Providence's Progeny

 

On the trail of all the female descendants of my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandmother Elizabeth Howard didn't seem to be that challenging of an assignment. At least that's how it seemed at the beginning. But after running into several daughters whose female offspring birthed only sons—if any children at all—I was beginning to despair of reaching my matriline-mapping goal with that handy mitochondrial DNA test.

Then, I found Providence. And among Providence's progeny, there were three daughters: Elizabeth, Sarah, and Mary Eugenia—not one, but three chances to make progress with my research goal.

Don't assume things will go well for us here, though. Providence, daughter of Elizabeth Howard's daughter Mary Ijams, was married to Thomas Dain, an Indiana man whose death in 1865 came with no documentation that I can find (so far), other than his monument in the Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis.

With Thomas' passing, he left Providence with their youngest daughter—Mary Eugenia—still at home. Born after the 1850 census, which listed her two older sisters, Mary Eugenia did not marry until her 1874 wedding with Jacob Smith.

It's fortunate to have found that record, for the 1900 census revealed exactly what I've been looking for: more daughters among the descendants of Elizabeth Howard. In fact, Mary Eugenia and Jacob had two daughters: Bernice and Myla. Bernice, however, never married. And Myla, soon wife of Frank Merrill Talbot, followed the family pattern by producing three sons for the next generation. No daughters.

Don't think looking to Mary Eugenia's older sisters will help us out in our quest. Her oldest sister Elizabeth's marriage produced one son. Period. And the middle sister, Sarah, has eluded me ever since her disappearance after the 1850 census.

With that, we'll retrace our steps back through the generations until we arrive at the generation of Elizabeth Howard's other daughters. Tomorrow, we'll see if we have better results in following Mary Ijams' sister Rachel, wife of James Turner, back in Fairfield County, Ohio.

Finding Females Before the Fifties

 

Since I realize that caving to the allure of alliteration may leave me wide open to misinterpreted hits from spammers, let me clarify that title: I'm now looking for the females in Walter Teal's family from before the fifties—the 1850s, that is, not their fifties. 

I'm still on the trail of my mother-in-law's matriline, looking for any mtDNA matches, specifically any women descending from her fourth great-grandmother Elizabeth Howard. Elizabeth's daughter Mary Ijams had married Walter Teal in Fairfield County, Ohio, in 1805, but somehow may have disappeared before her husband showed up in the 1840 census in Wabash County, Indiana.

It's hard to tell on those enumerations prior to 1850. While tally marks within age brackets can give us somewhat of a picture of a family's composition, they certainly can't tell us the names of any of those women in the household. But at least the document reveals that there was one possible daughter of Walter and Mary still remaining in the 1840 household: someone between the ages of fifteen and nineteen. Who could it have been?

Stepping back another ten years, Walter's household in the 1830 census had shown two other possible daughters: at that time, both were between the ages of fifteen and nineteen. If they were still alive by the time of the 1850 census, that would mean Mary had at least three daughters we need to find—assuming all three had lived to adulthood.

Fortunately, one of the daughters showed up in a transcription of a record in the Teal family's new home in Indiana. That transcription, a marriage index for Indiana weddings, clearly showed the parents' names as Walter and Mary Teal, but as for the bride's name, it was rendered as either Prudence or Providence. Likewise, the married surname display had problems, but appeared to be Jessup.

That's a start. Another marriage index supplied a bit more of the story. The groom was Jacob N. Shallenberger—or possibly Shallenborg. The bride was listed as Jessup. Apparently, if this was our Walter and Mary's daughter, she was married more than twice.

Sure enough, other documents began to fill in the blanks. Moving to earlier records than Shallenberger, Providence was once married to someone named Jessup. And before that, was married to someone named Thomas Dain. The good news in all of this? I could find that earliest couple in both the 1850 and the 1860 census—complete with the names of all their children.

Especially the daughters.

Where's Walter?

 

When relatives disappear, the natural question arising in a genealogist's mind is: where did they go? Since I've lately been working on the female ancestors comprising my mother-in-law's matriline, thanks to testing that full mitochondrial DNA signature, I can't simply wonder what became of her third great-grandmother's sister Mary Ijams. I need to ask what became of her husband. Thus, my question this week is: where's Walter Teal?

