In my recent research looking for Hamm or Amundson descendants in Minnesota, I unexpectedly came across this interesting take on the Fred and Carrie desertion case.
I have written about this incident before, and even thought I was done writing about it, but then I found this article reporting on the same court case, but in a different paper. Well, I couldn’t just let it sit there. Ignored.
When I read the first sentence in the article I burst out in shocked laughter. Then it was “WTF dude?” I actually had to look up ’round head’, and found that it is derogatory American slang for an immigrant from northern Europe, particularly a Swede. I was appalled by my great grandfather’s rudeness and prejudice. He must have been a real treat to live with, starting with his balking at taking care of his wife’s first child with another man, and then this choice language.
I am glad that Fred divorced her, he sounds like he would have been a misery to live with ’til death’. And, no doubt, all the while would have been chasing after every available skirt he could find.
As far as I am aware, he never did find that “Irish Molly”.
Our Ancestry ThruLines tree for Isserstedt, (I removed more recent names from the chart).
I can hear the question now — “Why, or what, am I looking at?” Well, this is the tree that showed up in Dad’s Isserstedt ThruLines recently. And this ThruLine is telling me that we have a DNA match with a descendant of Fredrick Isserstedt’s Uncle Johann Christian Isserstedt (I know his name because I did a little research). This Johann Christian had a daughter Johanna, she married Heinrich Ernst Koch and so the line continues through their son Karl all the way down to our present DNA match.
Here is Johanna’s marriage as noted in the church record:
Number 21 in the list is Johanna Maria Dorthea Isserstedt’s marriage record to Heinrich Ernst Koch. It lists her father Johann Christian Isserstedt and her mother, Elizabeth Moltzer.
For me this is cool, because it might help with finessing the Isserstedt line with German church records that have been digitized, and are available to research at Ancestry, and the Family History Library.
This is also a useful match, because if I can find out their chromosome location it will tell me which part of our Isserstedt/Sachs line is the Isserstedt segment.
Even all that aside, it is kinda cool that we are getting matches with some of our recent German immigrant lines. (We also have matches with folks whose ancestors were from Schwabsburg, but their lines are the Nehrboss and Knoblochs.)
So much fun is happening with our DNA matches. It’s hard to keep up.
In other DNA news, I finally heard back from our Hamman match. To review, I sent an email to the one and only match with our cousin’s HAMM yDNA at FamilyTreeDNA, and finally, after re-sending my email three times over the last year and a half, heard back. I received a very friendly email from a nephew of the tester. He provided a history of their line with a tree. But, at this time we can not connect the two.
There is a connection, but we don’t know where yet.
I asked if he would be able to get his uncle’s yDNA results bumped up to 111 markers (currently it is only 25). There is a 2 marker difference right now, if this marker difference increases with more markers tested, that means that the connection is likely a bit further back in time. But, if the difference remains at 2 or 3, then we are looking at a more recent connection. Fingers crossed.
I have been obsessed lately with my DNA research, probably because I can’t currently do much in the way of records research, except for what’s available online due to the pandemic, (which contrary to popular belief is not over!) So, in order to feel that I haven’t abandoned genealogy completely, I am focusing on the DNA end of things.
This obsession has also led me to try and learn as much as I can about how to analyze one’s data. Because I will admit, all those charts, lists and matches can get overwhelming! If nothing else, I have learned one thing for sure – focus. Pick one particular problem, or ancestor, and focus on analyzing only data related to that particular answer. Don’t get distracted by all the other pretty little lights.
As I have posted previously here, and here, with the addition of my parents DNA to Ancestry.com, two research puzzles were almost solved, we just have to find the actual records now to suss out exact data.
Now for some more good news! I can also say that DNA has confirmed our connection to Enoch Shepard and Esther Dewey, Hartley Shepard’s grandparents. We have DNA matches with several descendants of children of Enoch and Esther: Luther, Calvin, and Anna – all siblings of Huldah, mother of Hartley.
In the chart above you can see the 5 matches that we have with descendants of Enoch and Esther’s other children.
This is great news, because we have no documents that connect these Shepards to ours other than a yDNA test with 5 markers off on this Shepard line, which made me very nervous about connecting us to the Massachusetts line. But now we have more DNA connecting us. Which makes me breathe a sigh of relief.
In a nutshell this means that the word of mouth story of Hartley’s parents being Henry and Huldah Shepard, was not just a story. This also confirms that General William Shepard of Westfield, Massachusetts was indeed our ancestor. So, yes we can brag about it in full confidence now.
Here is a source mentioning the children of Enoch and Esther: “Colonel Enoch Shepherd, wife and nine Children, Enoch, Daniel, Luther, Calvin, Esther, Anna, Rhoda, Lorana, and Huldah.”
