Following the Monocacy Trail

 

If Frederick County, Maryland, was indeed the place where Mathias Ambrose's father was buried, it certainly would also be a place where records on this third great-grandfather of my mother-in-law could be found. Let's see what we can learn about this senior Mathias Ambrose.

Looking first to the Ambrose family history website, we find information on the senior Mathias' arrival in the area. Apparently after immigration, Mathias and his second wife had first settled in Lancaster County in Pennsylvania. Baptismal records for four of the elder Mathias' sons led researchers to speculate that Mathias had moved from the area by about 1738. Their new home? Near a now-lost settlement accessed along the Monocacy Trail following the Monocacy River area of Maryland.

Land records in 1738 confirmed the presence of someone named Mathias Ambrose, likely our Mathias' father. By 1759, the senior Mathias, having acquired several other parcels of land, was noted to have deeded one parcel each to three sons: Jacob, Henry, and Mathias. All three sons sold the land they received by 1761.

In the elder Mathias' will in 1782, he made note that he was giving the entirety of his land holdings to one daughter and her husband, Catherine and John Weller. In excluding the other Ambrose children, their father explained that he had already made provisions for them. The land received by the younger Mathias in 1759 would presumably be the transaction his father was referencing in his will.

Whether our Mathias took the money from his 1761 land transaction and moved directly back to Pennsylvania at that time, I can't yet say. There may yet be more records on the younger Mathias' family to be found in Frederick County, for which I'll be searching.

However, there was one other wrinkle in the story of the Ambrose move from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to Frederick County, Maryland, that might be helpful to take into consideration. Tomorrow, we'll delve into the history behind the the place where the Ambrose family had settled, and the events occurring there right during the time the family had decided to make that area their new home.

Apple's Church Cemetery

 

Sometimes, a walk through the old church cemetery does wonders for filling in blanks in the family tree. Now that I've discovered what might have been the church and hometown connection for my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather, Mathias Ambrose, that is exactly what I wish I could do now. Unfortunately, since I am in California and the church in question is in Maryland, that is not a visit I'll be doing any time soon. Still, that doesn't stop me from taking a virtual walk through the cemetery.

Since we learned yesterday that Mathias Ambrose had at least two daughters baptized at a place called Apple's Church, I pulled up the church's cemetery entry on Find A Grave. Though the entry was listed for Apples United Church of Christ, I already knew from learning about the church's history that the location had served as a meeting house for more than one denomination—hence the previous designation as Apples Lutheran and Reformed Church.

In the mid 1700s, apparently there weren't enough settlers to establish one specific church, and since there were likely not many ministers of either denomination in the sparsely-settled region of western Maryland then, the school trustees set up an arrangement whereby two different denominations would alternate use of the school building which had recently been established, thanks to a deed from local property owner Peter Apple. Since that time over two hundred years ago, other denominations have claimed use of that location, and even the cemetery is sometimes known by the alternate name of Apples Reformed Church Cemetery.

Regardless of the name, the question burning in my mind was: were there any Ambrose relatives buried in that cemetery? I put Find A Grave to the test with that search query, and was rewarded with six names:

• Anna Catharina Kempff Ambrose, who died in 1807
• Elizabeth Ambrose, who died in 1795
• Captain Jacob Ambrose senior, who died in 1779
• Maria Catherine Spohn Ambrose, who died in 1780
• Maria Elisabeth Willheit Ambrose, who died in 1732
• Mathias Ambrose, who died in 1784.

Curiosity got the best of me, and I had to cross-check those names with the Ambrose website to see whether any were close relatives of our Mathias Ambrose. Of course, the one by that same name who died in 1784 couldn't have been our Mathias, as we already discussed his will in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, dated 1804. Elizabeth, too, had the same name as our Mathias' daughter—and my mother-in-law's direct line ancestor, her second great-grandmother who died in Ohio—so perhaps this one, who died so young, might have been whom our Elizabeth was named after.

Bit by bit, this exploration—thanks to a virtual walk through a cemetery in Maryland—painted a picture of the family constellation for our Mathias Ambrose's relatives. Most importantly, though, it gave me confidence that this was the location where our Mathias had settled before moving to Pennsylvania in his later years.

Apple's Church

 

Following the clues of trailblazing researchers can turn out to be helpful—if the trailblazer truly can find the way to the right genealogical answer.

Right now, lost without any sign of which research direction to take on my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather Mathias Ambrose, I'm open to suggestions. One researcher who had shared her Ambrose material online—Pat Asher—pointed me in the direction of Maryland. After all, Mathias Ambrose's residence in 1800 in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, wasn't far from the border with Maryland, so the possibility made sense to me.

