Exploring Possibilities

 

Tracing an American ancestor's pathway backwards, from west to east and from the 1820s back in time to the late 1700s, can be as challenging as the wilderness from which they extracted their rugged existence. In this month's research project, we already discovered a report that Joseph and Elizabeth Flowers were likely living in Ohio by 1814—at least, if we can depend on a hundred-year-old history book's comment about the birth of their son Thomas in Muskingum County.

It's already evident that we are on shaky ground when we rely on reports of birth years and locations for the Flowers children, for although Thomas' older brother Joseph was said to have been born in Pennsylvania in 1811, after Thomas'  birth in Ohio, his younger brother Simon was supposedly born back in Pennsylvania. I find it highly unlikely that Elizabeth would have made such a reverse trek from Ohio for that 1817 occasion. Nor does such an itinerary give me confidence in any of the other reported birth dates or locations.

However, if we choose rather to view the big picture, it is obvious that the Flowers family came to Ohio from Pennsylvania, and there are significant clues that many of the folks establishing what became Somerset in Perry County, Ohio, originated from a namesake village back in Pennsylvania. That village, Somerset in what is now Somerset County, Pennsylvania, was carved from an older and larger county known as Bedford County.

This is where the research leap of faith comes in—and why I'm so grateful for the computer-aided capabilities we have today for genealogical research. I tried my hand at locating any southwest Pennsylvania census records prior to 1820 which might have included Flowers heads of household, keeping in mind that Joseph had a brother who married Elizabeth's sister.

There were indeed two Flowers men in Bedford County—the parent county for Somerset County in Pennsylvania. One was named Joseph, the other John, showing in sequential entries in the handwritten record for the 1810 census in "Dublin and Air" Township. (If trying to follow the lines to determine the ages in each man's household makes your eyes cross, you can find a handy transcription here.)

What's even more encouraging—keeping in mind the maiden name of the two Flowers wives was Ambrose—was to find, on the same page, an entry for a Jacob Ambrosy. Looking further, there was also an entry for a Matthias Ambrosy on another page.

While Ambrose and Ambrosy are not exactly the same, other researchers of this surname have noted such spelling variations, so at this point, I'll take that as a tentative confirmation that perhaps we've found the previous home for our wandering Flowers family. Before we can say so for sure, though, we need to delve deeper into the details.

A Clue from a Church

 

In puzzling over the immigrant pathway of my mother-in-law's second great-grandparents, Joseph and Elizabeth Flowers, we at least have found clues that they came to Ohio from somewhere in Pennsylvania. However, Pennsylvania is a sizeable chunk of territory, leaving us fairly directionless, even with that information gleaned from census records.

Not to worry—at least not too much yet—for there may be another clue we can gain from the Flowers' newest neighborhood in Perry County. That clue comes in the form of a church.

While it is possible, and perhaps even fairly common, for settlers in America to change their religious allegiance from one denomination to another over generations, some of our country's earliest immigrants came to these shores committed to a specific church membership. One of the details available to us is the fact that Joseph and Elizabeth were Catholic. At least, they were buried in Saint Joseph Cemetery, the cemetery adjoining the local Catholic church in the town of Somerset, Ohio.

That particular Catholic church claims a significant place in Ohio history, being the state's oldest Catholic parish. One of the earliest Catholic immigrants to that then-wilderness area began petitioning for a Catholic priest to be sent to that area as early as 1805, and by 1808, was granted an itinerant priest for at least annual visits. That was the origin of what became Saint Joseph's Catholic Church of Somerset, Ohio.

It is interesting to also note that the establishment of the village of Somerset itself was set to have taken place about 1810, and that it was formed by settlers from yet another town of the same name: Somerset in what is now Somerset County, Pennsylvania. However, only about ten years before that point, Pennsylvania's Somerset County had been carved from another county called Bedford County. In fact, that region of southwest Pennsylvania had undergone several border changes as the larger region was chiseled into several additional counties.

Could the establishment of Ohio's first Catholic church, or the founding of the town where the parish was located, provide any clues for us on where in Pennsylvania Joseph and Elizabeth Flowers may have emigrated? While it may be hard to pinpoint the specific county in Pennsylvania, due to the many border changes during that early 1800s time frame, these two clues do point us in a viable direction.

Our next task will be to examine any records from southwest Pennsylvania to see whether we can find any sign of the Flowers family—and hopefully, keeping in mind our overarching research goal for this month, any sign of Joseph's in-laws, the Ambrose family, as well.  

Needing that Double-Check

 

I'm a firm believer in double-checking details. In the case of researching my mother-in-law's second great-grandparents, that habit may have come in handy as we pursue our next step in the research process.

Joseph and Elizabeth Flowers likely settled near Perry County, Ohio, by the time of their son Thomas' birth in 1814. At least, that's what we've found in a local history book published in 1883.

Unfortunately, that handy history book neglected to tell us just where Joseph and Elizabeth Flowers came from. And that is our next step to determine. That is where the double-checking comes in.

