Sisters and Their Stories

 

Though I can't say I've found an answer yet, this has been a month which may have come full circle. I began the month looking for all the women who belong on my mother-in-law's matriline. I eventually settled on researching the daughters of her fourth great-grandmother, Elizabeth Howard, wife of William Ijams. The only problem: it's hard to find stories of sisters born in the late 1700s. Until, that is, I ran across a document identifying two of them, and hinting at a third.

Elizabeth Howard and her husband, William Ijams, had five daughters. Besides my mother-in-law's direct line third great-grandmother, Sarah, the other daughters were Rebecca, Rachel, Mary, and Comfort. This month has been one continuous struggle to find any records of these sisters' married lives, particularly the details indicating the names of their children—especially their own daughters.

We've found a bit of information on Mary's daughter, Providence Teal, but none of her three daughters had continuing lines of female descendants—they didn't "daughter out." With Rachel, an early census record after her marriage to James Turner indicated that she may have had at least five daughters, but what their names were or whether they lived to adulthood and married, I still can't say.

And then there's Rebecca. With Mary and Rachel, at least I could find some documentation beyond the marriage record to indicate what life had brought them in later years. For Rebecca, I had little beyond a reference to her husband's name in her father's will—William Ijams had named William Wiseman as his executor. I did find a will for someone by that name, living in Fairfield County, but the document didn't specify the names of any descendants. All the will mentioned was three apparently unrelated people with whom William Wiseman had been living at the time of the most recent census before his 1854 death.

In the 1850 census, living in William Wiseman's household were Eliza Noals and her likely daughters Elsa and Catherine Noals. Like William, Eliza had been born in Maryland, though she was almost thirty years younger than William. Her two supposed daughters were both born in Ohio, and were in their twenties. An unrelated eleven year old boy from Germany rounded out the household.

When William Wiseman's will was entered into the court records on February 7, 1854, names quite similar to those appeared as his legatees. Those named were Alicia Ann Noles and Catherine Noles. In addition, a third person of that surname—Leo Noles—was mentioned in William's will. Oddly, though Eliza Noles was also mentioned, she was only indicated as recipient, along with the other women, of support from the estate's executor for "protecting and maintaining" the three women "during their single life." All the rest of William's estate was bequeathed to the Literary Society of Saint Joseph in neighboring Perry County, Ohio, whose director was named as executor of William's will.

With no mention of a wife or descendants of his own, I considered whether the document was written by our William Wiseman. And yet, some details seemed to match. As indicated in his will, William was buried in Perry County. But there was no sign of a wife named Rebecca or any children from that marriage. I began to wonder whether there was another William Wiseman in town.

Fortunately, a land transaction in Fairfield County helped provide another piece of the Wiseman story. Dated May 1, 1831, the record indicated that land purchased by one Edward Stevenson was sold to him by "William Wiseman and Rebecca his wife," and "James Turner and Rachel his wife." With that one document, we are gifted with the names of the wives of those two men. Of course, we already knew from their father's will that Rebecca and Rachel were sisters, but finding their husbands' names in any records has been a challenge. This, at least, gave another verification of the connections.

What is interesting about that document in Fairfield County records is that, immediately preceding it was another document regarding another property exchange, between Joseph H. Ijams and Edward Stevenson. Referring to an original exchange in 1827, the 1831 document revealed that the description of the property in question contained an "incorrect recital of the metes and bounds" of the location.

What doesn't get mentioned in those documents is the other relationships contained within the named parties. Joseph H. Ijams was brother of William Wiseman's wife Rebecca, and James Turner's wife Rachel. In addition, Edward Stevenson had married another Ijams sister, Comfort, in 1811. While the land may have been changing hands, it was all still kept within the same family—but if it weren't for knowing who the sisters were, that fact would have remained invisible.

Too Many Turners in Town

 

It seemed like a really good research plan. To find the names of the Turner children—the unnamed descendants showing in the 1820 census household of James Turner and his wife Rachel—I thought I'd simply look for James Turner's will in Fairfield County, Ohio.

