A Miracle Find No Thanks To An Index

Ohio, Trumbull County, deed records, John Orr and Wife Deed to the Widow & Heirs of Thomas Duer, digital image; FamilySearch.org:  accessed 20 March 2023, citing film 005492829, images 3-4, p. 2-3. Last week I went to FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City, Utah with one main goal - to prove that John Duer (Circa 1803 PA-1885 IN) was the son of Thomas Duer (1775 NJ - 1829 OH). I'll blog next week about researching in the renovated library but for now, this story is just unbelievable! I have long wanted to prove that I am a descendant of Patriot John Duer (1748 NJ - 1831 OH). I've written two analyses on indirect evidence linking Patriot John to his oldest son, Thomas, who died intestate, and Thomas's son, John, who was of age when his father died and therefore, not named in probate. Early on in my research, I was advised to check land records and I did. The problem was that some early deeds for Trumbull County, Ohio are missing. Both Patriot John and Thomas lived next to each other from 1809 until Thomas's untimely death at age 54 in 1829. Since Thomas died before his father he was not named in his will, however, one of Thomas's daughter's husbands was named in Patriot John's will as receiving land. All of the rest of Patriot John's children were noted in the will. He had one other child who had predeceased him; for that child, the grandson was named as receiving cash. In Salt Lake City I was looking at volumes written by Henry Baldwin in the mid-1800s. I found the information I needed to prove that Thomas was the son of Patriot John. The books didn't help, though, by showing Patriot John's grandson, John, was Thomas's son. I asked several AGs and research specialists for ideas. I had looked for records that included Bibles, Presbyterian Church, cemeteries, obits, probate, wills, deeds, tax records, court records, identifying census tic marks, journals for pioneers/circuit riders, genealogy society records, mug books, and contacting people who had online family trees. One AG recommended checking Masonic Lodge records as he noted that many Presbyterian farmers were members. FamilySearch has New York Masonic records but not Ohio so I reached out to the Public Library of Youngstown, Ohio, and was referred to Warren County Public Library. I sent an email request noting I was looking to prove a relationship through Masonic records. The following day I received a wonderful reply - no Mason records but someone once left 4 pages of typed research notes on the family in the surname files. The librarian scanned them for me. Those notes were undated, the library had no idea who had left them or when. I had contacted the library for various help over the years and no one had ever mentioned these 4 pages of notes. I figured the Masonic records were a long shot but I admit, I was initially disappointed when I looked at the notes. I began reviewing the attachments and on page 3, almost fell out of my chair. The individual who had left the information had abstracted deeds. I had seen every deed at FamilySearch.org but one. The one that was not listed in the index was the one that had named the wife of Thomas and all their children, shown above. It neatly sold land that was mentioned in Patriot John's will to another of Thomas's children. The husband of that child sold the land to the named son of Thomas. I had looked page by page at early deed books but stopped at the end of 1832 as that was when the estates were finalized. I used indexes going forward. This one transaction wasn't indexed. The land was sold in 1832 but not recorded until 1833. It never dawned on me to go page by page for the following year AFTER the estates were closed. I could have solved this problem years ago if only I hadn't relied on the index and remembered that deeds are not always recorded when they were made. Lessons learned!

