Messy Lives Don't Yield Easy Research

Think of all the difficulties that face any one of our families today—the serious illnesses, the premature deaths, the divorces, the job losses and transcontinental career changes—and then, imagine trying to put that story back together again, after the passage of two or three hundred years. Oh—and do it with only three documents or less per family member.

After all the twists and turns you know Life comes packaged in, think you could reconstruct a three dimensional narrative of that ancestor's family story?

I mentioned yesterday about one family in my mother-in-law's line, one that I called a mystery. It isn't exactly a mystery. Somewhere, likely, there may be papers that could give me some clues. But I haven't found them yet.

Complicating matters is that handy little custom among many cultures of naming children after their parents or other ancestors. Trouble is, when a good percentage of the next generation sports that same given name—bestowed, incidentally, to all within an age range of five years or less—it becomes rough going on the research road.

That was the case—well, at least my case—with the William Gordon I referred to yesterday. William was evidently a popular name in the Gordon family, or at least in that branch of the Gordons who emigrated from Pennsylvania to Perry County, Ohio, in the early 1800s. But that wasn't the only name seeing multiple repeats over the years. William's son Adam may have had a close cousin with the same given name as his own, too.

The case with our William Gordon was that he was named as my mother-in-law's second great grandfather, and father of her great grandfather, Adam Gordon. It even says so on Adam's death certificate.

The problem isn't so much with Adam's father's name. It has more to do with his mother. In the death certificate, above, it's pretty clearly listed as "Lida Miller." In other places, I've seen her name written as Lidia. According to Perry County records, Lidia married William Gordon on April 24, 1838. Adam followed soon after, arriving in February of the subsequent year.

The next time I see any mention of Lidia was in the death index for Perry County. There, it indicates that she died January 6, 1840—once again, barely a year after the last time the family was officially documented.

I had presumed she had died in childbirth or shortly thereafter. She was of an age where that could be a possible risk. As for her husband, it had appeared that he simply dropped out of sight.

Working with another Gordon family researcher, we thought we spied William surface with another part of the Gordon family in Fort Wayne, Indiana. But then, there was this other William whose early demise was marked by a fuzzy headstone photograph we had snagged during our last trip to Perry County. (Fortunately, a Find A Grave volunteer captured a much clearer shot of the difficult-to-read inscription on that stone, showing William to have lived for "23 years, 11 months & 4 days, may his soul rest in peace, Amen.")

So, did Lidia die in January 1840, and her husband follow her later that same year? It seems possible. He was young enough to fit the image of a young father at the point of his death. Furthermore, in the 1850 census for Perry County, there was his son, Adam, living in the home of an elderly widow by the name of Mary Gordon—which, coincidentally, was the name of William's mother. Could Adam's grandmother have taken in this orphaned child?

What about the William who supposedly married and moved on to Fort Wayne? There was a William in Perry County who was married in 1847—actually, there were two of them. This is enough to give me pause. Was it my William who passed away in 1840, or not? If not, which 1847 wedding involved my William? Or was he not involved in any of that?

As if that many Williams were enough to confuse the average researcher, Find A Grave volunteers bring up another wrinkle in the record: an entry for a William M. Gordon, with a date of death given as February 25, 1841. There is no photograph of any headstone, but the volunteer makes the additional entry that this William was the son of "William and Lydia" and that his age was "1 M." If that meant an age of one month, we have a problem here. Do the math: it doesn't add up.

This is one of those rare times when I wish for the services of a juicy gossip column in the local newspaper. A tell-all column may not always be a bad thing.

Pardon Me, But Haven't I Seen that Surname Before?

Perusing the surnames in my mother-in-law's maternal line brings on a severe case of déjà vu. This is the branch of the Flowers family where people realize they might be their own seventh cousin. Yes, literally.

My mother-in-law's mother was a Metzger. As many times as I've run across that surname in everyday life, it apparently is not as common as one would suppose. It didn't, for instance, make the Top One Thousand list of surnames at the U.S. Census Bureau.

The trail ran cold for me on our particular Metzger line about 1850. Granted, that was still in Perry County, Ohio—the same place where my mother-in-law was born eighty years later.