We've already seen that Walter Teal was the man who married Mary. Though the only accessible digitized copy of their marriage record somehow managed to cut off Mary's maiden name, we fortunately have documentation of her receipt of her portion of her father's inheritance—thankfully, received after her marriage to Walter Teal.

Because this detail leaves us researching a woman during the invisible decades for women in the early 1800s, I can only hope I found the right Walter Teal when locating such a name in the 1830 census for Fairfield County, Ohio, the same place where the couple had married twenty five years earlier. But when we turn to the 1840 census to look for Walter's family, there is no mention of this head of household in the place where they had lived for decades. 

However, using the Full Text search at the FamilySearch Labs, it was apparent that Walter's name had been mentioned in a number of deeds in Fairfield County over the years. Perhaps this made me a little less apprehensive of the discovery that there was indeed a Walter Teal in the 1840 census—but not where we thought we'd find him. This time, a Walter Teal showed up in Indiana. Was this our guy?

Once again, the census wasn't really of any help in identifying who else might have been part of Walter's household. We can see from the readout that whoever was in the Teal home—we have no way to know whether they were relatives or, perhaps, farm hands—it was headed by a man between the years of fifty and fifty nine, exactly ten years difference from the report we found back in Ohio for the 1830 census.

The 1840 entry was for a household in Pleasant Township in Wabash County, Indiana. Along with that older man in the Teal household was one between fifteen and nineteen years of age, along with two younger boys, one of whom was five years or younger. The data for the women in the family paint a far different picture than what we had gleaned from the previous enumeration, however. The oldest woman this time was in her thirties. She was accompanied by one other female, aged fifteen through nineteen.

This might have been our Walter, alright, but it certainly couldn't have been his wife Mary. Looking elsewhere for confirmation—or at least explanation of what might have happened in the past ten years—I spotted a General Land Office record for someone named Walter Teal. It was, as I had hoped, for property in Wabash County, Indiana. Thankfully, where his name was to be entered in the document, the actual detail stated: "Walter Teal of Fairfield County, Ohio."

It may be possible that Walter's wife Mary had died before the 1840 census, and that he had remarried. Depending on when he acquired the Indiana property, Mary may have died before he made the decision to leave Ohio—or she may have made the trip with him, then died shortly afterwards. It is my guess that that youngest child in the household could serve as a clue as to how long it had been since Mary's death—if we are unable to locate any death record for her in either state.

In my pursuit of the family's matriline, though, it will be to those possible daughters of Mary that I will turn my attention next. Not only that, but in following the family—hopefully to some point beyond the 1850 census—we can see whether that matriline was carried forward to future generations. 

Duly Documented

 

Admittedly, there is nothing to compare with looking at an age-old document and realizing the signature at the bottom of the page—or even the "X" in its place—belonged to one's own ancestor. Conversely, there is nothing quite like the frustration of reading a digitized copy of an 1804 document and getting to that final line, only to realize the surname of that ancestor didn't quite make it into the picture.

So...was it her? Or was that just wishful thinking?

Despite that being the case in the record of Walter Teal's marriage to Mary Ijams, I didn't have to wait long to find my answer. Thankfully, Mary was one of the unnamed daughters in William Ijams' 1815 will who, after awaiting the slow-moving process of probate to duly run its course, had to sign to acknowledge receipt of her inheritance. Better yet, the probate documents identified her not only as the wife of Walter Teal, but listed her specifically as "formerly Mary Ijams."

I had first made that discovery last year, while researching my mother-in-law's matriline for mtDNA purposes. From that point, though, I've yet to discover what became of Mary and her husband, Walter Teal. Granted, their season of raising a family—if that was part of their life's story—would have fallen to the years before census records named each member of a household. The only information those early enumerations provided would be age ranges and genders. Whether those household teenagers called Mary "mom," I'd have no way of knowing.

