Signs of Familial Discontent

 

Simon Rinehart's will was presented in court in Perry County, Ohio, on March 8, 1853. The document was so sparse of details—it didn't even provide his wife's name, though he bequeathed her the entirety of his possessions—that I thought perhaps the man had taken care of such business beforehand by recording deeds concerning land transactions for his many children.

How wrong I was.

It took a bit over a year for the signs of familial discontent to surface, but in a faded entry in an appearance docket in the spring of 1854, I found my first sign of just who thought they should have been named in their father's will.

The faded entry named Samuel Rinehart, Martha Fordyce, Jacob Fordyce, Mary Smith, Robert Smith, Thomas Rinehart, and Sarah Gordon. Below that listing of names appeared the words, "heirs of Simon Rinehart, deceased."

That wasn't the end of it. That list was followed by another similarly long list of names: Anna Rinehart, Nancy Ankrom, Jesse Rinehart, Lucinda Rinehart, Charlotte Rinehart, Cassa Brown, Isaac Brown, and Hannah Rinehart. The note continued, "also heirs of said Simon Rinehart, deceased."

In between those two groupings of names was a line with the entry, "vs."

The second group of names contained the explanation, which we've already gleaned from an entry in the 1850 census, that Anna—also listed later in the document as Ann—was the widow who had not been mentioned specifically by name in Simon's will. 

Fast forward to January of 1855. In a court document signed by the publisher of a local newspaper, we can see an example of the required insertion in the paper of record, notifying that same list of people that Thomas Rinehart had filed a petition against all of them, for the purpose of demanding partition of the land of the now long deceased Simon Rinehart. And fortunately for us, the newspaper clipping provided the land's precise location: the northwest quarter of section 15, of township 15, and range 15.

That demand was to be presented at the next term of the court of common pleas in Perry County. No matter how the case was eventually resolved, this was sure to provide me far more information on the composition of Simon Rinehart's large family than I had ever expected to learn. 

Image above: Not long after Simon Rinehart's heirs contended for his property, this plat map showed the location of the land—in this 1859 map, labeled as "S. Rhinehart's Hrs"—situated somewhat to the southeast of the town of New Lexington, Ohio, on the northwest quarter of section 15 in Pike Township; map courtesy of U.S. Library of Congress, in the public domain.

To His Beloved Wife, Mrs. No-Name Rinehart

 

Why is it that some men bequeath large percentages of their possessions to their "beloved" wife without so much as mentioning her first name in the legal document granting her the man's parting tokens of love? I know it may be the 1850s we are discussing in following the last wishes of Simon Rinehart, but couldn't he have been just a tiny bit more expressive?

Simon Rinehart, my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather, had lived a good portion of his adult life in Perry County, Ohio, though he had been born in Pennsylvania. Fortunately, I had found him in the 1850 census in Pike Township, though that discovery was hard-won; the enumerator's handwriting made his surname look more like "Phinebot" than the misspelled Rhinehart it was intended to be.

Seventy-six year old Simon appeared in that household along with his sixty eight year old wife. Here, we learn that his beloved's name was Anne—or at least that's how the enumerator spelled Mrs. No-Name's given name. With a flip of the census page, we can see that three younger adult women with the same misshapen surname also lived in the household: Hannah, Lucinda, and Charlotte, all three born in Pennsylvania.

Three years later, Simon was dead.

While I'm grateful to have found the Rineharts in the 1850 census, the first enumeration to include names of each member of a household, there was apparently much I had yet to learn about this household.

Thinking that perhaps Simon had done his due diligence and, before his demise, had deeded property to any other possible family members, I decided to go looking for a more thorough legal listing.

It's a good thing the will's sparse wording prompted me to look further. As it turned out, I found no such deeds bearing Simon's name when I took my query to the FamilySearch labs' Full Text search. But what I did find more than made up for that.

