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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50349983847999208842016-05-28T19:02:55.793-07:00A Family TapestryJacqi Stevenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-87947201506176319022016-05-28T02:54:00.000-07:002016-05-28T02:54:00.161-07:00Of Mothers Long Forgotten
Some researchers favor a solitary approach when pursuing the history of their ancestors. I am not one of them. If I can conduct research in the company of—or at least in conjunction with—a seasoned researcher possessed of judicious methodology, I'm much happier.

Perhaps that's because I've had positive experiences in such projects. I've found that you can meet the most interesting people, circulating among aficionados of genealogical research. True, there are people out there who have tried that approach and walked away from less than stellar experiences. But for the most part, I've appreciated the insight brought to the equation when I have a research partner to compare notes with.

That said, I'm always on the lookout to spot others sharing interest in the same family lines as I have. When I branch out to a new surname, the first thing I do is try to locate others who are working on the same surnames.

As I push back through the generations—especially in pursuit of my matrilineal line—I'm getting into unfamiliar research territory. When the trail of my mother's mother's mother landed me—after several iterations of that process—in the early 1700s with representative to the House of Burgesses Thomas Lewis, it was his wife in whom I was most interested.

She, as it turns out, was daughter of a man by the name of William Strother. Not knowing anything about the Strother surname, I thought I'd go cyber-exploring to see what I could turn up. If I can't have real live research partners, at least I can go find them online.

My first stop was to see what books might have been written on the Strother genealogy. Apparently, there were not a few. One item on the list which caught my eye was entitled Houses of Strother: Descendants of William Strother I, King George County, Virginia. Not a book, it was one of those items in the "other" category for which access was denied.

Not to be undone, I decided on an alternate route of discovery: Google it. After all, though I had no idea who "William Strother I" was—nor where King George County might have been—I did know the Strother on my matrilineal line was the daughter of a colonial someone named William Strother. He, in turn, was the son of another William Strother, who was son of yet another William Strother. The odds were with me.

As it turns out, my Jane Strother, wife of Thomas Lewis, was great granddaughter of William Strother I. In the process of pursuing this item first found in FamilySearch.org's book list, I did access a separate volume of the same title with the subheading, "William Strother II (1653-1726) and his descendants." That, courtesy of his granddaughter, would include me.

Just in case I had the wrong William Strother, though, I thought I'd check out what could be found via Google Books. Though the volume wasn't accessible online, it was searchable, so I did a search for Jane Strother's husband, Thomas Lewis. Sure enough, there in the book were three entries which included his name—one of which specified the relationship of in-law to the Strother family.

From that shaky beginning—not being able to access the item included on the hyperlinked list of resources at FamilySearch.org—I made a few other discoveries, as well. Primary among them was that there is a family association for descendants of that original immigrant William Strother.

Since some websites are put online, perhaps hosted by a generous benefactor, and then left there long after the organization has disbanded, I had to poke around to see whether this was still a viable group. Apparently, it is; they are holding their biennial conference in Charlottesville, Virginia, this coming July.

In addition, they have a web page dedicated to genealogy helps. Most of them are generic, but on that page, I discovered references to some archives and holdings of Strother family papers. While that is beyond the realm of genealogy, per se, I'd be interested in perusing such holdings.

I also discovered from their website that The William Strother Society, Inc., are spearheading a DNA project at Family Tree DNA. Despite knowing that many such surname-based projects focus exclusively on Y-DNA test results, I still clicked through to see what the project gave as its mission statement. Sure enough, there was a Y-DNA project, but that was not all. They are tracking "Distinct mtDNA Haplogroups," which I'd specifically be interested in. After all, the reason that led me on the path to discovering this group in the first place was a question about my matrilineal line.

Family associations sometimes provide members-only resources for genealogical research—or at least the comparison of research notes. While this might not be exactly the research partnership I had in mind, I'm happy to stumble upon such an organization. Teamwork always holds out the promise of synergistic results. Jacqi Stevenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-65364105583090291662016-05-27T02:44:00.000-07:002016-05-27T22:28:28.253-07:00Who Are All These People?
No sooner had I caught up with the new announcement of changes at Family Tree DNA, when I slipped back to peek at what's been happening with my results at the post-changed Ancestry DNA. Honestly, despite all these promises of closer, more accurate matches, I'm still swamped with so many results which don't seem to connect to anyone in my family. Sometimes, I look at those thousand-plus "matches," scratch my head and moan, "Who are these people, anyhow?!"

Take Ancestry DNA's handy "New Ancestor Discoveries" feature, first introduced a little over a year ago. As forewarned promised, the names on my list of New Ancestor Discoveries changed, once Ancestry instituted their most recent of changes this year. None of these lines were from recognizable surnames—and when you consider my tree includes well over seven thousand ancestors and their relatives, that's something to be concerned about. One would think at least some of those names would ring a bell.

I try to make those connections work. Really, I do. But it seems I'm just spinning my wheels in the effort. No traction gained.

Take "New Ancestor Discoveries" candidate, Samuel Rowland Collier. That sounded like a fine and promising name to match. I do have some Colliers in my family tree—alas, each one of them married into my line, and not a one of them representing a connection with which we could share common descent.

However, I'm game to explore the possibilities, so I clicked through to see who, among those sharing DNA among my fellow New Ancestor Discoveries circle members, might show me a tree branch with just the right match. In one Collier family tree included in this readout, the only other surname showing was that of the Wade family. It so happens I have some Wade ancestors married into a distant branch of my maternal tree. But try as I might, I couldn't contort enough to fit that tree's Wade ancestor into the Wade branch of my own tree.

Experiences like these—contorting to try and make the match work—reminds me of a term given to this very experience by a genetic genealogy blogger I follow. Right after Ancestry first rolled out their beta program last year, Roberta Estes, writer of the blog, DNAeXplained, dubbed them "Bad NADs"—NADs, of course, being Ancestry's New Ancestor Discoveries.

Roberta went on, about a year ago, to describe one of the "new ancestors" Ancestry was trying to gift her with. In a follow up post about a week later, she continued her complaint with a catalog of "A Dozen Ancestors That Aren't—aka Bad NADs."

Of course, I read those posts when they first came out, so I consider myself forewarned. But the message apparently never took root for me, for I'm still conscientiously attempting to make these Bad NADs work, at least in my own tree. And by "conscientiously," I mean concluding that I must be needing more education to learn how to make the science fit into my tree. The more I learn, though—at seminars, workshops, DNA conferences, even a week-long intensive program at SLIG—the more frustrated I become at not being able to make these connections work.

Perhaps the key is to understand that sometimes, we need to cut our losses. Call them Bad NADs or whatever misaligned connection moniker you prefer, and walk away from that toxic family tree concoction. There may be solid DNA behind that connection, but it isn't what the majority of those paper trails in the circle are claiming. Maybe those grumpy genealogy researchers who were always complaining about the mistakes in online trees have yet another reason why their point is valid.

Still, you think I would have gotten it well before the eve of yet another DNA conference trip. Call me a slow learner. Or perhaps I just need to go back and do some basic review work. After all, in Ancestry's own rebuttal following the uproar, last year, over the introduction of their beta program, they emphasized,

We'll show you a New Ancestor Discovery if you share significant amounts of DNA with multiple members of a DNA Circle.

Perhaps the fault is not with Ancestry's beta program. Nor with the science behind DNA testing. Perhaps the match is there all along—those "significant amounts of DNA with multiple members." Maybe the real problem is with the trees of all those members. Who knows? Perhaps those trees were all cut-and-paste creations glomming on to just one sloppy researcher's errors, perpetuated across the genea-universe in like manner by other cut-and-paste enthusiasts in this brave new genealogical world. We may, indeed, all be related—we "NADs," who may not be bad, after all—but just can't see the forest of our joint relationships on account of all the mis-labeled family trees.

Above: "Forest Reserve, Pine Grove," 1881 oil on canvas by Russian landscape painter Ivan Shishkin; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.Jacqi Stevenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-49477150132329454032016-05-26T02:49:00.000-07:002016-05-26T21:45:41.433-07:00On the Eve of Another Change
No sooner had Ancestry DNA announced that they had made plans to adjust their algorithm for matches—and created a furor over impending changes in the process—than Family Tree DNA came out with an announcement of their own.

I first found out about it when making the rounds of all my favorite bloggers, especially the ones I can count on to keep me up to date on genetic genealogy news. First announcement I ran across was from John Reid's Canada's Anglo-Celtic Connections, where his article included a link to Blaine Bettinger's blog, The Genetic Genealogist.

In explaining that FTDNA intends to update its matching thresholds, Blaine included a helpful flow chart in his post. In addition, he, too, linked to the other major bloggers covering genetic genealogy, including Debbie Kennett, Roberta Estes, and Judy Russell. While some of these posts added little to what Blaine had already covered, there were a couple helpful observations.

In Debbie Kennett's blog, Cruwys News, she noted that the challenge with setting a cut-off limit is a walk down the fine line between false positives and false negatives. Because FTDNA doesn't phase their data (differentiate between chromosomes originating from the paternal side versus the maternal side), smaller segments do run the risk of yielding false results.

On the other hand, she explained another point to remember:

if you match on a single segment under 10 centiMorgans you will not share a common ancestor within the last ten generations. Even matches of 10 centiMorgans can be very distant.

With this proposed revision in mind—and FTDNA's anticipated outcome slated to yield "only minor changes in their matches"—I took a look at just how many of my own distant matches fall under that 9 cM threshold.

Out of nearly 1,160 matches in my autosomal results at FTDNA—a number incrementally growing every week—it turns out that from match number 811 onward, the "longest block" slips below the 9.00 cut-off point. Of course, there is a further option with the second node in FTDNA's new decision tree—in which single segments falling below 9 cMs may still be considered if the total amount of shared DNA is greater than 20 cMs—but I'll set aside that thumbnail sketch for another crisis.

The point is, upon that cut-off at the first branch of the decision tree, my matches leave off well over three hundred results.

Of course, those extra three hundred now-supposed non-relatives clock in at the proposed ranking of fifth cousin to remote cousin—a classification which already won them Ignore status in my personal decision tree for further contact. This may turn the whole issue into a non-news item for me.

