Augusta's Confederate Monument and My Family History

Sometimes, genealogy and modern politics have some overlap. 

In Augusta, Georgia, a giant, imposing obelisk stands as a memorial to Confederate soldiers. In particular, it hosts four life-sized statues of infamous Confederate military leaders, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, William H.T. Walker, and Thomas R.R. Cobb (shown left), the latter of which is my 2nd cousin 6 times removed. It's a distant relation, for sure, but a significant one, given why this monument was erected in 1878 by the Ladies Memorial Association of Augusta.

Let's be clear about one thing - statues, monuments, and memorials are built in honor, respect, and celebration of the people, places, or events they represent. Monuments like this one are made in memory and respect of men whose only or primary contribution to history was to lead armies in the name of slavery. And when monuments like this are inscribed with quotes like the following, that fact becomes impossible to deny:

"No nation rose so white and fair 

None fell so pure of crime."

I'm not sure how anyone could say this is anything but blatantly racist, and this is the inscription found emblazoned under the feet of my cousin. That makes this a little bit personal for me - southerners like to shout about how this is their history, and their heritage. But for me, it literally is. 

And I say, tear it down.

The removal of statues like this isn't the removal of history. History belongs in museums and history books, which there is no lack of. There are plenty of Civil War and Confederate artifacts and memorials to be found in museums, where people can study and learn from them, and this monument could be one of them instead of being revered in the middle of town. When a memorial is erected in honor and celebration of Confederate leaders, it's honoring and celebrating slavery and racism. By not only leaving such a monument standing, but actively refusing to remove it, the government is not-so-subtly condoning a symbol of racism. We would never tolerate a statue of Hitler standing proudly in the middle of a city, paying homage and reverence to him, so why do we allow it for Confederate leaders?

Even if we remove all the slavery and racism from such symbolism (which isn't really possible, but just for the sake of argument), you're still left with a monument honoring men who tried to tear our nation apart with war and violence. Are we now going to see statues of the leading faces among the rioters who broke into the Capitol Building? Because they too are talking about civil war, they too are waving the Confederate flag, and they too believe their violence to be "fair" and "pure of crime". In reality, they are traitors, and so were Confederate leaders. And actually, many (if not all) of the rioters are also proud racists, just like Confederate leaders, as proven by the presence of white supremacy groups and Neo Nazi symbolism during the Capitol riot. Confederate leaders were also unabashed racists. This direct quote from my own cousin, Thomas R.R. Cobb, a Confederate General, proves it:

"This inquiry into the physical, mental, and moral development of the negro [sic] race seems to point them clearly, as peculiarly fitted for a laborious class. The physical frame is capable of great and long-continued exertion. Their mental capacity renders them incapable of successful self-development, and yet adapts them for the direction of the wiser race. Their moral character renders them happy, peaceful, contented and cheerful in a status that would break the spirit and destroy the energies of the Caucasian or the native American."

None of this means that every statue of every historical figure who ever did anything unethical should be removed. Yes, I am aware of the fact that most of our founding fathers were slaveholders, and that's certainly something I don't think we should hide from - we should talk about it, and we should teach it in schools. Our founding fathers were flawed, and that's something we have to accept. But the difference is, statues of founding fathers were not constructed in honor of them being slaveholders, they were erected in honor of all their positive achievements. Statues of Confederate leaders are produced in honor of their fight for slavery, and supporting that in the name of "history" or "heritage" is, frankly, bullshit. It's not in the name of history, it's in the name of racism and hatred. 

And if your heritage is racist, it's not something you should celebrate. Read about it in a history book, or visit a museum, or find something else about your heritage to celebrate that's not based on slavery, but do not protect a symbol of hate standing proudly in the middle of a city. 

Shame on the Augusta, Georgia government, and shame on everyone who enables them.

Major Breakthrough with DNA

I think I finally broke through the biggest brick wall on my tree. I had forever been stuck at my 3rd great grandmother, Emma Elizabeth Sherwood (left), who married William Henry Mills. Despite having found her maiden name, I could never find her parents or any record of her before her marriage. Born about 1838 in New York, there were a lot of girls with the same or similar name in New York around that time. I'd tried to research by elimination, but I was still left with too many options that could have been her. And DNA? I made some efforts but it was really difficult with a fairly common surname like Sherwood. I never got anywhere promising.

Until now. I decided to work on some closer DNA matches that I hadn't been able to identify before. I randomly picked one from my mom's side who had several shared matches with people confirmed from my Mills branch. This match, we'll call him 11B, had a small family tree added, enough that I could build on it. Although that is supposed to be ThruLines' job, it doesn't always catch everything. I started digging and before long, I found that 11B's 2nd great grandmother was Orannah Sherwood b. 1841 in New York.

I instantly thought she could be a sister of my Emma Elizabeth Sherwood. Right surname, born only about 3 years apart in the same state. Plus, I know this DNA match 11B is somehow connected to my Mills branch and Emma Sherwood married William Henry Mills. But I tried not to get my hopes up too high, because Sherwood is a common name, and lots of people lived in New York in the late 1830s/early 1840s. 11B could be connected to my Mills branch in some other undiscovered way entirely. More research was needed, so I researched the other branches of 11B's tree and found no other connection to my tree, let alone to my Mills branch.

I then found Orannah, fortunately not a super common given name, in NY in the 1850 census and guess what? She had a sister named Emily E Sherwood b. abt. 1837.

The 1850 census showing the Sherwood family with Emily/Emma

Things are looking much more promising. Granted, Emily was supposedly born in Indiana according to the 1850 census, not New York, but that could be wrong. Or it could be right and she never knew it. Her older sister Louisa also seems to have been born in Indiana in 1835, and then her younger brother Homer was born back in NY in 1839, so the family could have been in Indiana for only a few years and Emily/Emma may not have remembered it and just assumed since she grew up in NY that that's where she was born. It's strange for us today with all our documentation to think that someone didn't actually know where they were truly born, but it happened a lot in history.

Another smaller piece of evidence is the fact that the 1850 census tells us Emily's father, Nathan, was born in New York, which is consistent with later records of Emma saying her father was born in New York too. Unfortunately, it's not as consistent with her mother, which later records say she was born in either New York or New Jersey, while the 1850 census for Annis O, the presumed mother of Emily, says she was born in Vermont.

Here's the craziest bit, though, and is a real testament to why you shouldn't just outright dismiss family stories. Once upon a time, my grandmother was doing genealogy research and left behind a wealth of information, though rarely cited her sources. Much of what she wrote down was word-of-mouth info from cousins she tracked down and wrote to. In her handwritten info, she claimed that William Henry Mills (Emma Sherwood's husband) had a sister named Belinda who married a man with the surname Beals. Turns out, William did have a sister named Blendena, which was obviously misremembered as Belinda, but her only married name was Church, not Beals. None of William's other sisters or relatives married anyone named Beals either, so I was really scratching my head over where this name came from and considering that maybe it was totally fictitious, even though about 90% of my grandmother's info I've proven to be accurate, and the remaining 10% has turned out to hold some kernel of truth, with only some of the details being wrong.