Apparently, Mrs. No-Name was Simon's second wife—I won't speculate on whether the first wife was also his "beloved"—so perhaps I discovered one reason why Simon chose to move from Pennsylvania to Ohio. Evidently, a son who still lived in Greene County, Pennsylvania, as well as a married daughter there, joined forces with several others among their siblings to contest that will.

While that act may have made life difficult for Simon's three (presumed) daughters still living in his household—to say nothing of his wife—the documentation which resulted from that family rift has been most informative for me, a nosy researcher trying to piece together the family picture from a vantage point of nearly one hundred seventy five years removed.

From those documents, I gleaned the names of each of the children from the first marriage, as distinguished from those of the second marriage—in addition to Hannah, Lucinda, and Charlotte. Added bonus: those daughters who were, by 1853, already married had not only their married surnames given, but the name of each husband to whom they had been "intermarried"—if the husband were still living.

One of those daughters, in fact, had already lost her husband, a fact I knew by virtue of that line being my mother-in-law's direct line ancestor, Sarah Rinehart. Sarah's husband, James Gordon, had died in 1840, thus explaining the reason why the mention of her name in the family's court case did not include her husband's name.

That convenient listing of each surviving member of Simon Rinehart's family may have helped me compose a more accurate and complete listing of the family constellation—but it also provided me with an unexpected narrative of the family's contentious dynamics at the point at which their father's last testament was publicly revealed. 

"Uh Oh"

 

Somehow, unexpected realizations can push that grade-school response out into the open when we least plan for it. And "uh oh" was exactly what slipped out of my mouth when I took a look at one of the ancestors I hadn't worked on in years.

You know how it can go. You work on one line of the family, moving backwards in time, but perhaps attack another part of the line from an ancestral vantage point and work forward. However it happened, the end result was that my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather Simon Rinehart was born nine years before his father was.

Yes, I know that is not humanly possible. But that's what ended up in her family tree.

In my defense, there are a lot of ancestors in my mother-in-law's family with the name Simon Rinehart. It was apparently a top-ten hit for naming sons born into that extended Rinehart clan, back in Greene County, Pennsylvania. In fact, there were so many Rinehart pioneers in that region that I'm sure I'll need to rework far more than just this one Simon Rinehart's line.

But, still: a son born before his father? C'mon now. It's a good thing Simon made it to my Twelve Most Wanted list for this year. We've got a lot of work ahead of us this month.

What I do know about Simon, however, is that while he was likely born in Greene County, Pennsylvania, he died in Perry County, Ohio. And while I have yet to find his final resting place there, I have a pretty good idea of when he died: 1853. A date I gleaned from Simon's will—a simple document which barely filled a third of one page in the county's court records—the document was presented there on March 8, 1853, launching the family into a multi-year, contentious struggle over Simon's purported desire to give his entire possessions over to his wife, and no one else.  

Time for a Do-Over

 

Welcome to June, when we move on from Lydia Miller's surprise last month to the next ancestor in my Twelve Most Wanted who needs a do-over for 2025. This month, we will be reviewing my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather, Simon Rinehart.

Up until this point, I had assumed that Simon was born in Pennsylvania just before the start of the American Revolution, and that he eventually migrated to Perry County, Ohio. But the more I look over this man's entry in my mother-in-law's family tree, the less I'm certain I have all his information correct.

Prime among the goals is to seek further confirmation of Simon's parents and siblings. I hope to put FamilySearch's Full Text Search through its paces this month in hopes of finding documentation to either confirm the information I already have, or rewrite it entirely. I have my doubts about what I had previously entered on this man, and keeping in mind the surprise discoveries made in last month's ancestor hunt, it would do me well to pay attention to those hunches.

Tomorrow, we'll review what details I already have on Simon Rinehart, then zero in on the information which causes me the most angst. The main goal will be to confirm each assertion with solid sources. As the month progresses, a secondary goal will be to review the one hundred DNA matches my husband shares with Simon's descendants. A glaring clue there also reminds me that not all is correct in that line. With this month, we have our work cut out for us—but it will only be resolved if I can locate sufficient documentation to shed some light on this muddled mess.