For my husband's results, however, I may see this change a bit differently. He is the one who descends from Perry County, Ohio, ancestors—those folks in the coal-mining region of southeastern Ohio who can't simply ask a classmate on a date without first checking to see who everyone's great-great-grandparents were. When I find a fifth cousin on his FTDNA results, that match often turns out to be a keeper. We have the paperwork to confirm it. It's nice to be able to get to know these distant relatives-cum-genealogy-aficionados who are as ably equipped to prove the connection as we are. There's a higher confidence level in letting such newfound relatives help fill in the blanks on the descendancy of those connected lines. Those are the matches I'd hate to see disappear, simply because someone decided to champion a different algorithm.

Of course, it's the rare person who wholeheartedly welcomes change, unexamined. I understand the reasons for the change. Besides, it would be nice to exchange that useless padding of umpteen misaligned "matches" for some real ones—if that is at all possible. Time will tell. And, from the looks of it, we won't have long to wait to find out.
 Jacqi Stevenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-13714721801460878082016-05-25T02:41:00.000-07:002016-05-25T21:10:52.671-07:00Matrilineal Matters
Sometimes, research projects seem so massive as to be unwieldy. That's how I feel, sometimes, about trying to find the nexus between my matrilineal line and that of my mystery cousin, the adoptee who turned out to be one of two "exact match" results on my full-sequence mitochondrial DNA test. (The only other exact match I received, strangely enough, also turned out to belong to an adoptee.)

As fortune would have it—or, more specifically, near-invincible determination and inexhaustible hard work—my mystery cousin was able to identify his birth parents and, in an almost storybook-perfect yet starkly-terrifying episode, actually meet up with his birth mother. From that point, the sharing of a lifetime apart opened the doors for him to learn about his genealogical heritage.

Of course, you know he and I compared notes. We want to know how our two lines connect.

Well, wherever they connect, it will have to be beyond the early 1800s, for that is where we have both made it in our trek backwards through time. Even then, neither of us has located surnames promising any connection.

In the face of such daunting possibilities, it is not any surprise to learn that I lost some of the verve to keep up the chase. After all, according to some calculations, the glacial rate of mutation means an mtDNA exact match could lead us to a Most Recent Common Ancestor well before the advent of surname usage. Complicating matters is the fact that this matrilineal pursuit presents one other hazard: the changing of surnames with each generation. Get one passage from married to maiden name wrong, and you could be on an entirely misleading track in your quest to discover your roots.

Right now, I'm looking at all the female descendants of my sixth great grandmother, Jane Strother, wife of Thomas Lewis. Thankfully, the family of Thomas Lewis—an Irish-American pioneer in colonial Virginia who served in the House of Burgesses and, later, in the provisional government of the new state—has been well documented in records retained by the Daughters of the American Revolution. The rather large Lewis family meant Jane passed her matrilineal line on to thirteen children, eight of whom were daughters insuring the continuance of that line to future generations of daughters, as well.

The task, once again—as I've already repeated for all the women in more recent generations of my matrilineal line—is to follow the lines of descent of each of those daughters of Jane Strother Lewis. The hope, once again, is to find one of these women moving to Kentucky and marrying someone whose daughter turns out to be the matriarch through whom my mystery cousin's matrilineal line is passed down to him. I've been through this process with each iteration of a new generation. It is certainly understandable to realize that I'm hoping this will be the last cycle—otherwise, it means pushing back yet another generation to Jane's mother, Margaret Watts Strother, and a whole new set of daughters and their descendants.

The actual mtDNA identifier I'm pursuing is a subclade of haplogroup H5. Depending on which research paper you read, you can find claims that my particular subclade of haplogroup H5 (which branches off from H5a) originated in central Europe, but there is wide fluctuation in speculations on origins. One interesting geographic pinpoint for a more highly honed subclade was the Austrian region of Tyrol. But the general H5 haplogroup has one specific point of interest, in regard to my own family history: some research papers consider the highest concentration in Europe of the H5 haplogroup to be in Wales.

If you know your surname origins, you would be correct in assuming the surname Lewis may have been from Wales—although Thomas Lewis' own history specified that he came from County Donegal in Ireland. However, remember that though I'm studying the genealogy of Thomas Lewis' family, because of the mtDNA test, I'm primarily doing so because of his wife, Jane Strother. Therefore, it would be her origin—precisely through her own matrilineal line—which would come from that (so far) hypothetical central European (or maybe Welsh) location.

At this point, I'm fervently hoping one of Jane's daughters will provide me the key to connect my matrilineal line with that of my mystery cousin. I've enjoyed the pursuit, but have to admit it is slipping much closer to the realm of exhaustive search than I had intended when I first started out with this project. Jacqi Stevenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-18874275479880880942016-05-24T02:52:00.000-07:002016-05-24T21:42:42.890-07:00The Continual Learning Curve of DNA
Perhaps it's that I just don't get it. After all, genetic genealogy can be an imposing topic to get your head around. And I feel like I'm continually learning. But never having learned.

To remedy that, I've made sure to register for the separate DNA Day preceding the Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree 2016 at the beginning of June. This has become a yearly event for me—a real treat to glean from a smorgasbord of DNA topics presented by an impressive array of much-appreciated speakers.

Despite having had the treat, last January, of a week of intensive training in the subject under the direction of Blaine Bettinger at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy 2016, I can still stand to learn more about the topic. I'm a hands-on learner who needs constant refresher courses if I don't keep my own hands in the mix all the time. Though I was dismayed to see the Ontario Genealogical Society lure away my favorite regulars from past SCGS DNA Day events, it looks like this will simply be the chance to meet many other, equally-impressive speakers in this realm.

One unexpected luminary in the DNA speakers lineup this year turns out to be certified genealogist Thomas W. Jones, Ph.D., who will present "Using Autosomal DNA to Solve a Family Mystery." I'm particularly curious about this presentation for one specific reason: while working on my husband's own autosomal results last year, one particularly promising distant cousin turned out to have an administrator by a different name than her own—someone by the name of Thomas Jones. Upon emailing that administrator, sure enough, it turned out to be the Thomas Jones. He graciously thanked me for my contact but explained that he was pursuing a specific goal with that particular person's Family Finder test, which involved relatives in New York. While my husband's Ohio branch of the family may have matched this woman's tree—at a distant level—this was not the focus of the project he was working on at the time.

I suspect the project he was working on was the very narrative he'll present at the SCGS conference this June. And you know I'm curious to see what it was.

Jacqi Stevenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-58985275504594941592016-05-23T02:49:00.000-07:002016-05-23T22:13:58.849-07:00Apoptosis and Genealogy
About a week from now—just as everyone is buttoning up their Memorial Day commemorations for another year—I'll be unzipping my suitcase and packing for another of those annual trips south to attend my favorite conference, the Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree.

My registration is completed and paid for—thankfully, as advanced registration closed just last night—and I'm wading through the myriad class selections to at least present the vague impression that I'm organized. Once again, I'm not only going there to attend the classes, but I'm hoping to meet with interesting fellow researchers and make some connections. After all, to my mind, that's what conferences are for: being with people.

It wasn't long ago—although quite far away—that another genealogical conference finished its last session and waved happy attendees goodbye. No sooner was the National Genealogical Society's annual event over than out came the observations about this year's attendance. It seems the numbers appeared to be down, and people were speculating as to reasons why.

In one blog post with off-the-charts reverberation—generating ninety comments to the post itself, plus a significant number of shares on social media—genealogist Amy Johnson Crow mused, "Are In-person Genealogy Events Dead?" Thankfully, her take on the matter was that no, they are not—but only if we are wise enough to capitalize on the reasons why people tend to do things in person (versus, say, save all that money and watch proceedings from the comfort of their own easy chair at home).

While I heartily endorse Amy's recommendations—and hope you stop by to see what she has to say in its entirety—her thoughts, juxtaposed with this upcoming venture to our west coast version of a genealogical conference, of course triggered other ideas on my part, ideas which veer far from the beaten path. You know me: rabbit trail thinking style. One thing always leads to another. There's just no guarantee that the path from thought to thought will lead in a straight line of reasoning.

You see, I'm very concerned about the health and well-being of genealogical gatherings, myself. I have a vested interest in those of a more local kind, being on the board of a local society. But I also see the need for us to continue gathering together in these larger genealogical events, as well. The educational value is superb, the range of options unparalleled at state, regional and national events. But the chance—and the need—to keep gathering together is an imperative, in my estimation.

Here's my jagged-line thought process, thanks to another interest in my life. Besides genealogy, I'm consumed with reading about nutrition, organic gardening, and health topics in general. In one particular nutrition site I frequent, I recently read the following, about a topic called apoptosis:

When a cell recognizes that it has become too compromised to continue functioning in a healthy manner with other cells, it stops proceeding through its own life cycle and essentially starts to dismantle itself and recycle its parts. It's critical for a cell to determine whether it should continue on or shut itself down, because cells that continue on without the ability to properly function or communicate effectively with other cells are at risk of becoming cancerous.

Apoptosis, if you haven't heard the term before, refers to programmed cell death. While death may seem like a morbid topic to discuss, at a scale as minute as the cellular level, it is important that cells go through a normal life cycle, then retire and become dismantled in an orderly fashion. Otherwise, drastic results such as cancer may result.

When I read about topics like this—not just regarding apoptosis, but referring more broadly to overarching concepts about cell messaging—in my mind, I get this picture of cells joining together in groups, sending each other messages, like, "Okay, jump!" (I know: not very scientific.)

Some messages—at least, in my highly imaginative but scarcely scientific mind—are probably very supportive, and not only the tiny cells in our bodies, but we, ourselves, need those micro-messages sent and received. After all, we are—even more so than those tiny cells we are made up of—social beings. We need to connect. We need to stay connected. We learn from the messages we send back and forth with other people.

If the very elements that keep us functioning in a beneficial manner follow such a pattern, perhaps we can benefit from heeding the lessons gleaned from that process of intercellular communication. After all, each of us needs to be in touch with each other, too. Not just in a digital, cyberized sort of way, but face to face, where we can take in all the visual and audio cues around us, and be in touch—literally—with each other.

For any organism to grow and thrive, being able to receive and heed the messages exchanged between parts of the whole is critical. I'd say the same is so for organizations—especially our genealogical groups, whether local societies or national establishments. It will be through our ongoing connections—the communication shared between the parts—that we will have the kind of adaptive growth that responds to both our internal needs and the imperatives of the environment in which we operate.