The Ambrose website indicated that Mathias Ambrose himself might have been married in Frederick County, Maryland, and according to that same website, at least one of his daughters was baptized there. In fact, the church was listed in the website as Apple's Lutheran and Reformed Church.

I am always cautious in using online trailblazers, though, and a church name like that caused me to hesitate. I definitely wanted to check out that information for myself. That's what led me to discover that the location given for the church—in Thurmont, Maryland—was the present name for a town formerly known as Mechanicstown. While doing that double-checking, I also learned a few more details about that church.

Apple's seemed to be an unusual name for a church. Normally, you'd expect perhaps the name of the location—like Mechanicstown Lutheran, for instance—and I couldn't think of any Maryland town called Apple.

In addition to that doubt, I also got to thinking about the denominational designation, Lutheran and Reformed. I knew there was a Reformed church, and of course, that there was a denomination called Lutheran. I just hadn't heard about any mergers between the two entities.

For that part, neither could I find any explanation for such an organization. I did, however, locate some local history information which turned out to be helpful. An Internet search can be good for extracting those hard-to-find little websites.

My first glance at an explanation for this church's existence came from a website called German Marylanders, a group I would otherwise have never known about. In an entry posted at that site, drawn from a book by local historian George Wireman called Gateway to the Mountains, I discovered that a local property owner named Peter Apple had donated land for a schoolhouse there.

The deed for this transaction named three trustees, including a man called Mathias Ambrose. Given that the deed was dated in 1760, it is more likely that the man named was not our Mathias Ambrose, but his father.

While the history provided in this website seemed interesting, I wanted to look further for more information. I found another site with similar details, plus some digitized copies from the actual baptismal register, and, looking even further, a copy of a book which gave an original spelling for the landholder's name as Peter Appel.

The book, which I found courtesy of FamilySearch.org, was called, simply enough, Baptismal Records of Apple's Church (Lutheran and Reformed). There, on page five, author Elizabeth Kieffer added an explanation to Dr. E. E. Higbee's original 1857 transcription of the church's records, including the history of how Apple's Church evolved over the decades.

Once assuaged of that nagging doubt concerning the church's name, I returned to FamilySearch where I discovered there were several other resources for perusing the names in the church's records. Some, of course, were listed in the FamilySearch catalog, but only viewable in person. Some referred researchers to another resource online, the Maryland Church Records collection. But what I found most useful was the FamilySearch wiki's Maryland Church Records Digital Folder Number List.

From that list, I clicked through to every link which included images or transcriptions for Apple's Church records. Granted, some of the microfilmed records were a hodgepodge of many smaller resources and I had to hunt and peck to find what I wanted—like this transcription of baptismal records including Mathias' daughter Barbara, born in June, 1774.

While so far, I've only located two of Mathias Ambrose's children—Barbara and her sister Magdalena—I've also learned about some other Ambrose relatives attending the same church. Included in that discovery would be Jacob, Philip, Heinrich, and Johannes Ambrose—who are they? These are names to be added to my list of questions to be answered the next time I tackle this Ambrose research puzzle. Every discovery has the potential to lead to more information.

The search did produce a substantial list of resources to check further, all thanks to the start granted by a trailblazing researcher's website and following a chain of connected references. Granted, some discoveries yielded transcriptions, not actual handwritten records. There is a chance that some copy errors might be made. But for now, this is a first step in not only pushing back to previous generations, but gathering more documentation for this Ambrose family's history.

In DNA's Murky Middle

 

With Mother's Day approaching last month, my one-track mind secretly hoped that many people would get the idea to give their mother a mitochondrial DNA test. The more tests taken, the greater the possibility that I would finally find a match to my own matriline. This month is no different. Since Father's Day will soon be here, so also will be those sales for Y-DNA tests. Hopefully, that will mean more DNA matches on my father-in-law's patriline, just in time to start researching some of his Irish roots next month.

Right now, though, my research focus is on the big, murky middle of DNA test results. Somewhere smack-dab in the middle of my mother-in-law's pedigree chart lies the most recent common ancestor whom I'm hoping will be claimed as someone else's ancestor, as well. 

