To go Deep, or Wide, or Not at All

 

Perhaps this is the genealogist's question: to go deep or wide when researching family lines. At the beginning, for many people, the idea of going deeply into the past seems a compelling goal. How far back can we go? What will we find in the stories of past generations?

The advent of genetic genealogy may have upended the draw of that proposition. After all, a sure-fire way to locate those umpteenth cousins in our tree is to build out the branches of our ancestors' collateral lines.

For the most part, that is where I've focused my time. After all, with upwards of twenty thousand DNA matches—if you count all the distant cousins in the mix—it takes a bushy tree indeed to find a place for each of those cousins. That is mostly the point of my biweekly count, incidentally: keeping track of the expanding family tree and my progress in filling in the blanks.

But when I get to a case like Elizabeth Plummer's—my mother-in-law's sixth great-grandmother—it hardly does me any good to add that ancestor's siblings into my in-laws' tree. Why? Because most DNA tests show matches that are capable of reaching back to the sixth cousin level. That means connecting descendants of fifth great-grandparents—if those cousins even share any genetic material in common at all.

Since it's my husband who stands in as test taker for my mother-in-law's genetic legacy, it would be a rare match indeed that would connect him to his seventh great-grandmother Elizabeth. And examining descendants of Elizabeth's siblings would mean tracing the lines of an eighth great grandparent.

That is the result of using the most widely available DNA test, the autosomal test. If, however, we had used either the Y-DNA test or the mitochondrial DNA test (mtDNA), our reach could be extended even farther. But those tests, in our case, would not apply. For one thing, Elizabeth Plummer lies on my mother-in-law's line of the family, so my husband's Y-DNA results would be of no help there. But for the mtDNA test, we could almost have qualified. The necessary matriline held steady for six generations—but then veered off to that woman's father's line, before returning to that ancestor's paternal grandmother, Elizabeth.

And so, we are left in the nether reaches of genetic genealogy. Choosing to trace the lines of Elizabeth Plummer's siblings would be an exercise chosen simply for the fun of it. With so many other fifth and sixth great-grandparents still a mystery to me, I'd take that as my cue to move on to other family history puzzles.

End of Another Messy Month

 

The month is out, but not the messy project I had planned for January. Perhaps it's a rule: in genealogy, we always bite off more than we can chew, but we don't always realize that predicament at the first bite. Choosing to outline the descendancy of John Carter's two, possibly three, wives couldn't possibly be a project that would fit into thirty one days.

As this often happens for those Twelve Most Wanted projects, at the end of the month I still have far more work to do on the Carters of Virginia. At this stopping point, as usual, I'll outline what still needs to be done for the next time I pick up this research question.

The overarching goal was to seek out those lines of descent which would follow the matriline leading back to John Carter's two documented wives, Sarah Kenyon and Hannah Chew. That would mean charting the daughters of the daughters of those two Carter wives. The goal—in case this project could ever become a viable reality—would be to find eligible descendants willing to take a mitochondrial DNA test to help trace back to the specific Carter wives. I am far from done with that work, meaning that this will be a task to continue behind the scenes.

As I went through this process during January, I noticed one detail. Just as genealogist George Harrison Sanford King had observed in researching the line of descent from first Carter wife Sarah Kenyon—that the Kenyon surname kept appearing as a family name in subsequent Carter generations—I saw the same repetition for the Carter wife for whom marriage records have been elusive. That wife was said to have been named Elizabeth Armistead, and for her likely descendants, that Armistead name seems to appear quite frequently over the generations. Completing the matrilineal line of descent for the supposed Armistead offspring may help clarify that question—though it will also call for examination of the family names which may have been inherited from the other, non-Carter, side of their family.

In the future, the mainstay of this continued research will be a thorough examination of court records for generations to come, in some cases the only way to find mention of the names in each Carter child's own family. This, too, will be a process requiring much time—although the help of technology through such conveniences as FamilySearch's Full Text Search will help expedite this exercise. It will also be a project which requires us to trace some family members as they moved away from their childhood home in Virginia to settle in other states.

For now, we'll close the books on John Carter's family and our exploration of what can be found of his colonial Virginia home and neighborhood in Spotsylvania County. It's time to step into a new month, and the second of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026. 

A Matrilineal Mainstay

 

Though we may have struck out yesterday in our review of possible matrilineal lines of descent for the wives of John Carter of colonial Virginia, there are three Carter daughters yet to review before we close out this month's research project. Those three daughters, all born to John Carter's final wife, Hannah Chew, were: Margaret Chew Carter, Lucy Carter, and Elizabeth Matilda Carter. Our quest is to follow the lines of these Carter daughters' daughters.

Starting today with Margaret Chew Carter, we find an encouraging possibility: this Carter daughter may apparently become our matrilineal mainstay, for she had four daughters of her own. Following Margaret Chew Carter's marriage to Zachariah Taliaferro, the couple welcomed in Sarah Ann, Lucy Hannah, Mary Margaret, and Caroline Virginia.

The good news is that each of those daughters eventually went on to marry and have children of their own.  Sarah Ann married Ozey Robert Broyles and together they raised a large family, including two daughters: Margaret Cornelia and namesake daughter Sarah Ann. But the genealogy happy dance stops right there. Margaret Cornelia, wife of Samuel Maverick van Wyck, produced four children—but the one daughter in that family died before reaching five years of age. And while her sister Sarah Ann went on to marry William Dickson Williams, her three daughters appear to have all died unmarried and childless.

That, however, was the result of my search through only the first of Margaret Chew Carter's four daughters. I'm still in the process of reviewing the lines of descent for her second daughter, Lucy Hannah, who became wife of David Sloan Taylor. For Lucy, her large family included three daughters. Likewise for her sister Mary Margaret, wife of Richard Franklin Simpson, for whom at least one daughter had daughters of her own.

