The New Mrs. Jackson

While the new wife of John Jay Jackson may not be in our family’s direct line, the data on her wedding day help sort out a few family history details. I may not know much about this woman, but at least I have this starting point.

First, I have the gift of her name. Bit by bit, each fact found chips away at the mystery of the unknown in this family—as in all others we research. From that one piece of information, I can begin searching further.

We’ve found that John’s second wife—in some ways a rush order for a desperate widowed husband and father of several children—was named Mary Grate. From her own headstone—she was buried with John at Holy Trinity Cemetery in Somerset, Ohio—we can expand upon that name: Mary Cecelia Grate Jackson.

Adding the date of death from her gravestone—assuming, of course, that it is correct—we can now proceed to locate any death record for the woman. The headstone itself only gives the year of her passing—1871—although whoever entered the information in Find A Grave added the detail of a month and day of death. The Find A Grave entry shows that Mary died on March 19, 1871.

Entering Mary’s name and the year of death in the search engine at FamilySearch.org, I do get one result. This, happily, provides names of Mary’s parents—provides them, however, only upon the resolution of one glitch: Mary’s date of death here is entered as May 19, 1871.

If we take that entry at Find A Grave as a typo—after all, it was actually abbreviated as “Mar.” meaning a matter of just one letter off—then we can assume that Mary’s parents were Joseph Grate and Harriet Owens.

All would be just fine—despite that simple matter of the one letter off between “Mar.” and “May”—except for one other problem: the Find A Grave entry also enters her birth year as 1803, in agreement with the FamilySearch record, but the gravestone itself clearly indicates the year as 1811.

Of course, since this is not my direct line, I could just pawn the whole thing off as “not my line” and forget about it.

But, holiday rush or not, I just can’t bring myself to do that. I have to take just one more look. Maybe Tim Fisher’s Perry County website will fish me out here.

And the answer is yes! The Fisher website comes through for me again! Twice! There it is, the eighth line from the top, under the listings for the Js, for Mary C. Jackson. Her date of death turns out to be May, not March. And though her age is given only as a year (not including months and days of age), minusing her sixty eight years of life from 1871 certainly yields a year of birth as 1803.

Chalk that up as yet another gravestone in error.

And count one more added bonus: the Perry County Record of Deaths shows her place of birth as Morgantown.

Now, if only I knew which Morgantown….


Photo, above right: Mary Cecelia Grate Jackson's gravestone at Holy Trinity Cemetery, Somerset, Ohio; courtesy Find A Grave contributor Jonathan Davis, Senior Vice Commander, Department of Ohio Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War; used by permission.

Parameters in Passing

When an ancestor’s lifespan predates the typical governmental bureaucracy we’ve come to expect with most Vital Statistics departments, we sometimes find ourselves having to do a tap dance of estimation. Of course, headstones help—that is, once they’re located, and even then, only if they haven’t already crumbled beyond recognition.

What if we don’t have that helpful stone marker, though? And what if church records are also silent?

In the case of the family I’m currently researching—that of John Jay Jackson of Fairfield County, Ohio—for his wife, the former Sarah Howard Ijams, I have neither headstone nor death record.

I do have one thing going for me, though: widower John Jackson did get married again.

Keep in mind, John Jackson was a father of several young children by the point at which his first wife passed. Situations like that, especially in that era, were a firm prompt to encourage such fathers to quickly seek a second bride. And that is exactly what John did.

At some point, the family must have moved from Fairfield County—where we had last seen report of them with records of their daughter Nancy Ann’s 1823 birth—to nearby Perry County. It is in that county’s marriage records that I find the documentation for John Jackson’s second marriage.

Dated August 28, 1829—although I wonder if my eyes deceive me on that number—the record was entered by hand, signed by the Catholic priest who performed the ceremony. 

I do hereby Certify that by Authority of a License Mr. John J. Jackson and Miss Mary Grate were by Me on the 28^th day of August 1829 Legally joined in holy Matrimony. Given under My hand this 26^th day of August 1829.

                                                  N. D. Young R. C. P.

The record was on the top of the page—page 108 of the first volume of marriage records for Perry County, Ohio.

While this marriage date doesn’t exactly pinpoint the moment of Sarah’s passing, it does eliminate anything beyond this date. As for the two dates already offered online—that of the confusing biographical sketch from that 1876 newspaper article, and the various researchers’ reports—both the 1825 date and the February, 1829, death are still plausible.

The difficulty with accepting the earlier of those two dates of death, however, is that it may call into question the parentage of two of the Jackson children: William Edwin Jackson, born in 1827, and Robert Turner Jackson, born the following year.

