What a Difference a Date Can Make

While I'm primarily struggling with dates of enlistment and discharge for John Jay Jackson because I want to determine exactly when he married Sarah Howard Ijams, apparently John Jackson was pursuing verification of those dates for a very different reason.

As we've already seen, when John Jackson enlisted under Captain John Morris in 1814, he had agreed to five years of service. Apparently, there was a payoff for keeping one's word in the terms of service under which he enlisted. And it didn't seem to be simply how much his survivor's pension might be, once he needed the money. There seems to be a matter of land involved, as well.

As is often the case, when it comes to agreements with the government, there might have been some fine print in the mix. Being that one of farmer John Jackson's sons eventually became an attorney in nearby New Lexington, Ohio, John was apparently well-equipped to take on any arguments arising from having taken advantage of one particular loophole, once it came time for him to call in those governmental promises.

My first clue that something was unusual about the Jackson pension papers was gleaned from a hand-written note affixed to the back of a letter. It contained the explanation:

A Certificate must be produced [?] from a [Commissioned] Officer in service, stateing [sic] the name of your [substitute?] & that he engaged to serve for 5 years from the date of your discharge, as the evidence cannot be procured from the rolls....

Looking further, the pension file revealed the information John Jackson must have been seeking: the document showing one Michael Kelly, "born in Dublin in the Kingdom of Ireland," who had voluntarily enlisted in the army at Bellefontaine in the Territory of Missouri. The document was dated April 13, 1818, and was witnessed by J. J. Jackson.

For his enlistment, Michael Kelly received from Captain McIntosh a twelve dollar bounty, for which he signed by placing his mark. Duly noted, below that, was the Captain's statement explaining the nature of the transaction:

I certify on Honor that the above named Michael Kelley substituted in the place of Quarter Master Sergt John J. Jackson U.S. Rifle Regt.

Penciled in, beneath the signatures, was the question, "Did Kelly engage for 5 years," likely a follow up to the subsequent application made by John Jackson for his pension—or, possibly, for paperwork requesting an enlistment bounty of 160 acres of land.

Substitutions were apparently a permissible way to disengage from that five year term of service. If that transaction was dated April 13, 1818, we might then be able to deduce the reason for John Jackson's desire to end his military service—and also the possible date for the upcoming event motivating his change of plans. If, that is, John Jackson's marriage occurred after the end of his military service.

Above: "Spring. High Water," painting by classical Russian landscape artist Isaac Ilyich Levitan; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Dates That Drive to Distraction

Though genealogy's research is driven by both names and dates, we most often focus on the names. However, in hoping to pinpoint John Jay Jackson's whereabouts during and after the War of 1812—trying, mainly, to determine when and where he actually wed Sarah Howard Ijams—I'd like to take one post to examine solely the dates.

Dates, it turns out, vary in the Jackson military history, depending on which document one is reading.

For instance, so far, I've found three different dates of enrollment for John J. Jackson. And no—though an understandable hypothesis—these differing dates aren't for other men with the same name. Each of these documents can be found in the War of 1812 pension files for John Jay Jackson of Somerset, Perry County, Ohio.

Take his claim for a survivor's pension, filed June 22, 1871. There, his date of enlistment showed as August 31, 1814.

Remember that fragment of a parchment I mentioned yesterday? Though the date of issuance was cut from the document, one line yet visible was the one confirming he

was enlisted the thirty first day of May Eighteen hundred and fourteen.

Unless it was a forgery, I'd take that parchment to be the older document and thus the more reliable source.

Yet another document confirms that enlistment date as June 4, 1814—and refers to the "Roll dated December 31st, 1815" as source for that date.

As can be seen on that last record, the same discrepancy seemed to exist, concerning John Jackson's date of discharge. On the roll dated June 30, 1819, from the last post at which the Quartermaster Sergeant served at Fort Bellefontaine, his discharge was said to have occurred June 4, 1819.

At this point, would you be surprised to learn that his date of discharge—according to a different Pension Office document—was listed as May 31, 1818. Although the document went on to add the explanation that Jackson "served afterwards under Capt. W. L. Duffy," we are talking about a discrepancy of over a year's difference. When it comes to applications for pension, that could make a difference for a man in his later years.

All told, for his pension, the final tally showed John Jackson was credited with a length of service of four years and three hundred eight days—not quite the five years that a different combination of the dates on record might have indicated. Considering the agreement under which he enlisted was to serve for five years "or as needed," he didn't quite make the original deal.

While one concern might be to learn what impact that might have had on his pension—or even eligibility to receive land grants—my insistence on getting the right dates is not driven by that question. What I'm really seeking is an indication of when he might have married his first wife, the young Sarah Howard Ijams of Fairfield County, Ohio.