I'll continue working my way through this line of descent from Margaret Chew Carter. I find myself cheering, each time I discover a daughter had daughters of her own—fervently hoping that matriline continues down to the present time.

There are a lot of reasons to hope for the matriline of Margaret Chew Carter. If we look beyond her family to those of her remaining sisters, we don't see many good signs. Margaret Chew Carter's younger sister, Lucy, became second wife of Burton Taliaferro, brother to Margaret Chew Carter's husband Zachariah, but Lucy had no children at all. And the youngest Carter daughter, Elizabeth Matilda, apparently died young and unmarried.

While the hope may be to find enough Carter descendants interested in and willing to participate in a mitochondrial DNA test, charting these lines of matrilineal descent may prove to eliminate any chances of exploring just how many wives John Carter actually had, and what their identities might have been. Granted, the final node in each line of descent—the eligible mtDNA test volunteers—can be either sons or daughters, but the catch is that, from that point up the line, each generation needs to be represented by a woman who was a direct matrilineal descendant of one of John Carter's wives.

There still is a long way to go before that tree outlining the possible test candidates is complete. This weekend, reviewing my biweekly count will tell the tale on progress on this Carter line. While I keep hoping for family lines which have "daughtered out," it will certainly be helpful to have outlined the entire line of Carter descendants, both sons and daughters.

Following the Descendant Trail

 

Working our way through the lines descending from my fifth great-grandfather, John Carter, one detail is apparent: he had a lot of daughters. That, as it turns out, suits my purposes just fine, as I'd like to lay out a diagram of those lines of descent from the daughters of John Carter's daughters. To be more specific, I'm seeking to outline the matrilineal descent of John Carter's wives—whether there were two wives, or three.

Right now, I'm working on those Carter daughters for whom the mother's identity was unclear. Some attribute those daughters' line to be children of Elizabeth Armistead—although I'm in plenty of company when I say I have yet to find confirmation of John Carter's marriage to anyone of that name. 

Since this is the last week of the month and time is running short for this first selection of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026, I am "speed dating" my way through the remainder of John's daughters. Yesterday, we discussed Martha Carter, wife of Robert Goodloe, from whose story—and legal documents—we deduced that she was survived by no descendants, male or female. Today, we'll touch briefly on the next youngest daughter, Frances.

For Frances' story, I'm indebted to the advanced work done by fellow blogger Patrick Jones of Frequent Traveler Ancestry, who recently included several posts detailing legal documents outlining the descendants of this particular Carter daughter. Beginning with the will of Frances herself—by then, wife of Rice Curtis and resident of Davidson County, Tennessee—Patrick has provided links and analysis of several other legal documents enabling us to sketch out the lines of descent from Frances Carter, including, as Patrick observed, several female descendants. 

From that point, the next step is to outline in a genealogical format the lines connected back to John Carter's wives, specifically seeking those descendants following each wife's matriline. Along the way, proper documentation needs to be attached to this pedigree chart to verify the lines of descent. Since we've begun with John Carter, whose own last legal document was a codicil issued in 1783, we've got a long way to go to bring our search into the era of "modern" records. Even arriving at the 1850 census, which marked the first time each member of a household was listed by name, represents a wandering search through the document wilderness prior to that time, a stretch of nearly seventy years.

This part of a research project devolves into the tedium of genealogy. As I've said often, it's rarely something to write home about. But in Frances Carter's case, we see some changes. Though her father and his subsequent wife, Hannah Chew, remained until his death in his home in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, Frances and her husband moved to Tennessee, to a location near current day Nashville. From there, some of John Carter's grandchildren and great-grandchildren began migrating westward, some of them toward the northern portion of the midwest, others toward the south.

And there were daughters. Several daughters. This branch of the Carter descendants will surely keep us busy behind the scenes for some time to come.

Scorecard: The Carter Girls' Team

 

Let's just say it's halftime—or time for the seventh inning stretch, depending on your preferred sports analogy—and it's time to cheer on the girls' team. In other words, I'm still in the process of finding daughters of daughters of daughters...et cetera...of my fifth great-grandfather John Carter of Spotsylvania County, Virginia, and I want to take a snapshot of the possibilities for pursuing a mitochondrial DNA project.

Let's review what we already know: John Carter had eleven daughters. What we don't know for sure is which daughter was born to which of John's wives. That's the hoped for big reveal if we can put together an mtDNA project for this Carter line.

If I follow the argument of George Harrison Sanford King, then John had two daughters by his first wife, Sarah Kenyon. Those two daughters would be Elizabeth, who married Owen Thomas, and Ann, wife of William Heslop.

So far, I've begun tracing the generations of Elizabeth's three daughters. As for Sarah Kenyon's second daughter, Ann, wife of William Heslop, I have only located one daughter, who apparently died unmarried and childless. Following my post on that branch of the Carter family, thanks to a comment by Patrick Jones of Frequent Traveler Ancestry, I see he has already been a way-finder for court records regarding the Heslop side of the family, so that will join my Carter to-do list for the final week of this month's Twelve Most Wanted pursuit.

That would leave four other daughters who were not children of the other documented wife of John Carter, Hannah Chew. Those four daughters—in some books, children attributed to Elizabeth Armistead—were Martha, wife of Robert Goodloe; Frances, wife of Rice Curtis; Sarah, wife of William Sutton; and Margaret, wife of John Marshall.

At this point, our girls' team scorecard wobbles. For Martha, I have no children listed yet, though I see she likely died around 1786. Frances has been more widely documented, and I look forward to tracing her five Curtis daughters. Sarah left three Sutton daughters, one of whom, also named Sarah, had three daughters of her own. And, pulling in the opposite direction, daughter Margaret's union with John Marshall produced seven sons—zip for the daughters' score there.