Well, guess who did have a sister whose married name was Beals? Emily Sherwood! Her older sister Louisa married Silvanus Beals in 1855 in Indiana. And note how this is the same sister who was supposedly born in Indiana? The family probably had some kind of connection to Indiana.

I even managed to explain how Emma and Louisa wound up marrying in different states in the same year. Louisa's husband, Silvanus Beals, apparently was living in the same county that Emma married William Henry Mills in, Wyandot County, Ohio. That links Silvanus, and therefore potentially also Louisa, to the same place Emma was married. Additionally, Silvanus' obituary says he worked for a railroad company as a young men, the same industry that William Henry Mills spent his life in. Perhaps they worked together before they met their wives, maybe Louisa introduced Emma to William through her fiance or vice versa. There clearly appears to be a connection there.

The evidence is starting to really pile up, but is it all just a coincidence? How could I know for sure this was the right family, given the slight difference in the given name, Emma vs Emily, and the difference in her birth place as well as her mother's birth place? 

Firstly, I started researching Emily, not Emma, as though she was a different person. If I could find her on later records as having married someone else, not William Henry Mills, or never married at all, that would disprove the theory that they were the same person. I didn't find anything like that, but of course that doesn't confirm they were the same person, it only means that's still a possibility.

I also found Emily in the FamilySearch tree as Emma, which is apparently coming from a book "Descendants to the eight generation of Thomas Sherwood (1586-1655) of Fairfield, Connecticut Vol 2" which was published in 1985, so it's obviously very much a secondary source (and really doesn't contain much info), but it certainly suggests Emily's name could have actually been Emma. It's not a stretch.

But what I really wanted was to find more DNA matches descended from this family. I was hesitant to put this family into my tree because it meant putting a lot of speculative data in my tree, but I did it because I wanted to see if ThruLines would find more descendants. And after a few days, the matches came rolling in! 7 so far, and they will only continue to grow as my tree grows. Unfortunately, this family has been a little difficult to research, so it's been a struggle, but worth it. 

ThruLines showing 5 out of 7 DNA matches from the Sherwood family so far

It appears that Nathan probably died sometime in between 1853 and 1855, and Annis in either 1854 or 1855, because their last child was born 27 Mar 1854. As a result, the children were split up and scattered, sent to live with other families. In 1855, we know that Lousia got married in Indiana, and Emily/Emma, assuming they are the same person, was married in Wyandot County, Ohio. They may have been living with family in those areas. Also in 1855, Oreannah was sent to live with the family of her future husband, Charles C Baxter. Their brother, Homer, was an apprentice living with a seemingly unrelated family in a different part of NY on the 1855 NY State census. Another brother, Dwight, was adopted by another member of the Baxter family, who was fortunately neighbors with the ones who took Oreannah in, so at least these siblings got to be near one another. The youngest brother, Frank, was actually born in March 1854 and adopted as an infant by Franics Postel and Sarah Baxter (Sarah being the sister of Oreanna's husband, yet another connection to the Baxter family) before the 1855 NY census, supporting the theory that Nathan and Annis died around that time. 

I am still working on researching the other children, but I'm having difficulty and I think it's because they were all split up after their parent's deaths. If I'm having difficulty researching them, others probably are as well, and indeed, when I look for these people in other trees, there are usually dead ends. If no one has these people well researched in their trees, ThruLines doesn't have much to follow. So it's not necessarily because I'm on the wrong path, there's just no established path yet for ThruLines to pick up on, which is kind of exciting to be working on something no one else has done much work on yet. Of course, the downside to that is how difficult it is.

Additionally, when I look at my Shared Matches with the confirmed matches descended from Nathan and Annis, I find most of them don't have any tree added at all, and among those that do, most of them are tiny. Another hindrance of ThruLines. All I can do is build my own tree as much as possible down descendant lines and see if they eventually link up with more trees. For now, this is an excellent start, and I'm thrilled to finally have found Emma's family!

Breaking Down More Brick Walls with DNA and ThruLines

Previously, I detailed how I broke down one brick wall with the aid of my DNA matches, involving a suspected maiden name. This time, I'm going to detail how it helped me prove that my ancestor Jonathan Deaves was the son of Isaac Deaves.

My 3rd great grandmother, Mary W Deaves was always a huge brick wall in my tree. When I first got into genealogy, I started out where my grandmother had left off with her research. She did not even have Mary's maiden name. I was able to find Mary's death record (shown left) which said her father's name was Jonathan Deaves. That at least gave me her maiden name, and her father's name, but there was no mother's name and for years I was not able to find out anything more about her father. I had no idea when he was born or died, though I assumed it was probably somewhere in or around Philadelphia since that's where his daughter lived. I had no idea who he married or when or where, or who his parents might have been. By the time of the 1850 census, Mary was already married and I couldn't narrow down any Jonathan or Jon/John Deaves, Daves, or even Davis in census records as conclusively the one I was looking for. So I'd made a little headway but I was stuck again, just like my grandmother had been.

Deaves seemed like a fairly unique name, although it is also written as Daves or Davis sometimes, which are very common, but I thought I'd give my DNA matches a search for the more unique spelling. Three matches showed up, and they were all descended from an Isaac Deaves or his father, Thomas Deaves. Looking into the records, Isaac Deaves did indeed have a son named Jonathan (named in Isaac's will) but how could I be sure he was the Jonathan Deaves I was looking for? The location was right but the will didn't mention any of Jonathan's children, or any other information about him (though even if it had, I had no other info on my Jonathan so how could I confirm it?). I couldn't find any other records to help confirm it either and I thought three matches were a good lead, but not conclusive. It didn't seem like quite enough, especially since I couldn't find anyone descended from Jonathan himself.

Then ThruLines happened. And suddenly, it was finding connections I hadn't been able to find. It's showing Isaac Deaves as a potential ancestor! I look again, and I (and my mom, who is one generation closer) now have six matches descended from Isaac, one from Jonathan, and three from Thomas for a total of ten, most of whom also matched each other (an important factor) and most of whom share a 15+ cM segment with me or my mom (meaning they are definitely identical by descent). I carefully went through each one and confirmed their descent from these men - it doesn't mean much to have this many matches to one branch if there's an error somewhere and most or none of them are actually descended from these ancestors. But once you do have this many numbers, it becomes less likely they each have an error, especially when they are descended from different generations in the same line because that means they can't have all just copied the same error.

Interestingly, I also have one other DNA match who is descended from a Deaves family in Glouchestershire, England, which is supposedly where Thomas's father was from (another Isaac), but I haven't been able to confirm this yet and with only one match, I can't confirm it with DNA. Hopefully with more research (either on the paper trail or with DNA), I can confirm or disprove it eventually. For now, I'm very happy with my breakthrough.