On the other hand, reviewing all the discrepancies on these dates—both on entering and on leaving the service of the United States Army and its Fourth Regiment, U.S. Rifles—makes me wonder: why didn't he get credited for a full five years' service?

A Little Home Decorating Project

It was a strange strip of time-worn paper which, in addition to the anticipated yellowing of the centuries, gave every appearance of once being part of a découpage project. It would not have been surprising to discover this slip of paper lying on a craft table, but that is not where I found it. I found it in a pension file from the War of 1812.

The cover of John J. Jackson's file, pursuant to the Act of February 14, 1871, indicated that subsequent to his service in Captain John Morris' company during the War of 1812, he had been discharged in the Spring of 1817.

The "Brief of Claim for a Survivor's Pension" amended that information to include service under Captains Magee, Birdsell and McGonigle, as well. However, there the dates showed enlistment on the last day of August, 1814, and discharge on June 4, 1819.

Over the course of the twenty six pages in the John J. Jackson file, the paperwork to secure his pension provided—or conflicted with—the basic facts of his service during and after that war. There were some curious insertions among those pages, but none more surprising—or aggravating—than that slip of yellowing paper found on the ninth page of the digitized personnel folder.

On that page, a typeset statement laid alongside the aged fragment of the page assured the researcher,
"All unique information in the document is visible in this image."

But looking at the image itself—seemingly a confusing mishmash of sentences—I got the distinct feeling there was much more that this page was wanting to tell us. The bold heading at the top read,

To all whom it may concern...

In much smaller script, the flowery hand continued,

...That John J. Jackson, Quarter Master Sergeant of the Rifle Regt...

At that precise spot, where the entry continued on the next line of the page, another piece of paper had been slapped over the first, at ninety degree angle and irritatingly face down, although the ink seemed to have bled through the paper. Whatever was written on the reverse side is now lost to us.

It seems hardly a matter to fuss about—and perhaps that might be so for anyone not caring to know more about this John J. Jackson of Somerset in Perry County, Ohio—but from the scraps of text I was able to decipher from the remainder of the segment, I could tell I would have been interested to see the rest.

...who was enlisted the thirty first day of May, Eighteen hundred and fourteen...is hereby honorably discharged from the Army of the United States...was born in Otsego...the State of New York, is twenty...

And that was the end of the readable portion. A side note, obviously added by someone reviewing the application, instructed the viewer to

Hold this discharge up to the light and the Genuine Signature of S. C. Pentland will be seen.

Oh, how I would have liked to have read the rest of that narrative! Granted, the details revealed themselves in the remaining twenty six pages in the Jackson file. At least, I presume they did. I have no way of knowing what might have been missing.

So, what became of that yellowed record that ended up only a fragment in John Jackson's military record?

A statement, signed on September 19, 1820, might provide the explanation.

Before me, a Notary Public duly commissioned + sworn personally, came John J. Jackson of said county and maketh oath that that [sic] he enlisted as a private in the 4th Rifle Regiment of the United States at Erie Pennsylvania on the 31st day of May 1814 for 5 years or until unless sooner discharged by proper authority, that he served as Quarter Master Sergeant of the Rifle Regiment until the 31st of May 1818...that his discharge was dated on the said 31st of May 1818 and signed by Charles Pentland Adj Rifle Regt. This discharge has since been mutilated by a female who did not know the value thereof + pasted it in a window. 

See? Découpage project.

Signs of His Presence

So the story goes, concerning ancestor John Jay Jackson, that

[a]fter the war was over, he in some way drifted to St. Louis, and he emigrated from that place, or vicinity, to Bearfield township, Perry county, Ohio, and his name will be found in the history of that township as one of the first settlers.

If that is so, we should be able to locate some corroboration of that assertion which was shared in the 1883 tome, History of Fairfield and Perry Counties, Ohio: Their Past and Present. And there are some encouraging signs.

Take this copy of the census for Perry County, enumerated in 1820. Not far from the bottom of the first page for Bearfield Township, as promised, there was the entry for John J. Jackson.

In his household was one male between the ages of twenty six and forty four—that would be John, who was born in 1792—plus a woman between the ages of sixteen and twenty five and a girl under the age of ten. Unless there was more than one John J. Jackson in that tiny township in the wide open places of that then-newly-established state of Ohio, the woman was likely his wife, Sarah Howard Ijams. Since the only daughter I am currently aware of—my husband's direct ancestor, Nancy Ann Jackson—was not born until 1823, I have yet to determine who the child might have been.