The remaining five daughters were documented as children of John's wife Hannah Chew. The oldest, Mary Beverley, became wife of Revolutionary War Patriot Richard Stevens, of which one daughter, Judith, is acknowledged in the D.A.R. website. John Carter's second daughter by his wife Hannah Chew, an ancestor in my direct line named Margaret Chew Carter, married Zachariah Taliaferro and raised a family of four daughters, each of whom raised two daughters of their own—with the exception of daughter Lucy, who claimed three daughters. Third daughter of Hannah Chew, Judith Carter, married Joseph Sutton, but her one daughter died young. Fourth daughter, Lucy, married Burton Taliaferro, but died childless. The youngest of Hannah Chew's daughters, Elizabeth Matilda, died young and likely unmarried, though I've seen conflicting reports concerning her.

As the generations multiply, it's apparent that I've bitten off more than I can research for one month. This, however, is a necessary start. With a triage-style approach to this final week of January, we'll see how many generations we can cover before we turn the calendar page over to a new month and a new project.

A final comment before closing today's notes. Thanks to those who have recently left helpful comments. I always like to leave a reply to comments, but it appears that Blogger is going through a technical glitch similar to what it had experienced a few years ago: I am unable to actually post a reply to your comments. I will try to acknowledge these helpful suggestions within the text of the next day's post, if possible—Kat, your suggestion yesterday about Nancy as a possible nickname for Ann is appreciated; I had wondered the same thing myself—or may try to add that reply as a new comment, if it is possible. 

Cheering for the Girls' Team

 

With a goal this month to research the matrilineal descendants of my fifth great-grandfather John Carter, I'm beginning to feel like the cheerleading mom of a family large enough to field two teams for a softball tournament. Do I cheer for the boys' team? Or the girls' team?

This month, the answer—genealogically speaking—is: I'm cheering for the girls' team. 

I started out, finding what documentation I could for each of John Carter's daughters. This is not easy, considering the time frame we are working with, spanning much of the eighteenth century. I jump-started my search by selecting as my first attempt the granddaughter mentioned in John Carter's own will: Sarah Kenyon Thomas, whose mother was John's daughter Elizabeth.

Keeping in mind the risks inherent in relying on published genealogies, I nevertheless defaulted to using some of these to guide in discovering names of potential husbands for each of these female Carter descendants. Sure enough, there was a mention of Sarah Kenyon Thomas as second wife of a Virginia widower named James Frazer—this, according to genealogist John Goodwin Herndon's privately published 1951 book, The Herndons of the American Revolution.

From this union, fortunately, I found three daughters to trace, and began my long slide down to the present era, document by document, daughter by daughter. I began this next iteration by focusing first on the Frazer daughter with a sure-bet given name: Sarah Kenyon Frazer, whose own marriage and family yielded four daughters.

Onward I searched, until I reached the present time, and a daughter born in 1939. I had made it to the brink of the generations of our own memory, and was poised to uncover the identity of someone eligible to  participate in a Carter matrilineal project, should it ever become a reality.

As often happens in these attempts, that was where I ran into a matrilineal roadblock. Unfortunately, that daughter tragically died in an automobile accident as a teenager. Her only sibling: a brother.

There are some families we research which, over generations, clearly present as families of sons of sons. Thankfully, what I'm seeing of the Carter family history shows me that there were several daughters in the branches extending over several generations who may still permit us a chance at this mtDNA experiment.

At this point, to be able to launch such an experiment will still involve much preparatory work simply building and documenting each line of descent, from each of John Carter's wives forward in time to living matrilineal descendants.  

Not All Daughters Lead to Matrilines

 

It seemed like such a straightforward, streamlined solution: to determine which of John Carter's children belonged to which of his wives, start with the daughters. Then, since my fifth great-grandfather John Carter lived and died in Virginia in the 1700s, trace the descendancy of his many daughters, seeking to focus specifically on the daughters' daughters' daughters, on down to the present time, at which point we could find willing Carter descendants of those matrilines to take a mitochondrial DNA test and help us compare results.

There's a problem with such an approach. Yes, of course, there is that one issue of finding eligible descendants who would be willing to participate in such a DNA project. But that is not the problem which concerns me. Where I'm stuck is this: not all ancestral daughters would eventually lead to matrilines. Somewhere in that long line of generations, John Carter's descendants could experience the exact opposite of what genetic genealogists call "daughtering out."

While I'm still stymied with actually documenting the genealogies of all of John's children, I did find one way to do a quick and dirty assessment of such a situation. I turned to the ThruLines tool at Ancestry to see whether, even at the level of fifth great-granddaughter, my autosomal DNA test could reveal genetic connections to this distant Carter ancestor.

At the level of fifth great-grandparent, that is the most distant level the ThruLines readout will extend. Sure enough, there in my results was an entry for my own DNA matches who join me in linking back to John Carter. 

There were seventeen of those Carter DNA matches. The closest of them shared a puny nineteen centiMorgans with me—an understandable amount, considering the distance of the relationship—and the smallest shared amount registered at only six cMs, hardly a measure generating confidence.

Still, my purpose was to do a quick assessment of my theory that finding matrilines direct from the current generation back to the Carter wives might be a challenge. Looking at the proposed lines according to ThruLines, here is what I found: 

• One match to Mary Beverley Carter, through her son Richard C. Stevens
• Five matches to Margaret Carter (half sister), all through her son Carter Marshall
• Six matches to Sarah Carter (half sister), four through son John Sutton, two through son Norborne Sutton

As you can see, none of those matches came strictly through a matrilineal line of descent, foiling our project's purpose. 

Looking even further, checking the ThruLines entries specifically for the wife of John Carter from whom I'm descended, Hannah Chew, there are a total of fifty nine DNA matches currently entered in this category. For one of them, Carter daughter Judith showed six matches to me, but three come through Judith's son Joseph Sutton, two from son Stephen Sutton, and one more from son John Sutton. Not even among these can I find lines of descent from any of John Carter's granddaughters. I, myself, am such an example, as the matriline leading from Hannah Chew to me stops with my second great-grandfather, Thomas Taliaferro Broyles.