Finding John Duer's Burial Site

Kessler Cemetery, Mercer County, Ohio I finally found the tombstone of my 3rd great-grandfather, John Duer, in Kessler Cemetery, Mercer County, Ohio! Last Saturday my husband suggested we drive to Ohio to check out the cemetery in the hopes of finding John’s gravestone. I’ve blogged many times in the past about my Duer family and the frustration of not being able to find where John was buried. I had probate from Adams County, Indiana so I knew John’s date of death but have never found an obituary and the probate didn’t disclose a burial location. No memorial was ever made on Findagrave or Billion Graves. When I lived in Florida my resources were sparse and I didn’t find the information when I went to Salt Lake City in 2015. I contacted organizations in both Adams, Indiana, and Mercer, Ohio but nothing was found. Sue Thomas, a trustee of Kessler Cemetery had sent me records for rows 1-7 and there was a John Duer, but it was the son of the man I was looking for. I wasn’t aware at the time that the records were incomplete. Fast forward to June 2022 when my husband and I visited the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the 2nd largest genealogy library in the country. I didn’t really think we’d find John’s burial location as the 1st largest genealogy library in the US didn’t have it. I was shocked when I handed my husband a book of Mercer County cemetery inscriptions and he found an entry for Kessler Cemetery, row 15, on the last page of the book that noted “John Duer – unreadable.” As soon as we had settled into our new home winter hit and I had to wait for spring before I could resume my quest to find John’s burial site. Last Saturday, the snow had melted, the sky was blue and the sun was shining. I had a meeting to attend in the morning so when I arrived home the last thing on my mind was John’s tombstone but my husband thought it was a good day to go look. The cemetery is in a rural location in Ohio so we had to use coordinates to find it. So remote is the cemetery that the cell service is spotty. It is accessible from a county road and surrounded by a field. There is a farmhouse visible to the north and a rooster doing his crowing the entire time we spent there. There are 331 memorials on Findagrave and it’s noted that the cemetery is 92% photographed. Of course, John was one of the 8%! This man left behind a few records so it is fitting. As soon as my husband turned into the unpaved U-shaped drive I was ecstatic. I immediately spotted my 2nd great-grandparent's tombstone and another of my 3rd great-grandparent's tombstones. There were Kables, Kuhns, Bollenbachers, and Duers as far as the eye could see. I’ve certainly visited many cemeteries over my genealogical career but I have never visited a small family cemetery that belonged to my family. There are no words to describe the feeling of knowing that everyone in this location was my kin. Best of all, I knew their stories. Seeing, touching, and walking among the stones made them real. The documents, stories, and photos I’ve amassed were connected to the individuals lying right below where I stood. Even my husband got excited, shouting “Look, there’s a Kable, oh, there’s a Kuhn, there’s another Kuhn.” He had heard me speak of these people for over 40 years and now, he too, felt they had become real. He parked in the field and the hunt was on. It was obvious the older stones were on the south side of the drive so we began there. Several were completely unreadable. I knew from the book that John was buried in row 15 but it was difficult to determine where the rows began as the graves were not dug in lines beginning at the same point. From the records that Sue Thomas had sent me I could tell that Row 1 was where the newest graves were placed. Even counting from there was difficult. Cold and frustrated, I said aloud, “John Duer, Come on. I’ve been searching for you for years and I’m tired of this. Where are you?” I turned and looked down and there was the stone pictured above. Standing back from and just at an angle, the late afternoon sunlight clearly showed John and 1885, his death year. The rest of the stone was unreadable. Yes, I did thank him. I was disappointed that I couldn’t read the entirety of the stone as nowhere is John’s birthdate recorded. It appears that it once could be calculated from the stone but no longer. My husband, laid upon the grave to get as close a look as possible as the stone is tilted downward. My husband is not interested in genealogy so his actions spoke volumes to me about how much he understands my passion. Think about this, the ground was damp, it was freezing, and he was lying on my 3rd great-grandfather’s grave to get a better look for me. I told my kids if that isn’t love I don’t know what is. I had one more mission which was to find his first wife, Jane’s grave. I’ve blogged before about the possible error on her stone giving a death date as 1866. John had married again in December 1864 and had a child with his second wife by 1866. No divorce document has been found. He wasn’t likely a polygamist as he was raised as a Presbyterian. Lastly, Jane’s grave states she was the wife of John Duer. If they had divorced she wouldn’t have been his wife. Interestingly, when his second wife died, she too has the "wife of John Duer" on her stone. He must have been something! We couldn’t find Jane anywhere and a stiff wind began to blow so we went back to the car to look up Findagrave to see if we could identify background stones to help us find Jane. We then realized we had no cell service. Yep, this cemetery is remote. Husband stuck his phone out of the window and finally, we got a signal. Although there are two photos on Findagrave only one would display and it was the closeup with little info in the background. We got out and looked again. I was standing catty-corner from John’s grave and my husband was in the last row before the field, about 3 rows from me. John was considered in row 15 and Jane was in row 14 but there was a large space where I was standing with no stones so I turned and immediately was facing Jane. What had happened was Jane’s top stone portion had come loose and it looked like someone had turned it 90 degrees so it was now facing John’s row. In 2007 when the Findagrave photo was taken, the stone was facing south as John’s was. When I was reading stones in row 14 I thought Jane’s stone was just another stone that had become illegible. Instead, I was looking at the back of her stone. I was beyond euphoric at finding her final resting place. Although I certainly never met her in person, I know that she was a strong woman who used a small inheritance from her father to purchase land in Killibuck, Holmes, Ohio so she could take her garden produce to town to sell. I love her entrepreneurial spirit, unusual for a woman in the 1840s. She lost several children, one as a child, several to the Civil War, and one to a mental illness. The family moved from eastern Ohio to mid-Ohio and finally to the border with Indiana. It must have been difficult leaving her parents and siblings behind as they moved west. I’ll be doing many more cemetery visits as the weather warms as I expect you will, too. Don’t give up your search! Your ancestor is out there just waiting to be found.