Unexpected

 

This month began with hopes to find information on the parents of Lydia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother. Lydia was my fifth choice among my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025, a goal I have had for not just this year, but a brick wall that has plagued me for decades. While I can't say I accomplished that goal in the past month, I certainly can vouch for a month of unexpected results.

The prime unexpected result was discovering that, after the death of her husband and second-born son, Lydia went on to raise eight children from a second marriage. Since that discovery came late in the month, I am only now working my way through the lines of descent for each of those surviving children from her marriage to Benedict Palmer. My goal with this most recent task is to seek out any possible DNA matches among her Palmer descendants—but so far, no results for that goal. I suspect the time frame has been too short to see results yet.

A second result has been the unexpected disappearance of DNA matches which had formerly been linked to my account at Ancestry.com. Apparently, nobody else knows the identity of Lydia Miller's parents, either, yet at Ancestry, ThruLines had offered up a guess—an entry labeled "Jacob???? Miller." Yes, that's Jacob with four question marks.

Through some unexpected digital sleight of hand, Jacob???? Miller has now disappeared from my ThruLines listing for this family. No one else has replaced him, either. That, however, means that the DNA matches which ThruLines had previously proposed—and that I had already confirmed through documentation—have suddenly, poof!, disappeared. So much for the theory that Jonathan Miller might have been a brother of Lydia, or at least a first cousin. Checking on the ThruLines results today showed Lydia with absolutely zero DNA matches linked to her own line.

Where to go from here is my next question. The end of this month means it's a wrap for Lydia—at least for this year's research projects. I will need to revisit her case again in a future year. When that time comes, I will once again rely on DNA connections, if any materialize. In the meantime, my task will be to complete her line of descent from all surviving children, down to the current generation, as I have done for all other lines I've worked on in my mother-in-law's family. With eight Palmer children born from the mid 1840s through the early 1860s, that will be a lot of work to confirm each line with appropriate documentation.

Another task that needs completion is the cluster research approach I've taken to examine the Miller households in Perry County, Lydia's original home where she had married, first, William Gordon, and second, widower Benedict Palmer. Since I've decided to continue my subscription to Ancestry's ProTools, where I can access the beta Networks tool, this will facilitate continuing that rather broad survey of parental possibilities. Again, much repetitive work that may well become necessary if I hope to find any answer to my research question.

Granted, this isn't the first time I've come to the end of a month without an answer in hand to my research question regarding one of my Twelve Most Wanted. But at least I've come close to discovering more useful information about that targeted ancestor. That is the value of at least trying to attain research goals.

Next month, for the last of my Twelve Most Wanted for my mother-in-law's line, I'm afraid we'll be again staring down a decades-long research goal. Whether we accomplish what has been hoped for or not, I'm confident the effort will bring some useful but unexpected results, as well. Though not the target I hope to hit, at least those unexpected bonuses add helpful details to the picture of these long-ago ancestors' stories.  

Nothing to Write Home About

 

It's a day before the end of another month, and I'm feverishly working on last-minute tasks on my to-do list for Lydia Miller's side of my mother-in-law's family tree. Sometimes, though there is a lot of work being done, there's not much to say about it—as they say, "nothing to write home about." 

My task today was to wrap up my exploration of Miller families appearing in the early census records of Reading Township in Perry County, Ohio. That was the location of Lydia's first married home, which she shared with her husband, William Gordon, and her one surviving son, Adam.

To aid in the exploration, I've been using an Ancestry.com beta tool, called simply, "Networks." Early this month, I had set up a network which I dubbed "Miller Family in Perry County, Ohio." One by one, I've been adding specific Miller households to this tool, then locating them in as many documents as possible, before extending each hypothetical relative's line of descent several generations.