With the resources we have at hand online, the only census reports which would include both spouses' place of birth would the the 1850 and 1860 enumerations, late in their lifetime. Joseph and Elizabeth both passed away long before the 1870 census. And that's the problem. According to the 1850 census, while Elizabeth was born in Pennsylvania, Joseph was born in Maryland. Yet, the 1860 census reports both as born in Pennsylvania.

We need to keep in mind there were all sorts of possible reasons why a census report could be in error. Clerical errors come to mind, thinking of the rush of work needing to be done by enumerators in a limited amount of time. Another factor could be the reporting party, who might—or might not—know the correct answer to each question for each family member he is representing.

Looking at the Flowers children's own reports in subsequent decades—especially including those enumerations which also ask where the parents were born—can help fill in the blanks. Since we already saw the report that son Thomas was born in Ohio, what about the next oldest child? Thomas' next oldest brother, named after his dad, was certainly accessible in census records for two more decades than his parents.

The younger Joseph reported his place of birth as Pennsylvania in the 1850 census, and again for 1860—but then stated Ohio for place of birth in the 1870 census. The answer reverted back to Pennsylvania in the 1880 census—along with affirmation of that location for both parents, as well—so we can assume that one enumeration was just an aberration.

The challenge, at this point, is embedded in the very date at which the government began naming all members of a household in the enumeration: 1850. We could look back to census records drawn up before that point, scouring all the results for Pennsylvania before 1820 to find just the right family constellation for a head of household named Joseph Flowers, but that might yield us too many results for any level of confidence. Or worse, none at all.

Of course, finding a will for Joseph's father would go a long way in providing clues—though I have yet to stumble upon such a family Rosetta Stone. And, unlike our previous project for the Ijams family, which serendipitously included a rich uncle dictating several stipulations for the disposition of all his earthly goods, I have yet to find any such leads from the siblings in the Flowers family.

There was, however, one other resource which could possibly help. It wasn't something I found any time recently, while shut in, out-manuevering the pandemic. It was a listing found through another resource, years ago—and while I learned about it online, it isn't something that can be found online now, at least as far as I know.

This might be time to revisit those old, old notes and see if I can retrace my steps—and hope something new has been added to the mix in the meantime.

Landing in Ohio

 

While we may not have the benefit of such modern records as birth certificates when we research our ancestors from previous centuries, we do have a few other way to track their whereabouts: land records and tax records. In the case of Joseph and Elizabeth Flowers, my mother-in-law's second great-grandparents, it is land records which help us determine when they first landed in Perry County, Ohio. 

From the archives of the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management, we can find a digitized copy of a record assuring us that one Joseph Flowers had made his way to the land office at Zanesville, Ohio, with verification that he had made full payment for a specific parcel of land situated in Perry County.

Those one hundred fifty five acres which Joseph Flowers obtained on May 26, 1828, may have been officially documented in that land office, but the notes on the preserved record let us know that Joseph was actually the assignee of another man, Vachel Ogg. How Vachel Ogg happened to originally obtain the land, I can't yet determine—although Ogg's name can be found associated to various land transactions not only in Ohio, but back in Pennsylvania, as well.

That neither Ogg nor his assignee, Joseph Flowers, obtained the land through military service is fairly clear. A check through the Patriot files at the national headquarters of the Daughters of the American Revolution reveal no entry for Ogg's name, and Joseph was likely born too close to the dates of the Revolutionary War to have been eligible to serve.

Joseph Flowers may have obtained this parcel of land in 1828, but that is not the earliest date we can find him in Ohio. Though I can't yet find him in any 1820 census records, tax records in 1818 reveal there was someone by that same name in Muskingum County—the county from which land was drawn to form Perry County in 1818. And, of course, there was that mention in a hundred-year-old local history book that his son Thomas was born there in 1814.

Now that we've isolated a few instances of the earliest dates of our possible Joseph's existence in Ohio, that helps us zero in on the dates in which he and his family might have left their former residence. After all, one can't be in two places at the same time. Though the name Flowers is not the most common of early American surnames, we still need to make sure we are not following the trail of a name twin, and this timeline clue is one token to guide us to some possible prior residences in Pennsylvania.

Duplicates

 

When dealing with family trees which include intermarried lines, there is this little problem with encountering duplicates. Only those whose trees include what's called "pedigree collapse" would need to keep an eye on such an occurrence. When it comes to the lines of descent of my mother-in-law's tree, that issue crops up a lot.

Hence, I'm always on the lookout for duplicate entries. Hers is a tree with multiple intermarriages, primarily because her family settled in one place and stayed there for, oh, a couple centuries.

Moving up the family lines, starting with my mother-in-law's own parents, it didn't take long to realize how intermarried the families in her Ohio hometown in Perry County had become. I'd work my way up one line—say, her patriline—adding all the children for each specific generation, then moving to the parents of that generation and their place in their own birth families. At some point, a spouse would get entered into the family line who had a double somewhere else in the extended family. Sometimes, second cousins would marry, or third cousins who perhaps didn't even realize the relationship. While I'm focusing on the Flowers line right now, I've seen the related surnames of Snider, Gordon, and Metzger get woven into more lines than one.