Still, without exploring the possible lead, I'd have nothing on this other daughter of my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandmother. Considering that, I think it's time to play genealogy guinea pig again, and test possible leads for Walter and Mary Teal.

Fortunately for us, there was an 1830 census record for a man by that same name—Walter Teal—in the same Ohio county where he had married Mary: Fairfield County. Listed in that household was one man between the ages of forty and forty nine, along with one woman in that same age bracket. In addition, the household included two males between the ages of ten and fourteen, plus another one in his twenties. Of particular interest to me, searching for other descendants from the same matriline, was the entry for one young girl between five and nine years of age, plus two others in their later teen years.

Was this the household of our Walter and Mary? Hard to say, not knowing the date at which Mary might have been born. An 1804 wedding might imply Mary was about eighteen to twenty years of age by that point which, extrapolated out to that 1830 census, would make sense to see her fall within the forty to forty nine year bracket. And the couple certainly had remained in the same county where Mary's parents had settled. But we can never just assume—even in a rural county during its early years of settlement—that there wouldn't be more than one man by the same name. And it's the man's name we would have to rely on during a time period like that. Pick the wrong name twin and we'd be led to mistaken conclusions.

Next week, we'll see whether we can follow Walter Teal through the next decade of his life to learn more about this family, especially to see whether we are chasing the right couple.

Didn't "Daughter Out"

 

It was years ago when I first ran into the phrase, "daughtered out." Perhaps it was during a time when Y-DNA was the preferred—or perhaps only—DNA test used for purposes of genealogy. Following the patriline for Y-DNA meant, of course, that one was following a male line of descent which featured one detail in common for each match: sharing the same surname. The difficulty with trying to piece together a genealogy based on that surname was that, in any given generation, it was possible for a man in that line to not have any sons who could thus pass along the surname. In other words, that man would have "daughtered out."

In my current case, using the mitochondrial DNA test to help in researching the matriline of my mother-in-law, I would have loved it if her ancestors had "daughtered out." However, with aggravating frequency, those women belonging to her matriline often did the opposite: if they had any children at all, the offspring was comprised solely of sons. Very rarely did I see any daughters.

I'm not done yet with my travels through my mother-in-law's matriline. While in the background—where I'm stuck on a dispute over whether her sixth great-grandmother was daughter of Lewis Duvall of colonial Maryland—I'm seeking documents to resolve the genealogical impasse, for purposes of daily posts from this genealogical guinea pig, I've taken to seeking any and all female descendants. And finding very little at all for her mtDNA results.

In many cases, more sons were born to these ancestors than daughters. For those few families which included female descendants, quite a few of those daughters either never married, or had childless marriages. In other cases, a female descendant who married might have had several children, all of whom would be sons. Where were those "daughtered out" families when I needed them?!

I am working my way down the lines of descent for the daughters of Elizabeth Howard, my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandmother. The reasons for this choice of starting point take in the difficulty of locating descendants for Elizabeth's two sisters, Rachel and Sarah. There is more work to do on those searches, but while that is ongoing in the background, following Elizabeth's own daughters seems easier. And easy progress would be encouraging right now.

Elizabeth and her husband, William Ijams, chose to move from the area in Maryland where their ancestors had settled for generations. Their new home was in Fairfield County, Ohio, where William died in the early years of the 1800s. Because their daughter Sarah was in my mother-in-law's direct line, that was one line which I've already checked quite thoroughly. It is Sarah's sisters—Rebecca, Comfort, Rachel, and Mary—whose descendants I need to pursue.

I have yet to find any descendants at all for Rebecca. Comfort, while having four daughters herself, seemed to be blessed with many grandsons, at least for those daughters who married at all. On the other hand, Rachel and Mary, while marrying in the early years of the 1800s in Fairfield County, seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth. For Mary, though, there may be a slight sign of just where she went after disappearing from her home in Ohio—but I can't yet be sure.

You know what that means: I'll have to once again play the genealogical guinea pig and test a hypothesis. For this, we'll need a few days to pursue Mary and her likely husband, Walter Teal, after the date of their 1804 wedding in Fairfield County, Ohio. We'll begin tackling that question tomorrow.