ThruLines only picked up on 4 people descended from Isaac, I found the
other 2

Breaking Down Brick Walls with DNA

I'm going to detail one example of how DNA helped me break down a brick wall in my tree. This may be a somewhat unique case that might not always apply to every situation, but it's still worth detailing so people can get an understanding of how to work with your DNA matches in general.

Hope's baptism confirming her parent's names, but not her
mother's maiden name.

My 4th great grandmother was Hope Gibbs, b. November 3, 1805 in Philadelphia. I knew from her baptism record that her parents names were Caleb and Isabella (maiden name unknown), but I didn't know anything else about them. My grandmother had left notes with the names and some details of Hope's sisters, and indeed, research of some of them not only confirmed those details but also listed Caleb and Isabella as their parents, but still no details on those parents. I even found some DNA matches who were descended from those sisters, but none of those matches knew more about their parents.

I then found a marriage record of a Caleb Gibbs and Isabella Brannin in 1799, in Mt Holly, Burlington, NJ (Ancestry.com wrongly transcribed the location as Philadelphia), but given the difference of location, how could I know it was the right couple I was looking for? Further research on the couple married in 1799 revealed they were Quakers, and Isabella was the daughter of Barzillai Brannin/Branin, and the granddaughter of Michael Brannin/Branin, but I still was unsure about the connection to Hope Gibbs. Were these really her parents?

It took me a while to think of this for some reason, but I eventually decided to look for the surname Brannin in my DNA matches (well, my mom's DNA matches, since she is one generation closer to the ancestors in question). Theoretically, I figured if my Isabella was a Brannin, I (or my mom) would have DNA matches with people descended from her father or grandfather, I just hoped Brannin wasn't so common of a name that I got unrelated hits for it among my matches. It would be much more difficult if the name was something like Smith, and indeed, I had previously tried to search my DNA matches for the Gibbs surname, hoping to find people who descended from a father or grandfather of Caleb, but Gibbs was too common of a name and I was getting results for DNA matches with obviously unrelated Gibbs ancestors due to their location or time period (my DNA relation to these matches obviously lies elsewhere and the Gibbs surname is just a coincidence).

But the results and conclusions of the Brannin surname search were almost instantaneous - I quickly found 10 DNA matches descended from either Barzillai or Michael Brannin (two shown above), which would only be likely if I was descended from or at least related to them genetically. Not all recurring ancestors among your DNA matches will be your ancestors, some may be related to you in other ways, but combined with the existing question of whether my Isabella was Barzillai's daughter, the DNA matches conclude that the two Isabella's were indeed the same. Worth noting is the fact that two of the ten matches shared a segment with my mom of over 14 cM, which has over a 99% chance of being identical by descent, so these are not false positive matches. Also worth noting is the fact that some of the ten matches I found I had to uncover myself because their trees didn't go back far enough, but with a little digging, I expanded on their tree and trace their Brannin line back to Barzillai or Michael. Sometimes, you have to do a little of the legwork yourself.

Quakers are good record keepers, so confirming Isabella's identity was a huge breakthrough for me, and I then spend the next few days building this new branch of my tree, going back several more generations on both her paternal and maternal sides, something I couldn't have been sure of if I hadn't found the DNA connection. Of course, this also confirmed Caleb's identity as the man who married her, but unfortunately the Quaker records didn't go back as far for his ancestry. It at least confirmed his parents as Samuel Gibbs and Mercy (maiden name unknown).

By the way, if you're wondering about the notes showing simultaneously with both DNA matches in the screenshot above, that is with the use of Chrome extension MedBetterDNA. It allows you to always display notes so you can refer to them quicker and easier. It also has a lot of other useful tools, like the the hashtag option, which you'll see I'm also making use of - it lets you search your matches by hashtags in the notes field, so you can more quickly find the matches you're looking for. You may also notice the emoji icons I'm using - the green check mark and the black heart. There's no hidden meaning to the black heart, I'm just using it as a quick visual reference for that particular branch of my tree. Every one of my 2nd great grandparents gets a unique icon for their branch and I was running out of heart colors - that may seem excessive with 16 second great grandparents but it's working for me. The green check mark denotes matches with whom I've identified our most recent common ancestor. As a visual person (I am a photographer, after all), I just find the icons help my brain sort my matches. For non-windows users, you can also make use of flag emojis (the flags don't work on Windows for some reason) to identify matches with a MRCA from a known country.

I hope this helps illustrate how you can use your DNA matches to confirm questionable branches like this. Keep in mind that the further back the ancestors you're looking for are on your tree, the less likely you'll be able to reliably use or find identical by descent DNA matches descended from those ancestors. In this case, we were looking at my mom's 5th or 6th great grandparents, meaning she'd be around 6th or 7th cousins with those DNA matches, which is still within the realms of identical by descent.

Ancestry's "We're Related" App

We're Related app
My relationship to Stephen Amell
is confirmed

Edit to add Mar 28, 2019: Since publishing this article, it's come to my attention that the We're Related app is no longer available from app stores to download. It will still function if you still have it on your device, but you can no longer download it. I contacted Ancestry.com support about this, but they refused to give me any information on when and why the discontinuation happened and why there was no announcement, and instead flat out denied that they even owned the app (see below). Maybe they sold it at some point, but they most definitely owned it at one point, as proven by older community/Facebook topics answered by Ancestry reps as though they manage or own it found here in 2017 and here in 2016. So I've now asked them if they sold it, when and why did that happen and why was there no announcement. No response yet.

I know it's only a little app that produces a lot of false connections, but this lack of communication and transparency with their paying customers is just so typical of Ancestry.com.

Edit to add July 29, 2019: Ancestry.com have finally recently sent out an email about the discontinuation of the We're Related app, and added a help article detailing the same, available here. How odd that they would finally announce the discontinuation of an app they claimed they didn't even own back in March. While it's nice to finally see some acknowledgment of this, it just highlights the fact that their customer service reps either don't know what they're talking about or are just flat out lying.

Ancestry's denial that they ever owned the app which they've
now finally announced has been discontinued.

--------------- Original article:-----------------

As many of you may know already, Ancestry.com has an app available called "We're Related". It's a fun little app that looks at Ancestry's vast database of user created family trees and attempts to find common ancestors between you and famous people, both of today and in history. It probably goes without saying that you should be careful about accepting the authenticity of the connections the app makes, given that it's based on user created trees and we all know how error-filled they can be, but that doesn't mean it can't be accurate sometimes.

Out of curiosity, I set out to determine how many of the famous people it's claiming I'm related to are actually accurate. Admittedly, I haven't gotten very far because most of the common ancestors the app finds are colonial, meaning they can be difficult to research. That doesn't mean the app is wrong, just that a lot of them can't be confirmed or denied either way. But so far, I have been able to confirm one link, and deny another.

I started with the ones who had common ancestors I recognized because they were already in my own tree (the app will extend on your tree to find common ancestors even further back than you've researched). That way, I at least knew my own descent from that common ancestor was accurate, and only had to research the path from the common ancestor to the famous person in question.