However, unless the archives of the church diocese includes baptismal records from these early years—and online sources of that era's records don’t seem to do so—or unless I can obtain a death certificate for the one child of Sarah who died after the point when more data began being provided, this will have to remain a mystery for me.

This will be one of those loose ends that I’ll set aside for further attention in the New Year.

Gone Over to the Dark Side

In a move that’s sure to garner me a lump of coal in my stocking for Christmas, I’ve gone a-wandering through forbidden fields. The struggle I’ve mounted to uncover the story behind the connection between Fort Bellefontaine in Missouri territory and Fairfield County in the new state of Ohio has yielded me little. I’m still puzzled about what connected the widow Elizabeth Howard Ijams with the widower John Whistler—and later, forged the connection between John Jay Jackson and Elizabeth Ijams’ daughter Sarah. Frankly, I feel as if these stubborn forebears refuse to come out of hiding.

I confess: I’ve gone looking for what others have posted online for those intransigent Jackson and Ijams ancestors.

I know: shock and disbelief. Lectures on how you need to do your own research. Scoldings for not relying only on source documents.

Yep. A lump of coal in my stocking. This Christmas.

So…now that we’ve gotten that out of the way…do ya wanna know? Aren’t you just a bit curious?

I don’t know about anybody else, but when I hit a brick wall, I’m not opposed to taking a peak around and seeing if anyone else has found a chink in the masonry, a toe-hold or a hand up. Of course, I’m cautious to see if I can replicate any results others have already found. But I’m not averse to learning from my peers. After all, I’m not that good at re-inventing wheels.

My thinking was: if I could find someone else in the family constellation for whom documentation could be located, perhaps those papers would reveal a hint of a trail. Perhaps another child in the family died after the date in which states began collecting additional personal information. Perhaps a report of a sibling’s birth location different than the other children’s might reveal travels that I hadn’t previously anticipated.

At any rate, cut me some slack, you who are saintly genealogists. The need to know has led me in the path of temptation, and I have yielded.

Onward to the dubious world of online genealogy. My first stop was to FamilySearch.org. Not to besmirch their name—I’m so grateful for all the documents I’ve found at this resource—but here I found my first indication of squishy reportage. Searching for Sarah Howard Ijams, no documents popped up in the search results. However, there was an item from the Pedigree Resource File.

Alright, I know it: warning bells are going off in my head as I speak. The file indicated Sarah was born October 6, 1798, and died February 12, 1829. Of course, no source was cited for those dates—dates I’ve already struggled to verify. How did the supplier of this information know these dates were correct?

Next came the marriage information. The file named John Jay Jackson as the groom—no surprise here—and the event’s date as January 25, 1818, in Saint Louis. Both those latter details may actually be correct. I’m a bit more convinced now than I was before about the marriage location in the Saint Louis area. And the year of 1818 is more acceptable to me than the other entry I’ve seen of 1816.

Seven children are listed in this file, though unfortunately not in date order. The firstborn arrived in 1819, and the last on December 30 of 1828. These two dates at least frame the possible time span between marriage and Sarah’s early death. An infant’s arrival that late in the year could actually have been what precipitated Sarah’s demise.

There are other online resources, too. Of course, the narrative that I’ve already mentioned—that of Sarah’s mother’s second marriage to John Whistler—included a statement that there were ten children in the Ijams family. Where are the other three?

Other online files give more of a hint as to what happened to the Ijams and Jackson families. The disputed count for the number of children in the Jackson family shrinks to six in a Rootsweb file here, but reveals information on John Jackson’s own second marriage. Another Rootsweb file, focusing more on the Ijams ancestors, shows no descendants for John and Sarah, but provides ample resources for tracing Sarah’s Ijams family back multiple generations.

While I cannot just appropriate the information found online as impeccable truth—I must exercise my own due diligence in checking these lines myself—when confronted with a bewildering maze of false leads, it helps to lift up one’s head and take a look around. Why insist on playing the trailblazer on the edge of civilization when you can lift your blindfolds and take a look around. Who knows? You may discover you are actually walking in an urban jungle with a road map already in your hand.

Picture above: a print by Winslow Homer entitled, "A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year," published in Harper's Weekly on December 24, 1859; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Giving Back Again

We often hear about “The Gift that Keeps on Giving.” While such a thought sounds dreamy at first, in the end, I am not sure how valid that saying is.

However, I can think of one gift that, at first, seems like the genealogist’s dream—but then, turns around and starts kicking and tormenting the very person who once welcomed it.

While I’m sure you can think of several examples of such a “gift,” I’ll cut to the chase here and explain what I’m talking about: the “gift” of a box of old photographs—usually from a deceased relative—which turn out to be pictures without labels.