Although the History book mentioned Jackson's arrival in the county was "in 1815 or 1816," I couldn't manage to find any documentation of his presence in Perry County before 1820. Included in that pursuit was a review of a transcription of the county's 1819 tax record, obtained from the auditor of the State of Ohio, which showed one Jacob Jackson, but no other Jacksons at all.

However, even the history book didn't know the history of the county it was purportedly describing. The county wasn't founded until March 1, 1818. Records dating farther back would have to obtained from whatever county in which the Jackson residence had previously been recorded.

Land records didn't seem to help, either. Though Jackson is not an unusual name—and its combination with a given name as oft-used as John no help in fingering the right individual in our search—there still didn't seem to be any likely prospects among the many John Jacksons brought up in a document search through the General Land Office Records. Not in pre-1820 Perry County, nor in the surrounding counties during that time period, either.

The war referred to in that history's narrative was, of course, the War of 1812, and it may be there that we find the one detail that can be corroborated by actual documentation. Even that, though, presents its own problems. Set aside any hope of finding a widow's pension application with all the usual details of benefit to family history researchers; unlike many veterans, John Jay Jackson not only long outlived Sarah Howard Ijams, but survived well beyond the passing of a second wife, as well.

That John Jackson "in some way drifted to" Saint Louis is an odd way of representing that portion of his life's history. It also does no justice to whatever arrangement allowed a widow and her marriageable-aged daughter to travel west through the frontier to Jackson's post along the Mississippi—and then return home to Ohio through conditions just as rugged and dangerous. Oh, and in the meantime, exchange two sets of vows—one for the mother, one for the daughter.

I had hoped the archived records from the War of 1812 would shed some light on the reasons behind these events, but as some of you had suspected, the contents of the Jackson file turned out to disappoint on that account.

In other ways, the file provoked even more questions.

Above: "View of Bald Face Creek in the Ohio River Valley," 1858 painting by Berlin-born artist, Henri Lovie; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Marching Orders

After hissing and moaning over the difficulties anticipated for my newest project—finding enough documentation to connect my mother-in-law's family to Revolutionary War Patriots Lyman Jackson and William Ijams—it turns out I actually have quite a few resources already assembled.

Primary among them is an excerpt I found in a book entitled History of Fairfield and Perry Counties, Ohio: Their Past and Present. Being a book published in 1883, of course the title runs on for at least seven more lines of text—ending, incidentally, with the helpful "Biographies and Histories of Pioneer Families, etc., etc."

I'm always overjoyed to stumble upon such entries in the history publications of that prior century. I don't, however, see them as gospel truth. I tend to use the information gleaned from their pages as guide and trailblazer for my own research. If you are not convinced of the wisdom of this approach, perhaps the observations of the next couple days will persuade you otherwise.

John Jay Jackson, supposed son of Patriot Lyman Jackson and husband of the daughter of Patriot William Ijams, merited an entire paragraph in this book of over twelve hundred pages. Yes, you read that right: the book has 1222 pages—yet another of the many reasons why I love digitized and searchable manuscripts.

At face value, the text contains a number of clues to guide our research:

John J. Jackson, of this township, and the latest surviving soldier of the War of 1812 in it, though a quiet, modest man all his life, has rather an eventful history. He served through the War of 1812, and drew a pension to the day of his death, for military services rendered the United States Government. After the war was over, he in some way drifted to St. Louis, and he emigrated from that place, or vicinity, to Bearfield township, Perry county, Ohio, and his name will be found in the history of that township as one of the first settlers. His first wife was an Ijams, a sister of William, John and Joseph Ijams, well remembered by the older citizens of Perry county. Mr. Jackson and others journeyed from St. Louis, across the country, to this county, in 1815 or 1816. It was a journey full of strange adventures. So far as now remembered, Mr. Jackson and companions are the only pioneers of Perry county who emigrated from the West. All the others came from the East or South, and nearly all from the East.

Besides the dates and locations mentioned in the narrative, the big prize is the detail about John Jackson's involvement in the War of 1812. Even more important than that was the fact that he drew a pension following his service. While the tedium of having to sift through a list of numerous other pensioners with a surname as common as Jackson coupled with a given name as oft-used as John will be the main obstacle, at least this gives us the possibility of finding documentation that may include other details I need. Remember, the goal is to construct a paper trail connecting my current day relatives with either John Jay Jackson or William Ijams—or, hopefully, both.

Above: "Blue Hole, Little Miami River," 1851 oil on canvas by Robert Seldon Duncanson; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Why I Stopped

If you found it rather extreme that I should have completed, over three years after its start, my application to become a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, then I expect this explanation will strike you in quite the same manner.