In a general exploration of all of John Carter's grandchildren, I spotted further problems from documentation. Some daughters did have daughters of their own—but of those I've found so far, some died young, or, having survived and married, had only sons. I did find one daughter who had a daughter—but I find no record that she even married, let alone had daughters of her own.

Granted, ThruLines relies on the trees of those who tested their DNA at Ancestry. There can be mistakes. But even the old published genealogies some people rely on contain errors, too. Seeking actual documentation, as we've already discovered, can reveal details not included in some genealogies.

To complicate matters, researching ancestors from the 1700s is far easier when we are looking for ancestral grandfathers than when we are looking for their wives. Women from earlier centuries seemed almost invisible, adding this one challenge to our quest to trace the matrilineal descent of John Carter's wives. Still, if someone doesn't build the tree, we'll never arrive at the answer we're seeking.

Finding Daughters of Daughters

 

Problem: how to find whatever became of daughters when looking at the descendants of a colonial Virginia ancestor. That's the task I'll be facing this month when I ask that very question regarding my fifth great-grandfather John Carter.

More to the point: I'll specifically be looking for daughters of John Carter's daughters. Beyond that point, I'll extend the search to those granddaughters' daughters, and then some.

If you sense a matriline pursuit here, you are on to what my goal will be for this month. The problem is, first, determining just how many wives John Carter actually had. If you look at a privately-published genealogy book written by the husband of one of my distant cousins (also a Carter descendant by virtue of John's daughter Margaret Chew Carter, wife of Zachariah Taliaferro), you'd read that there were two wives: Elizabeth Armistead and Hannah Chew. Another published genealogy asserted the same.

There are other documented indications suggesting that the spousal count was actually three. That, as it turned out, was one of the questions I grappled with the last time I dug into the Carter family history in 2024. The mentions of grandchildren in some key extended family members' wills points to a third wife, who also had a daughter. But which daughters belonged to which mother? Records from that time period in the 1700s are scarce.

There is, of course, a modern research tool now available to us, especially suited for use in specific questions such as mine. If we want to determine which Carter children belonged to which of John Carter's wives, we can simply follow the genetic record. But which genetic record becomes key.

In a case like mine, where John Carter was my fifth great-grandfather, it would be difficult to isolate a genetic segment of reasonable size and confirm that that strand was specifically inherited from that ancestor—and shared with distant cousins in my own generation. Worse—as is the case with one Carter descendant I know—the relationship could be more distant than even my own, hampering the use of autosomal DNA testing even further.

There are other DNA tests with a more powerful reach, of course, and they are beginning to come into play in questions such as that of our John Carter. When I last explored questions about John Carter's line two years ago, I mentioned one study using Y-DNA to examine his own relationship to other Carter men in colonial Virginia. This study I became aware of, thanks to that Carter descendant I just mentioned, Patrick Jones, who included findings about this Carter family in his blog, Frequent Traveler Ancestry.

Thanks to Patrick's discovery of wills and legal documents on this Carter family, it has become quite clear that there was a wife whose name had not been included in those old Carter genealogies. And with the apparent question concerning which Carter descendants belonged to which of John Carter's wives, there is another powerful DNA test which can be called into play: the mitochondrial DNA test (mtDNA). 

In a post last August, Patrick outlined the possibility for such a project, and shared an example of a similar study which was reported in the Spring 2024 edition of the Journal of Genetic Genealogy.

In order to explore use of such a test project for our research question, it would require willing subjects who could claim one specific line of descent: a daughter of a daughter of a daughter reaching back to John Carter's wives. Proposing specific matrilines through documentation would be a first step in isolating possible project participants. Though piecing together that sort of pedigree may prove difficult, I certainly would like to see such a study become a reality.

Maybe This will be the Year

 

At the dawning of a new year, do you ever get the feeling that maybe, just maybe, this will be the year? Sometimes, that is the case with me, but not this year. When I look through my Twelve Most Wanted for each of the past six years, I see some remaining on my list who have tenaciously clung to that "most recalcitrant" category. They refuse to be found.

Among such a list for my father-in-law's ancestors is his great-grandmother Anna Flanagan. With a compelling story—and the saved ephemera to support it—she is one ancestor who stubbornly resists being put in her place, at least in the family tree.

Since Anna Flanagan's place is on my father-in-law's matriline, how I wish he were still alive to participate in DNA testing. A mitochondrial DNA test could at least provide guidance in this quest to isolate the right Flanagan family back in County Limerick. There is, however, hope that autosomal DNA testing can provide some guidance regarding this woman who was second great-grandmother to my husband—and at least one current DNA match who is a direct descendant of a Flanagan line.

Last year has been the only time I've tried to tackle this Flanagan line. Despite that attempt, I wasn't able to resolve the question of who Anna's parents and siblings might have been—other than her unmarried brother who also migrated to Chicago as she did. However, improvement in analytical tools coupled with possible expanded record availability back in Ireland may provide the tipping point to finally enable me to find the right place in the family tree for Anna Flanagan this coming August, as the eighth of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026.

Some Lines are Long . . .

 

There are some lines in my family tree which extend through multiple researched generations—my matriline, for instance, where I've managed to trace that mother's mother's line just over the divide from the 1700s to the last quarter century of the 1600s. On the other hand, some family lines are, well, frustratingly stunted.

One branch off my matriline falls in that latter category. While it was a bit of a struggle, I was able to figure out the parents of my orphaned second great-grandmother Mary Elizabeth Rainey, using the mitochondrial DNA test in tandem with the usual autosomal test available at so many genetic genealogy companies. From that step onward, progress on researching my matriline went smoothly.

Her father's line? Well, that's another story.

