Landing in Ohio

 

While we may not have the benefit of such modern records as birth certificates when we research our ancestors from previous centuries, we do have a few other way to track their whereabouts: land records and tax records. In the case of Joseph and Elizabeth Flowers, my mother-in-law's second great-grandparents, it is land records which help us determine when they first landed in Perry County, Ohio. 

From the archives of the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management, we can find a digitized copy of a record assuring us that one Joseph Flowers had made his way to the land office at Zanesville, Ohio, with verification that he had made full payment for a specific parcel of land situated in Perry County.

Those one hundred fifty five acres which Joseph Flowers obtained on May 26, 1828, may have been officially documented in that land office, but the notes on the preserved record let us know that Joseph was actually the assignee of another man, Vachel Ogg. How Vachel Ogg happened to originally obtain the land, I can't yet determine—although Ogg's name can be found associated to various land transactions not only in Ohio, but back in Pennsylvania, as well.

That neither Ogg nor his assignee, Joseph Flowers, obtained the land through military service is fairly clear. A check through the Patriot files at the national headquarters of the Daughters of the American Revolution reveal no entry for Ogg's name, and Joseph was likely born too close to the dates of the Revolutionary War to have been eligible to serve.

Joseph Flowers may have obtained this parcel of land in 1828, but that is not the earliest date we can find him in Ohio. Though I can't yet find him in any 1820 census records, tax records in 1818 reveal there was someone by that same name in Muskingum County—the county from which land was drawn to form Perry County in 1818. And, of course, there was that mention in a hundred-year-old local history book that his son Thomas was born there in 1814.

Now that we've isolated a few instances of the earliest dates of our possible Joseph's existence in Ohio, that helps us zero in on the dates in which he and his family might have left their former residence. After all, one can't be in two places at the same time. Though the name Flowers is not the most common of early American surnames, we still need to make sure we are not following the trail of a name twin, and this timeline clue is one token to guide us to some possible prior residences in Pennsylvania.

Duplicates

 

When dealing with family trees which include intermarried lines, there is this little problem with encountering duplicates. Only those whose trees include what's called "pedigree collapse" would need to keep an eye on such an occurrence. When it comes to the lines of descent of my mother-in-law's tree, that issue crops up a lot.

Hence, I'm always on the lookout for duplicate entries. Hers is a tree with multiple intermarriages, primarily because her family settled in one place and stayed there for, oh, a couple centuries.

Moving up the family lines, starting with my mother-in-law's own parents, it didn't take long to realize how intermarried the families in her Ohio hometown in Perry County had become. I'd work my way up one line—say, her patriline—adding all the children for each specific generation, then moving to the parents of that generation and their place in their own birth families. At some point, a spouse would get entered into the family line who had a double somewhere else in the extended family. Sometimes, second cousins would marry, or third cousins who perhaps didn't even realize the relationship. While I'm focusing on the Flowers line right now, I've seen the related surnames of Snider, Gordon, and Metzger get woven into more lines than one.

Thus, adding the siblings to each generation—those collateral lines—results in multiplied duplications. This is something I've had to periodically monitor, lest the proliferation of entries in that family tree become nearly twice the size it truly is.

While Ancestry.com's "Tree Overview" provides a Summary section which can be sorted alphabetically by surnames, it does mean requiring a visual scan of the list to spot duplicates. An easier method is to keep my Ancestry trees synced with my desktop-resident program (I use Family Tree Maker) and regularly run a check through that feature. There, I can easily determine whether I'm viewing a true duplicate entry, or simply a matter of several descendants all named after the same ancestor.

As for those namesakes, there are many. Names like John and Joseph, Catherine and (especially) Mary make me grateful for the advent of middle names. Many times, the differing dates of birth, or places listed, help differentiate between what otherwise look like duplicate entries. But sometimes, I encounter duplicates for which I have yet to confirm any of these secondary details, requiring another look to see whether a linking person—parent or spouse—can become the tie breaker.

While the tree-trimming can become cumbersome, it's a necessary step to ensure those remaining in the tree have their one place, not two—or multiple!—duplicate entries. Sometimes the threads of this family tapestry become so interwoven that I realize how much like a fabric a family can be, rather than simply the intersection between two disparate lines. In those tight-knit communities—whether in Ohio's rural coal-mining country, or far away in isolated mountain villages of other continents—that's what makes people lose the thread of connection and simply resort to saying, "they're kin."