I know, I know: what a long, strange post this has been. Bet you hadn't bargained for a journey through such sidelines as these, just to talk about why we shouldn't forsake gathering ourselves together on a regular basis as genealogists. Of course, the warning is always lingering in the background: if we don't keep in touch to keep up to date with the needs of our constituents, that cell message received may someday become, "Okay, jump!" Hopefully, though, we'll not only remain attuned to the messages sent by those within the body of genealogy, but become pro-active in adapting and re-inventing ourselves to remain relevant to every aspect of our body of knowledge.

As for the event I'm heading south to attend in just over a week now, I'm hoping to give it my all in connecting, talking, listening, learning—even using the social media hashtag #scgs2016 and tweeting about it. I hope to see you there, too—but if not there this year, at a future event, whether in southern California, Fort Lauderdale, Springfield, or with another group at another time and place. Whatever you do in genealogy, find a way to get together with the others who speak your language.

Above: "Young Hare," 1502 watercolor by German artist and printmaker, Albrecht Dürer; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.
 Jacqi Stevenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-55933653197954492422016-05-22T02:55:00.000-07:002016-05-22T22:15:55.115-07:00A Genealogist's Work Is Never Done
Perhaps I believed my own press releases more than I should have, in the last two weeks, for once again it's time to face the numbers, but that breathtaking work pace has not quite been sustained as much as could be hoped. Even I was astounded, two weeks ago, to see I had added over four hundred verified records to my mother-in-law's family tree—and that was after another half-month time frame in which I had added more than seven hundred individuals. Such a pace cannot be sustained indefinitely, no matter how well meaning the project.

And so, as we turn to check the numbers once again in this bi-monthly ritual, it will be no surprise to see the inevitable downturn.

I had been intending—thanks, in most part, to that inevitable computer crash due to happen someday to my Window XP operating system on my dinosaur computer—to transfer an old family tree file over to my Ancestry account. The purpose was two-fold: not only to save a body of work representing over two decades of hard work and collaboration with other respected researchers, but also to benefit from more recently available digitized documentation, to beef up my resources to verify that work.

Thus, the seemingly phenomenal work rate in the past month.

That is not quite how things progressed in this last term. On my husband's maternal line, I only added 444 individuals to the new tree, dusting them off, hauling them over from the old file and plugging in as many pertinent documents to each person's record as possible. The tally on that tree now stands at 5,791. It's getting there. But nowhere near project finish. It will likely take most of the rest of the summer before I can make that claim.

On my own maternal tree, in the past two weeks, I've felt a twinge of guilt as I recall my previous goal of working on my matrilineal line, in hopes of finding the nexus with a mystery cousin who is one of a very few "exact match" results on my mitochondrial DNA test. (Truth is, I got sidetracked by The Bright Shiny when I stumbled upon the unbelievable story of the man who shot Marshall Jackson in 1917.) Last week, I again felt the need to get back to that DNA project—it is, after all, another immense one—and recommenced work on that tree. It's only been a pathetically small bit of progress I've made there, but with the addition of thirty one more names on another branch of my matrilineal line, I've edged the total up to 7,686 in my maternal tree.

You can rehearse the story with me on the two paternal lines, for I've made not a whit of progress on either my father's line or my father-in-law's line. It likely will remain that way—barring a breathtaking breakthrough on either of these two family lines—until my two maternal line projects are completed.

On the DNA testing front, there hasn't been much progress—except for one interesting development. Matches to our test results continue to trickle in—sixteen on my mother's line, and coincidentally, the same number for my mother-in-law's line. I now have 1,150 matches for my DNA test at Family Tree DNA, and my husband has 707. For my test results at Ancestry DNA, I gained seven matches to bring my total to 290, and my husband gained six for a total of 119.

That interesting development, though, turned out to involve a separate type of DNA test. Unlike the matches I've been mentioning at both Family Tree DNA and Ancestry DNA—which are autosomal DNA tests—I also have results at Family Tree DNA for the mitochondrial DNA test. This test, which involves the specific line of descent from an ancestor on the mother's mother's mother's line, is the one which revealed the exact match with the adoptee I refer to as my mystery cousin.

Matches on the mitochondrial DNA test are not listed by closeness of familial relationship—say, second to fourth cousin—as they are in the autosomal DNA test with which most people are familiar. Instead, they are ranked by genetic distance, based on count of number of mutations' distance, from one person to another in a matched set. In addition to my exact match—numbered at zero—with this adoptee, I have several other matches at greater genetic distance, starting from the third ranking.

Because mutations on the mtDNA line can occur very slowly, over several generations—sometimes even to a thousand years or more—someone with a genetic distance of one can turn out to be a recent relative, but will more likely be several generations removed, or possibly so far removed as to pre-date the genealogical paper trail or even the use of surnames.

Thus, I never bothered pursuing the matches to my matrilineal line with genetic distances greater than zero.

Until this past week, that is.

It was last week when the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution put out a letter to their members, explaining their newly formed DNA project for members of DAR. While they are primarily focusing on the Y-DNA test—specifically for the patrilineal line—they are also inviting members to share their autosomal and mtDNA results as well.

Since I already have my DNA results at the same company as the one used for this special NSDAR project—Family Tree DNA—it was only a matter of clicking the "join" button on my account there. (Those with their DNA results at Ancestry DNA can, for a minimal fee, upload their DNA results to Family Tree DNA and then join the project, as well.)

Once into the project, I took a look to see if any other DAR members had the same haplogroup as mine. Sure enough, there was one. Just one. But that was enough! I went back to my own results at FTDNA to see if she was on my list. Sure enough, there she was, showing at a genetic distance of three—explaining why I hadn't connected with her previously. Now realizing the DAR connection, I emailed that member, and we have begun comparing notes, both on our respective patriots, as well as on the matrilineal line which evidently connects us.

Confirming matches on DNA tests is deceptively more difficult than it may appear from the ease with which companies like Ancestry portray it. Perhaps that is why I am making such slow progress on the many results on both mine and my husband's family trees. Still, those confirmed tests can become so helpful in our genealogical research, and may provide clues on how to skirt some issues that we previously believed were immovable brick walls. The progress may seem glacial, but it's the determination—and the follow-through—to keep progressing that counts.

Jacqi Stevenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-23130651584235771062016-05-21T02:49:00.000-07:002016-05-21T22:16:22.866-07:00Moving Back, Moving Onward
When Marshall Jackson left Pembina County in the new state of North Dakota, it was likely with only his immediate family. Along with his wife Hester, that included sons Burnett and Earl, and daughters Gladys and Eleanor.

According to the 1906 Canadian census, the family reported arriving in Winnipeg in 1903—although by then, son Burnett had married and moved to Saskatchewan, and son Earl had also moved out of the family household, likely remaining in Winnipeg.

As for the many Harvey family members related to Marshall's wife, Hester, none apparently joined them on the trek northward, when the moved to Winnipeg. For although Marshall was said to have been born in Peterborough, Ontario, the majority of census reports showed Hester as having been born in New York.

In checking the 1885 census for the Dakota Territory, Pembina County—where the young Jackson family had settled—had no less than thirty four people itemized with the surname Harvey, Hester's maiden name. In fact, on the land grant records for Marshall Jackson, related documents referred to both an Ellen Harvey and a John B. Harvey—and then a reference to "heirs of" John Harvey in 1899.

Whether Hester was connected to this John and Ellen was not clear from documents I could locate, though. John's obituary was vague, to say the least. Here's all The Pioneer Express had to say on the matter on May 4, 1894:

Mr. John Harvey, sr. passed away Friday last, after an illness for over six weeks, which he bore with Christian fortitude. He leaves a widow and seven children, all of whom were at his bedside when he passed away. His funeral on Sunday last was largely attended, about sixty carriages following to his last resting place.

There was a John B. Harvey buried in a Pembina County cemetery—the Walhalla Hillside Cemetery—who had died on April 27, 1894, well within the parameters described by the newspaper article. Of course, a will and probate records would help determine whether Hester Harvey Jackson was among those seven children steadfastly attending to John Harvey in his last moments. As neither FamilySearch.org nor Ancestry.com currently include digitized wills or probate records for North Dakota, and since I have no plans in the foreseeable future to journey there, that little research project will have to be put on a back burner.

However, I can certainly hunt and peck through the documents which are available, in the meantime. So I looked for any records which might contain a John, an Ellen, and a Hester in the same household. I found one: in Watertown, New York, where a John B. Harvey lived with his wife Anna and four children, according to the 1880 U.S. Census. Conveniently, the household included a seventeen year old Hester, plus a nineteen year old Ellen. The added bonus was the inclusion of a son John—thus making his father's record agree with the "John Harvey, sr." designation we found later in North Dakota.

There were, of course, several drawbacks to this proposed match.

First was that the reporting party declared every single one of the household members to have been born in Canada, thus disagreeing with Hester's subsequent—and repeated—identification as having been a New York native.

Second was not only the number of children, but the discrepancy between their names and those of the Harvey family I found in the 1885 Dakota territorial census—while I found an Ellen and a John (Hester was, by then, married to Marshall Jackson), I lacked any sign of their older brother Samuel.

Worse, while it certainly would be possible for more children to have been born to the couple after the 1880 census, it wouldn't quite as handily explain away so many discrepancies on the reported ages in each census. Not to mention, there would be some explaining to do in the matter of wife Anna turning into wife Agnes in the journey from New York to North Dakota.

At best, all I can determine at this point is that Hester's Harvey family—whoever they were in Pembina County—all seemed to remain behind as she took her leave of them in 1903. Many of them likely remained in North Dakota for the rest of their lives, judging from the many Harvey memorials on the Find A Grave entry for the Walhalla cemetery where John B. Harvey was buried.

As for Marshall Jackson's own siblings—he had two brothers and two sisters, all but one sister still remaining in the Jackson household in Calhoun County, Iowa, in that state's 1885 census—none of them seemed to follow him back to Canada either. One brother headed toward Montana then eventually wound up in the Los Angeles region, while the other eventually ended up in the Chicago area. One sister stayed in Lake City, Iowa, until after her husband died, when she returned home to Ontario and remarried. The other sister eventually moved to Nebraska.

The 1903 move that returned Marshall Jackson back to his homeland brought with him five United States citizens. According to the 1916 census, Hester and her daughters became naturalized Canadian citizens in 1910. That didn't last for long, though. After the tragic death of her husband, Hester eventually moved southward with her two daughters, where each of them lived in various locations in Los Angeles County in California.