That story, as it turned out, left me with a name, a few dates and locations, and not much else. Mary Elizabeth's father was likely a Virginia man named Thomas Firth Rainey, who made it to Oglethorpe County, Georgia, by early adulthood. There, in 1818, he married Mary Elizabeth's mother, a Georgia-born Taliaferro descendant for whom Mary Elizabeth was named.

After that date followed several children, last of whom was Mary Elizabeth, herself. Most of those collateral lines I have not been able to trace, but thankfully, there have been a few which have yielded confirmation through autosomal DNA test results that I am on the right track for this orphaned baby sister's line.

As for her father, Thomas Firth Rainey, I still don't know much more about him than his date of death in Coweta County, Georgia. What I would like to know about this third selection of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026 is the identity of his own parents. Since Thomas was born about 1796, this search—if successful—will put me on a trail to wander back through the years of the American Revolution to records regarding his parents, possibly even during the British colonial era. If the door opens in this brick wall Rainey line, it may also lead me to collateral lines whose descendants number among my unexplained DNA matches.

For this March's research focus for my Twelve Most Wanted, Thomas Firth Rainey will either be a brick wall stubbornly refusing to yield to probing, or be one ancestor whose life's opened door will lead to multiple additional discoveries. With the many new tools technology has gifted us, I suspect research on Thomas Rainey's ancestors may see that more successful latter result. 

Six is All we Get

 

If you are looking for clues to help break through brick walls, a surefire way to overcome research roadblocks is to look to DNA. In the case of my father-in-law's great-grandmother Anna Flanagan and her mysterious fleeing husband Stephen Malloy, however, six DNA clues is all we get. Worse, there are no guesses on the ThruLines tool as to who their parents might have been. Nobody knows, apparently—at least, nobody who has already tested their DNA.

Of those six Flanagan and Malloy DNA matches we get, however, none is a distant relative. All matches descend from Anna's only daughter Catherine, who eventually became the wife of Chicago cop John Tully. With Catherine's six children, though, the possibilities are still limited. Only three married and had children: William, Mary Monica, and Agnes, my father-in-law's mother.

From those three children came the descendants who eventually became my husband's DNA matches. But even that became a limited resource. Looking at the possibilities, I began to wonder whether using a different form of DNA testing—mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA for short—might help uncover clues about Anna Flanagan Malloy's Irish past.

Here were the possibilities. From William came his only child, one daughter whose frail constitution didn't prohibit her from having children of her own, but each of those granddaughters of William chose to become nuns, perhaps inspired by the sobering loss of their mother. Agnes, the baby of Catherine Malloy Tully's family, raised six healthy children—five sons and one intrepid daughter whose only child was a son; again, no resource for possible mtDNA testing. But Mary Monica was a different story.

Mary Monica had one of those storybook romances from that bygone era. The family's doctor, who lived down the street and was far more a part of the local community than what we experience in current times, mentioned that his brother in Ohio had unexpectedly lost his wife and mother of his two young children, a toddler daughter and infant son. Would Mary Monica consider...?

The answer was yes, and Mary Monica set out from her home in bustling Chicago to a lifetime in a far different setting, that of rural Perry County, Ohio. From that union with widower Dennis McGonagle came nine children, all with different stories to share of the lives which unfolded after that move.

Four of those six DNA matches come from that same storybook romance. Two of those four are actively researching their roots and have been in touch with me to compare notes as we struggle with that brick wall impasse of Anna Flanagan and her husband Stephen Malloy. And though he may not realize it, another DNA match is the grandson of the Tully descendant who had, in a past generation, become the designated family recipient of the original letter from Stephen to Anna on the eve of his unexplained flight from Ireland to the New World, just before his disappearance. (A poor photocopy of that original letter is all that's left to witness that original goodbye between husband and wife.)

Meanwhile, what can a researcher do? I keep watching the autosomal DNA results at each of the companies where we have tests—and hope a matrilineal descendant of Anna might be willing to take a mitochondrial DNA test.

And I keep adding to the family tree in hopes of finding more distant cousins, especially those whose roots may reach back a generation before Stephen and Anna. After all, in the past two weeks, I've documented 395 more family connections on my in-laws' tree, which now has 40,615 individuals. And though the DNA matches come dribbling in at about two or three for each biweekly period, perhaps someday, one match will make that connection we've been waiting for.    

Another Month, Another Ancestor

 

Some researchers may set out a single research question and wrestle it to the death, rather than give up gracefully when lacking access to records. In my case, I set a time limit to each research plan, knowing I am playing with hard-to-find ancestors. A few years ago, I designed a plan I call my Twelve Most Wanted—those twelve making up a list of the hard-to-find relatives I would devote one month each to pursuing for the coming year.

To further organize my research approach, I also divided up the year so that I would equitably pursue those ancestors: three months each for my mother's line, my father's line, and then each of my in-laws' ancestors.

Today marks the shift from the search for my father-in-law's ancestors to those of my own father. With that shift, we move from the stress of lack of records in Ireland for famine-era immigrants to the stress of having to decipher records in a language I don't speak and which appears to have far too many consonants per each vowel for my English-speaking mind.

With the start of October, that means we will now spend time exploring whatever records can be found from a place nearly six thousand miles from my home, written in a language which, for me, could just as well have been from a different universe. We'll head to Poland—virtually, of course—and see if we can find anything new about my second great-grandmother Franziska Olejniczak.

To pinpoint details more accurately, we'll be searching for information on my father's maternal grandmother's own mother. If I were fortunate enough to have a relative in this matriline willing to volunteer for a mitochondrial DNA test—an mtDNA test, as some people abbreviate the long name for the mother's mother's mother's ancestral line—perhaps I could learn more about the maternal side of Franziska Olejniczak's family, but I'll have to be satisfied with results from my own autosomal DNA test. That result, though I've waited for years to see increasing numbers, has only drawn in eight matches—all of whom are cousins I already have charted on paper. More are likely out there, but lacking the means to draw connections with previous generations in a foreign country, I have no way yet of knowing.