On the one hand, I've failed miserably in finding any confirmed connection between these other Millers and Lydia's own Miller roots, but on the other hand, I'm hoping the effort may produce some sign of DNA matches. An additional possible outcome might be to discover patterns, such as any Millers who might have followed Lydia and her second husband Benedict Palmer to their new home in Mercer County.

So far, no such promising signs have emerged. Thus, the repetitive grunt work—with nothing much more to say about it. Some work takes time but, regardless of the proportion of work, yields very little in the way of remarkable results.

Tomorrow, whether the work is done or not, we'll close out this exploration to discover Lydia Miller's roots. It will be time for a recap of the month's progress—including some unexpected discoveries—and an outline of what to do the next time I revisit this research puzzle. And if we are really lucky, perhaps Ancestry's algorithms will catch up with us and be ready to yield some new DNA matches from the descendants of Lydia's second family.

Piling on the Palmers — And Just in Time

 

Quick! To the chase—at least, before the end of the month beats us to the finish line.

Right now, to my mother-in-law's family tree I'm feverishly adding the children of Lydia Palmer—formerly the Lidia we had listed as widow of William Gordon of Perry County, Ohio. The reason for this rush to add the children of Lydia's second marriage is my hope that connecting them to my tree today will give us enough time for the algorithms at Ancestry.com DNA to pick up this additional line of descent. After all, no matter how people spelled her name—Lidia Gordon or Lydia Palmer—she was ancestor of not only those descending from her first son, Adam Gordon, but from her many Palmer children, too. There may be a lot more DNA matches out there to discover.

According to an article about ThruLines posted by Ancestry.com's support team on their website, changes in family trees at Ancestry are usually reflected in ThruLines within forty eight hours. That means, if I hurry, all these new discoveries about Lydia's second family may generate ThruLines results by May 31. Talk about a deadline!

Of course, I'll likely continue the chase into June, despite my promise to myself to move on to the next month's feature from my Twelve Most Wanted for this year. I'm curious to see whether any matches show up who share DNA specifically based on the Miller line—Lydia's as-yet unknown parents' line—rather than the Gordon line of her first husband.

In the meantime, here are a few details to wrap up the month.

First was the question about what became of Benedict Palmer's first wife. We found the 1839 marriage record for Benedict and Catherine Hovermill in Fairfield County, but her ominous absence just a few years after that marriage demanded a search for her burial information.

In what seemed to be a fluke from Find A Grave, I did indeed find Catherine's burial—but it came to my attention as a hint at Ancestry pointing to a Find A Grave memorial supposedly for her husband, not for herself. 

Once I clicked on the link provided by that hint, I could see that the headstone itself was for Catherine, not her bereaved husband.

We could already see that there was a monument marking Benedict Palmer's actual burial location in Mercer County, where he and his second wife Lydia had settled, but because the stone was engraved with the man's name spelled as "Benadict," it did not surface as a hint for his final resting place. I had to go in and manually change the search to the other spelling to get the memorial linked to the right person.

As for Catherine's son Jerome, he, too, was buried in the same cemetery in Mercer County, Ohio, where his father had moved the family. I suspect his Find A Grave entry contains some errors, though, as the memorial states that he was born in Mercer County, when we can see from the Palmer family's entry in the 1850 census that they had not yet moved from Fairfield County until after that point.

If Jerome Palmer, born about 1840, had lived a longer life, his death record might have confirmed his mother's name for us. As it turned out, though, Jerome died before his fortieth birthday, leaving a wife and two young daughters, long before the advent of such helpful documents.

Locating information on those two details from Benedict Palmer's first marriage, I can now get back to work, building out this newly-discovered branch of my mother-in-law's family tree. From Lydia Miller's additional eight children in the Palmer line, there surely will be multiple candidates for DNA matches to connect us to her unknown Miller parents. And while I impatiently wait out those forty eight hours, I have some wrap-up work to do on Lydia's possible brothers' families, back in Perry County, Ohio.