As for Marshall's two sons, the eldest moved first to Saskatchewan, but eventually ended up moving closer to his father's home in Winnipeg by relocating to the city of Brandon. The youngest, at first living in Winnipeg, later moved to Saskatchewan, to Moose Jaw.

I often wonder, in the aftermath of great personal tragedy, what becomes of those left behind—what the personal repercussions were, and how far that painful experience emanated. In the case of Marshall Jackson's family, as his children married and started families of their own, life's path seemed to tug them in different directions—a natural occurrence for many of us in these more recent eras. It's been almost one hundred years now since Marshall Jackson lost his life so tragically and senselessly, and the family has seen the passing of two more generations since Marshall's death. And yet, though the newspaper headlines of the tragedy that took his life have long faded from public view, his was a story that surely hasn't been forgotten by the ones who were the closest to him.

Above: Where the Marshall Jackson tragedy began: boarding the eastbound train at the Canadian Pacific Railway depot in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in January, 1917. From the Rob McInnes Postcard Collection, one of the collections featured at PastForward, Winnipeg's Digital Public History. Used by permission, with thanks to the Winnipeg Public Library.
 Jacqi Stevenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-50990569591035773542016-05-20T02:46:00.000-07:002016-05-20T23:31:18.947-07:00Clues of Family Close By
I'm always curious, in examining the stories of brave immigrants who left home—and all else, apparently—to travel great distances at considerable risk, just to have a fresh start in life.

In the case of Marshall Jackson, he left the place of his birth—Ontario, Canada—as a young adult headed for Dakota Territory. Best I can tell, he married after his arrival there, to a young woman named Hester Jane Harvey.

But did he come west on his own?

It was thanks to those archived newspapers that I discovered he was not alone in that immense journey. For at least part of the way, he had the company of family. While I don't yet have all the details, one brief newspaper mention in The Pioneer Express on June 1, 1894—for which scant detail I'm certainly grateful—opened up the picture for me. Under the headline, "Died," was found this brief entry:

JACKSON.—At Lake City, Iowa, May 11th. Mrs. Astor Jackson, aged 52 years. Mrs. Jackson was the mother of Marshall Jackson of Walhalla and sister of Wm. Rose, of Ernest, in this county.

Part helpful and yet part not helpful—I have yet to find the town called Ernest on a map, and more to the point, anyone named William Rose in that county—it does tell me a few things. First of all, that Marshall had family who had also left Canada and headed west in the United States. Second, it provided the name of his mother, and—especially valuable—her maiden name. Then, too, if she hadn't been coy about revealing her real age, it gave me the reference point to extrapolate the year of her birth. Coupling that with an educated guess that she might also have been born in Ontario, it held out the hope I could trace Marshall's own documentation to his birthplace in Ontario, as well.

Given the precise date of death and the location, it wasn't difficult to confirm that record in Lake City, Iowa. The location, in Calhoun County, was a railroad town founded in 1856 whose population peaked at the turn of the century—just a few years after Mrs. Jackson's passing—and has gone steadily down from that high of 2,703 ever since.

As it turns out, the newspaper got one detail wrong, though: her name wasn't Astor, but Esther—although throughout the many years of documentation in which her record was captured, her given name suffered the predictable spelling permutations, so "Astor" is forgivable. She, her husband, two sons and a daughter had apparently lived in Lake City since at least the 1885 state census, giving us a snapshot of Marshall Jackson's immediate family. Perhaps he, too, had once lived there before venturing further westward to the Dakota Territory.

Esther Rose Jackson, who predeceased her husband, was buried at the cemetery in town. At least that's what I gleaned from her memorial on Find A Grave. I can safely say that's a record I would never have stumbled upon, had it not been for that brief mention in the North Dakota newspaper linking her with her son, Marshall Jackson.

That, however, was not the only nearby family connection for Marshall's family. A few hints in property records made me wonder whether Marshall's wife might also have had connections in town.

Marshall had married a young woman with a name similar to his mother's. In the case of his wife, most documents listed her name with the spelling Hester. Her maiden name was Harvey, and her own mother's maiden name had been Burnett—thus providing the explanation for the given name of Hester and Marshall's eldest son: Burnett Harvey Marshall.

There did happen to be, in Pembina County, several entries in the 1885 Territorial census for the surname Harvey. Although I don't know yet which ones were related to Hester, it was interesting to learn that there were some Harvey family members named in relation to the original land grant Marshall Jackson had obtained in 1891.

If Marshall and Hester both had family which had moved west with them, what was prompting them to leave home once again? Were they going it alone, this time? Or was this move back to Canada also going to be done in the company of others?

Jacqi Stevenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-49174564735976125022016-05-19T02:56:00.000-07:002016-05-20T00:28:16.851-07:00Getting Personal
In retracing the steps on the timeline of constable Marshall Jackson's life, not all was newspaper coverage of his career in law enforcement. There were a few glimpses on the personal side in those Dakota Territory newspaper reports, as well, helping to paint a portrait of the man and his family.

The newspaper from the county in which he settled, after leaving his home in Canada, captured this moment in time on March 1, 1889, in The Pioneer Express:

Marshall Jackson, wife and family, have returned from the east. Their little boy was sick with the chicken pox when they left and he has been very sick since their return but is now slowly convalescing.

Given the date of 1889, it was impossible to tell whether the "little boy" the paper was designating was Marshall's oldest son, Burnett—who would, by then, have been five years of age—or their younger son, whose name turned out to be Earl, after all.

Still, one valuable clue in that brief insert showed us that the Jackson family had reason to visit someone—or something—back east. The trick in finding utility in that "back east" idea depends on the frame of reference of those choosing that descriptor. For those of us originating on the eastern seaboard, the phrase could only mean one thing: an east coast destination. But for those accustomed to midwestern ways, the term could simply mean a trip to, say, Iowa.

Wherever it was, though, chances were good that Marshall had not made his previous trek westward as a young, single man, alone. The possibility of family nearby—instead of far away, back in Ontario—increased ever so slightly with this detail from the local newspaper.

Second son Earl became the mention of the next clue found in newspaper reports of Marshall's personal life in North Dakota. Once again, it was The Pioneer Express providing the details, this time on October 4, 1901, in a section labeled "County News" under a subheading for Glasston:

Marshall Jackson of Neche visited his son Earl, Sunday.

As brief as that line was, it also provoked some questions. By 1901, young Earl would have been about fifteen years of age. Considering he was living back in Neche at the time of the 1900 census—just over one year previous to this news mention—what caused the change? There was little more in Glasston—then as well as now—than farmland and a stop along the Great Northern Railroad. Could he have moved the twenty five miles from Neche, simply to get a job?

Actually, hold that thought on the railroad. The Great Northern Railroad may well have been the very vehicle which brought Marshall Jackson to this part of the Dakota Territory in the first place. After all, the Great Northern had branches that ran northward to Canada from Dakota Territory and, like the Northern Pacific Railway—another company with early train service to Dakota with a northern line headed to Winnipeg—heavily promoted their service westward to immigrants and others seeking new opportunity as land in this territory opened up in the 1870s onwards.

Whether it was the Great Northern or the Northern Pacific that brought Marshall Jackson all the way from Ontario, Canada, to Pembina County in Dakota Territory in the early 1880s, one thing is sure: it was the easiest way to move back out again. And that is apparently what Marshall and his family did, in the early 1900s.

An entry in the April 3, 1903, edition of The Pioneer Express gave the first indication:

W. A. Murphy purchased the residence of Marshall Jackson, of Neche, recently. The latter will remove to the Northwest.

Well, take that last line with a strong dose of skepticism. You know those editorial foibles. As we already know, by the time of Canada's 1906 census, Marshall and Hester Jackson and at least their two daughters were in Winnipeg, listing their date of arrival in the Dominion of Canada as 1903.

Above: An undated photograph, circa 1909, of Osborne Street in Fort Rouge, the section of Winnipeg in which Marshall Jackson and his family eventually moved, upon their return from North Dakota. This intersection was less than one kilometer from the Jackson home. From the Rob McInnes Postcard Collection, one of the collections featured at PastForward, Winnipeg's Digital Public History. Used by permission, with thanks to the Winnipeg Public Library. Jacqi Stevenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-87257892942045278022016-05-18T02:49:00.000-07:002016-05-18T22:09:43.228-07:00Putting the Search in Context
One thing which seemed masked, in the search for Marshall Jackson in his home in Dakota Territory, was the context in which he arrived, lived his life, and eventually exited. Perhaps there is this sense of continuity assumed in any genealogical search: that while our ancestor obviously arrived at some point, the place at which he arrived had always been there—at least in some form.

Sometimes, you have to put effort into the search to step back and discover the big picture. What I missed in this week's search was the fact that Marshall Jackson had arrived in Dakota Territory in the early years of formation of the places in which he lived. Not only that, but he arrived in the early years of his own life, as well.

Judging from census records, it appears to have been a young, single man of barely eighteen years who arrived in Pembina County from his native Ontario, Canada. Pulling our clues from the 1900 census, when he declared his age to be thirty seven, he gave his birth to be in the month of July, 1862. While his arrival out west in 1881 might have given the impression that he was a seasoned traveler, the fact was that he actually had barely grown up and left home.

In that same census, he indicated not only that he had arrived from Canada in 1881, but that he had become a naturalized United States citizen.

Sure enough, turning to the database at the North Dakota State University Archives, looking up his name in their naturalization records index yielded this result:

Marshall Jackson had filed his first papers in Pembina County on November 1, 1881. The follow-through occurred in the same county almost to the day, six years later.

Now, let's put this in perspective. In 1881, North Dakota was not yet a state—that didn't happen until the end of 1889. The county in which he filed his papers—Pembina County—was established in the northeast region of the Dakota Territory in early 1867, but didn't assume its current holdings until much later. Its shape morphed through a series of transitions that took it down in size from 1871, when it stretched from the Canadian border to nearly current-day South Dakota, to 1873, when the process began to carve eleven new counties from Pembina's borders.

That process had barely been completed when Marshall Jackson arrived in the region. To say where he actually settled might have been near impossible, without following the border changes through several iterations of map editing, if it hadn't been for two other documents.

One of those documents was the territorial census conducted in 1885. Transcribed and posted for free access on the North Dakota State University Archives, it shows us a young Jackson family—in addition to Marshall, his newly-wed young wife Hester and two year old son, listed as Bernard, at the bottom of this page—living in Cavalier, one of the counties carved out from the formerly immense Pembina County.