Of Donuts and Do-Overs

 

It's Saturday morning. Time to grab a donut and a good cup of coffee, sit back and ponder the work we've done, and what's still ahead to be completed. Problem is, with this month's research goal, I'm realizing there is a lot of messy work yet to accomplish. When it's all said and done, I may have more mess left than month.

I've seen a lot of talk, over the years, about the virtues of a "Genealogy Do-Over." Sometimes, we make messes so big, the only way to deal with them, it seems, is to just explode them—poof!—and start again from scratch.

Except... 

I have twenty one thousand relatives in a family tree that started its growth cycle as my mother-in-law's tree. With my research strategy adjustments in the last year, I've combined both my in-laws' trees into one, which inflated that count. Still, facing the recently-discovered fact that vast chunks of generational nether reaches have been grossly neglected, scrapping a work of decades which includes that many entries would be disheartening. And yes, that is an understatement.

However, now that I'm working on this month's research goal—to confirm the parents of Elizabeth Ambrose, wife of Joseph Flowers, my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather—I'm realizing it has been a long time since I last passed this way down the Flowers branch of the family tree. I'm working hard to add the missing lines of descent, which we'll review tomorrow in my biweekly count, but the realization of how much work has been lacking puts me in mind of the very reason some people decide to scrap it all in a do-over mode.

Do-overs have their place, but we have to remember that a do-over is a system, just as much as any other system designed to help us get all the facts correct—and included—in assembling a pedigree. I do have other systems in place to ensure a thorough review of work done in the past, a step-by-step system designed to move from one specific ancestor down through each line of children, then grandchildren, then greats and beyond. It's a process that makes sure no descendant gets left out in the review of newly-available digitized documents and associated resources as they become available.

Then, too, there's the constant check of DNA test matches to see whether newly discovered relatives already have a place in the tree, or need to be freshly added. Add to that one more systematic sweep: checking the universal list of profiles for duplicate entries which need to be merged, and that seems to be a triple-check that all descendants have been accounted for.

Except that we're talking about an ever-growing family tree branching out from the twenty one thousand who are already here and accounted for.

Every system, no matter how thorough, eventually groans under its own weight. I have to remind myself that when I encounter such signs of omission, they don't necessarily herald a cause to scrap it all and start again from scratch. The work which is already laid out is salvageable. No matter how it is rectified, all corrections take work and diligence. Declaring a moratorium on taking remedial action on what we have, or seeing the act of scrapping what's done to start afresh as "freeing," is not necessarily the best choice for moving forward.

Sometimes we need to recognize that grunt work is called what it is for exactly that reason: it's roll-up-your-sleeves tedium. But it needs to get done, whether we call it a "do-over" or a "system."

There's a quote about donuts that's been bandied about and blended into various forms over the years, credited to more than one pragmatist. It's about the donut and the hole: the optimist sees the donut, the pessimist the hole, so keep your eye on the donut.

No matter how you first heard that saying, perhaps you'll identify why it reminds me so much of the chasm between the work we do as genealogists and the hypothetical "done" we'll never seem to attain in working on our family trees.

When I think about yielding to the urge to succumb to a "do-over," all I can see is the hole. It's when I keep my eye on the donut that I find the inner fortitude to keep plugging away at the work. I had to realize the "hole" of "not done" can suck a researcher into counter-productive pessimism. And that's not what I'm after in this quest to catalog family history. What I'm really after in this process of research is not that black hole, but the process of enjoying the donut.

Which I hope you'll do as well, both this morning with your cup of coffee and metaphorically as you tackle your next research challenge. 

 

Putting It All in Perspective

 

In order to trace our ancestors' steps, going back through time, we need to start with their ending point. So it is, in pondering the migration pathway for my mother-in-law's Flowers and Ambrose families, that we start where they ended: in Perry County, Ohio. Since it would be near-impossible for a son to be born without his mother present at the same location, now that we've found the report that Joseph and Elizabeth Ambrose Flowers' son Thomas was born in 1814 in or near what later became Perry County, we can safely assume that Elizabeth—and thus likely her husband Joseph—were in Ohio in that same year.

Although the young Flowers family arrived quite a bit after Ohio achieved statehood in 1803, don't think life in their new home came easily to them—nor was the way leading to their new community easily navigated. When I examine the few tokens of their arrival in the new state, I begin to wonder just what it was which provided the incentive for Joseph to move his young family there. To put this all into perspective, we need to examine what was—and was not—available as incentives for the family to move to the nascent state of Ohio, and what was left behind by the family in the state they had previously called home.