So the first famous person I've been able to confirm my relation to is Stephen Amell (shown above). For those of you who don't watch the TV show "Arrow" based on the D.C. Comic's superhero Green Arrow, Stephen Amell is the star of the show (also, you're missing out). He's not exactly an A-lister but it's still pretty cool. Additionally, although the app doesn't mention it, Stephen Amell's cousin is Robbie Amell, who had a brief part in the corresponding TV show, The Flash, and it's their shared ancestry which I also share so I'm related to both of them. Our shared ancestors are Jacob C Gottschalk, who was the first Mennonite bishop in America (not to be confused with the first Mennonite minister in America, the more famous William Rittenhouse), and his wife Aeltien Symons Hermans. My path to Jacob is well documented, since he was a somewhat well known historical figure, at least among Mennonite history, his descendants are well documented, which made researching down to Stephen and Robbie Amell fairly easy as well. Jacob was my 7th great grandfather and Stephen's 9th great grandfather, making us 8th cousins twice removed.

App shows the path from alleged
common ancestor to the Cole
family

Sadly, not all the connection are this easy to confirm, nor are they always so accurate. I went after another suggested relation, Nat King Cole (shown right). The app seemed to think we shared ancestors Peter Schumacher and his wife Sarah Hendricks. Again, these ancestors were already in my tree so I knew they were accurate and only needed to research down Nat King Cole's side. On his path, the app suggested that Peter and Sarah's daughter was Fronica or Frances Schumacher, which indeed she was and I already had her in my tree. The next step showed Fronica's son Peter Van Bebber b. 1695, which was again correct according to the research already in my tree. But next it claimed that Peter's daughter was an Esther Van Bebber b. 1707 who I had no record of and anyone with any kind of observation skills will immediately notice that it's highly unlikely Peter had a child when he was only 12 years old. So I don't know who has this lineage in their tree that the app is picking up, but it's probably incorrect and it's a good thing I checked it before accepting it as fact. Looks like I'm probably not related to Nat King Cole after all. Bummer.

The good thing about the app is that it does use words like "Possible Common Ancestor" so hopefully people don't take it too seriously without researching and confirming connections. Additionally, at the bottom of each pathway (either from you to the ancestor, or the famous person to the ancestor), it asks "Does this path look correct to you?" and offers a thumbs up or thumbs down (shown below). Unfortunately, it doesn't offer any kind of comment box for you to detail what looks wrong about it if you thumbs-down it, but it's better than nothing.

Also noteworthy is the one I found in which the pathway from me to a common ancestor who is in my tree may have been wrong. When looking at the suggestion for my relation to Elizabeth Montgomery, we allegedly share known ancestors of mine, Robert Cobbs and Rebecca Vinckler - however, when I open up the pathway from myself to Robert, there is a very noticeable inconsistency with my own tree on Ancestry.com. In my tree (which the app is supposed to be working off of), Thomas Cobbs Jr is obviously the son of Thomas Cobbs Sr, who is the son of the Robert Cobbs in question, but in the app, it bizarrely has the mother of Thomas Cobbs Jr as Susanna Moon, who is then the daughter of Mildred Cobbs, the daughter of Robert.

Now, I supposed it's not impossible that the pathway in the app is correct and I just have yet to discover it, which would mean I am descended from Robert Cobbs in two ways. But that would also mean Susanna Moon married her uncle, and that sounds kind of gross and highly unlikely. I know it's not uncommon for 1st cousins to marry, but uncle and niece? It's not something I've ever come across (except in royalty/nobility, but that's different). Given the unlikeliness of this situation to begin with, and the fact that I have no record of Robert having a daughter named Mildred, I think this pathway is probably inaccurate. Even assuming for a moment it's correct, it's still strange that the app went with a pathway which is not in my tree instead of the one which is. So make sure you look at each pathway, even if the common ancestor is already one in your tree who you've confirmed. Don't just assume since the ancestor is correct, the pathway to you is as well. Regardless though, I am descended from Robert Cobbs, and so if Elizabeth Montgomery is as well, then we are indeed related, even though the pathway is wrong.

Although I have some criticisms of the app, it does give me a lot to do when I'm stuck on brick walls in my normal research. This gives me something different to explore, while still working on my family tree. Hopefully, as I carry on with it, I can continue to confirm or deny more and more relationships to famous people.

(Note: when you first set up the app, it will take a few days to look for and start generating people you're related to, and it will continue to update and add more and more people to the list over time.)

The Forgotten Witch Trials of Connecticut, 1647-1697

Dramatized depiction of a witch trial

I recently discovered that I had an ancestor involved in the witch trials of Connecticut and of course immediately went to look up more information on this subject. I was very surprised to find that while there are a lot of articles about it around the internet, none came from the popular Wikipedia. (Edit: this has finally now changed - see here). There are only a few books which detail the Connecticut events and fewer still which are dedicated entirely to them. Even history buffs often admit to not knowing about the Connecticut witch trials, in spite of the fact that the very first ones in the colonies occurred in Connecticut. It's safe to say they are greatly eclipsed by the Salem witch trials, which perhaps receive more attention because they occurred over a much shorter time period. Salem was very much a frenzied hysteria with the executions of 20 people within just over a year (February 1692 to May 1693), whereas the trials in Connecticut resulted in 35 cases and just 11 executions over the course of 50 years (1647-1697). Salem certainly deserves the attention it gets, but it should not be at the cost of forgetting other important witch hunts too.

Oddly, the ancestor in question, Christopher Comstock, has his own Wikipedia page, despite the greater trials in which he was involved not having one. Christopher was involved in the witch trials twice, firstly in 1653-1654 when he gave an affidavit about having visited Goodwife Knapp while she was in prison for witchcraft. Knapp was later executed. Secondly, he served on the grand jury investigating witchcraft in Connecticut in September 1692.

One of the reasons these trials kept cropping up was because every time someone was accused of witchcraft, they were pressured to "confess" and name others they knew of who were also witches. According to the author of "The witchcraft delusion in colonial Connecticut," from the moment Knapp was sentenced she "was made the object of rudest treatment, espionage, and of inhuman attempts to wring from her lips a confession of her own guilt or an accusation against some other person as a witch." Just as we might question a terrorist to confess who they are working with, this logic was applied to "witches" too in the 17th century. This is where my ancestor Christopher Comstock comes in. In 1653, Goodwife Knapp, whose first name is lost to history, was in prison in Fairfield for witchcraft. Comstock, along with Thomas Sheruington and Goodwife Baldwin, visited her in her cell where Baldwin questioned her about her fellow "witches". It sounds as though Comstock and Sheruington were merely there as witnesses. Knapp admitted that she knew some, or at least one person who had "received Indian gods that were very bright." Knapp was claiming her innocence so Baldwin asked her how she could know this if she weren't a witch herself, to which Knapp responded that the guilty party had told her so. It appears that Knapp did not reveal the name of the person who told her this though. During another questioning by Mistress Pell, Knapp insisted, "I have sins enough already, and I will not add this [accusing another] to my condemnation."