The other document which guides us to Marshall's whereabouts had a later date of origination: February 13, 1891. By the time that record was issued, Marshall was not quite yet twenty nine years of age, but he had just gotten himself named as a patentee on a land grant in Pembina County in the new state of North Dakota. In some ways, he and his family could be considered pioneers in that county's history.

Of course, at the time of the 1900 census, we can see the Jackson residence was located in the town known as Neche—said to be a Chippewa word meaning friend—and Marshall and Hester were by then the proud parents of two sons and two daughters. By the time the Jackson family left the state—best guess so far is 1904—Marshall had become well established in the county, thanks to his active duty as Pembina's constable.

By juxtaposing Marshall Jackson's personal timeline alongside the historical events of both the territory and the county, it reveals just how early in the history of the new state of North Dakota the family had actually settled there.

Above: Plat map of the township of Neche, North Dakota, from 1928—long after the Jackson family had left town; courtesy United States Library of Congress; in the public domain.
 Jacqi Stevenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-26927101471509368932016-05-17T02:53:00.000-07:002016-05-17T23:31:31.496-07:00One "L" Or Two?
If you happen to find yourself researching the family history of a man employed in law enforcement in the small towns of nineteenth century America, you may find a wealth of mentions in local newspapers. All the better if those newspaper excerpts can be gleaned from a publicly accessible source such as the Library of Congress' Chronicling America project.

In our case, we've been perusing Dakota area newspapers from 1881 through 1904, the years our man Marshall Jackson had been living and working in Pembina County. The date range was gleaned from census records, both in the United States and in Canada, where "Marsh" moved, after his twenty-plus year stay in what had just become the state of North Dakota.

The 1900 U.S. census had indicated Marshall Jackson was serving as constable, but assertions in the Winnipeg newspaper, on the event of his death, had pegged him as a former sheriff in North Dakota. All I could find, though, was a series of articles in The Pioneer Express detailing his candidacy—and subsequent loss—for sheriff in Pembina County.

Still, there were ample entries in the local paper giving every indication that he was active in local law enforcement. Take, for instance, this entry on September 19, 1902:

Marshall Jackson, of Neche, was notified to look out for Frank Forbes, an escaped insane patient of the Jamestown hospital, who was committed from Hyde Park some time since.

Marsh's name was peppered liberally among the usual small town cop stories. In one instance reported on June 15, 1900, a local farmer was approached about purchasing some cows from two men who had just come over the county line. After the deal was struck, the purchaser discovered his bargain of "a couple of cheap beeves" was really the property of a neighboring farmer, who identified them as such.

Upon that discovery, the man, now out his money and having returned the stolen property,

immediately telegraphed Marsh Jackson, county constable, of the trouble. In the evening, Mr. Jackson arrived and it only took him a short time to secure a clew to the direction taken by the thieves....

Cattle thievery wasn't the only crime to make local headlines in Pembina County. On October 24, 1902, a store in Neche was broken into and the cash register stolen. A series of other stores in town were also hit that same night. However,

One of the suspects was arrested by Marshal Jackson near Altona the next day and now occupies quarters in the village jail pending examination.

Even the more pleasant aspects of a police officer's duties were covered in the local paper. The "international picnic" of the "A.O.U.W. of Manitoba and North Dakota"—held to be "one of the most successful"—included among its accolades on July 6, 1900, a nod to our man:

Marshal Jackson performed his duty, and the peace of the day was not marred in the least.

This January 27, 1899, report may have been another example encompassing all in a day's work for local law enforcement.

Marshal Jackson of Neche brought over a man named Robert J. Embery to the county jail, in default of bail, under charge of assault with a dangerous weapon. Embury was in a scrap with another man and Deputy Marshal Neil McKinnon attempted his arrest when Embury assaulted him with a leaden billy.

Wait! Deputy Marshal?

If some of these news reports—alternately featuring spelling as Marshall or Marshal—offended the sensibilities of your editorial eye, you are not alone in being irked by this irregularity. Though we could have excused it—just as the swapping of "Embery" and "Embury" in the above news story—to poor copy editing, it seems there was something more at play here.

Like this example. Remember the stolen cash register reported on October 24, 1902? Here's another detail:

Marshal Jackson, of Neche, on Tuesday brought over the two burglars who went through LaMoure & Co.'s store. They are pretty tough-looking characters. One of them became a little belligerent, which resulted in a black eye for him and a broken finger for the marshal.

Oh oh. Could this have been Marshal Marshall? But I thought he was constable. He was, after all, collecting fees for his services as constable.

So far, in sketches of the big picture of local law enforcement, I had run across mentions of the office of sheriff and that of constable. I hadn't picked up on the possibility that there was also a position there called marshal. It was time to consider whether Marsh was the marshal, or whether someone else was.

It didn't take long, in Chronicling America's easy to navigate newspaper resource, to find a "clew." There, in the May 10, 1895, edition of The Pioneer Express, was a whiff of local politics to waft in our direction:

On Saturday night a caucus was called to put in nomination officers for the ensuing year. It needed not a very intelligent man to see which way the wind blew. The fight was on the clerkship and marshal.

So there was a position of marshal out in this pioneer region. The question now became: who was the marshal? Marshall? Or some other Jackson?

In that very 1895 column discussing the machinations of local politics, we find our answer. The "hottest fight for years" resulted in "a strong ticket elected" which included, for marshal, a man identified by the name of C. Jackson.

Whether Mr. C. Jackson retained his position after that year's election, I can't tell. But further inquiry led to some details which either will serve to confuse or clarify whether Marshall Jackson was ever known as marshal in these parts. It seems—at least on November 2, 1900, the eve of another election—that perhaps the editorial staff of The Pioneer Express had finally made peace with their Ls:

Marshall Jackson of Neche has made an enviable record as a peace officer while acting as constable and marshal of Neche village. He is a teetotaler, does not drink or smoke, and is one of the most active men we know of. He will make a good record as sheriff.

It seems the predictive power of their editorial staff is exceeded only by their editorial prowess in such political matters.

Jacqi Stevenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-2204731230820035782016-05-16T02:49:00.000-07:002016-05-17T00:14:20.208-07:00At Least a Candidate
Archived news reports can help augment genealogical research, but should come embedded with a caveat emptor warning regarding editorial errors. That, I learned long ago. And don't intend to ever forget.

In the search for details on the life of murdered immigration officer Marshall Jackson of Winnipeg, I was elated to discover the local newspaper during the years he had lived in North Dakota is now part of the Chronicling America collection of the U.S. Library of Congress. Still, I made sure to proceed cautiously in case of any potential editorial hazards.

My goal in checking each mention of Marshall Jackson's name in the North Dakota newspapers in the Chronicling America collection was to see whether the memorial comments printed in Winnipeg following his passing were indeed accurate. In particular, the Manitoba Free Press had mentioned that "Marsh" had once served as Sheriff in Fargo, North Dakota.

Already, I was discovering that that report was not entirely correct. Fargo was located in Cass County, while we have already seen that, at least in the 1900 census, Marshall Jackson was serving as constable in the town of Neche in Pembina County to the north.

While Cass County isn't Pembina County—and constable doesn't equal sheriff—I thought there might still be some truth to the matter, so I trawled through the many references to Marshall Jackson found in the Chronicling America collection to see what I could find.

Right away, I found a mention of some activity of interest. From The Pioneer Express, Pembina's newspaper, on August 24, 1900:

Marshal Jackson of Neche was in the city on Wednesday evening and made us a pleasant call. Mr. Jackson was on his way to Drayton and expected to make several calls on his way. He informs us that he expects to be a candidate for the office of sheriff before the republican county convention, and from present prospects confidently expects the nomination. Mr. Jackson's record as a police officer and constable is of the best and proves him to be a faithful and efficient officer worthy of promotion.

While the slant on that article slides farther toward editorial spin than news reporting, it does show us that Marsh at least intended to run for sheriff.

A second such insertion in the same newspaper—this time on September 7—shows the man was busy pursuing his political dream.

Marshal Jackson of Neche was in town last week talking politics to some of the boys. "Marsh" is spoken of as a likely candidate for sheriff on the republican ticket.

Sure enough, in a column of convention reports gathered in the September 19 edition of the Grand Forks Daily Herald, one day after the republican county convention in Neche, Marshall Jackson's name appeared among those who had been nominated. It was now official: he was running for sheriff.

Now it was time to get to work. As election day drew near, Marsh did seem to be out there, connecting with prospective voters, according to mentions like this one in The Pioneer Express on October 19:

Marshall Jackson and J.W. Harvey have been canvassing this district and apparently are well pleased with prospects. They are both good fellows and deserve a popular vote.

It may have been too early for such confidence. The local newspaper began printing the list of candidates for all offices in late October. Marsh was running against Democrat candidate F.J. Farrow. From what I can glean from other editions of The Pioneer Express, Farrow appeared to be the incumbent.

As it turned out, Marshall Jackson couldn't generate enough support among the voters by the time of the November election. The tally—not printed in the Express until November 9—showed our man gleaning a total of 1,412 votes. His opponent, Sheriff Farrow, came in at 1,759. I'll let you do the math.

Still, there's one thing I've noticed about researching ancestors and others who once served in law enforcement careers: you can find a lot of mentions of their name in the local paper. Considering I received five pages worth of hits at Chronicling America for Marshall Jackson's name—within the limited time frame of his few years in the Dakota Territory and new state of North Dakota—it appeared there was a lot more to learn about his career as constable than in his brief run for sheriff.

 Jacqi Stevenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-32816634441487267982016-05-15T02:54:00.000-07:002016-05-15T23:01:22.057-07:00Finding the Jackson Family
It isn't every day that one uncovers a murder mystery among the stories tucked inside one's family history. Even though the victim in this case—Marshall Jackson of Winnipeg, Canada—wasn't part of my family (sadly, it was his murderer who was a distant relative in my matrilineal line), I wanted to trace his story to find out more about the man.

At the time of his 1917 death in the line of duty, working as part of the immigration service, Marshall Jackson lived with his family in a section of Winnipeg known as Fort Rouge. Newspaper reports of his funeral helped pinpoint his family in the census taken only one year prior to his passing. Although the household listed Marshall, his wife "Ester" and two daughters, we had seen from newspaper coverage that he also had two sons—one living in Brandon in the same province of Manitoba as his parents, the other in the neighboring province, Saskatchewan, in a place called Moose Jaw.