Apparently, that idea crashed and burned far sooner than I ever dreamed would be possible—all thanks to the efficiency of Full Text search capabilities at FamilySearch Labs. On to Plan B: look for signs of any transfers of property in the same county, from James Turner and Rachel, his wife, to any others with that same surname. But that idea isn't working too well for me either. Why? Apparently in a county of sixteen thousand people, there were too many Turners in town for that approach to yield any helpful clues.

Still, I'll keep my eye open for these possibilities. Besides seeing the deed transferring ownership of property from James and Rachel to someone else named James M. Turner, I found another deed mentioning Solomon Turner—another possible son? Among the deeds in Fairfield County during that time period, I also ran across Turners by the names of Isaac, Joseph, and even Bazel. Then again, in later dates, I couldn't be sure whether the Williams I found were sons of James' father William, or sons of another Turner sibling. I had enough tabs open on my laptop to cause a computer meltdown, surely.

But what about the daughters? That, after all, was my original goal for this month's research project. I wanted to find information on the female descendants related to my mother-in-law's matriline for DNA purposes. There certainly were a few land transactions in those Fairfield County deeds which mentioned men of other surnames. What they lacked, though, was any mention of how—if at all—they might have been connected to James Turner. So the 1823 transaction selling land to Herbert Winegardner, or the one naming James Price, provided me no details to give me any traction. Though James and Rachel certainly did have daughters, we're still left not knowing what their given names—let alone their married names— might have been.

In the midst of searching through pages and pages of court records, though, I did run across another curious land transaction, bringing together some of the same names I had encountered while taking that research detour to learn the history of one of Fairfield County's first churches. We'll take a moment to examine that deed tomorrow.

Near the Old Graveyard

 

Richland Chapel was the name of the first Methodist church built in Fairfield County, Ohio. From a description in an old local history book, the chapel was said to have been a log cabin built "near the old graveyard." Among the church's first members appeared the surnames of collateral lines descending from my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandmother, Elizabeth Howard, wife of William Ijams.

Right now, as I take a hiatus from the search for all Elizabeth's matrilineal descendants, a detour to examine the history of this county's earliest church may be helpful. As it turns out, that "old graveyard" near the chapel is a place I've written about before. Known by some as the Stevenson Cemetery, by others as the Ruffner Cemetery or the Campground Cemetery, it was an old burial ground where the now-half-sunken headstone for William Ijams rests. 

A more recent cemetery sign—at least, according to Find A Grave resources—identifies the location as the Stevenson Ruffner Cemetery. Through chatty weekend "Nature Notes" over the years by Lancaster Eagle-Gazette columnist Charles Goslin, we can glean some of the history of the place. His May 6, 1961, article takes us on a Sunday afternoon drive along "Snake Run," stopping in at the cemetery to learn a bit about the history of the area.

On or near that same property, not long after 1800, a man named Daniel Stevenson settled, along with his brothers. Daniel was said to have been a "soldier of the Revolution"—though D.A.R. can find no service records and admits earlier membership applications may have mistaken him for another soldier entirely—and received a land grant to settle in Fairfield County in 1806. Columnist Charles Goslin mentioned that the area became known as the "Stevenson Settlement" after this early settler.

How well-integrated the Ijams household became within that Stevenson Settlement, the church meetings held on that property, and even the burial of Elizabeth's husband there, can be gleaned by comparing names in hundred-year-old history books with the intermarriages of the Ijams daughters. As we've already seen, though daughter Rachel's husband James Turner has not been specifically mentioned, history reports we've already covered did mention others of that surname in the congregation. Younger Ijams daughter Comfort married Edward Stevenson, and although I have yet to document his father's identity, the surname does resonate. Daughter Sarah, of my mother-in-law's direct line, married John Jay Jackson, mentioned in yesterday's post. And William and Elizabeth's son William married a daughter of the Ruffner family. All these marriages handily demonstrate the intertwined community whose legacy became the now-deserted cemetery called by many names where our Ijams ancestors once lived, worshipped and, eventually, were buried. 