In my mother-in-law's Ambrose line—the one I'm researching this month—it would require a long, hard look at the family tree to locate a DNA test volunteer who would qualify to reveal results on either the Ambrose patriline or the matriline of Mathias Ambrose's daughter, my mother-in-law's direct ancestor. This line goes from my mother-in-law to her father, up through that patrilineal for three generations, then jumps to that ancestor's matriline for one generation to arrive at Mathias Ambrose's daughter Elizabeth. A zigzag line of ascent like that can only rely on autosomal DNA to reveal genetic matches.

Plus, we're looking at a potential DNA connection with her third great-grandfather. Still, even though the connection is so far away, there are a few matches showing up. And for those few, I am documenting those lines of descent. Thus, I'm beginning to trace the collateral lines of Elizabeth Ambrose, who became the wife of Joseph Flowers.

That is slow going, though, due to difficulty identifying the right people who would be Elizabeth's collateral lines—her brothers and sisters. Knowing, thanks to his will, that Mathias Ambrose had a daughter named Barbara may be helpful, but discovering that her married name became Miller—with no husband's given name in sight that I can find—has me stuck in much the same spot where I was two weeks ago.

Still, I'm making progress—a bit. In the past two weeks, I've been able to add 347 people to my mother-in-law's tree. That means the tree now includes 32,658 individuals whose entries include ample documentation. But there could have been more, if I could have located more documents from early 1800s Bedford County, Pennsylvania. Thankfully, I still have almost three full weeks left to work on this research goal.

In the meantime, various unplanned discoveries of connections on my own family lines led to some work on my mother's family line. An unexpected sixty three people were added to my own tree in the past two weeks, thanks to those developments. Right now, that tree has grown slightly to a new high of 33,563.

While the challenge of researching family history so far removed from our current day is definitely there, I'm hoping my mother-in-law's tree will continue that slow growth process. We'll keep chipping away at this Ambrose family tomorrow. Sometime progress is only made when we stick to the work step by step.

The Strengths and Weaknesses of Local Societies

 

Sometimes, our strongest suits can also turn out to become our greatest weaknesses. This past week, I had two experiences which prompted some meditation on that paradox. Both kept calling me back for later reflection. And both grew out of meetings with our local genealogical society.

Local genealogical societies are facing a thrive-or-demise turning point. Those who are involved in  leadership of these societies have seen that situation looming for years. The pandemic has not helped—although, hey: our meeting attendance numbers could have done a deep dive now without that worldwide excuse. As "next gen" genealogy advocates have been telling us, what we do as societies needs to keep better pace with the world's changes and family history practitioners' current needs.

Many local genealogical organizations began with a worthy mission: to preserve their locale's history, particularly through the use of locally-generated records. When many local government agencies in the past century may have viewed that "outdated" paperwork as an encumbrance—and I know; our county's record storage was, in some cases, abysmal—genealogical societies made it their mission to catalog, index, or transcribe the information gleaned from those crumbling, decaying records.

That's where our strength came in. We burrowed deep into the catacombs of government, church, and other organizational records and extracted material that we could then network with others to share with those seeking answers concerning their family's past. With the advent of technological aids, we became even more proficient at preserving and passing along what we had rescued. Our freedom-of-information spirit predated that of this era's government-mandated legislation. We were among the forerunners of preservation programs, even if we were more like mom-and-pop enterprises than big-business powerhouses.

We—and I use that term quite generally—were some of the first to marry the ideas of historic preservation and cutting edge technology. Some of us, standing on the shoulders of those local organizations, coalesced with other organizations and the promise of new tech to try out fresh ideas: why not copy actual records and enable access to those records using computers? Why not encourage networking of family tree discoveries?

Eventually, the best and brightest of us assembled information domains—unparalleled and widely-accessible opportunities for researchers to access what they had been seeking (in some cases, for years). But with that strength, the unspoken question became: why rely on local organizations to continue making document search-and-rescue a cornerstone of their mission? The strength of our best and brightest, while helpful in unparalleled magnitudes, became the weakness of those whose shoulders they once stood upon.

That same aggregating process followed in the realm of genealogical education. If local societies included education and training in their mission, the organizing and aggregating efforts of bigger entities could, of course, do things faster, bigger, better. Why pay $25 for yearly dues to a local genealogical society when you could enjoy world class training resources for a full twelve months, accessible twenty four hours a day online, for barely more than the cost of local membership?

The bottom line becomes: the strengths we once had have inspired the bigger and better innovations made by others, carving out the core of our mission and leaving us less effective, less pertinent. Why bother having a volunteer-operated local genealogical organization at all? There will always be someone else who can offer the same services our local missions statement addresses for less cost and better coverage.