Rather than attempt the rather unwieldy genealogical chore of trying to find these Jackson sons at their place of residence in that same census enumeration—a trying feat, considering such a common surname—I thought it might be more expeditious to wander back through the census records systematically, until I could locate a year in which they all resided in one household.

Pulling up the prior census, though, proved unhelpful. There, still in Winnipeg, were the Jacksons—sans sons, unfortunately. The 1911 census showed wife Hester and daughters Gladys and Eleanor, but no sons.

Again, skipping backwards another five years to the previous census record of 1906, we find the same household. No sons.

Five years prior to that, in the 1901 census: nothing. No Marshall Jackson family whatsoever—with or without sons.

It might have seemed like we were doomed to have to go the more tedious route of eliminating numerous Jackson families in those two other Canadian locations in the hope of finding the right sons of Marshall and Hester Jackson. Except for one thing: looking at the actual digitized replica of the census page reveals much more than the mere transcription provides (at least in current formats). And on that digitized record, we could glean a few more facts to help reconstruct this family tree.

For one thing, the 1916 census showed that the Marshalls' youngest daughter was born in the United States. Because she was twenty one years of age at the time of that census, it would mean that the family—well, this daughter and her mother, at the very least—would not have been in Canada as late as 1895.

This particular census, however, helps us pinpoint the year of immigration a little more clearly—if, however, the reporting party remembered the incident clearly.

The 1916 census record shows Marshall's wife—not a citizen at the time of her arrival in Canada—to have come to that country in 1904. The same thing was reported for her two American-born daughters, indicating they must have been in the United States during the time of that country's census in 1900—thus addressing why they wouldn't have shown up in the 1901 census in Canada.

And sure enough: there the family was, in the town of Neche in Pembina County, one of the most northern counties in the new state of North Dakota.

Although the precise handwriting of the enumerator made reading the names of each family member a snap, it was somewhat complicated by his less than stellar spelling abilities, thus not quite providing us the precise names of each of Marshall Jackson's sons. However, we do have an approximation of what their names were. "Bernatt," the eldest, was fifteen years of age, having been born in North Dakota in December of 1884.

The second son, also born in North Dakota, arrived in June of 1886, bringing him to the brink of fourteen years of age at the point of the 1900 census. The only problem is: I can't read his name. It looks suspiciously like "Irl," making me wonder whether it should actually be Earl—until I succumb to pondering the possibility that it might have been Gil. I find it more forgivable to have to endure bad handwriting than poor spelling.

Of course, the girls were both listed—Gladys, having been born in October of 1891, and her younger sister "Ellen" in August of 1896—as was their then-thirty six year old mother, Hester. Apparently, Marshall and Hester had by then been married for seventeen years, placing the year of their marriage around 1883, and the location—considering Hester was, by other reports, actually American and not Canadian, as this census mistakenly identified her—somewhere in the United States. Indeed, the date of Marshall's arrival in the country was marked as 1881, most likely precluding the possibility of a Canadian marriage.

Another interesting detail of that 1900 census in North Dakota was the listing of Marshall's occupation. The census reported him to be serving as constable. While not to the rank of sheriff that the Winnipeg newspapers had later reported him to be—and certainly nowhere near the size of city his reported location of Fargo would have been at the time—the position of constable was a form of law enforcement officer, in some cases an elected official.

Although by this census record, Marshall Jackson had not, exactly, served as sheriff as the Winnipeg newspapers later reported, there were other indications that the paper may not have missed the mark by as much as it seems here. It was another newspaper report—this time from stateside—that provided a few hints.

Above: The Marshall Jackson household in the 1900 U.S. Census for the town of Neche in Pembina County, North Dakota. Image courtesy Ancestry.com. Jacqi Stevenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-5850364954163478712016-05-14T02:46:00.000-07:002016-05-14T22:09:28.142-07:00Documenting the Details
It doesn't take a deep examination of newspaper articles to realize that the editorial process is prone to errors. Genealogists are often overjoyed to discover mentions—no matter how fleeting—in the daily press of their ancestors' home towns, but that joy can sometimes be short lived if not tempered by a cautious double-check in corresponding official documents.

Take the Find A Grave entry I mentioned yesterday. While I was delighted to find a newspaper reprint of Marshall Jackson's photograph posted on his Find A Grave memorial by a well-meaning volunteer, I couldn't help notice some possible discrepancies.

For one thing, his date of birth was given in the Find A Grave entry only as a year—1862—meaning we'd have to delve further to sharpen that detail. That, however, is not my main concern, as much as the fact that his place of birth was listed as North Dakota. If you are a history buff focused on the American West, you will know that the state of North Dakota didn't even exist then; lumped in with what eventually became its twin state, South Dakota, the area was then known as the Dakota Territory.

More important than that slight error, though, is the fact that this detail disagreed with the newspaper report back in Winnipeg, the day the news of his murder hit his hometown newspaper. According to the Manitoba Free Press on January 26, 1917, Marshall Jackson was not born in Dakota—no matter what one chose to call the place—but was born near Peterborough, Ontario.

Considering such a discrepancy, when his obituary mentioned he was survived by a wife, two sons and two daughters, you know I had to check that one out.

Unlike the census records in the United States—regularly scheduled for intervals of ten years' duration—the Canadian census from the western provinces provided us a glimpse of the listing of local residents only one year prior to this 1917 tragedy. Thus, it was fairly easy to determine just which household was the right Jackson household.

Thankfully, the Free Press had also provided the Jackson family's address in Winnipeg at the time: 697 Warsaw Avenue. While the 1916 census record showed a different house number, the Jackson family was right there on Warsaw: fifty two year old grain inspector, Marshall Jackson (who was indeed born in Ontario, at least according to this census enumeration), his wife, Hester, plus two daughters, "Gladas" and "Ellan." Both twenty four year old Gladys and twenty one year old Ellen were entered as born in the United States.

Those details seemed to corroborate nicely the newspaper report that, before his fifteen years "in the investigation business," Marshall Jackson "had come to Winnipeg from Fargo, N.D., where he had been sheriff."

If you suspect my next point of inquiry will be to check out that claim that Marsh had once been sheriff, you know me well. Count your tally as having gained bonus points if you also wondered whether I would still pursue the record to discover the names of the two as-yet missing sons' names. We'll trace the family back through the 1911 and 1906 Canadian census records, and then jump the border to the United States census record for 1900, to see what else we can discover about this family.

 Jacqi Stevenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-13819559251703258832016-05-13T02:54:00.000-07:002016-05-13T21:40:24.327-07:00Gone in Five
It was a somber gathering in Winnipeg, that late Monday morning of January 29, 1917, to await the incoming train from Ontario. It wasn't exactly for a passenger that the crowd awaited the train's arrival. It was, however, on behalf of a person that they had gathered: Marshall Jackson, the recently slain detective who had taken on the assignment of conveying an extradited prisoner to Windsor, Ontario. His remains, escorted by an official from the Ottawa Immigration Department, were to arrive home that day.

Marshall Jackson had passed away only days before. According to the coroner's report in the records of the Sandwich West division of Essex County, he had died on that January 25th, near Saint Clair Junction in that same district. The coroner noted the cause as "a shot in abdomen by James Stewart" who was "being brought to Windsor for deportation." Mercifully—at least according to the coroner's reckoning—the victim had "died in about five minutes."

Gathered at the station in Winnipeg, four days later, were members of Marsh's family, along with representatives from "Damon Lodge, No. 5, Knights of Pythias" (listed as "Dominion Lodge" in a later newspaper report, along with a note that he was also affiliated with the Atabara Temple No. 149, D.O.K.K.).

The plan called for a private ceremony at the family's home the following day, from which the funeral cortège would then proceed to the Fort Rouge Methodist Church for a public service. Committal was to be at Elmwood Cemetery.

As I gather these details from the various newspaper articles, I'm working on locating additional documents to verify those reports at the close of Marshall Jackson's life. Indeed, his burial at Elmwood was corroborated by an entry in Find A Grave—although admittedly, that resource is not always error-free. Included in the Find A Grave entry was a clipping from an unnamed newspaper, with the caption,

Victim: Winnipeg private detective shot to death by his prisoner, William Anderson, on speeding train near Windsor, Ont.

The news clipping was accompanied by a photograph of Marshall Jackson, himself. Of course, we now know that William Anderson was merely one alias used by John Syme Hogue, and we've already discussed his side of this story. But now that we have these few details on Marshall Jackson, it's time to delve into his own story—at least as much as online resources permit.

Above: Portion of the death records of Essex County, Ontario, Canada, showing the Medical Certificate of Death for Marshall Jackson. Image courtesy Ancestry.com.Jacqi Stevenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-69641608923830001532016-05-12T02:53:00.000-07:002016-05-12T22:26:05.597-07:00Getting to Know "Marsh"
When the news first broke on January 25, 1917, that a Dominion immigration officer had been shot in the line of duty, the papers back in his hometown of Winnipeg got the scoop, alright—but they got it wrong. Announcing in the Manitoba Free Press that it was Detective Nesbitt who was shot, the editors found themselves in the uncomfortable position—at the bottom of the very same front page column—of admitting there was no such person in the employ of the Winnipeg police force.

What did come to light, though, was a series of articles revealing just a little bit about the man who was killed early that morning. While those articles may be found disappointingly inadequate for genealogists hoping to locate identifying names of the bereaved family members, the series of clues about Marshall Jackson does reveal several details about the man, his career, and his earlier life.

Right away, the newspaper caught its error and explained,

The only Jackson known to the police in Winnipeg was Marshall Jackson, usually known as "Marsh." Mr. Jackson was a prominent private detective, and did considerable work for the [Sir Rodmond Palen] Roblin government. He also figured in Saskatchewan elections. His agency supplied private detectives for departmental stores, banks, and similar institutions, and being an old-timer he was well established in Winnipeg.

The next day, while newspapers on both sides of the border were furiously following the progress of the manhunt for Marsh's slayer, the Manitoba Free Press slipped in a small notice about the man's funeral, in the midst of a brief biographical sketch about Marsh.

Jackson was well known all over Canada, more especially in the west. He was born near Peterborough, Ont. He had been in the investigation business for fifteen years. He had come to Winnipeg from Fargo, N.D., where he had been sheriff. He was about 50 years of age.

