Retracing Those Steps Westward

When reports about an ancestor's mother's maiden name seem to conflict, it's time to entertain the possibility that perhaps there wasn't just one wife and mother. Perhaps there were two. Whoever Simon Rinehart married—either before leaving southwest Pennsylvania for what would soon become the commonwealth of Kentucky, or after arriving in Kentucky—we know one thing: her given name was likely Ann.

But was she a Wise? Or a Wiley? Reports about Simon's daughter Sarah claim her mother was a Wiley. A brief biographical sketch of her brother Jesse claims his mother was a Wise.

In order to determine just who married Simon Rinehart and braved the wilds of a new continent to give birth to his daughter in Kentucky by 1795, we need to first reconstruct the entire community of people who moved west. Perhaps some repeat appearances of specific surnames will reveal clues as to which families would be most likely in-laws to Simon Rinehart—and thus, parents of Simon's daughter Sarah.

We'll start reconstructing the trail with the one standard we know: the family of the man whom Sarah eventually married, James Gordon.

As I've mentioned before, James Gordon was the grandson of John Gordon, whose migrations were fairly easy to trace. After all, we've recently discovered that John was the son of George Gordon, appointed first sheriff of the newly-formed Frederick County, Maryland, in 1748. John and several of his children eventually moved, after the Revolutionary War, from western Maryland to Monongalia County in what is now West Virginia, where his son William married Mary Carroll in 1793.

Immediately after that, William and Mary—as well as others in the Gordon family—moved from Monongalia County to the southwest portion of the state of Pennsylvania. Originally settling in what was Washington County—in the region informally known as Tenmile Country after the waters flowing through the area—the land eventually became part of the newly-formed Greene County. Their son James—the one who eventually married Sarah Rinehart, the identity of whose mother we are still tracing—was born there in 1794, just before the official creation of Greene County in 1796.

Let's see if that echoes any of the migration stories for families with the same surname as Simon Rinehart's as-yet-unidentified wife. We'll start today with a family in the Tenmile Country descended from a man named John Wiley, one which echoes the path taken by the Gordons.

John Wiley—at least, according to the Tenmile Country history—was also born in Maryland, but eventually ended up settling on a branch of the Tenmile Creek. One name mentioned in conjunction with this John Wiley was that of the widow of Samuel Seals, who became John's second wife; Seals being a surname related to the extended Gordon family.

Most interesting about this John Wiley, interjected in his brief biography in The Tenmile Country, was the note, "He joined the migration to Mason County, Kentucky." While that was not the same location as the tax record showing our Simon Rinehart to have lived, briefly, in Bracken County, it was interesting to see that John Wiley's oldest son, Elijah, eventually died in Bracken County, Kentucky. Not only that, but Elijah's wife was also a Seals. Another son, Hiram Wiley, also apparently moved to Bracken County.

Lest we get our hopes up about this John Wiley as a possible father of our mystery mother of Sarah Rinehart—who was born in Kentucky and lived, though only briefly, in Bracken County—let it be noted that while Sarah's mother's birth might well be within the range of possibility as a child of John Wiley, who was born about 1732, none of his ten listed children in The Tenmile Country were named Ann.

Still, where one Wiley moved, perhaps there were others. However, there also were folks in Tenmile Country by the name of Wise—the other possible surname for Sarah's mother. We'll take a look at that possibility on Monday.

Finding Fine-Feathered Friends

Oh, woe is me; I'm seeking non-existent ancestors.

How is it that an unsuspecting researcher (me) could be caught up in a quest to find a man who was never recorded in records in the lands of his forebears—or, worse, was mis-attributed as the son of someone who could never possibly be his father? How do you find such a person?

Perhaps I can blame it on my mother-in-law. After all, this is her line. Remember that John Gordon I so swimmingly could trace back to his early days in Frederick County, Maryland? Well, his grandson James can be implicated for his choice of wife: he it was who married Sarah Rinehart, supposedly born in Kentucky in 1795 to proud parents Simon and Ann Rinehart.

How did a man who lived in Greene County, Pennsylvania, find a potential bride who came from as far away as Kentucky?

Granted, Simon and Ann's daughter likely returned to Pennsylvania after their fling in the fledgling state of Kentucky. After all, Sarah Rinehart's younger brother Jesse was said to have been born in Pennsylvania, so they must have returned to their family's hometown before 1810.

Finding Sarah Rinehart, however—or her parents Simon and Ann—is not getting me any traction in trundling back to a previous generation. So, how to proceed when your research gets in a rut?

Since I already have been stymied with the conflicting stories of just who her dad married—was it Ann Wiley or Ann Wise?—I figured that might be an alternate route for my research to take. Birds of a feather, as they say. Or, to put it in more genealogically-friendly words, I could look for Ann's F.A.N. Club. Were there any Wises or Wileys in Tenmile Country?

You know the drill with the F.A.N. Club theory: people often did things in groups, so it pays to pay attention to the names of the folks in those groups. Migrations of long distances, or any other major changes, often were done by people in groups. Communities were built to stay together, especially near the frontier where strength in numbers could mean the difference between survival and those other, more dire, circumstances.

So our task—should we choose to accept it—is now to see if we can find any indication of families in the neighborhood of our Simon Rinehart, whoever he was, and see if their whereabouts harmonize in any way with Simon's own story. Since Greene County, about the time of the Rinehart family's return from Kentucky, only had about 8,600 residents, chances are likely strong that any Wises or Wileys living there would be connected in some way to the Ann who could have been Simon's wife.

Since I've already entertained the possibility that Simon might have been married twice—once to a Wiley and once to a Wise—it will be beneficial for us to check out both possibilities. And that is exactly what we'll take a look at, starting tomorrow.