In yet another attempt to connect with a Patriot, I am currently struggling over how to locate documents connecting my mother-in-law's family line with the Patriot, William Ijams. While it sounds like it's helpful that William's daughter had also married the son of a patriot—Lyman Jackson—it's not turning out that way.

It's not just a matter of inaccessible documentation. Granted, I'll have to get my hands on some old-fashioned paper records, likely during a trip back east. But that's not the main issue.

What's at hand here is a situation which either falls in the cracks between regularly scheduled forms of early documentation, or moves far afield of the type of civilization which is accustomed to such documentation. In other words, the story of what became of these people has been handed down in various—sometimes conflicting—permutations. And I needed to review those twists and turns in the narrative.

I had gone down this path before. Just as I had mentioned initiating my search for my own D.A.R. Patriot years ago—worse, in reviewing my notes, I found Sheri Fenley's own blog post about our first meeting to start the project indicating the true date was more likely in 2011—I had started the search for the Jackson and Ijams connections almost as long ago. Right after the Thanksgiving weekend in 2012, to be exact.

How did I remember that trivial detail so vividly? Simple: I Googled my original series of posts to refresh my memory on the tangled pile of data I had found back then.

In reading that series, starting here, only so slowly did the realization dawn on me of what it was that kept me from completing the task that first time. Calling it deja vu would cast the experience in too cheerful a light, so I suppose I'd have to find a more somber label for that creeping melancholy that again slipped over me.

I had pre-written some of those posts, back in 2012, because I knew I'd be going on a business trip to the Midwest; taking a break in the midst of our duties to visit family nearby, I couldn't help but remember the cousin who had died there of cancer less than a year before. Then, right after starting the series, our family was hit with the surprising loss of another relative—my sister-in-law. And just before that Christmas Eve, I received a phone call that my aunt had unexpectedly fallen, in the midst of picking up her bags to head out of town with friends for a holiday trip, and broken her neck.

It was a devastating month. If it hadn't been for writing up some of that research ahead of time, I probably wouldn't have had any of the work laid out for this project, at all. Even now, getting my head around all the twists and turns is overshadowed by those memories. Funny how we forget some of the details. Maybe that is merciful.

In pursuing family history, when we spend so much of our time focusing on those who are no longer with us, it seems ironic to realize how much the circumstances we write off as "Life Happens" can get in the way of research progress.

Above: "The Oxbow," Thomas Cole's 1836 oil on canvas depicting the view of the Connecticut River from Mount Holyoke near Northampton, Massachusetts, after a thunderstorm; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.
 

Extracting Clues About Nancy

The difficulty with identifying family connections in the early 1800s is that documents from that time period don't share, outright, the information we are seeking. Reconstructing our family history earlier than 1850 is an entirely different process than the post-1840 process of checking census records, or availing ourselves of post-1860 marriage records, or even the more detailed death records of the early 1900s. Sometimes, we have to infer the details we are seeking.

That's pretty much what I'm doing, in piecing together the life history for Nancy Ann Jackson Snider. I can tell from her death record in Perry County, Ohio, that she was born in nearby Fairfield County, because someone thought to record that detail in the November 23, 1905, record. Because the record gave the exact length of her life—down to the number of months and days—I can conclude that her birth was on or about February 5, 1823.

Furthermore, I know that Nancy Ann married Simon Snider in 1841 because that detail is included in the index to marriages in Perry County—and, as long as the surname discrepancy doesn't cause us to wince too badly, we can presume that it was their wedding that occurred on October 25.

We can track the names and approximate life spans of all fourteen of the Snider children by following the records of the 1850 census, the 1860 census, and—even though Nancy Ann became a widow on April 3, 1867—even in the 1870 census.

Though it took other means to determine Nancy Ann's parents' names, I can't help but notice that her father and step-mother lived next door to the Snider household, according to the 1860 census—and that they stayed close at hand through at least the 1870 census, as well.

"J. J." Jackson—John Jay—had been in the area of Perry County for years. Even though his daughter Nancy Ann had been born the next county over, there are reports of the Jackson family being in Perry County from an early point.

Actually, some of those stories seem to be conflicting reports—seeming to repeat the difficulty I had had in tracing John Jay Jackson's whereabouts, ever since he and Sarah Howard Ijams had been married, sometime after his service up river from Saint Louis during the War of 1812. This is a story that will do us well to revisit, tomorrow, as we retrace the soldier's steps as he returned to civilian life, raised a family, lost a wife, and moved from one county in Ohio to another—a task made all the more difficult because it occurred during an era not obsessed with leaving a paper trail.