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.

In the Right Vicinity

Some local histories just resonate with surnames from our family's history. That, according to the history of Richland Township in Fairfield County, is what I've been noticing as I search for signs of my mother-in-law's roots during the early years of Ohio's statehood.

Among the earliest settlers in that vicinity, according to one 1912 book, History of Fairfield County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens, were these: Wiseman, Turner, Stephenson, Ijams. All of these, I already know, fall handily into what some genealogists call the "F.A.N. Club" of my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandmother Elizabeth Howard and her husband, William Ijams. Or, to look at this report from the eyes of another genealogical phrase, "cluster genealogy," those surnames lead us to the right cluster.

To see that cluster a bit more clearly, though, we need to take a detour from our main research goal to explore what brought those families from their previous, distant residences to their new homes in the formative years of Ohio's Fairfield County. In a word, that gathering force was religion.

That same 1912 history book noted that the township—indeed, the whole of Fairfield County—saw "the early organization of religious societies and churches," but the first of such meetings were held before any church buildings could be erected. Those meetings were held "in the log cabins of the settlers."

In another book, Pioneer Period and Pioneer People of Fairfield County, Ohio, published in 1901, author C. M. L. Wiseman noted that the church in question—at least for my mother-in-law's family—was Methodist. Included in a list of those who attended services in that early church prior to 1805 were:

Daniel Stevenson and wife, Isaac and Thomas Ijams, John J. Jackson, John Sunderland, Edward Teal...William Turner.

Perhaps you, as I do, see that cluster of familiar surnames taking shape—the very surnames I've been following as we look for the matrilineal descendants of Elizabeth Howard and her husband, William Ijams.

When attendance overtook building capacity, church meetings were held out of doors in 1803, and then again in 1807, a year said to have drawn over one thousand people to such a "camp meeting." The site of the camp meetings, and the log cabin itself, was noted as "near the old graveyard" and "in sight of the home of Daniel Stevenson." Before we explore further how these surnames intertwine with the daughters of Elizabeth Howard and William Ijams, let's take a step back, tomorrow, to learn a bit more about what that author meant in 1901 when he talked about the old graveyard. 

So There's a Will

 

It can be quite frustrating, when finally locating an ancestor's obituary, to discover that, after paragraphs about the person's virtues and accomplishments, all that was said about the bereaved family members was that, yep, there were family members. No mention of names, frustratingly. If the researcher is lucky, the notice might at least include a count of members in the family.

That was the situation after the 1850 passing of Comfort Ijams Stevenson, the only other daughter of Elizabeth Howard and William Ijams of Fairfield County, Ohio. Since I already knew her husband—Edward Stevenson—had died before that point, my only hope in finding names for the couple's supposed four surviving daughters was to locate his will.

If, that is, he left one.

As it turned out, thanks to this era of increasing digitized resources, his was one of the wills included in a collection at FamilySearch.org. But don't think it was that simple a matter to find it. Entering through the front portal of the website and searching the catalog for Fairfield County court records directly yielded me nothing. Even when I searched with the quite common alternate spelling—Stephenson—nothing came up in response to my query.

Winding my way through the FamilySearch wiki to the broader Ohio probate records category, I once again looked for Edward Stevenson. This time, I was in a collection which was not searchable, but thankfully had enough way-markers to point me in the right direction. The index provided the page number for an entry on Edward Stevenson—yes, spelled that same way—and it was just a hunt and peck matter of tiptoeing my way through the records.

Once at Edward Stevenson's own will, it didn't take long to assure me I had the right man. First mention was his wishes for his "beloved wife Comfort." And among the witnesses to his will was someone identified as F. R. Ijams, possibly Comfort's brother, Frederick R. Ijams.

To the matter at hand, finding the names of the four daughters supposedly alive by the time of Edward Stevenson's will, was my next goal. This was not as straightforward a process as I'd hoped. First named was a daughter identified as Elizabeth Walker (although later listed as Elizabeth Walters), to whom her father gave specific properties, including one at which the Walker family was already residing. Reading further in the will, it appears that her husband might be the man identified as Richard B. Walker, whom Edward Stevenson appointed as executor of his will.

The next daughter named was, by that point, already married and called Lucinda Greer. This is the daughter I already knew about—often listed as Lucinda Grier—and have researched her line of descent.

The third daughter mentioned in Edward's will was apparently not married by the time of the 1844 will, her name being listed as Mary Ann Stevenson. Like the first daughter in Edward's will, this was a name I had not found in any other records, presenting me with another task to complete in tandem with exploration of my mother-in-law's matriline through the results of my husband's mtDNA test.

But what about a fourth daughter? At the time of the 1830 census—the most recent one in which I had been able to find an entry for Edward "Stephenson" in Fairfield County, Ohio—it was apparent that there were four girls included in that household. As we continue to look for further information on the two daughters found today in Edward's will, perhaps we'll encounter clues as to what became of that fourth daughter.