Well, that is not entirely correct. The trail ran cold prior to the February 18, 1849, marriage of Michael Metzger and Catharine Mutter in Perry County—the earliest documentation I've found for either of them, so far. Depending on which census enumeration you care to believe, Michael and Catharine were born in either Germany or Switzerland. Did their families know each other before arrival in Perry County? I have no way of knowing—yet.

My mother-in-law's maternal grandmother was a Gordon. This is a line which has been documented quite a way back in time—although even there, you can find genealogical disputes over whether our original Gordon was truly one of the Gordons of Scotland, or an immigrant originating in Germany. I have no way to even quip, "The jury is out," for I can't replicate the documentation confirming such assertions.

"But wait a minute," you might be thinking. "Didn't we talk about that surname yesterday, in the post about the Flowers paternal line?"

The answer is yes. Your eyes were not deceiving you. Your memory served you right. There are Gordons in that paternal line, too. And they are related to the maternal-side Gordons. This is Perry County, remember? Where everyone is related. They take that warning seriously.

If I were to continue with the rest of this maternal side of our Flowers line—moving on to the Sniders—you would find yourself repeating that exclamation. Yes, there were Sniders—or Snyders or Schneiders—on that paternal side of the Flowers tree as well. Despite all the spelling variations, that family was related to those on the other side of the family tree, as well.

That leaves me with only one other surname on this maternal—actually, matrilineal—line for which I have information for additional generations: Jackson. Nancy Jackson, who married Simon Snider, claimed a heritage which not only included Revolutionary War Patriots on her father's side, but on her mother's Ijams and Howard lines. Howard also becomes my last stop, so far, in the matrilineal express for my mother-in-law's family.

Though that tidbit stretches my mother-in-law's genealogy back a few more generations into colonial America, I'm still left with three mysteries at the level of my husband's third great grandparents.

First is the empty name tags for Michael Metzger's parents—back in Germany or Switzerland or wherever they once lived.

The second involves the maiden name for Michael Metzger's wife's mother. I have documents indicating she was called Mary Ann. But as for her maiden name, I've yet to stumble upon any confirmation.

And the final mystery lies with the fate of William H. Gordon's wife, Lidia Miller, who supposedly suffered an early demise. As for the documentation of what became of her—or where she came from or who her family was—I have yet to make that discovery, even after on-site visits to Perry County. Even though I have documents stating it is so, I'm not even sure that was the woman's name. There are times, with all the tangles in this story, when I even wonder whether I have the right William Gordon as her husband.

Sometimes, there seems to be so much more to a family's story than those brief documents are willing to divulge. 

A Heritage of Flowers

When, as a newlywed, I first interviewed my mother-in-law about recollections of her family history, she was certain I wouldn't have long to research before discovering that her family had "just gotten off the boat."

As it turned out, it took a journey back to the 1700s before I could even budge that family line out of her native Ohio. And then, we only moved the clan back to Pennsylvania. Hardly what I call "just getting off the boat."

My mother-in-law's patrilineal line, at current—and at least within our own extended family—has only one survivor who could qualify to take the Y-DNA test that would trace the Flowers line's "deep ancestry." Her immediate line has "daughtered out," leaving only her brother—the proud papa of three daughters—as sole candidate to answer the question of where this line originated.

Still, there is ample documentation to bring this line all the way back to the founding ancestor who—best I can tell—arrived in America in the mid 1700s. That's a long wait until finding the proverbial ancestor who "just got off the boat."

In the meantime, I've gathered lots of documentation on all the descendants of my mother-in-law's father, John Ambrose Flowers. And his father, Joseph E. Flowers. And his father, Simon Flowers. And his father, Joseph S. Flowers. And even then, I'd still be researching family living in Perry County, Ohio.

Why? Because they were some of the first families to have settled in the new state of Ohio in the early 1800s.

Before that point, the Flowers family had edged their way westward through the state of Pennsylvania. They likely arrived on the continent via the port at Philadelphia—but that is something I've yet to verify. All in good time.

