and Ohio. Besides having run into that unusual surname in family history research, the only other way I had encountered that name was in driving through a once-rural section that now is on the outskirts of the city where I live.

What would happen if I conducted a study on how Ijams Road received its name?

Based on what I had learned about Shields Avenue in Fresno, I pulled up old census records for my county to see if there were any landowners by the name Ijams. I started as far back in time as I could—considering our city was in existence when California became a state, that meant checking the 1850 census.

Well, it was a long slog until I reached my answer: the 1930 and 1940 census enumerations showed a William Ijams family residing in San Joaquin County.

William? What were the chances?

To answer that question, I took the quick but superficial route of seeing what other family trees on Ancestry.com might have included that William Ijams family—and then traced that line back in time to see if there might be any connections to the William Ijams in Fairfield County, Ohio, that I've been studying.

As it turned out, there were two trees developed to that extent. And yes, after going through the three generations preceding that William Ijams—in which each man was named Isaac—I arrived at a John Ijams whose wife was Rebecca Jones. That, if you remember, was the very same couple who were parents of my husband's fifth great grandfather William.

How often do you run across a scenario like that? The ancestor of a family based twenty five hundred miles from where you live just happens to have another descendant who settles in the same distant town.

So, every time our family has driven down Ijams Road—well, before real estate development took those farm parcels and subdivided them, re-routing the roads and obliterating much of what used to be Ijams Road—we've been driving down the street named for my husband's third cousin, four times removed.

If this were happening, back in central Ohio where those Revolutionary War patriots had settled in the early 1800s, it would not have been such an unexpected coincidence. But hey, this isn't Ohio but California—and a sizeable state, to boot—and a mighty far distance from the family's old neighborhoods in Fairfield and Perry counties in Ohio.

Granted, following up on a hunch for a road bearing a more-common surname might not yield much. Don't, for instance, trouble yourself with the history of Smith Street. But if you run across the less well known surnames in your family tree printed across a street sign, it might be worth your while to check into the history of that road's name.