The court didn't believe her plea of not-guilty, because Knapp was convicted and executed by hanging. She went to the grave pleading her innocence. My ancestor's role in this was minor, he was merely witness to an interview with Knapp as prisoner. His affidavit was not even used at her trial, since it was actually written after the fact, to be used in another case the following year. Unfortunately, there are few details about Knapp's trial, we do not even know the specifics of what she was accused of, who accused her, what the testimonies against her included, etc. Most of what we know about Knapp comes from an investigation after her 1653 execution in which testimonies were given about Knapp's supposed accusations of another, Mary Staples, which is when Comstock wrote his affidavit.

After Knapp's execution, her body was desecrated when several individuals stripped it and searched it for marks of a witch. Mary Staples proclaimed there were no marks on Knapp's body that couldn't also be found on herself, an attempt to claim there were no witch's marks on Knapp's body. Later, Robert Ludlow claimed that just before her execution, Knapp had requested to speak to him privately, during which she told him that Mary Staples was a witch. This seems unlikely given the fact that she wouldn't name anyone under extreme pressure and duress in her cell. Why would she suddenly, on her own accord, decide to accuse Mary Staples, and furthermore, why would she do so privately, with no witnesses, if she wanted it known? It's believed Ludlow took Mary's comments not to mean Knapp had no witch's marks, but that both Knapp and Mary had them and that made Mary a witch too. But the conflict between Ludlow and Staples had been going on since at least 1651 when Ludlow won a law suit against Mary for slander, so Ludlow was likely looking for anyway he could to accuse her of anything else. Mary's husband, Thomas Staples, caught wind of Ludlow's tale, and in attempts to forestall the accusations against his wife, brought suit against Ludlow in 1654 for defamation of character, and there began the investigation in 1654, including Comstock's affidavit. There was also a witness account given by another of my ancestors, Rose Sherwood, then the wife of Thomas Barlow. Rose testified that after Knapp's execution, she was among those women who searched Knapp's body for marks. She claims at first they found nothing unusual, but then upon another look, they did.

Despite several testimonies against Mary Staples, in the end, the court saw reason and ruled in favor of her husband, awarding Ludlow with damages for defamation of character. It did not prevent a later trial against Mary for witchcraft though, in 1692, but Ludlow had left Connecticut by then and Mary was fortunately acquitted.

It is relieving to see that Comstock's affidavit did not contribute to any conviction or execution. He was merely an observer, witness of something Knapp had said, which was later used by others as an attempt to accuse someone else, but it failed. It's hard to say what he thought or felt about it. Comstock is believed to have been born about 1635, which would have made him only 18 at the time he witnessed the questioning of Knapp in 1653. If that's the case, he was quite young and his experiences in these trials must have helped shaped his development into an adult.

What else is known of Knapp is very little. In John Taylor's "The witchcraft delusion", all it says of Knapp herself is that she was "presumably a woman of good repute, and not a common scold, an outcast, or a harridan" and quotes other sources saying "she impresses one as the best woman" and that she was a "just and high minded old lady."

John Winthrop Jr.

Fast forward to 1692. Salem is in its height of witch trial hysteria and Connecticut isn't far behind, with the trials of six women in Fairfield, all accused by the same servant girl, Katherine Branch. Fortunately, unlike in Salem, none were executed. After Hartford saw the trials of nine people and the executions of four of them in 1662, the Connecticut governor John Winthrop Jr made it necessary for two witnesses for each alleged act of witchcraft to be required for a conviction, rather than only one. This made convictions much more difficult and resulted in no further executions of witches in Connecticut after 1662. Winthrop appears to have been the saving grace of Connecticut, and something of an antithesis to Salem's Cotton Mather, often personally overturning or reversing convictions. He may have been the main reason Connecticut had fewer executions of witches overall than Salem, and none at all during Salem's mass of them in 1692. However, that's not to say the Fairfield trials in 1692 didn't results in any convictions at all. Of the six women accused, three were acquitted, two never went to trial (jury found no bill, meaning there wasn't enough evidence to go to trial), and one, Mercy Disborough, was convicted. She was never executed though, as she was later pardoned. Christopher Comstock was on the jury that convicted Mercy, but also acquitted and found no bill for the other five women. So my ancestor was (partially) responsible for the conviction of Mercy Disborough on the charge of witchcraft, but fortunately not for her death.

An engraving of one floating on water
during ordeal by water (ie, guilty)

Although Katherine Branch made the initial accusation, there were numerous testimonies against Mercy, so it seems she ruffled more than enough feathers, though nothing that should warrant her execution. Most of the accusations were ridiculous to think they could be related to Mercy, including one unnamed young woman prone to seizures who accused Mercy of being responsible for them. Mercy was subjected to being searched naked for marks of the devil, and even to the water test, or ordeal by water. This is the notorious test where one's hands and feet are bound together before being thrown into the water and if they sink, they are considered innocent, and if they float, they are considered guilty. The basis of this was the ridiculous theory that witches floated because they had renounced baptism and therefore were being rejected by the water. Another idea was that witches were supernaturally light weight. In any case, naturally, they were pulled out of the water before they drown, by a rope which was tied to them. The idea that this sort of test meant the individual on trial would die whether found innocent or guilty (drown if innocent, executed if guilty) is a modern misconception. Mercy, along with another accused (Elizabeth Clawson), were tied up and thrown into the water on September 15, 1692, where two witnesses (Abram Adams and Jonathan Squire) claimed they floated like corks, and even when pressed down into the water, they bounced back up. However, this test obviously wasn't the deciding factor in the trials, since although Mercy was convicted, Elizabeth was not, despite both of them floating. That suggests enough people at the time were skeptical of the authenticity of such a test that its results weren't taken into great consideration.

Apart from Mercy Disborough and Elizabeth Clawson, the others who were on trial in Fairfield in 1692, accused by Katherine Branch (a servant of Daniel Wescot/Westcott), included: Mary Harvey, Hannah Harvey, Goody Miller, and Mary Staples, the same Mary Staples whose husband sued Robert Ludlow for defamation of her character and won. Most of the other Connecticut cases took place in other towns, including Windsor, Hartford, Wethersfield, New Haven, East Hampton, Saybrook, Stratford, and Wallingford, though some of them were tried in Hartford instead.

Although the Connecticut cases were spread out over time and saw fewer executions than Salem, they still played an important role in the history of witch trials and should not be forgotten.

Sources:

• The witchcraft delusion in colonial Connecticut, 1647-1697 by John M. Taylor
• Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England: A Documentary History 1638–1693, Second Edition by David D. Hall
• The Hanging of Goodwife Knapp 1653 by Laurence A Moran
• Connecticut Witch Trials
• Before Salem - Smithsonian

Also check out:

• Connecticut Witch Trials: The First Panic in the New World by Cynthia Wolfe Boynton  
• Before Salem: Witch Hunting in the Connecticut River Valley, 1647–1663 by Richard S. III Ross
• Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692 (New Narratives in American History) by Richard Godbeer 
• Witchcraft Trials of Connecticut by Richard G. Tomlinson

When it all comes together

Mary Cath. Brady, Martha Washington House, William Henry
McBride, and Daniel H McBride are all children of the John
McBride in my DNA match's tree, mentioned here as the heirs
of Catherine McBride, the mother of "my" John McBride.