Marrying into that Perry County, Ohio, Flowers line were women from surnames familiar to those in the area, for all were longstanding members of that tight-knit Catholic community. Complicating matters were details such as the spelling of some German-heritage names, such as Snider. Is it Snider? Or Snyder? Or Schneider? Any of the three, if you believe all the census enumerators.

Or perhaps all those Snider-sounding surnames were not part of the same extended family. There is that possibility, as we'll see tomorrow when I review the maternal side of my mother-in-law's family. While Snider married into my mother-in-law's paternal side of the family, I've run across some Sniders on her mother's side of the equation, as well.

Same goes for Gordon, another surname showing up in multiple places on that family tree.

In addition, there are some other surnames joining up with the Flowers line for which I've still not obtained the full story. These include Eckhardt, Rinehart, and Stine.

And Ambrose. Remember the man whose name started off this whole genealogy? John Ambrose Flowers? You may have thought Ambrose was simply an unusual middle name. Perhaps it was. But it also was a surname handed down through the family, as well, owing to two Ambrose sisters who married two of the Flowers brothers, back in Pennsylvania—another surname with a long family history to trace.

Families like these make genealogy simpler. They stayed together, predictably. When they moved—and that was rarely—they traveled in a large party. Though they are not as definable as such endogamous groups as the Acadians, they surely bear some of the same hallmarks. Living for generations in the same, rural, isolated communities, they surely ended up intermarrying over the generations. If I knew more about administering DNA projects, I think they would make a fascinating study.

In the meantime, it is family historians like me who benefit from such predictable tendencies as theirs.

The Family That Kept "The Stuff"

If it weren't for family members who decided to keep "The Stuff," none of us would have that starting point which inspired us to check out our family history.

In my husband's family, that privilege fell to my father-in-law's maternal line. In particular, it was the mother-daughter team of Catherine Malloy Tully and Agnes Tully Stevens to whom we all owe the opportunity of still being able—literally—to handle the details. It seemed these two women saved everything. And "everything" meant the letters, photos, newspaper clippings, cards, employee newsletters and even school music programs that contained all the details to help me get started in preparing for our research trip to Ireland.

Even so, being Irish meant having a family line that eventually would come up against that nationwide brick wall that faces everyone researching their Irish ancestry. The census records for some decades are simply not there. We count ourselves fortunate to have been able to push back to documents from the 1820s in one of our lines—the Tully family in County Tipperary—mainly because of hints unearthed from the pile of personal records that Catherine Tully and her daughter couldn't bear to toss.

Oh, how fabulous it would have been to have access to someone able to do a Y-DNA test on our Tully line today. That, however, would be impossible, as the Tully line "daughtered out" with the death of Agnes Tully Stevens' brother William one hundred years ago. While there are gaps in my documentation of the extended Tully family affiliated with my husband's second great grandfather—the farthest back I've been able to research so far—it appears there are no males from that patrilineal line alive now at all.

Related to that earliest Tully I've been able to find was his wife, Margaret. By virtue of the fact that she was a Flannery, there are a number of resources available to me from that family's association. Still, I haven't pushed back farther than 1807, the year Margaret was born. Perhaps there is some wiggle room in that family line and I will be able to tap into some pertinent clues.

My father-in-law's maternal grandmother, Catherine, was a Malloy. Only because her mother saved what turned out to be the last letter sent her in Ireland from her husband, Stephen Malloy, do I have any record of his existence. Well, that plus a ship's passenger list, showing he did arrive safely in Boston, exactly as the letter told his wife he would do. As to what happened after that point—he was said to have been killed in Boston—or even details on where he came from before marrying Anna Flanagan, Catherine's mother, I can find no verification. If it weren't for the letter and its envelope, I could have waved it aside as just another one of those unbelievable family myths.

Still, while those of us with genealogical research duties reaching back to colonial America can revel in our ability to get our hands on paperwork dating back to the 1600s, those of us with Irish heritage are fated to stew over the fact that, having found ancestors whose arrival on this earth came close to the early 1800s, we will likely not be able to span the gap between those dates and the generation of the previous century. Not unless someone important makes a monumental archival discovery.

Or a little ol' somebody in our own family comes up with another stash of stuff.    