Think of it: staring into the eyes of the long-departed, despairing at the thought that you could save their memory for posterity…if only you knew their names!

When that happened to me—I inherited a box loaded with snapshots from dear departed Uncle Bill—I wasn’t so creative with my solution. I just stuck the box back up on a shelf in the closet for oh, say, twenty years. Not that those twenty years worked any wonders on my memory. They still are faces of people I never knew, so how can I remember them?!

Some people are more creative with their mystery photo boxes: they sell them to antique stores. At least, that is what appears to be happening, judging from the proliferation of blogs on photos and other vintage ephemera.

My first and most favorite blog on these orphan photos is Forgotten Old Photos. If you’ve been following along here, you realize that I am indebted to the writer of that blog for inspiration to give it a try, myself: post those old photos and see if anyone in the Great Internet Beyond stumbles upon a recognizable face.

That is one way of giving back that I rather favor.

Think of it: a photo from seventy or one hundred years ago, reunited with progeny of the picture’s own, now-long-gone subject. I always wish someone like that blogger would stumble upon the missing photos of my own families!

People are finding other ways to give back, when it comes to these vintage photographs. Another one of my favorite bloggers—journalist Paul Lukas, a fancier of all things ephemera—once mentioned on his blog, Permanent Record, an artist who not only saves these tossed treasures from destruction, but gives them a new lease on life as her own artistic creations. This Brooklyn, New York, artist—Lauren Simkin Berke—has made a project of sketching old photos she finds at flea markets. After a successful studio exhibit of her work, she launched a Kickstarter project to fund publication of a book containing her work. All this has become one artist’s way of giving back. Regarding the rescue work she does on these pictures from the past, she does this “in order to give them a new, longer life.”

We have others in the genealogy community online who wish to do the same. Whether simply passing these photos along, or using them as springboards for further inspiration, these bloggers regularly post their discoveries for the world to find.

Whether doing their work anonymously, as does “The Archivist” for Family Photo Reunion, or shyly and partially-named like the writers behind Grandma’s Picture Box and Unclaimed Ancestors, these people are, in their own way, giving back to the genealogy—and broader—community.

In a gift-giving season, these are the givers I most appreciate.

Above left: cover for the sheet music of "Santa Claus Galop," by Charles Kinkel, published by J. L. Peters in New York, 1874; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Genealogists Giving Back

There is nothing that makes a genealogist’s eyes light up like the sight of an old, crumbly document holding the name of a specific, sought-after ancestor. We’ve all been there: at that moment when, after a long search, we get our hands on the age-old document itself, read through the text, and locate that one particular name.

Right now, I’m at the stage in my own research where I’d love to get my hands on some two-hundred-year-old documents—documents of the War of 1812, to be precise.

For that reason, my eyes did light up when I heard about a giving project during this holiday season—a project making possible the digitization of the War of 1812 Pension Application Files.

It’s quite heartening to realize this story of “Giving Back.” I caught glimpses of the story from several different perspectives that, pieced together, mean a new collection that will be of benefit to so many genealogy researchers.

I first heard about the project through an announcement from the Illinois State Genealogical Society. The ISGS is planning on matching donations to the digitization project, up to $10,000 for all funds raised through their efforts by the close of this year. Through their web page on the match challenge, I also learned of the other organizations involved in funding the project. Ancestry.com has agreed to match the funds raised by this same state organization. In addition, FamilySearch made its own contribution toward the project funding goal of $3.7 million.

Spearheading the project is a joint effort of the National Archives and Records Administration and the Federation of Genealogical Societies. Both Ancestry.com and Fold3 are actively involved in the process.

Over seven million pages of pension applications and bounty land warrant applications will be scanned and indexed by the time the project is completed. At that point, the entire digitization project will be available to the public, for free, at the hosted site provided by Fold3. The best news about this project: as the files are completed, they are posted online, making them immediately available.

Because of the cost of scanning, a tax-deductible gift of $45 allows one hundred pages to be digitized. With the various matches being announced by major players in the genealogy sphere, that same gift can be multiplied to gain up to four times as much progress.

The Federation of Genealogical Societies has been in the forefront of encouraging local and state organizations to join in the effort to raise funds for this multi-year project. A website set up by the key players provides a place for people to donate—and contributions may be made in the name of your ancestor. The FGS has also created a “Preserve the Pensions Honor Roll” to acknowledge donors in various categories. A Facebook page and a Twitter feed round out the publicity for this worthwhile project.