This is a great example of how a combination of DNA and paper research can break down a brick wall. And it's why you should read all pages of a multipage document, even if it doesn't seem like it has any useful information at first. Additionally, probates often seem to get overlooked, but this is also a great example of how important they can be. When you're stuck, always look for a probate record, of all relatives involved. Even if they are female (women sometimes had wills and probates too!).

I had a suspicion that one of my DNA match's ancestor was my 5th great uncle, John McBride. The DNA match had the same name in her tree, but she knew nothing about him apart from his name (which she found from orphan court records), his wife, and his children. I had his birth and death data, and obviously his parents names (and records to back it all up), but no records confirming his wife's name or any children. The only thing they had in common was both location and time period, but there was no proof they were definitely the same man. It was like I had half the story, and she had the other half, but we had no way to link them together.

I finally read ALL the pages of John's mother's probate records. Initially I'd only read her will, thinking if she names her grandchildren by her son John, and they match the names of John's children in my DNA match's tree, that obviously proves they are the same man. The will doesn't name them (only says "my grandchildren by my son John")... but upon further inspection of the follow up documents, such as the distribution of her estate, it does list several people whose names match perfectly with the children in my DNA match's tree! Although it doesn't specify they are her grandchildren, given the context (i.e., her estate is being distributed to her heirs, as specified in her will as her grandchildren), it would be too much of a coincidence for so many of them to be listed on this woman's probate records if they weren't her grandchildren.

So when you're struggling to find a connection to a DNA match, it pays to do some digging around on a hunch, even if it seems like a long shot or there's not enough info to say for sure. The only connection I had was a name, and an extremely common first name at that, with a surname that isn't unheard of either. Even my DNA match in question was skeptical when I first proposed the idea to her, but a little digging proved my hunch was right!

The Ramsey Curse and Happy Endings

Sorry for the lack of posts, I recently had house guests and then my husband suffered a family tragedy. But it's partly for this reason that I want to get back into honoring ancestors and relatives.

Bertha May Ramsey suffered from the
"Ramsey curse" of early deaths in her
family, including herself.

This article is about what I've started calling the "Ramsey Curse" in light of all the premature deaths in this family. My 2nd great grandmother, Bertha May Ramsey, lost her mother when she was only about 10-12 years old. Her father remarried twice and so she had several half siblings. As an adult, Bertha's first husband, George Benton Phillips, also died prematurely leaving her with five young girls to raise on her own in rural Ohio. Not surprisingly she quickly remarried to my 2nd great grandfather, Ralph Springer Pike, and had three more girls. Then Bertha herself died in 1914 when she was only 40 years old and Ralph remarried to Edna Zearley who, according to my great grandmother, resented her stepdaughters and embodied the evil stepmother. Bertha's daughters from her previous marriage were then orphans and what happened to them while they were still minors is still a mystery to me. They might have stayed with their stepfather or gone to live with another relative or they may have even lived in an orphanage, which were still in use at the time. Given that Ralph's new wife resented his own children, it seems unlikely that she allowed his orphaned stepdaughters to stay with them.

The second eldest, Eva M. Phillips, had already been married the year prior to Bertha's death and the eldest, Lela Phillips, was an adult and married a year after her mother's death. But the remaining three, Ester, Ruby and Alice, were still minors and unmarried. Ester and Alice married immediately upon turning 18 which suggests that wherever they were living as orphans was turning them out as they reached the age of majority and their best option was to marry quickly. Ruby Phillips (b. 1899), however, obviously decided to go it on her own and sadly, as a result, she wound up pregnant and unmarried in 1920 when she was 21 years old. She found refuge in the Salvation Army Home Maternity Home and Nursery in Bellevue, near Pittsburgh, which was a home for women like Ruby having a child out of wedlock. It originally aimed to keep mother and child together, a very progressive idea for the times, but they also arranged for adoptions.

Sadly, the fate of Ruby's baby is unknown. It either died or was adopted - as you can see, I don't even know whether it was a boy or girl and I don't know how to find out, I've never done adoption research before (any tips?). But Ruby's story at least has a somewhat happy ending. By 1930, she had become a nurse, probably inspired by those who worked at the Salvation Army home and had helped her when she needed it most. And then in 1937, she finally married at the age of 37 to a man named Thomas C. Russell. When I heard this name, I knew it sounded familiar. See if you can follow this.

Ruby's half-sister, Jennie Lee Pike, had married James Edward Bauer whose mother, Anna Jane Russell, had a half brother named Thomas C. Russell. So Ruby married her half sister's husband's mother's half brother.

Unfortunately, Ruby and Thomas didn't have any children together that I know of so she has no known descendants apart from possibly the baby she gave up. Thomas was 44 when he married Ruby and had been previously married with two children from his first wife so it's possible he was only looking for companionship from his second marriage. Having a child out of wedlock was still very taboo in the 1920s and 1930s and could ruin a woman's chance of ever marrying and having a traditional family. But as I covered in a previous entry, the Russell family was no stranger to scandalous behavior.

I am putting this one out there so Ruby's story gets told - with no legitimate children, she has no one else to remember her and tell her story. And maybe if anyone is researching the genealogy of their parent or grandparent who had a birth mother named Ruby Phillips, they will find this. I have a lot of info on the Ramsey lineage, though granted nothing on the Phillips lineage since I am descended from the Pikes.

Ancestry.com's City Directories

ACOM's City Directories aren't always the easiest records collection to use. Though they are improving, you'll probably find wildly inaccurate and nonsensical transcriptions - for example, a "1" instead of an "I". This is because they were transcribed by a computer with what is called OCR, Optical Character Recognition. The benefit is that it's quicker than having human beings index millions of names but the downside is that there can be lots of errors, especially depending on the quality of the original document or the scan. Basically, OCR is programmed to recognize the basic shapes of common characters in the English language on an image/scan and output it into text so when two or more characters look similar, it can get confused as to which one it is. This, of course, means that using the search function on the city directories is hit and miss but here's some tips to help you find what you're looking for.

• Restrict to location. Make sure you've got the advanced search open (in the upper right corner of the search box, click "show advanced"). Type in the city name in the "lived in" field and in the drop down menu below it which says "use default settings" select "restrict to this place exactly". Obviously, only do this is you want to restrict your search to one city - if you know the person you're looking for lived there and only there. Since this part of the search doesn't use OCR, it's very effective in at least narrowing down your search to one location so your results aren't cluttered with irrelevant entries.