Moving Forward: Sometimes an Inch, Sometimes a Mile

We interrupt this recap of surnames to do a recap of the numbers.

And to make an important announcement: I've (finally) been inducted into the Daughters of the American Revolution. Yesterday. During a sweet holiday luncheon, I got to join the ranks of the women who make up our local chapter—and I got to do so along with my daughter, who was inducted at the same time, making the event doubly special for me in celebrating our Patriot, Zachariah Taliaferro.

Next on the D.A.R. agenda: adding a supplemental patriot to my daughter's account, coming from her paternal grandmother's line, thus making my sisters-in-law eligible for membership, as well. All in good time, though. I have a DNA project that will absorb most of my available time between now and the January Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy class I will be taking on genetic genealogy.

In the meantime, with most of my focus being on that matrilineal line that refuses to reveal the nexus with my mystery cousin, it is no surprise that most of my research progress over the last half month has been on my mother's family tree. Since mid November, I've added 568 names (plus requisite documentation, of course) to my maternal tree, bringing the total up to 6,705 individuals there.

It was on that maternal side that I received the bulk of the DNA testing activity, as well. Since mid November, my total autosomal DNA matches bumped up to 967, an increase of eighteen matches through December 3 (the last time I received any notification of matches). I also made contact with five of those matches, some of whom have been actively corresponding with me regarding just how we might connect. Even though these matches are mostly estimated at the level of second to fourth cousin, it has been challenging to determine the most recent common ancestor for any of them. Frustrating.

Meanwhile, it almost goes without saying that one can't crank out that much work on one line without the others suffering a large measure of neglect. And so, it comes as no surprise to hear that my paternal line has not budged from its count of 150 persons in the tree, with no DNA matches received since July 13. I told you this was a rare line. Talk about a small family!

Still, I somehow managed to add six names to my husband's paternal tree, and twenty eight to his maternal tree. Perhaps it's because I have my mind on those Ijams and Jackson ancestors who will yield the D.A.R. patriots I'm targeting. But more on that next week, when I continue with a recap of my husband's maternal lines, as well as rounding out the maternal side of his Stevens line.

As for my husband's DNA matches, it seems there has been a surge in results in his equation, as well: seventeen more matches, bringing his total matches to 559. I managed to contact four of those new matches in the past couple weeks.

A new twist for this complicated DNA matching process is that we used the recent sale opportunities to add an mtDNA test from Family Tree DNA for my husband, as well as autosomal tests for both of us at Ancestry DNA. Of course, it will take over two months for all the results to come back to us, so unfortunately, I won't have those details to play with during my genetic genealogy class. But by the time I return from Salt Lake City, I will hopefully be equipped with more insight on how to facilitate manipulation of all that data. Right now, it feels as if I am drowning in matches and a flood of irreconcilable surnames.  

Patrilineals and Company

When it comes to tracking the surnames of my husband's family, it doesn't take long to arrive at the point when that research needs to be continued in Ireland. Of my father-in-law's ancestors, for instance, three of his four grandparents were born in Ireland, as were all eight of his great grandparents. When we traveled to Ireland a year ago, I had plenty of family history to work on.

Continuing to weave through the strands making up my husband's heritage, his paternal side features, among other names, two sets of Kellys. One, for sure, originated in County Kerry—John T. Kelly and his wife, Johanna Falvey. The other—James and Mary Kelly and their adult children (including our direct line Catherine)—arriving much earlier in Indiana by way of the Mississippi River from New Orleans, left no trace of their origin other than census reports of being born in Ireland. Could they be related to the County Kerry Kellys? There's no way to tell, as yet. But I am starting to get a few nibbles from DNA matches who may help to tell the rest of the story.

As for "the rest" of my father-in-law's paternal side, what wasn't related to a Kelly was a Stevens. At least, that's what we think that patrilineal surname is. We certainly claim it enthusiastically now. But back in 1850, when John Stevens sailed up the Mississippi River and tributaries to land at Lafayette, Indiana, the only indication he left of his origin was on his Declaration of Intention. There, he renounced his allegiance to Queen Victoria and stated he came from County Mayo in Ireland.