The answer to that question, thankfully, was the gift I received this past week from the words of members at two local society meetings. Let me describe these two very different gatherings and what happened to provide such inspiration.

The first was an impromptu gathering of about twenty of our local members. The meeting came about because one member who recently joined our society felt the need to meet other members face to face. She  had joined our organization after we had been through nearly three full years of online meetings due to precautions required by the pandemic. Seeing thumbnail-sized pictures of each attendee's face was not enough for this woman; she wanted to meet in person, and asked our board to put together something—anything—to allow new members to get to know our regulars.

Since our organization traditionally takes the summer months off from our meeting schedule, we decided last week would be a good time to beta test her idea. Flash meeting: we sent out an email blast to let members know the date, time and place and gathered for coffee, come whoever may.

Despite having a deep drop in membership since the beginning of the pandemic (except for picking up several long-distance members thanks to online meetings), nearly twenty highly-energized members showed up at the appointed time to get re-acquainted with each other and meet our newest members. The agenda was open; no official speakers or topics. No one even needed to talk about genealogy.

Out of that session came such a burst of energy—and a volley of great ideas. What if we tried this new activity? How about participating in this specific local event as a community outreach? And, surprise: did your family come from that same town in Oklahoma? Or marry someone with my family's surname?

The meeting also became a time for true confessions. Members shared that desire to learn more about their roots, something they discovered from the very first moment, as some put it, that the "bug" bit them to delve into researching their own family. Finding a document or getting a chance to travel to an ancient homeland might have been the initiating call, but when Life happens, these members noticed, sometimes the symptoms from that bug's bite wax and wane. They always could count on the desire coming back at the right time—and knowing that our organization would always be there to inspire and shape them, once they had that opportunity to renew their research passion.

Organic growth, as I've learned from a different field of inquiry, can be the best kind of organizational development. And this non-organized event became the Petri dish for some beneficial growth and badly-needed dose of administrative energy for our burned-out board members. Our members took ownership of their own organization and, while still shunning those dreaded mantles of responsibility, were quite pleased to offer their ideas and assistance. We all realized we needed that boost. We needed to take back one of our organization's true strengths from those echoes of the pandemic still taunting us: the strengths of our members. Our organization evolves—and thus, ultimately informs our mission statement—according to the current needs of the members who continue to bring it into existence. 

Organizations are a living, breathing entity. That is their strength. The more we realize that need of organizations to morph to fit the form of the people who power it, the better we become at continuing to grow our own local society. Just like those living, breathing organizations, though, we need to realize one additional weakness: organizations, like individuals, can die. And that became the second of the inspirations I gained from last week's society engagements.

The week started off with our society's monthly board meeting. We have a cordial board composed of long-standing members who are, at this point, frankly burned out with the roles they've taken on behalf of the organization. Though we can write off that problem with excuses like "the pandemic" or "nobody steps up to run for office"—I'm sure your group has a long list of such mantras—the fact is, whether through forced attrition (the only reason one president "stepped down" from her office was because she unexpectedly died during her service) or a strictly-enforced term limits policy, without willing members, the organization will die. That is our weakness.

That thought apparently weighed heavily on one of our board members who, at last week's board meeting, expressed that concern. In our group's case, that is a gravely heavy concern. We have a term limits policy outlined in our bylaws, instituted by a previous administration which sought to use that stipulation as a way to force members to take their turn at the helm. In normal years, the usual influx of new members, year after year, might have provided the willing talent to step up to those board positions and thus avert any organizational demise. But not with the last three years our group has been having.

In a heartfelt outline of concerns, this board member's bottom line was: "I don't want to see this group die." This group is important to members, enough for those who can to push the limits to make happen the efforts needed to preserve stability through rough times.

While the thoughts expressed were cogent—and the feelings genuine and resonant—that episode in our recent board meeting ricocheted through my mind in the following days for yet another reason. Having stepped up to share feelings on the meaning and importance of the group, that board member staked a claim of joint ownership: an intention to do what it takes to allow this organization to continue so others in the future can, at some point, become part of us when the connection is right. When the "bug" bites and the need to learn or to share or to contribute finds its right time and place, we still need to have that living organization there to meet those renewed members.

That claim of joint ownership—being a part of what gives a group a future—is itself an expression of strength. It is a sign that someone thinks this organization needs to continue not only having a reason to exist, but an imperative to fill a needed role that others, too, will value. It is a pledge for the future, that others will agree with us that it's important to keep the organization alive, not just to drag existence further into the future, but because the organization becomes a symbol of the integral essence joining the organization's purpose with our individual meaning. When a group's meaning is married to what helps us as individuals thrive and self-actualize, that infuses the organization with the strength it needs to continue. 