History of Washington County: Residents at Campus Martius – Marietta and at “The Point” – in and Near Fort Harmer during the Whole or Part of the period of the Indian Wars between 1790–1795
Here is Hartley’s tree in a beautiful fan shape. There is quite a bit of cousin marrying cousin in Hartley’s family, up to and including his son Elza marrying his 2nd cousin, Jane Buchanan.
This also means that I will be posting more about this line in the future than I have previously. Having more confidence in the connection to the Westfield Shepards makes me feel much better about researching and sharing this line with family.
A few months ago I asked my parents if they would do another DNA test, only this time through Ancestry.com. Currently I have their DNA data at MyHeritage, FTDNA, LivingDNA, and GEDMatch, (I think that is all of them) But, of course, greedy Ancestry (what a bunch of wankers) doesn’t allow you to upload results from other companies, so I have to test everyone all over again just for this site. This also means that those relatives who donated in the past, and have since died, are out of luck.
My main reason for doing this was to see if the Irish DNA my Dad carries would show up as from a particular part of Ireland, but also, we would most likely find lots of different matches because so many people get suckered into Ancestry’s universe and don’t use the other DNA sites.
Thankfully they both said yes and the results arrived a week or two ago.
First, to get it out of the way: my Dad’s Irish DNA is too small an amount to even show up (guess I will have to try my sister). My Mother has Irish too, in fact more than my Dad, but I still have no idea where in Ireland these ancestors came from as both didn’t have enough DNA from this ethnicity to sort it out. Bummer.
Now the good stuff. I have to say that the Thrulines and DNA matches have really been exciting.
Our Cross and Warner connection has been reaffirmed with several matches with siblings of our ancestors.
My Norwegian ancestry is 100% correct. Damn I am good!
And Mary Baker/Weekley can stop wavering as she appears to be a Weekley.
A little background on Mary. I talked about her a little bit in a previous post, but the nitty gritty is this. Elzy George and Mary Baker likely were married1 in December 1825. They posted their marriage bonds in November and December. These are the parents of Rachel George who married Ezra Hays, who are then the parents of my great grandmother Rachel, aka Dick. In this bond it clearly states her name as Mary Baker:
But then several of her children’s death records started showing up with their mother’s surname being stated at Weekley. And the confusion commenced.
One of my theories at the time was it was possible that she married a Baker who died very shortly afterward and then married Elzy George. Or she was a Baker. No one in the genealogy circles had developed any theories, at least that I know of. Research into the matter didn’t really clear it up either. I could find no record that connected Mary specifically to either surname other than this marriage bond.
But now we have DNA, and DNA says she was a Weekley:
ThruLines as defined by Ancestry.com: ThruLines uses Ancestry trees to suggest how SJ may be related to their DNA matches through common ancestors.
Now this match does not mean that Mary is a daughter of Thomas, it is merely being suggested because we match all these other Weekleys who appear to be children of Thomas. The DNA only tells us that we match these Weekleys, not HOW we match them. ThruLines are suggestions, that could be correct. It is also possible that Thomas had a sibling who is Mary’s parent.
At Ancestry Thomas shows up in SJ’s list of ThruLines as:
Here is Thomas Weekley and his wife Mary Jones (Polly is a nickname for Mary).
The dotted line around his square means potential ancestor, which is also indicated on the square. If there is no line then that means you have that person in your tree, and we will all assume that it is the correct ancestor. Below is the ThruLines from the top when you first go into your results, scrolling down will bring you to each generation that they have ThruLines for, some of which will also be potential ancestors.
Of course now that we have more of a nudge to the Weekley line, I will have to be more vigilant in researching the Weekley family in Tyler County, West Virginia. She is connected somehow. Maybe she is illegitimate!
Elzy George and Polly/Mary Baker marriage bonds, November 30, 1825 and December 1, 1825. Tyler County, [West] Virginia. Test. Absalom George and John Baker, son of Evan, William George and Deborah George.
Some years back my grandparents took a trip to England and Scotland for 14 days. They did a lot of site-seeing, and I guess, gramps wanted to talk to someone about the Scottish origins of our Shepards. (At the time we didn’t know that the Shepards are actually English. DNA.)
Grandmother kept a little journal of their trip, which I found recently while going through their papers. I loved finding it, because my husband and I do the same thing when we go on trips, it must be in my genes. In fact I created a book of our first visit to Hawaii together, as it was a 5 year anniversary vacation. It included photos, little mementos (scanned), and our journal entries, then I had it printed by Apple’s photo book company. It looks pretty spiffy, if I say so myself.
So, anytime I run across these types of items my heart sings. Admittedly, it might be the only one she kept. The year is not indicated on the journal, but I know we have letters that talk about them going on the trip. I believe it occurred sometime in the 70s-80s.