Of course, this project couldn’t be more timely for my own research. I never dreamed I’d be researching ancestors who participated in this war. When I think of the can-do attitude with which the genealogical coalition of last spring conquered the indexing task for the recently-released 1940 census, I know that this collective approach will benefit us all in making these War of 1812 records available to the general public. With NARA stating that they annually receive three thousand requests for copies of soldiers’ files for this war alone, considering the fragility of these two hundred year old documents, it’s about time that we all engaged in making this project possible.

For those of us in a gift-giving position at this season of the year, giving a gift in the memory of an ancestor—or whomever else you’d like to honor—would be a gift that turns around and gives back to all of us. It’s a gift to the community of genealogy researchers, and a gift to the American public.

Now that’s a different way to give a Christmas gift.


Above right: Edward Percy Moran 1910 painting, "The Battle of New Orleans," courtesy the Library of Congress via Wikipedia; in the public domain in Australia, the European Union, the United States, and those countries with a copyright term of life of the artist plus seventy years.

A Season For Giving Back

Since we are fast approaching the holiday season—wait! Did I say approaching? Let me start that again:

Since we have already been hopelessly engulfed by yet another holiday season, and since I’ve already gone and done it by adding a gifty post of my own yesterday, I may as well stop fighting the torrent and just give in to the rush. After all, I do have some of my own ideas to spout off about for the next few days.

In case you’ve never noticed it while perusing the posts on this blog, one of my themes is to encourage all of us to remember to give back to the community which first gave us a hand up when we were newbies. “Giving Back” is a big idea, in my book—mainly because I’m so grateful for all the help I’ve gotten over the years from librarians (Deb Ruth, you caught that, right? I said librarians first), archivists (that one’s for you, Melissa Mannon!), genealogy mailing lists, online forums and message boards.

Over the course of this past year, while researching topics to post on A Family Tapestry, I’ve run across some interesting items that were, well, not exactly related to genealogy—but ideas and examples that spoke to the heart. Okay, admittedly, sometimes they tangentially related to genealogy in a right-brained sort of way. But I never really had a slot to put these topics in, so I’ve just set them aside with the warm fuzzy thought, “Neat…someday I’ll have to mention this.”

Well, let this be the today in which I start. While I promise I’ll get back to the core of genealogy research and family history stories soon, I can’t bypass this holiday season without sharing some thoughts of my own. Since there are a few, I can’t just pile them all up in one gigantic post, or I’ll wear out your pot of coffee. So, to be considerate of you who are sneaking in to read during your coffee break, I’ll share a thought each day.

To start off, I wanted to share a video. Now chances are, this video has already gone viral and you have seen numerous reruns of the thing. However, in case that assumption’s wrong—and mainly because I just love the sentiments here—I want to share this timely pre-Christmas idea.

Remember when I mentioned re-thinking giving? When I talked about the trouble with unleashing a Me Generation upon a Black Friday shopping stage? I mentioned how I’m rethinking Christmas giving—instead of giving what they already have to people who don’t need any more, giving to those who truly are in need in the name of the person I wish to honor.

A short trailer for an upcoming film carries that idea one step further. It gives us a glimpse of who some of those people-in-need might be. It allows us to step into their lives for a moment and see how resourceful they have been in helping themselves—and each other—to capture bright moments in the drudgery of their own lives. It definitely inspires me to give to those who have learned how to give to themselves in spite of overwhelming odds.

Part of what called to me from this brief film clip was the music. Since music was my first love in life, I’ve always paid attention to the stories of those who have discovered that same spark of joy. Classical music, in particular, seems to be the domain of the well-heeled, the privileged, the upper class. But see how the classics, introduced into surprising settings, remake the whole outlook on life. To take a germ of an idea such as the power behind the classics of music, and let that be planted and sprung to life can be an amazing process. If you haven’t seen this video yet, you will sense that yourself, as you watch it (below).

What does that have to do with genealogy? The barely-discernable nexus is that of creativity and passion. Just as the musicians who conceived this phenomenal project in the poorest districts of Paraguay discovered, a simple but elegant idea borne of creativity may allow powerful transformations. While we, in the (admit it, now) drudgery of genealogy research, may not see our tasks as cutting edge creativity, we, too, provide a type of spark that allows others to catch a glimpse of life purpose. We, too, take the “junk” of old—sometimes discarded—records and ephemera, and turn them into stories that can make a difference.

How do they make a difference? When we help someone turn from mundane life to see beauty in someone else’s story—even a story at first full of pain—we make a difference. When we revitalize the public’s interest in history—even in the guise of personal or “micro” history—we benefit our society by calling to remembrance the important lessons to be learned from others’ experiences. When we learn to recreate lives by crafting stories out of dry data, we bring that history to life. That’s when people get interested in genealogy—when they see the possibilities and couple that with that deep-seated hunger to know where they came from.