Some Things Never Change — Others Do

 

When we reach far back into our family's history, we may assume that some things never change. The name of the town where our great-grandparents grew up still sports the same name, right?

Not necessarily so. Now that I've discovered that the family of Mathias Ambrose—my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather—might not always have lived in Pennsylvania, I'm ready to go searching for him in the place where his children were said to have been baptized: Thurmont, Maryland.

But not so fast. When we delve into the history of our ancestors, we also need to heed the history of the places where they lived. Thurmont, in Frederick County, Maryland, is a prime example. As it turns out, if Mathias Ambrose lived in Frederick County at all, he most certainly couldn't have lived in Thurmont. Why? Thurmont was originally known as Mechanicstown.

Mechanicstown was a town incorporated in 1751, but some records seem to indicate the place was settled by German immigrants in the mid 1740s—in some cases, before the formation of Frederick County, itself. It wasn't until 1893 that the town's name officially changed to Thurmont—long after Mathias Ambrose's passing around 1804.

Whether the Ambrose family was among those early German settlers of the colonial Maryland region which eventually became known as Thurmont, I can't yet say. However, just by thinking through the details, if any of the Ambrose children were baptized in Maryland, rather than in Pennsylvania, the dates were likely to be far back in the 1700s. After all, some of Mathias' children were mentioned in his will as married, and at least one grandchild was indicated. I'd guess at least twenty years had passed since the family had been in Maryland, by the time of his passing.

Whether looking for Thurmont or Mechanicstown, what I need to do next is locate the resource mentioned in the Ambrose website: records for a place known as Apple's Lutheran and Reformed Church. Turns out, there are books which may be of help with that. We'll look into that further next week.

When Staring Isn't Impolite

 

It sometimes takes staring for a long time at a document's details before the facts actually sink in. Right now, I'm working on my mother-in-law's relationship to other DNA matches whose most recent common ancestor was Mathias Ambrose, a man who died about 1804. Let's just say finding documentation on the man, himself, has been challenging—let alone any records for the names of each of his children. Other than Mathias' will, I've come up with absolutely zero for supplemental documentation. But staring at the details long enough can sometimes can bring a family history story into focus.

Yet, incredibly enough, there are at least sixty seven DNA matches displayed at Ancestry's ThruLines connecting with my mother-in-law's proxy—her DNA-tested son. Of those sixty seven, fifteen of those matches reach back to siblings of her direct line ancestor, Mathias' daughter Elizabeth (other than the sibling whose marriage yielded double cousins for the next generation). The problem? Those fifteen are descended from the children of Mathias for whom I have absolutely no record other than their name in their father's will.

So, who is identified in these DNA matches? Ten matches lead back to Mathias' daughter Barbara, the one whose married name—Miller—is a surname claimed by so many others as to make the search even more challenging. Besides Barbara, four matches connect us with Mathias' namesake son, and one with the son he named Jacob.

Not having found any documentation for these other children, I pulled up the work of a long-time Ambrose researcher which has been posted online. There, I could check a footnoted paragraph about each of these children which provides somewhat of a guide to us. From that record, I clicked through to see what this researcher had found on Mathias' daughter Barbara, the one who had married a Miller.

Answer: not much. But in the process of looking, I noticed something I hadn't realized before. While Mathias had drawn up his will in Bedford County, Pennsylvania—and while he and his sons had their names show up in tax and census records there—Barbara was apparently born in Maryland.

In fact, a church record mentioned on that Ambrose website indicated Barbara was baptized on August 21, 1774, in a Lutheran and Reformed Church in a Maryland town called Thurmont.

Looking further, I noticed that older brother Jacob also had been born in Maryland. According to this website, Jacob was born there in 1767. Perhaps this was a clue worth looking into.

Lest anyone think Mathias Ambrose had caused his large family to endure a massive trek across the frontier, a mere look at a map will help dispel that notion. Ayr Township, the place where Mathias had lived at the turn of that century, while formerly in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, is now part of Fulton County. And the place now known as Thurmont is just over the state line in Maryland. In all, the trip between the two locations is just under sixty miles.

Whether that trip could easily be made during the late 1700s, I can't yet say. But that quick look at the maps tells me it was at least a possibility. And with that possibility comes the realization that, if I couldn't find records on Mathias' children in Bedford County, a smart place to look next would be to start staring at the records in the northern portion of Maryland's Frederick County, where Thurmont is located.