There was more explanation of Marsh's connection to government:

For the past four years, Jackson had been employed more or less by the Dominion government. He was a seed grain inspector at one time, and during the latter years was a special investigator, and employed in the deportation of dangerous criminals.

Naturally, with those business connections—and especially considering the manner in which he died—it was no surprise to read that the "Dominion government will have charge of the funeral."

With all that detail on Marshall Jackson's work history, one would have hoped for a more complete obituary than the brief paragraph offered on his family. Still, I'll let that suffice me for a start on the genealogical research trail.

Besides his wife, two boys, one in Brandon and one in Moose Jaw, and two girls, who live with their mother at 697 Warsaw avenue, Fort Rouge, survive.

Jacqi Stevenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-88175024144284495692016-05-11T02:47:00.000-07:002016-05-12T18:37:58.584-07:00The Other Side of the Story

Accompanied by an official of the Ottawa Immigration department, the body of Marshall Jackson, the well-known Winnipeg detective, who was killed while escorting a prisoner...will arrive in Winnipeg at 11 o'clock this morning.

That was the news report in the Manitoba Free Press on Monday, January 29, 1917, which brings us back to the other side of the story I set aside, back in January of this year—almost exactly ninety nine years after this newspaper entry. It was—at least on the side I had been talking about—the story of John Syme Hogue, son of a civil engineer in Charleston, West Virginia, whose unfortunate life choices found him on death row in a prison in Ontario, Canada. The reason: murder of an immigration officer handling the process of his extradition to stand trial back in the United States.

The other side of the story, of course, would be that of Marshall Jackson, the Winnipeg detective assigned to escort John Hogue—still being referred to under one of his many aliases—back to Windsor in Ontario, where he was to oversee the transfer of his prisoner to United States law enforcement personnel at the international border.

While there are several newspaper reports which included enough details on the man to develop a sketch of who he was, the downside to that attempt is the typical rush to publish in the face of getting "the scoop" ahead of the competition. At first, the Winnipeg newspaper identified the officer as "Detective Nesbitt"—until someone from the police force must have pointed out that they had no such detective by that name. For a while, it seemed the number of aliases for the reports on the now-deceased detective was doomed to catch up with the number of aliases assigned to his assailant.

It is not simply to sort out the chronology—or merely the correct identity—of the slain officer that I want to pick up this thread of the narrative. As you likely have realized from following along here at A Family Tapestry, it's the stories that exert that powerful pull on me—of course I want to know Marshall Jackson's story, as well.

Even more than that, though, is an additional pull this story exerts on me, personally. Because I am married to a law enforcement professional, I have had the vicarious—albeit admittedly distant—experience of knowing the impact on those on the force who have lost a co-worker who has died in the line of duty. It is an awful experience with multiple repercussions, not only for immediate family, but for those who worked with the fallen officer, and for the community in which that person once served. Whenever I hear of an officer who was injured or killed during the course of work, I can't help but hear echoes of officer safety warnings in my head—the oft-repeated kind drilled into public safety employees over the course of their career. When I read a story like Marshall Jackson's, I can't help but cringe when I realize what happened to him. Stories like his became the training material used to hopefully prevent further such tragedies from occurring.

For the rest of the week, we'll revisit this other side of the John Syme Hogue story. We'll explore what we can reconstruct of Marshall Jackson's own role in this story, his work history, and his family's story. Between newspaper reports, census records, cemetery records and other findings, this will help us understand a bit more about who this seasoned detective was who nevertheless lost his life in the course of a day's work.

Above: French impressionist painter Claude Monet's 1885 oil on canvas, "Train in the Snow." Courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain. Jacqi Stevenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-40577471438896263292016-05-10T02:50:00.000-07:002016-05-10T22:22:17.681-07:00Off the Shelf: Born For This
April was a month of pursuits that expanded to fill more than my allotted thirty days. I kept stumbling upon an ever-expanding clue trail in tracking down the family of missionary Peachy Taliaferro Wilson (and really, with a name like that, who could resist?). From that conclusion, I couldn't help but ponder the absence of a fellow genealogical researcher—and attempt to find the answer to my question—all the while revisiting reams of printouts and notes on a family tree I hadn't revisited for well over a decade.

When I came up for breath, it was nearly mid-May. And I hadn't attended to my usual monthly posts, like my resolution to do some indexing each month. And my promise to myself to read a book a month. That hasn't happened since the beginning of March.

Besides, I'm mindful of the special occurrences the month of May always brings—especially graduations. So when I saw an announcement that my favorite nonconformist had just published his most recent book, I had to add it to my collection.

Not just for my own reading pleasure, though. I have another motive in acquiring this newest title: I suspect it will be a great graduation present, at least for forward-thinking college graduates.

I was so keen on getting started reading this book that I couldn't wait for the hardcover to reach my home address. (Note: in my world, every book is a keeper, so every book I buy tends to be a hardcover edition.)

So I took Amazon up on their offer and read the first chapter, right off the page on their website. I wasn't disappointed. Chris Guillebeau's Born for This examines three aspects of the enviable work position: doing what brings you joy in life, receiving reasonable pay for the value you add through your work, and a third element the author calls "flow"—"the all-encompassing feeling you get from working well at something you enjoy." If you find yourself getting so engrossed in your task that you are surprised to realize how much time has past since you last took a break, you are experiencing the positive aspect he calls "flow."

Being the nonconformist that he is, Guillebeau isn't merely going to provide pat answers to the career question. In all his books, he's been careful to present a wide variety of perspectives and approaches, courtesy of the many interviews he conducts in preparation for each publication. I trust he won't disappoint on this one.

I've had a set of side interests that have become lifelong pursuits. One of them has to do with the methods of career selection, planning, and development. Maybe that's because I've never really known what I want to do when I grow up—so I've been fascinated with how others have successfully gone about it. The discovery process, that is. Plus the application. And the follow-through. Life purpose is something so easily camouflaged by life itself. Anyone who can simplify or clarify the process has my ear—and, I suspect, a good number of others' as well. I'm hoping to introduce a few freshly-minted graduates to this way of thinking.

 Jacqi Stevenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-71815071166497189342016-05-09T02:53:00.000-07:002016-05-09T23:02:26.820-07:00Now Indexing: Illinois County Naturalization Records
What?! Could it be that I haven't indexed any records at FamilySearch.org for over one month? So much for good intentions!

Last month just flew by for me. I decided to make amends today by pulling up a new file to index, and selected the United States collection from the state of Illinois, labeled "County Naturalization Records, 1848-1945." Since my husband had family who entered the country from Canada by settling in Chicago, my hope to help the research cause was admittedly not entirely altruistic. But I still want to do my part to help with research progress.

Perhaps I got a little rusty, having taken this more-than-month-long hiatus from my volunteer duties. I read the project notes thoroughly, followed the prompts for each field—and still felt like I wasn't getting things right. How difficult can this be? I didn't even run into impossible handwriting this time, but still felt like I was missing the mark.

That wasn't the only disorienting feeling about this long-neglected exercise. I kept feeling like I had worked on naturalization records before, but when I pulled up my personal indexing history, apparently I hadn't. Still, I liked the fact that I could look over my past efforts and see which areas tend to have my focus. I decidedly prefer the regions where my ancestors once lived, and that is understandable.

It was interesting to observe the opening message on the indexing program that "for the first time in years, images awaiting arbitration are below three million." Three million? If my slush pile was that large, I'd feel hopelessly behind! However, judging by the fact that that simple message was reprinted in ten other languages, it gives one the idea of how massive a project this indexing endeavor is. Not only does each document get indexed by one volunteer, but by a second one, as well—and then discrepancies are arbitrated by a third set of volunteers. A quick visit to see how many record sets are coming online every week gives an idea of the immense amount of data that is sifted through in preparation for that weekly addition.

On the other hand, perhaps seeing less than three million images in the queue for arbitration indicates a hidden plea for more volunteers to send those images to the arbitration step. Though kudos are in order for those hard-working arbitrators, I'm sure additional indexing volunteers would be welcomed to the process with open arms.

Above: 1887 watercolor by English landscape artist Alfred Parsons, "When Nature Painted All Things Gay." Courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.Jacqi Stevenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-13388919261977707882016-05-08T02:54:00.000-07:002016-05-08T22:09:27.847-07:00A Full Circle of Mother's Days
Exactly today, five years ago on May 8, just so happened to also be a Mother's Day. I should know, for it was leading up to that date that I decided to do something a bit different to commemorate the event: start a blog about my mother's family history. After all, she came from a family which had a good three hundred years' worth of that history, just in this country—including enough stories to fill a blog for untold hundreds of posts.

I decided to launch my project on Mother's Day, 2011. I thought that might be a nice touch.

Of course, I couldn't just limit the blog to my mother's family history. I had to include a few pages on my father's mysterious origins, as well.

It wasn't long after that when family on both sides of our happy marriage chimed in. "Oh, you're researching that? Well, maybe you would be interested in this stuff," they would say, handing me a stack of old letters. Or documents. Or photographs. "We don't know who those people are, but maybe you do."

A mere 1,829 posts later, and we wind up on another May 8. And, likewise, it happens to be Mother's Day. Just like that. Where did the time go?

In the meantime, I've touched on the stories belonging to eighty four surnames in our families' combined genealogies—but have barely scratched the surface of what's out there. A genealogist's job is never done.

Although my mother has now been gone for a few years, I can't help but think of her and remember some of the stories she used to tell about her memories from her growing-up years, of her grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and others I've never met, when I sit down to write another post for this project once launched on another May 8—a Mother's Day, five years ago.

Jacqi Stevenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-34545078827902983232016-05-07T02:48:00.000-07:002016-05-07T22:27:05.724-07:00A Focus on Gordons
Sometimes, work on family history takes a scattershot approach: you work on a little bit here, then a little bit there. The trouble with that approach is the resultant feeling that not much has been accomplished. And really, how would you know anything was accomplished, if you didn't have a goal?

Lately, I've been working on one specific goal: reconcile the gift of shared research material on the Gordon family of Perry County, Ohio, that I received over the past twenty years with my relatively newly-constructed tree on Ancestry.com. While most of that seems a fairly routine task—talk about grunt work!—it has had its up side. I've added a significant chunk of records to one specific branch of the tree.