• Enter a year. Similarly, if you have an approximate time period you're trying to search in, plug a year into the "any event" date. Only tick "exact" if you're looking for that specific year - if not, leave it unticked and you'll get results of or around that year. Use the +/- drop down to expand the year range further if you need to. There's also a "residence year" field at the bottom and in my experience, it works exactly the same so I don't know why there's both.

• Use the asterisk. First try entering the full name of the individual - you might get a few results with good OCR entries but it won't be comprehensive. To find more entries, keep in mind that you really need only find an entry of any name on the same page and then you can open up the original document to check the details of the specific person you're looking for. So let's say you're looking for James Bronson - leave the first name field blank and merely type in "Bro*" or "Bron*" with the asterisk after the first few letters of the surname. The asterisk tells the system to search for all surnames beginning with "Bro" or "Bron". Most results, though they may not be for James Bronson exactly, will open up the page where I can find him, if not the previous or following page.

• Use the keyword field. If you know the occupation of the individual or the name of the company where they worked, try plugging it into the "Keyword" field. This doesn't always work since it's dependant on the OCR but it can help. Alternatively, if you're looking for a specific address, it can also be entered in the keyword field, though I suggest not entering the full address, just part of it. Like if it's 100 Main Street, just put in "main". Also remember the asterisk can be used in this field too.

This photo of an unknown young man
was probably taken in 1893 or 1894.

I've been effectively using these methods to find the time periods and addresses of which different photographers in or around Philadelphia operated in order to get approximate dates on when my "mystery photos" were taken. For example, one of the photographs says the photographer and studio information is "James Bronson 4721 Main Street Germantown" and I discovered James Bronson had a studio at this specific address only during the years of 1893 and 1894 so I was able to narrow down one photo to only a two year period. Of course, it's important to remember that the directories didn't update on the fly so it's possible for an individual to move addresses after the directory is published with their former address. Theoretically, that means it could have also been taken in 1892, though the directory says Bronson's studio was at 4946 Germantown Ave in 1892, he could have moved later in the year.

Even if your photos aren't mystery photos and you have identified the individual in them, finding when the photographer operated at the address labelled can still help narrow down when the picture was taken.

I also used these methods to find tenants of my ancestor's properties by putting the address into the keyword field. There are many various ways to use these methods.

Every Record Tells a Story

Recently, as I previously mentioned, a bunch of death certificates I'd ordered months ago finally arrived and as I gleefully analyzed them, I found them to be full of revelations, one of which was actually a little emotionally moving.

As I've mentioned before, my grandfather, known to me as "Pop", grew up without his own father in his life. According to Pop, after his parents divorced, his father (James Edward Bauer I) remarried to a woman who did not want anyone in her family or social circle to know her husband had previously been married and even had children. Divorce was still taboo in those days (the 1930s) so she forbade her new husband from seeing his children, at least in public. Pop recalls that he was told not to acknowledge his own father if he happened to run into him in a public place. Of course, James didn't have to go along with this, he could have told his wife that he was going to be a part of his children's lives whether she liked it or not. He chose to abandon them instead. 

By 1940, Pop's mother had remarried and moved to Philadelphia with her children. This probably made having a relationship with his father, who was still living in Reading, all the more difficult even after he divorced the evil stepmother sometime around 1950. It wasn't until after James remarried for the third and final time to a kindly woman named Alma in 1951 that the gap between father and son began to bridge. Apparently, Alma was the driving force behind their reconciliation but despite this, Pop and his father never grew particularly close and so we didn't know much about this branch of our tree. Some bridges just can't be rebuilt.

Some time ago, I discovered that James' abandonment of his family had deeper roots. Thanks to census records, I had found that James' own parents, Edward William Bauer and Anna Jane Russell, had separated but this time it was the father the children stayed with. This prompted all sorts of questions with unknown answers. Why did they separate? Why did the children stay with their father Edward? Did this somehow impair James' ability to be a good husband and father? I tried to remind myself that separation and divorce were not completely unheard of even in the very early 20th century and that it could have just been "irreconcilable differences" that drove Anna and Edward apart. It didn't necessarily mean Anna wasn't still involved in her children's lives. But in my experience it's usually difficult to find a woman who would so readily give up custody of her children unless something much darker drove or force her away. 

Today, I finally got a look at Anna's death certificate. I actually had to order two because I wasn't sure when she died and the Pennsylvania Department of Health Death Indices don't give you much information to go on. I was actually worried neither of them would be the record I was looking for but when I saw Anna's father clearly listed as Robert Russell on one of them, I knew I had the right Anna. 

And then, there is was . . . cause of death: Acute Alcoholism. She was 31 years old.

Acute Alcoholism as cause of death for 31 year old Anna.
A sad death following her sad existence living alone in a
boarding home for the last 4-5 years of her life.

Poor James. The poor family. Anna's drinking must have been so severe that either her husband banished her from their home or she left on her own accord, knowing she was no longer fit to be a good wife or mother.  Of course, it's possible her drinking began after the separation, in her loneliness and anguish over the loss of her children. During this time period, it would not be unusual for the courts to rule in favor of the father regarding custody, which is probably why so many women stayed in unhappy marriages, so they wouldn't lose their children. And acute alcoholism I believe refers to alcohol poisoning, not organ failure due to long term consumption of alcohol, so she may not have necessarily been drinking for very long. However, a key factor is in the contributing cause of death on Anna's death certificate. It's hard to read but my mom and I worked out that it was probably menorrhagia nonpuerperal and that she'd be suffering from it for 42 days. Menorrhagia refers to menstrual bleeding and nonpuerperal means it was unrelated to pregnancy or giving birth. In other words, she was having a 42 day period which my mom, an RN, explained could have been happening because the alcoholism was making it difficult for her blood to clot. This supports the idea that she had been drinking for some time.

Another supporting factor on the record is that the informant was Anna's stepmother. By this point, her father was still alive and she was technically still married to Edward. Legally, he was her next of kin and often it is the next of kin who reports the death. Yet neither her husband or father were willing to report it. Could it have been that they were too grief stricken to serve as the informant? Yes, it's possible. But combined with the fact that Anna had been living on her own in a boarding house for the last 4-5 years of her life, it is certainly indicative that neither of the men in her life wanted anything to do with her.

This was further supported by the fact that I later discovered there was never a headstone erected at her burial place in Homewood Cemetery (it was not stolen or deteriorated, it just never existed). Her family were not so destitute that they could not have afforded a small, humble headstone so it must have been that they simply didn't care enough to pay for one. It's clear that by the time she drank herself to death alone in a boarding house, she had already been dead to her family for some years and it seems mostly likely the reason for that would be her drinking.

And when I realized all this, I think I sat here for a good five minutes and just contemplated what that meant for each member of the family and how it can't be a coincidence that the child of an alcoholic mother who abandoned her children by drinking herself into an early grave would grow up to abandon his own.