In the Right Vicinity

Some local histories just resonate with surnames from our family's history. That, according to the history of Richland Township in Fairfield County, is what I've been noticing as I search for signs of my mother-in-law's roots during the early years of Ohio's statehood.

Among the earliest settlers in that vicinity, according to one 1912 book, History of Fairfield County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens, were these: Wiseman, Turner, Stephenson, Ijams. All of these, I already know, fall handily into what some genealogists call the "F.A.N. Club" of my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandmother Elizabeth Howard and her husband, William Ijams. Or, to look at this report from the eyes of another genealogical phrase, "cluster genealogy," those surnames lead us to the right cluster.

To see that cluster a bit more clearly, though, we need to take a detour from our main research goal to explore what brought those families from their previous, distant residences to their new homes in the formative years of Ohio's Fairfield County. In a word, that gathering force was religion.

That same 1912 history book noted that the township—indeed, the whole of Fairfield County—saw "the early organization of religious societies and churches," but the first of such meetings were held before any church buildings could be erected. Those meetings were held "in the log cabins of the settlers."

In another book, Pioneer Period and Pioneer People of Fairfield County, Ohio, published in 1901, author C. M. L. Wiseman noted that the church in question—at least for my mother-in-law's family—was Methodist. Included in a list of those who attended services in that early church prior to 1805 were:

Daniel Stevenson and wife, Isaac and Thomas Ijams, John J. Jackson, John Sunderland, Edward Teal...William Turner.

Perhaps you, as I do, see that cluster of familiar surnames taking shape—the very surnames I've been following as we look for the matrilineal descendants of Elizabeth Howard and her husband, William Ijams.

When attendance overtook building capacity, church meetings were held out of doors in 1803, and then again in 1807, a year said to have drawn over one thousand people to such a "camp meeting." The site of the camp meetings, and the log cabin itself, was noted as "near the old graveyard" and "in sight of the home of Daniel Stevenson." Before we explore further how these surnames intertwine with the daughters of Elizabeth Howard and William Ijams, let's take a step back, tomorrow, to learn a bit more about what that author meant in 1901 when he talked about the old graveyard. 

Revisiting a Six Year Old Story

 

It was almost exactly six years ago when I began sharing the story of a photograph I rescued from an antique shop up in Gold Country. The picture itself was sweet, containing the cherubic faces of two young boys, the younger barely one year of age. The puzzling part was that the portrait was labeled in French, and likely dated from the earliest years of the 1900s, an odd find from a store in a small town in the northern California foothills.

At that time, I had begun what has become a habit of rescuing old abandoned photographs and researching the subjects of the picture in hopes of finding current-day descendants who might be interested in receiving the orphaned picture. In the case of Emile and Lucien Hallée, the two boys in the photograph, with barely enough details to locate a possible descendant, the generous assistance of a Canadian blogger who spread the word plus the power of social media enabled a happy ending: the photograph made its way home to family.

Ever since that point, I've been totally sold on the thrill that comes from what I call "giving back" to the genealogical community, and have returned several other photographs to family over the years. But it has only been lately that I've been able to share such stories in person. This coming Monday, April 22, I'm privileged to have that opportunity to head up to the same gold rush country where it all began in 1848 to present "The Genealogical Legacy of the California Gold Rush" to the Placer County Genealogical Society. If you're curious or want to hear that story once again (as well as others), I invite you to come along, whether in person for those living in the Auburn, California area, or online for those in time zones in which an evening presentation at seven, Pacific Time, would not be prohibitively late. The Society's website has the information to guide you in accessing the online meeting, and they are very welcoming in inviting visitors to their meetings.

   

Granny Hobbies: Do We Make the Cut?

 

Recently, I read an article by one writer I follow online, who was reflecting on something he had read in another writer's blog. The topic he had shared was about what's called "granny hobbies." The originating writer, in a blog called Working Theorys, explained granny hobbies like this: hands-on and thumbs-off. Hands-on, because these are hobbies which are all about creating something. Thumbs-off, to signify being as far removed from online activities as possible, especially if mindlessly consuming social media posts.