Yet, to find any trace of him—or a mystery relative, Hugh Stevens, who repeated that exact travel itinerary a year later—has proven next to impossible.

If you think "Y-DNA to the rescue!" you are being overly optimistic. We have received no exact matches for that test. Of those who come the closest to matching our Stevens line, they are at the genetic distance of five on the 67-marker test. If you know anything about the Y-DNA test, you know that's a long way from providing much helpful information. At worst, the fact that absolutely none of those matches sports the same surname is disconcerting. While we have been the focus of much ribbing over "Non-Paternal Events," our suspicion is that, if anything, there might have been a voluntary surname change for other reasons. Perhaps the ancestor we know as John Stevens arrived in this country a new man in more ways than one.

In going from World War II veteran Frank Stevens, to his father Will Stevens, to his father John Kelly Stevens to his father John Stevens, we trace that patrilineal line with a paper trail of certainty. But when we step back to County Mayo, Ireland, we step into a void with no hint whatsoever of whose name might have come before that. We can hope feverishly that someone in Ireland—or wherever his other descendants might have emigrated—will volunteer to participate in Y-DNA testing, so that we have another way to piece together the story of the Stevens heritage. We can peer through countless New Orleans passenger lists in hopes of uncovering this mystery John Stevens. But unless some small detail slips through and catches daylight, it's unlikely that this patrilineal line will become anything other than an impenetrable brick wall. 

 

The Sparseness of Those Northern Lines

While there are so many resources with which to track my mother's Southern lines, heading up north to reconstruct my father's family history has not been successful. For one thing, this line includes fairly recent immigrants, confronting me with the challenge of reaching across an ocean within less than one hundred fifty years. Coupled with that is the immigrant's penchant, in hoping to blend in, of changing names—often unexplained and without legal documentation.

Still, for the sake of this exercise and to provide a surname summary, I'll play along.

The best chance of finding anything on this extended family lies with my paternal grandmother's line. It was with the Laskowskis that "going home" often meant ending up at their place.

My maternal grandmother, Sophie Laskowska—the female form for the surname, in Poland, took on the "a" ending—came to this country as a child, sometime shortly after her 1885 birth. All I have to go on, for her parents' own histories, was the documentation left on their death certificates in New York City. If that is correct—and I make that a very tentatively qualified if—it means her father Anton was son of Mateusz Laskowski and Elzbieta Gramlewicz, two Prussians who likely never left their homeland as their son had done. Other than having one gratifying email contact with a Gramlewicz descendant who had found me thanks to Google, I have found no sign of the roots of that family, on either side.

Not as if that were enough to keep me puzzled, Sophie's mother has given me a research challenge, as well. I suspect that is partly owing to my hunch that someone got the information wrong when reporting it for a family death certificate. I have one record indicating her father's name as Francis—or whatever the Polish form for that is supposed to be—Jankowsky, but another record shows Sophie's mother as having a surname Zelinski. I toyed with the notion that she might have been previously married, but haven't yet found any corroboration.

One thing I do know: Sophie's maternal grandmother was an Aktabowski—a name I was exceedingly thankful to stumble upon. That was the ticket I was hoping for: a name that was not too common, giving me hope that anyone I would find would likely be a relative. Not that that has borne out steadily in my favor—sometimes, it became a little too hard to trace—but it has helped me flesh out the cousins in this sparsely-populated family tree.

As for the other side of my father's family tree, well, there isn't exactly even a tree to show. That was the domain of the mysterious "John T. McCann" who turned out to really be Theodore J. Puchalski—or maybe Puhalski—whose origin and arrival in this country I've yet to discover. Even doing the Y-DNA test (thanks to the willingness of my brother) has not helped uncover the story, nor has the autosomal DNA test helped much, either. There simply aren't that many cousins closer than the level of fourth cousin to trace—and, in my experience concerning this messy family line, there isn't even a way to bring the documentation back enough generations to engage tentative cousins in a meaningful dialog.

While I hope to plug away at this mystery line, I likely won't find any more key discoveries. But I'll keep trying. After all, maybe another English-speaking paternal distant cousin from Poland will once again Google her family's surnames and land at my electronic doorstep, willing to compare notes.