Over a Brickwall Through A DNA Match

I'm blogging early this weekend as I've got too many events scheduled! Next Saturday, my blog will be late. I'm blaming it on the time change. There is nothing worse than trying to solve a brick wall for commonly named individuals. For years, I’ve not been able to go back further than the parents of my 3rd great-grandfather, Edward Adams. Actually, I still don’t know his parents’ names but I definitely know who his grandparents were! I don’t use DNA much for my own family genealogy because my maternal side were fairly recent immigrants to the U.S. and few have matched me. On my paternal side, I seem to get most matches for my maiden name and I have no brick walls there, going back as far as I could with remaining French and German records. I have tremendous issues, though, with my paternal grandmother’s lines; I was always told she was Irish, English, Welsh, and Scottish. My DNA confirms those ethnicities but the names where I reach a dead end are Adams, Byrd, Cole, Dennis, and Morrison. Too many in the same place at the same time! Last month, I was pleasantly surprised when I decided to take a look to see if I had any new matches. I had a hunch that I was related through the Sylvanus Adams line. Although it was just a hypothesis, it made sense as my Edward Adams, who had died intestate (why do all my people do this?!), left behind young children in rural Perry, Ohio in 1822. A man named Evi Adams settled the estate. Evi died soon after Edward. Evi was an interesting name to me so I poked around and found several in New Jersey where Edward’s wife had originated. Now New Jersey is not a small land a mass so I was even more intrigued when I learned the Evi’s were all in Sussex County, the same place as Edward’s wife. I then made a tree from the youngest Evi I found living there in the late 1700s and based on birth years, it looked plausible that Sylvanus and Elizabeth Crowell Adams could be my 5th great-grandparents. I attached Edward to one of their sons with a disclaimer that this was just a hypothesis. And there my mystery sat for years! Until February, when finally, along with 7 newfound “cousins” I indeed do link to Elizabeth Crowell and Sylvanus Adams. But the man I guessed was Edward’s father was not correct. There were gaps in children so I suspected that was where my 4th great-grandfather had once been, perhaps dying young. I found Sylvanus’ will to see if there were additional children or grandchildren of deceased children named but nope, he even left out a known son Isaiah, who had left New Jersey for Ohio. Hmmm, not the same county where Edward was but I still tried to place him as my great-grandfather; it didn’t work. I then found a further DNA match with an Ichabod and Sarah Sumner Crittenden. I’ve been trying to find which of their daughters married a son of Sylvanus and that’s where things got stopped again. The Crittenden’s were from Connecticut and had a daughter, Hannah, who married James Adams in Massachusetts. Could James be an unnamed son of Sylvanus? Possibly, but the James and Hannah Adams family remained in New England. That could explain why James was not listed in Sylvanus’ will as it appears that only children who were close by to him in New Jersey were named. Then I found a James Adams in Sussex, New Jersey in 1793 but he was married to a Sarah Dunn. Arghhh! But here it gets interesting because Sarah Dunn’s parents were also from Connecticut. I am THRILLED that I have found Edward’s grandparents after all these years and even happier to know I was correct in guessing who they were. I just wish I could figure out who his parents were.