The list provided by the original writer encompassed the kind of activities you might presume would be in such a list: cooking, gardening, knitting, playing board games. What I found interesting was to see how the second writer augmented that list of granny hobbies: he included genealogy.

Great. Now we can officially claim family history research to be among those in the domain of senior citizens? While I prefer to see people of all ages finding themselves fascinated with their family's stories, I do have to grant these authors one concession: there are benefits to the act of creating and the discipline of mindfulness about those creative processes.

If there is now a movement returning to such beneficial hands-on activities, I suppose I don't mind the moniker of "granny" hobbies. By its description in these two online articles, it apparently is something seen in a positive light. And there is certainly plenty to say for the therapeutic benefits of working for pleasure with the end goal of creating something of beauty or value. Preserving one's family legacy—at least the intangibles of personal and family history—can apparently not only give us something to pass down the generations, but it can serve to benefit ourselves and others in the doing of it, as well.

When All the Details Line Up

 

It's encouraging, when looking for a brick wall ancestor, to finally find the document in which all the details line up and we can say with assurity that we have discovered the name belonging to the previous generation. In some cases, the one court document I found which mentions James Turner assures me of his connections to my mother-in-law's family. In other cases, though, it brings up more questions.

James Turner, if you recall, was son-in-law of my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandmother. And that distant great-grandmother was a matriarch on my mother-in-law's matriline, a potential common ancestor for the three exact matches my husband has on his—and thus his mother's—mtDNA test results. All I need to do is determine just how those female descendants for that matriline might figure into the puzzle.

After discarding the possibility of several of the women descending from Elizabeth Howard, that fourth great-grandmother, due to lack of daughters to pass down that mtDNA signature, we are currently circling the family of Elizabeth's daughter Rachel. Because Rachel was married in 1802, before Ohio had even attained statehood status, it would be a very slim chance indeed for me to find mention of her own name in legal documents—with one exception.

That exception was my hope to find a will for her husband, James Turner—and that her husband predeceased her. That hope, however, was quashed when my search for such a legal document in Fairfield County came up empty-handed.

It was as far as a last will and testament go that I was foiled in my research attempt. In its place, however, I found something else which turned out to be quite helpful—except for one detail.

The document was an indenture dated January 11, 1843. By the time of the 1840 census, James had already declared his age to be in his seventies. His wife was not far behind him. And the document being drawn up in court on that date in 1843 served as an exchange of property between the elderly couple and another man named James M. Turner.

The record was helpful in that it identified Rachel specifically as James' wife. In addition, we could possibly infer that James M. Turner may have had some relationship to the originating parties in that he exchanged a mere two hundred dollars in exchange for the property (worth about $8,000 in today's economy, not a bad price).

There was, however, one glitch in that document which didn't seem to line up. Toward the end of the first page of the court record, in specifically describing this property of James Turner, the wording stated, 

...which lot or section of land was granted by the United States unto the said William Turner by Letters made Patent...

Wait. Which said William Turner? I went back to reread the document—not relying on the AI transcription provided by FamilySearch Labs' Full Text search function, but reading that handwriting for myself. If there was a "said" William Turner previously mentioned, I have yet to find it.

However, the indenture provided some other very specific details, like the date in which that original transaction occurred (August 13, 1805), and the description of the property location (Section 28, Township 17, Range 17). I blasted over to the Bureau of Land Management's General Land Office Records to see whether there might be any record of a William Turner receiving land in Ohio.

There was. In Fairfield County. At that precise location: Section 28, Township 17, Range 17. On that same date: August 13, 1805. 

Don't you love it when all the details line up?

Better yet, if James Turner had somehow received that land from someone named William Turner, perhaps William was James' father, just as James M. Turner, next recipient of that property, might have been son of the elder James.

Of course, that's just a guess on my part. But at least it points me in a possible direction to continue my search. After all, it will take some cluster genealogy to help point out what became of Rachel and James Turner's currently invisible daughters.