Tomorrow, we'll take a quick peek at what I already know about Franziska Olejniczak and her family line. Then we'll formulate a plan for next steps to take, in hopes of pushing that family tree further out—at least in search of more collateral lines and, eventually, distant cousins.

Another One Who Didn't "Daughter Out"

 

If there is anything a researcher in search of matrilineal descendants wouldn't want to see, it would be to discover that the line of interest didn't "daughter out." That, however, is exactly what unfolded as I looked at what became of the two daughters of Sarah Mitchell. Sarah, if you'll recall, was herself a daughter of the recently-discovered extra matrilineal descendant, Rosanna Jackson Mitchell, who in turn was daughter of my mother-in-law's third great-grandmother Sarah Ijams Jackson.

With that youngest daughter of that newly-discovered matriline, Sarah Mitchell, I was at first elated to discover she had had two daughters of her own. Anna Nugent was the oldest of Sarah's daughters, born in 1881 in Chickasaw County, Iowa, where Sarah's parents had originally settled after their move from Ohio. 

After her widowed mother moved the family to nearby Wright County, Anna met and married a twenty eight year old railroad man from Indiana by the name of Orville S. Carr. Their wedding was performed by a Justice of the Peace and recorded in Wright County on December 12, 1900.

As had many of the rest of Anna's family, Anna and Orville Carr moved from Iowa to California. They can be found in the 1910 census in San Joaquin County, on Roberts Island, just outside the city of Stockton, along with their two sons, Cecil and Leo. Ten years later, Anna, though still listed as married, had moved with her children to live with her mother in nearby Sacramento County. Though she now was mother to three children, not a one of them was a daughter. Checking her obituary, published only months after her mother's passing in 1939, we can see that Anna was confirmed as having been survived by three sons: in addition to Cecil and Leo, there was third son Bernard. No daughters.

Anna died at the home of her sister in Roseville, Placer County. Her obituary mentioned that she had resided with her sister for the past three months. It is quite possible that illness obligated her to reside near someone who could care for her in her last months of life.

Her sister, Mary Elizabeth, had married someone before 1918 who was alternately referred to as Thomas F. or Francis T. Harrigan. Though this will come as no surprise to learn at this point, Mary's 1947 obituary confirmed that this daughter of our matriline also died leaving only sons: Virgil and George Harrigan. Where were those daughters we were hoping to find in that next generation?

Striking out on our matrilineal tour with this youngest daughter of Rosanna Jackson Mitchell, Sarah Mitchell Nugent, we still have one other option among Rosanna's daughters: the middle daughter Martha. Tomorrow, we'll see whether we can hold out hope for potential mtDNA matches from any descendants of Martha Mitchell.

About Sarah

 

Sometimes a bird-in-hand moment makes for better research progress than searching for a more advantageous starting point. Right now, that's my situation with Rosanna Jackson Mitchell's youngest daughter Sarah. While I am not sure about the other two Mitchell daughters, Sarah was the one who was most findable, so we'll look at a few details about Sarah to start us down our path of exploring this newly-found matrilineal descent from my mother-in-law's third great-grandmother, Sarah Howard Ijams.

While it is true that Sarah Howard Ijams' newly found daughter Rosanna had at least three daughters, Rosanna's youngest daughter, presumably named Sarah after her maternal grandmother, could be found in every federal census record from the one following her 1862 birth to the one just preceding her 1939 death—something I can't exactly say for the other two. Just those documents alone tell quite a bit of this youngest Mitchell daughter's life story. Whether this daughter had daughters of her own to continue that matriline to the next generation will be our task to discover today.

Born in Chickasaw County, Iowa, Sarah's life remained in that same county for decades afterwards. She appeared with her father in the 1870 census after her (presumed) mother's death in 1862. By 1880, she had been married to Arthur Nugent for nearly three years and already had a son named William. While the gap left by the loss of the 1890 census cost us some missing segments of Sarah's story, with the 1900 census, we can see Sarah listed as a widow with six children, by then living in Wright County, Iowa.

Even bigger changes awaited Sarah in the subsequent decade, for she and several of her children moved from Iowa to California. The 1910 census showed her living in Sacramento with her youngest three children. There she remained for the 1920 census, as well. It was only by the time of the 1930 census that Sarah, still in Sacramento County, had moved to live with her son Francis and his growing family.

One specific detail jumps to our attention when examining all those census records: the fact that Sarah, youngest daughter of Rosanna Jackson Mitchell, had daughters of her own. That detail resonates, as our purpose in this exploration of the Mitchell family is to trace all possible lines of descent from the matriline tying Rosanna's daughters to the daughters in my mother-in-law's own ancestry. According to Sarah Mitchell Nugent's obituary, she had two married daughters to survive her: Anna, wife of Orville S. Carr, and Mary Elizabeth, wife of Francis T. Harrigan.

Our next task, then, will be see if we can trace that same matriline through yet another generation, in search of possible matches to the mtDNA test results representing my mother-in-law's own line. 

Three Chances — Maybe

 

The research task this month has been to follow the matriline leading from my husband to his mother, to her mother, and on up the line from daughter to mother through the generations. The reason for this search has been to sketch out the possible other descendants of that as-yet-unknown matriarch to determine the connection between my husband and his mtDNA matches.

Finding yet another ancestral sister in that matriline has opened up possibilities to help determine just how these mtDNA matches connect to my mother-in-law's line. This month, we discovered another sister of my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother, a woman born in Ohio about 1821 by the name of Rosanna Jackson. Having found her, I discovered Rosanna had married Walter Mitchell, and the couple eventually had three daughters: Mary, Martha, and Sarah. But before you assume that gives me three chances to find the path to those matrilineal matches, there is one caveat I need to introduce: youngest daughter Sarah was most certainly daughter of Rosanna's husband Walter Mitchell, but we'll have to look closer at the records to see whether she was actually Rosanna's own daughter.