Though we aren’t playing instruments, per se, and though we don’t quite form a symphony with our individual projects, we are seeking to create something that, in turn, may very well inspire someone else, allow others to see the possibilities, and encourage them to join in and give it a try, themselves.

Inspiration, itself, can be a most powerful gift.

We Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled Program…

Yes, I know, I have already exhibited a “Bah, Humbug” attitude toward, at the very least, holiday shopping rushes this season. Despite my Black Friday rant—and despite the fact that A Family Tapestry does not have any business interests or financial ties with any organization mentioned throughout the course of this publication—I do want to stop and offer a suggestion about holiday shopping.

Actually, I need to amend that statement: I wish to pass along an idea that I read in someone else’s newsletter.

Cyndi Ingle Howells, whom most people know as the owner of Cyndi’s List, was the one who got me starting thinking. In a December first mailing list reprint of her November 30 Facebook entry, Cyndi mentioned:

During the upcoming holiday season, I have a favor to ask. If you do any shopping online please consider using the affiliate links on Cyndi's List. Purchases you make after using these links help to support Cyndi's List.

A simple request, granted. But what a difference a thought like that can make when it is put in action.

Think about it: sites like Cyndi’s List provide all of us, as genealogy researchers, with multiple free resources to further our progress—and all in the comfort of our own homes. Usually, the way such websites meet their expenses—and you know there are expenses, even if the website is done free of charge or calls itself “non-profit”—is through advertising or sales programs such as the affiliate links Cyndi mentioned. All that means is that you, as the recipient of what she provides, pay nothing, but her costs are covered through a third party program.

For instance, if you buy a book through Cyndi’s affiliate link with Amazon, you pay no more and no less than you would by purchasing the same book directly through Amazon. The difference is that, because Cyndi’s List directed you to that book’s specific link, Amazon agrees to pay Cyndi a small amount roughly akin to a commission for the sale. Furthermore, some affiliate programs will continue to pay that commission on other items you buy at the site, even if they weren’t originally mentioned on the original referral.

That way, the referring site—in this case, Cyndi’s List—benefits from the commission, which then gets plowed back into providing even more great content on Cyndi’s site. It’s a win-win-win situation: Amazon gets the business, Cyndi’s List gets the commission, and you get informed of a great product that you might not otherwise have known about, let alone bought.

When I saw that comment on Cyndi’s newsletter, it got me to thinking. I’ve written about “clicking through” to help fund other privately-funded genealogy websites before. My first post on that subject, over a year ago, was inspired by my appreciation for what Tim Fisher does with his Perry County sites—both his site with scanned data and his family tree database. Tim uses this same sort of model (albeit including outright advertising banners, too) to fund the costs for his server and associated website costs. When users click through on the ads on his sites, it helps him pay his site’s expenses and expand his collection.

But my thoughts on this topic range even farther. I think of other, more traditional non-profits we encounter as genealogy researchers—or in our other walks of life, too. I think of the many local and state genealogy organizations who try throughout the year to raise funds for their group’s mission. When you visit their site, if there are affiliate links such as Amazon’s program—or even advertising banners—do you click through? If you do, and end up making a purchase, you may be helping your genealogy society raise funds.

The same goes for other organizations, too. Think of your favorite charities or causes you like to support. If their website includes affiliate links to companies where you’d normally do your shopping, why not take the detour and click through to the business through your charity’s website? They would get the credit while you do your normal shopping routine—other than that minor detour.

Of course, places like Amazon are enormous and provide such a wide variety of shopping choices that clicking through sites like Cyndi’s List to get started with your shopping could make a difference for some of these genealogy websites.

On the other hand, some of us have very specific genealogical items on our wish lists, and perhaps those items aren’t readily available through such an affiliate link. That reminds me of an excellent “wish list” post that fellow genealogy blogger Julie Cahill Tarr wrote last Thursday. There are some items on the genealogist’s wish list that can’t be found just anywhere.

Regardless, much as my bah-humbug disposition led me to write on Black Friday, there are some things that just can’t be bought at any price. The finest things we have in life—family, friends, the values we cherish—are truly priceless. Often, these are the intangibles of life, such as love, selflessness—or even time, as Mariann Regan quipped in a clever twist on the Twelve Days of Christmas theme.

These are the essence of what makes the holiday season glow, in my opinion.

However…if you must spend that hard-earned money, I know of some volunteer organizations and non-profit groups that would appreciate your keeping them in mind as you head to those online stores.

Above left: Currier and Ives lithograph, "American Homestead Winter," courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.