Evaluating Ancestry.com’s ThruLines

I want to pass on this tip if you find yourself stuck with a brick wall ancestor. While I was writing my John-Thomas Duer relationship analysis I used Ancestry’s ThruLines and created a chart to place in the paper as additional proof. If you have DNA tested with Ancestry.com then ThruLines is available to you. To access, sign on and then click DNA on the ribbon. Click ThruLines. Here’s where it’s advantageous to have a tree on Ancestry – for all the individuals that you’ve included in your tree for several generations, their information will appear on ThruLines in a white box by their relationship to you. I know that I’m genetically related to both of my parents, grandparents, and great grandparents from my DNA Matches on Ancestry and other sites so I scroll down the page and begin to investigate people I have placed in my tree but need further proof of lineage. Perhaps records are just not available or sketchy. Perhaps they are a brick wall. For my example, I’m using a line I haven’t thoroughly researched. I have a hypothesis that Mary Whitlock and John Cole were my 5th great grandparents. The ThruLine boxes for them appear at the bottom of the page:

Interestingly, I have NO DNA Matches for John Cole but 3 for who I thought his wife was, Mary Whitlock. This means I need to check out Mary Whitlock further. Click on the name box and you will see a descending tree chart. I have a pic of my connection to one of the three DNA matches:

The above chart has been clipped – I’m not showing you the entire chart that Ancestry presents because I’m only going to look at one match at a time and start with the one who is closest to me. My Mary “Polly” Dennis married 5 times and had children with 3 of her husbands. I recognized in the chart above that Sarah Elder is my half 2nd great-grandaunt because Sarah’s dad was Owen Elder; my line descends from Edward Adams. Two other DNA Matches I didn’t clip Show descent from husband John Hodge. My relationship shows as half because both Catharine Adams and Sarah E Elder got half their DNA from Polly and the other half from their dad’s, who were not the same individual. I’m not sure why Ancestry needs me to EVALUATE the information as I had that in my tree already and I thought they would recognize it. If you come across that, here’s how to get the chart looking complete: Step 1. Click on the individual to EVALUATE. You must start at the top, with the oldest generation first. Once you click EVALUATE this page will appear:

As you can see in the picture, My Main Tree is an option and that’s my personal family tree. Why Ancestry didn’t automatically connect to it I don’t understand. You don’t need to make any decision on this page, just click Next at the bottom. The next page looks like this:

Obviously, I’m going to click the button in front of Sarah A Elizabeth Elder in My Main Tree as that’s my tree. Once the button is clicked, on the bottom “Add” to tree is shown. Click that. You now need to make a decision as to who the spouse will be. This is important for the DNA process. Here’s my options and it automatically defaults to the first marriage. I will be clicking the button in front of Mary Polly Dennis and Owen Elder:

You’ll get a message from Ancestry that looks like this if it worked correctly: For a brief second a message displays stating “We’re adding (individual) to your (tree name).” When it’s processed it will display this message:

When you click “View Profile,” the individual will pop up as a page in your tree. But this is a problem as I already had the woman in my tree! Next you are going to have to merge the new information with your old information.

Click “Merge with duplicate” that is displayed right under 2nd great-grandaunt. This page will display:

Ancestry recognizes I already had the same person in the tree so I just need to click ”Select.” If Ancestry doesn’t recognize the individual, type the individual exactly as you named them in your tree. For example, perhaps you entered Sarah as Sarah E. Elder instead of Sarah A. Elizabeth Elder. Type what you originally had and it will display the name, birth and death information for the person you typed. Compare and if you are sure you have selected the correct individual, click “Merge” as seen below:

Now, the new info is connected to the old and the person is one on your tree. Within 24 hours, when you back to ThruLines, the individuals will be displayed just like your own data was so you can clip and use the chart as you like. Here’s what it will look like but you’ll have to go through and evaluate all of the individuals in descending order to get the chart complete.

If you are confused about the relationship that is displayed, Ancestry has a help guide available here.