Why? Because about the time Sarah was born, Rosanna had died. At least according to her headstone, Rosanna had died in Iowa on October 14, 1862. According to the earliest census in which I can find Sarah's entry, the U.S. Census for 1870, Sarah was listed as eight years of age, giving a year of birth around 1862. But in that enumeration, we also realize that the wife in the Mitchell household was not Rosanna, but another wife by the name of Bridgett. Since Bridgett was sixty eight years of age at that same time, it is unlikely that she would have been the mother of Sarah, but a lot can happen in the undocumented years in between decennial enumerations—not to mention reporting errors and other possible recording mishaps. I'd feel more confident in that assertion of Sarah's birth to Rosanna in 1862 if I could find records affirming that maternal connection.

Another problem with the assumption that we have three chances to locate possible matrilineal matches through Rosanna's line lies with the identity of oldest daughter Mary. While Mary appeared in the 1860 census as an eight year old in the Mitchell household in Chickasaw County, Iowa, she was not listed in the subsequent census. True, by the time of the 1870 census, Mary could have been married and starting a household of her own, so it is no surprise to see her missing from her father's household. But there was one other troubling clue, and it came inscribed on her mother's headstone.

If Mary Mitchell, born in Ohio in 1852, was one and the same as the "Mary G." listed on Rosanna Mitchell's headstone, she apparently died in December of 1862. Thus, no possibility of any children—let alone daughters—from Rosanna's daughter Mary. Admittedly, as many families of the time did, Walter and Rosanna could have named a subsequent daughter by that same name, and if so, we can still search for a descendant named Mary. I'll leave that possibility open, but I tend to doubt that was so, based mainly on Rosanna's own death about that time.

Those discoveries leave us with two main tasks in searching through this matrilineal connection: determine whether baby Sarah was indeed daughter of Rosanna, and search for signs of any other sister named Mary Mitchell. Once we clarify those two details, we'll be off to start building a descendancy chart for each of Rosanna's remaining daughters, whoever they turn out to be.  

Still Looking for Daughters

 

Discovering a previously-missed daughter in the Ijams line I'm working on this month put another task on my research to-do list. Daughters mean possible connections to my mother-in-law's matriline, and the discovery this month of another daughter for Sarah Ijams and John Jay Jackson means more work ahead.

Sarah Ijams was my mother-in-law's third great-grandmother. As for DNA significance, Sarah was ancestral to my mother-in-law's matriline, which means any of her daughters could have passed along that same mitochondrial DNA signature. In the case of that newly-realized daughter, Rosanna Jackson, her marriage to Walter Mitchell produced at least three possibilities: her daughters Mary, Martha, and Sarah.

Our task this week will be to explore the lines of descent for each of those three daughters, looking particularly at the daughters of the next generation, those girls born to Mary, Martha, or Sarah. Once we find any candidates, we'll proceed with the same process for the next generation, and then the generation following that, looking only at daughters of daughters.

Once we arrive at any remaining daughters in that long line of female-only descent, the next step will be to see whether any connect to the mtDNA matches we have for my husband's own mtDNA test. Remember, though we are restricting our search to daughters of daughters, mothers do pass down their mtDNA signature to their sons, as well—it's just that sons cannot pass that same result to any of their children.

Thus, though we may need to peek at some genealogical clues for Rosanna and Walter Mitchell's sons, that would only be to guide us regarding their sisters—such as married names. Other than that, we'll need to be sure to keep strictly on task exploring those candidates who can pass along Rosanna's matrilineal code.

There's Always Something

 

When I hear people say that they are "finished" building their family tree, I always have to re-translate that idea in my own mind. Someone like that might have tired with the process of searching for ancestors, but you and I know there is always something—or someone—more to find. Whether that is owing to a new insight regarding an intractable mystery ancestor, or revelation of a previously missing clue, new discoveries bring more research possibilities. 

It will be no surprise to learn that, in the past two weeks, I've added 348 names to my in-laws' tree, which now holds documentation for a total of 34,831 individuals. Since I've been concentrating on my mother-in-law's Ijams ancestry—the descendants and, hopefully, the ancestry of her fourth great-grandfather, William Ijams—progress had been hampered as I tried to push backwards to previous generations specifically using documented resources. But then, a surprise discovery thanks to the ThruLines tool at Ancestry.com broke opened an entirely new source of distant cousins—and another matrilineal route to explore for mtDNA purposes.

Following that, another surprise discovery that I may share ancestral Broyles connections with a fellow member of our local genealogical society has sent both of us on a chase to discover just how close that connection might be. Since our most recent common ancestor may point us to the level of seventh cousin or possibly a connection more distant, it's no surprise to see that the initial sketches of the connection have already added an unexpected sixty names to my own family tree, which now contains 38,366 names. And even though my research goal this month is to focus on the Ijams line in my mother-in-law's family, I'll continue working on this Broyles project behind the scenes. It's so fun to discover our friends and neighbors can also be relatives.  

Missed an Entire Branch

 

Drove right by that fork in the road, I did. Didn't even see it. The sense of being blind to something so obviously staring me in the face can be startling to realize. And that, essentially, is how I felt when I discovered I had missed an entire branch of my mother-in-law's family tree.

That "fork in the road" was an additional daughter whose life story fell into the cracks in a century when married women were almost as invisible as they were as unmarried daughters. Being born, marrying, and dying all before the 1850 U.S. Census could have called any attention to their existence, these women can be hard to find on paper. That is pretty much what happened to William Ijams' granddaughter Rosanna.