Thus, adding the siblings to each generation—those collateral lines—results in multiplied duplications. This is something I've had to periodically monitor, lest the proliferation of entries in that family tree become nearly twice the size it truly is.

While Ancestry.com's "Tree Overview" provides a Summary section which can be sorted alphabetically by surnames, it does mean requiring a visual scan of the list to spot duplicates. An easier method is to keep my Ancestry trees synced with my desktop-resident program (I use Family Tree Maker) and regularly run a check through that feature. There, I can easily determine whether I'm viewing a true duplicate entry, or simply a matter of several descendants all named after the same ancestor.

As for those namesakes, there are many. Names like John and Joseph, Catherine and (especially) Mary make me grateful for the advent of middle names. Many times, the differing dates of birth, or places listed, help differentiate between what otherwise look like duplicate entries. But sometimes, I encounter duplicates for which I have yet to confirm any of these secondary details, requiring another look to see whether a linking person—parent or spouse—can become the tie breaker.

While the tree-trimming can become cumbersome, it's a necessary step to ensure those remaining in the tree have their one place, not two—or multiple!—duplicate entries. Sometimes the threads of this family tapestry become so interwoven that I realize how much like a fabric a family can be, rather than simply the intersection between two disparate lines. In those tight-knit communities—whether in Ohio's rural coal-mining country, or far away in isolated mountain villages of other continents—that's what makes people lose the thread of connection and simply resort to saying, "they're kin."

Of Donuts and Do-Overs

 

It's Saturday morning. Time to grab a donut and a good cup of coffee, sit back and ponder the work we've done, and what's still ahead to be completed. Problem is, with this month's research goal, I'm realizing there is a lot of messy work yet to accomplish. When it's all said and done, I may have more mess left than month.

I've seen a lot of talk, over the years, about the virtues of a "Genealogy Do-Over." Sometimes, we make messes so big, the only way to deal with them, it seems, is to just explode them—poof!—and start again from scratch.

Except... 

I have twenty one thousand relatives in a family tree that started its growth cycle as my mother-in-law's tree. With my research strategy adjustments in the last year, I've combined both my in-laws' trees into one, which inflated that count. Still, facing the recently-discovered fact that vast chunks of generational nether reaches have been grossly neglected, scrapping a work of decades which includes that many entries would be disheartening. And yes, that is an understatement.

However, now that I'm working on this month's research goal—to confirm the parents of Elizabeth Ambrose, wife of Joseph Flowers, my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather—I'm realizing it has been a long time since I last passed this way down the Flowers branch of the family tree. I'm working hard to add the missing lines of descent, which we'll review tomorrow in my biweekly count, but the realization of how much work has been lacking puts me in mind of the very reason some people decide to scrap it all in a do-over mode.

Do-overs have their place, but we have to remember that a do-over is a system, just as much as any other system designed to help us get all the facts correct—and included—in assembling a pedigree. I do have other systems in place to ensure a thorough review of work done in the past, a step-by-step system designed to move from one specific ancestor down through each line of children, then grandchildren, then greats and beyond. It's a process that makes sure no descendant gets left out in the review of newly-available digitized documents and associated resources as they become available.

Then, too, there's the constant check of DNA test matches to see whether newly discovered relatives already have a place in the tree, or need to be freshly added. Add to that one more systematic sweep: checking the universal list of profiles for duplicate entries which need to be merged, and that seems to be a triple-check that all descendants have been accounted for.

Except that we're talking about an ever-growing family tree branching out from the twenty one thousand who are already here and accounted for.

Every system, no matter how thorough, eventually groans under its own weight. I have to remind myself that when I encounter such signs of omission, they don't necessarily herald a cause to scrap it all and start again from scratch. The work which is already laid out is salvageable. No matter how it is rectified, all corrections take work and diligence. Declaring a moratorium on taking remedial action on what we have, or seeing the act of scrapping what's done to start afresh as "freeing," is not necessarily the best choice for moving forward.

Sometimes we need to recognize that grunt work is called what it is for exactly that reason: it's roll-up-your-sleeves tedium. But it needs to get done, whether we call it a "do-over" or a "system."

There's a quote about donuts that's been bandied about and blended into various forms over the years, credited to more than one pragmatist. It's about the donut and the hole: the optimist sees the donut, the pessimist the hole, so keep your eye on the donut.

No matter how you first heard that saying, perhaps you'll identify why it reminds me so much of the chasm between the work we do as genealogists and the hypothetical "done" we'll never seem to attain in working on our family trees.

When I think about yielding to the urge to succumb to a "do-over," all I can see is the hole. It's when I keep my eye on the donut that I find the inner fortitude to keep plugging away at the work. I had to realize the "hole" of "not done" can suck a researcher into counter-productive pessimism. And that's not what I'm after in this quest to catalog family history. What I'm really after in this process of research is not that black hole, but the process of enjoying the donut.

Which I hope you'll do as well, both this morning with your cup of coffee and metaphorically as you tackle your next research challenge. 

 

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.