It's a tedious process, first entering each person's data from the old file, then searching for the documentation which is now so much more readily available than it was, twenty years ago. Rather than relying on perhaps only two documents per person—say, the 1880 census record and an obituary—as the old file had, I now could lay out a cradle-to-grave paper trail of verification.

When it comes to tracking progress—and it is time for my bi-monthly statistics rundown—the effort to focus on this one family line certainly shows. The flip side, of course, is that all my other lines—both my paternal and maternal line, as well as my husband's paternal line—have slowed to a standstill, or at the very best, a trickle of new documents. But that is fine. A measurable goal is probably the most helpful in demonstrating research progress.

So, right off the bat, let me say I scrounged up a mere nineteen extra names to add to my maternal line, which now stands at 7,655. My paternal line is frozen in time, at 180 names. Likewise is my husband's paternal line, still weighing in at 955 names.

On my husband's maternal line—the spot which includes the Gordon line (in more places than one, as we've already demonstrated)—is where all the action was, these past two weeks. I managed to plow through a whopping 737 entries, leaving the tally there now at 5,347. And believe me, if I had more time, I could have done more. That Gordon tree residing in my old computer database is extensive.

In the meantime, while I was focusing on that Gordon line, there have been a number of changes in the DNA testing world, particularly at Ancestry DNA. I'm curious to see how the changes went for others. As for our family's tests, my husband gained only six additional matches at the range of fourth cousin or closer—while I gained exactly nada (a little post-Cinco de Mayo lingo for you, there). Yes, that's right: my Ancestry DNA account gained not a single extra match in the last two weeks. Go figure. Perhaps I should be grateful I didn't see the tally go backwards.

Interestingly enough, that was the exact same case for my Family Tree DNA account, as well: not a single addition of a match there for me. Although my husband's account at FTDNA yielded an addition twenty matches in the same time period, I can't say I did much of anything with them. Remember, I was focused on adding those Gordons to his tree. There is a price to be paid for focusing exclusively on one area.

Since my schedule will be slowing down a bit for the remainder of this month (yes, there is life after genealogy), I am hoping to accelerate this push to reconcile the Gordons between my two genealogy databases. By the second half of May, there should be another similar leap in numbers on that one tree—of course, at the expense of the other languishing collections. I doubt the project will be completed by then—perhaps I will be able to check for duplicate entries and eliminate some names as well—but by the end of the month, I suspect I'll be significantly closer to closing out this goal.

Despite that hackneyed mantra about never "finishing" one's genealogy, it will feel good to gain that sense of actually completing the task, as much an anathema as that concept of "finishing" seems to be in the realm of family history research. Jacqi Stevenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-71692291411253898962016-05-06T02:53:00.000-07:002016-05-06T23:18:57.494-07:00Close Encounters of a Family Kind
How does one end up marrying a third cousin without knowing it? Apparently, sometimes these things happen. Those who keep diligent track of every branch of their family tree would spot the issue immediately. But how many people out there are smitten with the genealogy bug, as we are? Despite the current rankings for popular genealogy shows on television, not that many.

In the case of my husband's family, the route went something like this, all beginning with two half-siblings, both sons of William Gordon. The eldest, James, was son of William and his first wife, Mary Carroll. Before the family moved from Greene County, Pennsylvania, to their final home in Perry County, Ohio, James married a woman named Sarah Rinehart. Among their ten (and counting) children was their first-born daughter, Nancy Ann. She married Simon Flowers in Perry County and had, among many others, a son whom the couple named Joseph.

Joseph, in turn, married and also had many children, including John Ambrose Flowers, born in 1885. Still in Perry County by this point, John Ambrose took a wife of his own, the young Bertha Metzger, daughter of Joseph Metzger and Bertha Gordon.

Oh oh. There's that Gordon surname again. Perhaps the couple—and their parents, too—didn't realize that significance because the groom's family hadn't had a Gordon surname since John Ambrose's paternal grandmother, who died six years after he was born. Besides, the bride's connection to the Gordon name was through her mother's maiden name. But still.

The young bride, Bertha, owed her surname to her father, Joseph Metzger, true, but that Gordon line came through to her, too, thanks to her mother's father, Adam Gordon.

The name Adam plus the surname Gordon is enough to give me grief. There seem to be more than one Adam Gordon—all born about the same time—so I've had to tread carefully through this branch of the family tree. Still, a Gordon is a Gordon, and it's likely Adam's father was William H. Gordon, who turns out to be son of none other than William B. Gordon and his second wife, Mary Cain.

And that, my friend, is the full circle between half-siblings James and William Gordon.

 Jacqi Stevenshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-55903555821442061352016-05-05T02:51:00.000-07:002016-05-05T21:29:39.235-07:00Nineteen and Counting
When the genealogical records mentioned that William Gordon fathered nineteen children back in the 1800s, it calls to mind—at least in modern memory—those reality programs examining the logistics of large families. While large families may not be the norm today, they certainly were in previous centuries, and our William Gordon was not to be outdone in his capacity.

However, rest assured his accomplishment in this arena was courtesy of the assistance of not one (weary) wife, but two. His first wife was the former Mary Carroll, daughter of Anthony Carroll who, after serving in the British navy, had emigrated to the western reaches of what was then still Virginia, settling in Morgantown. Before she died, Mary bore William eleven children, a mammoth task in its own right.

After Mary's passing in 1812 in Greene County, Pennsylvania, William remarried. With his second wife, also named Mary, he had an additional eight children—all of whom, with the exception of the youngest, George, were born in Greene County.

After having followed his father from his birthplace in Maryland, moving first to Monongalia County in what was then Virginia, then to Greene County, Pennsylvania, William was not satisfied to remain settled at what became known as the old Gordon homestead. Shortly after the 1830 census, William convinced all his family (except for daughter Nancy, who had by then married a man who chose to remain in Greene County) to move once again. This time, their destination was Perry County, Ohio.

The caravan westward of the Gordon clan might have seemed a daunting move, although some reports seem to indicate that it was accomplished by clever command of nearby rivers. At any rate, the party included most of those nineteen children—George, not yet born, arrived in Ohio on his birth in 1832—with the exception of the daughter who remained behind, and two sons who may have served as advanced guard in going ahead to scope out possible property purchases.

Indeed, William and Mary (Carroll) Gordon's eldest son, James, did make a transaction for three parcels of land in Perry County, dated August 15, 1837, according to General Land Office Records. In addition, Perry County marriage records from the 1830s onward were liberally peppered with mentions of grooms sporting that same surname. By the time of the 1850 federal census, out of a population of just over twenty thousand people, Perry County tallied at least forty eight Gordons, with ten of them born in Pennsylvania and twenty seven of them born in Ohio from 1830 onward. While not all of them are likely descendants of our Gordons, I'd be fairly confident that a good majority of them were either born to this family, or married into it.

What seems most awkward about this large family, though, was not so much the fact that William moved westward with seventeen of his by then mostly grown children, but that the sheer numbers—plus the spread of ages from eldest to youngest, added to the division of one wife's children from the other's—created some interesting effects, moving forward a few generations.

For instance, part of my husband's family is descended from James, the eldest son of William Gordon and Mary Carroll, while another part claims as their ancestor the eldest son of William Gordon and Mary Cain, his second wife. The actual marriage resulting from the joining of descendants of those half siblings didn't occur for another three generations, making it quite unlikely that the newlyweds in question were even aware of the connection.

Only a genealogist, of course, would discover such an aberration.Jacqi Stevenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5034998384799920884.post-34468734372313739392016-05-04T02:49:00.000-07:002016-05-04T22:22:40.933-07:00Letters: A Peek Into Your Family's Past
Hardly anyone writes letters anymore. That's a sad fact, considering the most likely candidates for personal communication today—and how easily those records can be deleted. From what I've observed in researching the various lines in my family's history, letters not only gave us a glimpse into our family's past, but were items that often were stored and cherished for decades.

I often became jealous of other researchers who had such stashes of family letters—until, that is, I discovered a second resource for capturing the sentiments shared in those letters: local (especially genealogical) history books.

The first time I read through the books on the Gordon family I mentioned the other day, I'd say I turned a brilliant shade of green. I wanted letters like those in my own family line! It took me this long hiatus, and a return (with an attitude check, apparently) to realize it was solely because of these books that I get to know those precious, privately-shared sentiments about the Gordon family.

These are the types of tidbits that paint a clearer picture of just who our ancestors really were. Take the patriarch of my husband's Gordon line. John Gordon was a hard-working, determined man, judging by the biographical sketches in the books I've found. But anyone can say that sort of stuff about anyone; it doesn't take much to wax eloquent in print. It's when the choice wording in private letters paints the word picture that allows the reader to decide for herself just what a man's character is—now, that's priceless.

Letters collected by the researchers who wrote the genealogy books of a century ago provided glimpses of everything from personal appearance to religious preference to pet peeves. I recalled several quotes from letters used in The Gordons of Greene County Pennsylvania.

Hardly bolstering the "from Scotland" side of the family argument about their patriarch's origin, one Gordon descendant wrote in a letter on October 27, 1889, (presumably to the book's author) quoted in the footnotes on page 19:

I have heard that up to this time [referring to the date 1789] the Gordons were a black-eyed, dark-complected people.

From various family letters, the author assembled several descriptions of the Gordons as "stout, active and healthy...a little rough," being of "above the average size," and "at least some of them were of the Catholic faith." Despite that strong faith, several of the Gordon men were known for their "backwoods fighting"—"'a great fighter,' so the older generation used to boast."

It's interesting to find a book which not only catalogs one's general genealogy, but focuses on the exact individuals which comprise one's own line. This particular book did so with my husband's fourth great grandfather William, son of the patriarch John Gordon. Of this man, the researcher remarked,

William Gordon seems to have been the family leader. He was a man of fine character, keen humor, and the soundest common sense. Though having nineteen children of his own, he fathered nearly as many more among his nephews and nieces. When the children of his brother, John Adam Gordon I, were cut off in their maternal grandfather's will, it was "old Uncle Billy" who must post off to Morgantown and see that justice was done.

It was this same William Gordon who, having moved from John Gordon's original Maryland property to the old Virginia region of Monongalia County (near Morgantown), and later to Greene County, Pennsylvania, convinced his extended family to move once again. This time, the move was to the central Ohio location of Perry County—site of the first Catholic church in what was then a sparsely populated state.

Jacqi Stevenshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com