Born to one of William's youngest daughters—Sarah, wife of John Jay Jackson—Rosanna arrived during the early years of Ohio statehood. Since she was born about 1821 and married in 1840, I had entirely missed her existence. It was only thanks to a DNA test at Ancestry.com—and a tip from the ThruLines tool there—that one of Rosanna's descendants showed up as a match to my husband, beginning the head-scratching process of examining available documents in hindsight.

Perhaps because the process began with a DNA test, it made sense to bolster the data I'd need for any future possible cousin matches. Since that discovery, I've been working on adding all the descendants of Rosanna and her husband, Walter Mitchell, as collateral lines on my mother-in-law's family tree. My real focus at this point is the matriline leading up to Rosanna, since her female descendants will also be passing along the same matriline that my mother-in-law passed along to her son, my husband. And right now, I'm still stuck with some mtDNA matches whose connection to that most recent common ancestor—whoever that ancient mother might have been—is still a mystery. 

At least now I've got a few more resources to help point to the answer.

Looking Back Before Leaping Forward

 

We're on a bluff overlooking a whole new month, and it's time to make our leap into a new research project. But before we move forward, it's good practice to take a look backwards, review what we've accomplished over the past month, and make plans for the next time we visit this specific research adventure.

My goal for April had been to examine my mother-in-law's matriline, starting with one particular ancestor: her fourth great-grandmother Elizabeth Howard, eventual wife of William Ijams. This fourth of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2024 I had hoped held the key to determining just how my husband's mtDNA matches connected to his mother's matriline.

Step one in that process was to push the trail back as many more generations as possible, but in that one month, we only gained two generations before discovering that William Ridgely's wife Elizabeth, if she was indeed a Duvall, was not daughter of the Lewis Duvall to whom genealogists of past centuries had attributed her parentage.

From that point, we did an about-face, keeping in mind there were several daughters whose lines could be followed in that multi-generational process bringing us back to the present. After all, William and Elizabeth Ridgely, no matter who she might have been, were said to have been parents of at least eleven daughters.

Only problem: that was back in the mid-1700s, when women may have been seen, but seldom documented. A better approach was to start with what I already knew, and work the same plan from there. Hence, the start with Elizabeth Howard, herself, and the careful work to document each of her own daughters.

At that point—partially thanks to autosomal DNA matches linking back to Elizabeth Howard—the unexpected happened. There was another daughter in the matriline, someone I had entirely missed. I now needed to carefully construct her life story. That was the discovery of Rosanna, granddaughter of Elizabeth Howard and daughter of my mother-in-law's direct line ancestor, Sarah Ijams, wife of John Jay Jackson. 

It is easy to see how I could have missed Rosanna. Sarah, her mother, died at a relatively young age in 1829 in a place then still considered a frontier. Rosanna had married, and with her husband and children, eventually left the family's home in Perry County, Ohio, for new farmland in Iowa. Perhaps there was not much community built around that new home to remember Rosanna at her own early passing.

Rosanna, however, had daughters. And those daughters still need to be researched. With that on my to-do list, I need to set up plans for when I revisit this research question. Among the items I want to assemble would be records regarding Rosanna's husband, Walter Mitchell—his will, in particular. For each of their daughters, a next step would be to trace their own generations, at least for those who married and had children. Checking for any other autosomal DNA matches will be helpful, but my main focus in moving to the next generations would be to identify Rosanna's daughters, then their daughters, and onward to the present with those same female descendants. Remember the research goal: identify possible mtDNA matches by building out that aspect of Rosanna's tree.

Granted, there still is that other puzzle on the distant end of the generations: the other Elizabeth, wife of William Ridgely, who as my mother-in-law's sixth great-grandmother, was also on her matriline. She, too, had female descendants to trace, women who also may have carried that same mitochondrial DNA signature. Putting all this on my research to-do list for a future year sounds more like the makings of at least two projects, rather than one month's goal. 

That, however, is a task to puzzle over in another year. Tomorrow, we'll start fresh with another of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2024. This time, we'll turn to the Maryland ancestors of William Ijams, husband of this month's focus, Elizabeth Howard.

A New Branch

 

This has been one of those weeks when I have to ask myself, "Now, how did you miss that?!" Despite the number of years I've been working on my mother-in-law's third great-grandmother Sarah Ijams, I never realized she had another daughter—not, that is, until I discovered a DNA match whose connection to Sarah was through a branch of the family I hadn't previously found in my own research.

To be fair to my bewildered self, I was working with a woman's story line which had her born at the very end of the 1700s and abruptly cut short in her early thirties—long before women's names made any regular appearance in census records. To add to the complications, hers was apparently a family with the preference of deeding property to their children, rather than drawing up one of those documents which bequeathed everything to their beloved relatives. I could have found such a deed to a son-in-law and blithely flipped right past it, having no knowledge of how that person connected to the family line.

So, in a spate of document discoveries, I've tentatively added yet another daughter to Sarah and John Jay Jackson's family, and have begun that long slide back to the present, following each of that daughter's descendants. After all, any daughter of Sarah becomes granddaughter of Elizabeth Howard, and thus part of my mother-in-law's matriline. Hopefully, this will produce useful information for continuing that search for mtDNA matches.

In the meantime, though, that discovery of a new branch also bolsters my count, just in time for another biweekly report. Sure enough, when I checked, the past two weeks has brought 165 new names to my in-laws' family tree, despite the struggle to locate documentation on the women in the family during those early years of female invisibility. My in-laws' tree now includes 34,483 documented individuals—and this new discovery will keep me busy for another couple weeks to come.

In just a few days, we'll move on from my April research goal as the month comes to a close. I'm not sure I've found everything I had hoped to find for my mother-in-law's matriline—there are so many women in her ancestry for whom I still have not been able to find documentation, even with the research boost of the FamilySearch Labs' Full Text search. We'll take the next couple days to recap what we've accomplished this month, and lay out plans for next steps when I return to tackle this same family line in a future year.