Yes, for one thing, in Ohio, there was land there to be had, but the systems of administering the first federal land grants in Ohio amounted to a patchwork quilt of various programs evolving over time and through different agencies and systems. That said, we can't simply assume that Joseph Flowers came to Ohio to claim land as a benefit of service in any particular war, or that he came as part of a wave of ethnic migration from Pennsylvania, for instance.

Nor can we assume the way there was easy or convenient. For those leaving homes in Pennsylvania—Joseph's likely former residence—the main route preferred by fellow immigrants of the time was a pathway known as Zane's Trace. This was an overland route leading from Pennsylvania to Kentucky, cutting through the very region around Muskingum County and what eventually became Perry County, the location where the Flowers family settled.

Though Zane's Trace was, up to and after the War of 1812, considered the main route through portions of what became Ohio, disabuse yourself of any concept of this route as a wagon road. In its earliest years, Zane's Trace was a trail through wilderness, barely wide enough to allow passage of settlers on foot, or on horseback, or perhaps traveling with a pack animal. It was only after Ohio achieved statehood that tax money was used to "improve" Zane's Trace and make it wide enough for wagon access. Even then, the road had hazards—though not quite as many as might be faced by those choosing to migrate via the waterways connected to the unpredictable Ohio River.

It is likely through understanding the immigrants' perspective that we can allow their motivations to guide us from the place where they settled, back to their origins in Pennsylvania—or, perhaps, even farther than that location. Next week, we'll take a close look at the few documents affording us a glimpse of where Joseph and Elizabeth might have originated their rough journey to the new state of Ohio.

It's Been a Long Time . . .

 

...since I last passed this way.

The Flowers and Ambrose family lines make up part of my mother-in-law's genealogy, but that doesn't mean I've kept the latest details constantly at my fingertips. That family history study was, far longer ago than I care to remember, one of my first research projects after becoming her daughter-in-law.

On her part as the interviewee in this process, my mother-in-law was certain that her ancestors had "just stepped off the boat" only about two generations prior to her own story. How far from the truth that turned out to be. While one of her grandfathers did descend from immigrant parents—who arrived from Switzerland before their 1849 marriage in Ohio—the rest of her family lines could be traced back, generation after generation, still in America.

The Flowers and Ambrose lines were such an example, stretching back to colonial times. I had, years ago, traced them the best I could, long before such conveniences as Ancestry.com or the online version of what we now know as FamilySearch.org.

Back then, all such research was eventually recorded on my pre-dawn-of-genealogical-civilization version of Family Tree Maker. As I do now, I included in that desktop-resident computerized record all the details on collateral lines in each generation, and then reached back down through the lines of all their descendants. When it came time to shed the desktop-resident (and antiquated) genealogy program, I transferred details to Ancestry.com, step by agonizing step, so I could glean those valuable hints about digitized support documents.

That was then; this is now. Bottom line: now that I'm returning to my mother-in-law's Flowers and Ambrose lines, I'm realizing there was a lot of data I inadvertently left out.

How do you "inadvertently" leave out such critical data?

It's been back to the drawing board to reconstruct the many lines reaching through the generations to the double connection between the Ambrose family and the Flowers family—the marriages of the two Flowers brothers and Elizabeth and Susannah Ambrose.

In my mother-in-law's direct line, her second great-grandparents Joseph Flowers and Elizabeth Ambrose had at least five sons, the eldest two of whom were born in Pennsylvania. Those eldest Flowers children, of course, migrated to Perry County, Ohio, with their parents, where they were joined by the younger three sons.

What, to my dismay, turned out to be missing from this research project were the descendants for those other four lines besides my mother-in-law's direct line. Filling in these blanks will certainly add a large number of individuals to her tree, but it isn't the sheer numbers I'm seeking. This research policy enables me to connect the dots between those in her immediate family who have taken DNA tests and their matches.

While I retrace my steps from notes made on that antiquated desktop-resident program, in the background, I'll be systematically moving through each family line of Joseph and Elizabeth, adding their descendants to their rightful place in my online trees. Reviewing these notes has also reminded me of fellow researchers who, long ago, were pursuing these same surnames—some of whom are avid researchers whose writings remain online for further reference. You can be sure I'll be gleaning notes from these newly re-housed websites, as well.