I have never thought very favorably of my great grandfather for his utter failure as a father to my Pop but I do now have some sympathy for him. It doesn't excuse what he did but it does make it a bit more understandable. He wasn't just a deadbeat dad, he was also the child of a deadbeat alcoholic mother and the two are inseparable. However, I don't think I'll be crying him a river anytime soon. After all, my Pop was also the child of a deadbeat dad and he turned out to be such a devoted husband and father, he was actually in danger of smothering his family!

Every record tells a story. Though not every record tells a story with quite the impact of one like this, it will give you some insight into your ancestor's lives and sometimes perhaps even of those closer to you. 

Confirming Hunches

Don't you just love when you find a record that confirms a hunch you've had for a while? I had one of these moments last night when my mom messaged me to let me know that the death certificates we ordered from the Pennsylvania Department of Health back in July/August finally came in. Anyone who has ordered anything from the PA DOH knows how slow they are to fill requests but I can't really complain considering they're only $3 a piece. When I ordered an Alabama death certificate, it had cost something like $30 but it arrived within a week. So "you get what you pay for" is obviously at work here.

Death certificate for Caroline's son showing her maiden
name as something looking like "Wahr".

Offline genealogy isn't easy for me since I live in England but only have one branch that came from England. Getting records sent to England isn't cheap so I always have them sent to my mom in Pennsylvania. Last night, she sent me a message saying the records had come in and started rattling off some of the details on them. When she said "George's mother's maiden name Wake or Wahe" I got excited and asked "Wahr?!" She replied "could be!" and I knew I'd struck gold. Let me backtrack and explain why.

The Bauer branch of my tree hasn't been easy to research. My grandfather had effectively been abandoned by his father when he was a child and though they reconnected later in life, I don't think they ever got particularly close. So my grandfather didn't know a whole lot about his father's ancestry. On top of that, I've tackled obstacles like the family being missing from the 1910 census and my second great grandfather sharing the exact same name as someone else roughly of his age with two sisters who have the same names as his sisters (more on this later).

I'd found that my third great grandfather, August Bauer, had been from Germany, settled in Butler County, PA as a child and then in his 20's began moving south into Pittsburgh. In 1860, he was living unmarried in Allegheny City near the post office of Perrysville and by 1870, he was married to a woman named Caroline, had a few kids, and had moved deeper into the heart of Allegheny City, which has since been incorporated into Pittsburgh. Caroline then died before 1900, meaning I can't find her on the PA DOH Death Indices which start in 1906. So how was I going to find out more about Caroline? Ordering the death certificates of her children might tell me her maiden name but while I waited for the PA DOH to take it's time merry retrieving them, I did some browsing of census records.

I knew August was unmarried in 1860 while living near Perrysville which meant he probably didn't meet and marry his wife Caroline while still in Butler County. I knew when and where Caroline was born thanks to census records of both her and her children. The main thing I didn't know was her maiden name. What if I did some searching for any Caroline (before they were married) born in either France of Germany (she had been from Alsace-Lorraine, an area of France that bordered Germany and switched ownership several times, therefore her birth place is alternately recorded as either France or Germany) around 1842 and living in the specific areas August was probably living in during the years they must have been married? I thought it would make perfect sense if August had met Caroline and married her in Perrysville before moving further into Allegheny so I narrowed my search to post office Perrysville first. And to my great surprise and pleasure, there weren't many Caroline's that fit the bill. One by the name of "Wear" stood out (other records of the same family revealed it to be more likely spelled as Wahr) because some records said she was from France and some and Germany, just like the later records for my Caroline said. And after finding her parents in 1870, it showed she was no longer a part of the household, which meant she either died or had married and moved out. And the man she married could have been August.

It made sense but of course I couldn't confirm it. There was no way I was going to add this to my tree based on purely circumstantial links. I had a clue or a hunch but nothing more.

So when this death record of one of August and Caroline's sons came in with a maiden name that looks like "Wahr", I knew I had confirmed my hunch. While the last letter doesn't look much like an "r", according to censuses, there are no other Caroline's of the right age living in the right area(s) with a similar maiden name. So having already found the census records for Caroline Wahr before she was married, I now can confirm her parents names too and that they were born in Württemberg. I was literally doing a happy dance last night and this morning, I had email attachments of the scanned death records (thanks, Dad!) so I can now add them to my tree.

Additionally, I was thrilled to find out one of the other records that came in is the wrong record for my ancestor. Yes, that's right, I'm happy that it's the incorrect record. Why? Well, remember when I said that another individual (not in my tree) shared the exact name of my second great grandfather, Edward William Bauer, and was born roughly around the same time? Well, it appears there's been some confusion regarding them. I had a Freemason record of him saying he died in 1921 and so I also found him on the PA Death Index. But then I found him on the 1930 census! I knew it was him because he was living with one of his daughters, who was present on earlier census records that link them to my great grandfather too. So I knew it was the correct family which could only mean the 1921 death was for the other Edward William Bauer but I wanted to order the record to be sure. And that is why I was pleased to see Edward's parent's names listed as Charles and Rosina, not August and Caroline.

It does mean I now don't know when Edward died and that the Freemason record is not his. I had thought that it was because I knew his son (my great grandfather) was indeed a Freemason and so I thought it made sense that he might have been too. At the time, I had no idea there was another Edward William Bauer around the same age living in the same area! At least I've got it sorted out now and everything is more clear.

It just goes to show that sometimes you definitely need to go offline to confirm your hunches or find new information.

In light of all this, I haven't had time to do my daily Family History Writing Challenge but it will be back tomorrow.

Think Outside the Household

1850 US Census showing patriarch listed separately
from family household.

This is another one of those "how could I have missed this?" moments. Sometimes, I get so caught up in trying to find a family on a census that I forget to look for an individual on his or her own. Recently, I was reminded of this when I assumed a male ancestor died before the 1850 US Census was taken on June 1 because I had already found his wife and children living together but he was not listed among the household.

Land ownership map showing the
two properties of my ancestors.

In fact, he was still alive and recorded on the census, he was just listed separately. Why? Because, as I should have remembered, I had a land ownership map which proved he had owned two separate properties - one large, main one where I think the family was living and another, smaller lot not far away. My guess is that my ancestor was tending to the secondary property when the census taker came around. And sure enough, I found him listed on the very same census page, just two house away from his family! He was only listed by his initials, which is probably another reason why I overlooked him or why he wasn't showing up in any auto hints. I am unsure whether he was actually permanently living there or just there temporarily to tend to the secondary property but I lean towards the latter being the case.

This is also a reminder of why land ownership maps can be very important! Without it, I may have still been scratching my head as to why my ancestor was listed separately. I might have assumed he had a second property but without confirmation, the facts would have remained muddled.

1850 US Census showing son apprenticing in another
household.

Also be sure to look for missing children with other households - a neighbor or relative may have taken in a child if the family didn't have enough living space (or financially couldn't support all their children) or if the child was actually helping out around the property of an older neighbor or relative or may have been apprenticing with the head of the household. I also thought a child of the same family may have died before 1850 but then I found him apprenticing as a blacksmith with another family.