The next task, though, will be to find a will for Elizabeth's and Susannah's father, which means probing for the possible location in Pennsylvania which was the sisters' last stop before migrating to Ohio in the early 1800s.

Where They Were Last Seen

 

The advice often given, when working with those brand new to the pursuit of family history, is to start with what you know. Step one for beginners, then, means starting with yourself.

In the case of our research project for this month of June—pursuing the sixth ancestor of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2021—means chasing after a man born in the 1700s, possibly in colonial Pennsylvania. While I have a hypothesis based on the suggestion of other researchers, I can't yet be sure of such a lead; I haven't proved it for myself. 

When we start from what we know in such a case, we have to double back to territory where we are more confident of our assertions. In our case, that means looking to the later years of two couples in the Flowers family: two Flowers brothers who married sisters from the Ambrose family.

The biggest help in this search is the fact that these four "suspects"—the two Flowers brothers and their Ambrose spouses—all left Pennsylvania and settled in the same location in Ohio, a place called Perry County. Apparently, both Flowers families purchased land there and stayed for the remainder of their lives, a helpful detail for our research purposes.

In fact, I can find entries at Find A Grave for both Joseph Flowers and his wife, the former Elizabeth Ambrose, as well as the practically illegible headstone for Elizabeth's sister Susannah. (Though Find A Grave volunteers have helpfully inserted notes affirming that Elizabeth and Susannah were born with the surname Ambrose, in my experience, not all notes affixed to Find A Grave memorials can be substantiated, so I choose to look for more details.)

That Joseph and Elizabeth were longtime residents of Perry County can be verified with a review of the census records for the later years of their life in 1850 and 1860, just a few years before their deaths. And yet, that Ambrose maiden name does not show in any later Perry County documents that I can find.

More conveniently, we can trace indications of that Ambrose maiden name in the middle name the couple gave their youngest son, George Ambrose Flowers—although by the time he died, at the home of his niece in Indiana, the fact was lost on those who knew him there, judging by the use of only a middle initial in his obituary and on his headstone, and the unfortunate entry on his death certificate giving his mother's maiden name as "Amber."

While it was from Joseph and Elizabeth's next-to-youngest son Simon that my mother-in-law's line descended, searching through details on collateral lines proves beneficial through one clue about another Flowers brother of George and Simon. Their elder brother Thomas, likely born about 1814, merited an entry in one of those old county history books which were the vogue about one hundred years ago. The A. A. Graham volume, History of Fairfield and Perry Counties, Ohio, included the details that Thomas was born in neighboring Muskingum County and came to Perry County by 1820. Better than that was the book's addition of his parents' names, including his mother's maiden name: Joseph and Elizabeth (Ambrose) Flowers.

Admittedly, there may be errors in those thousand-plus page local history books, as well. Counterbalancing that drawback is the proximity of the report's date to the time in which such events took place. The 1883 History of Fairfield and Perry Counties, Ohio is nearly 140 years closer to the time of Joseph and Elizabeth than we are. I'll take my chances that we're on to something here.  

Meet Elizabeth

 

Her name was Elizabeth Ambrose, and she entered life in a particularly turbulent year. Born in Pennsylvania on December 4 of 1776, her life was already thrown into turmoil. 

That she made it safely through to the other side of the American struggle for independence we can see from an 1864 headstone marking her grave in Ohio, far from the town of her birth. Hers was a life spanning two significant wars testing America: the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

Though Elizabeth was born 245 years ago, she was only my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother, courtesy of some long generations separating the two women. Yet, the era in which Elizabeth was born was characterized by a different set of records, one which sometimes left women invisible to the society in which they lived.

Elizabeth and her sister Susannah apparently married two brothers, Joseph and John Henry Flowers, and all together moved from Pennsylvania to settle in Perry County, Ohio.

Our challenge this month is not so much to examine Elizabeth as it is to confirm the identity of her father, said to have been Mathias Ambrose of colonial Pennsylvania—the sixth of my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors for this year. We'll take the month of June to explore what we can find to connect Elizabeth and her sister Susannah to the Ambrose family of Pennsylvania—or to send us in a different direction, should that be what we discover.

No matter what details we unearth from our family history exploration this month, learning about Elizabeth Ambrose Flowers' roots will mean we'll familiarize ourselves with the history of that epic era and the minutiae of colonial life in Pennsylvania leading up to that key year of 1776.