I scanned the whole journal and am putting it here for anyone to enjoy. It is not a novel, the entries are pretty short, they talk mostly about the foods they ate, arrivals, departures, but there is a little bit of commentary. The file can be downloaded, it is a .pdf, or just read it here in my blog. Enjoy!
I have been going through my grandparents papers recently, reorganizing, seeing what needs scanning, throwing away, etc. When I ran across this great newspaper clipping about my mom! She looks gorgeous in this pic too.
She was attending Bliss College in Lewiston, Maine at the time. The picture was taken in the winter of either 1960 or 1961.
Window shopping in Lewiston, Maine.
Bliss College in Lewiston, Maine; opened 1897, closed 1972; records held: Maine Department of Education, 23 State House Station, Augusta, ME 04333. Songe, Alice H. American Universities and Colleges: A Dictionary of Name Changes. 1978.
Jane (Buchanan) Shepard; I think she looks beautiful in this picture.
[Author’s note: I know it doesn’t seem like it should have, but this post took me over 2 years to write. It was one of those writer’s block episodes. Maybe because there is so little to write about, I didn’t know how to put it down on paper and make it seem…meaningful. Well, here it is, although I still don’t think I did her justice! Maybe I will find more about her life in the future – fingers crossed.]
The family papers from our Shepard side of the family have lots and lots of photos of Jane, her husband, and her children, but we know very little about her life other than what we see in these pictures. Hm, and I don’t recall my grandfather talking much about her either. Which means this bio is not full of much data, but, I have tried to piece together a bit of a life for her. So, here goes.
We know nothing about the how, or why, of our Buchanan line’s arrival in America.
It was possibly sometime in the 1700s, (the date is not currently known, nor has it been proven). The current theory is that John Buchanan is the first in the U.S. of the name in our line. So, until we know differently, he is the dude we start with.
John Buchanan and his wife Jean/Jane Rowan[?] are found in York County, Pennsylvania, where the family stayed for a good 25 years before their grown children started moving out and about the country. Their son William, Jane’s great grandfather, was living in Virginia by the 1780s. I know this because land records were found for him in the area at that time.
When Jane was born, on October 10, 1852, her parents, William Atkinson Buchanan and Margaret Mobley, had settled in Wood County, Virginia (later to become West Virginia). The map below shows the approximate location of the family farm in Wood County, which was deduced using land records for William and Margaret. I think the farm was more towards the right part of the encircled area on the image. Pond Creek Road can be seen towards the bottom of the image; (I think this is the road my mother and I were trying to find the cemetery for Hartley and Susannah Shepard on when we visited years ago.)
Road up Bear Run, there is no view down the road.Joshua Fork, there is no view down the road.
Jane attended school from about 1857 to about 1866. Which gave her enough time to learn the basics of reading and writing. (I found some great images of old schools in the County). It is possible that one of these two schools is where the Buchanan children attended, (I lean more towards Mount Hope as it just seemed closer to their farm).
Oak Grove School, Wood CountyMount Hope School, Wood CountyThese are images of the possible schools that Jane and her siblings attended while they lived in Wood County.
Jane must have been in a hurry to get out of the house, (or maybe it was what all the cool girls were doing), because she was married at the age of 15. The groom was Elza Shepard, the eldest child of Hartley Shepard and Susanna Smith, and he was 21.
Number 16 on the list is the marriage record for Jane and Elza. [Wood County Register of Marriages, 1868, page 38, line 16, County Clerks Office, Parkersburg, West Virginia.]
At the time of the marriage Elza’s family was living in Jackson County. So, I believe that because Elza was 21, he was out on his own making a living as a farm hand, or working at oil rigs in the Wood County area, and that is how he met Jane. Of course, I have no proof of that, but it seems plausible.
After Jane and Elza were married they made their first home together on a farm that they didn’t own, at least not in 1870, (there was no ‘value of real estate’ entered for them in the 1870 census, just ‘value of personal property’). By 1872 they had purchased 110 acres, (4 acres of this property description were owned by W. A. Buchanan, Jane’s father), and Elza appears in the 1873 Table of Tracts of Land, which included valuation and acreage (which was listed as 106). However, they didn’t live on this property for long, their son Thomas was born in Wood County in about 1874, and they stopped paying property taxes in Wood County after 1874. Their son Isaiah was born in Jackson County in 1877. This indicates that by at least 1875 they were living in Jackson County.
Elza and Jane purchased property from her parents when they moved to Jackson County. And they lived on that property for about 10 years before they made another move, this time to property in Wirt County that Jane’s father had sold to her for $1.00 in August of 1888. Maybe her parents realized they were having a hard time of it and wanted to help them out by selling them property at this nice discount. or they possibly made side deals regarding crops and the like.
Possibly this is Jane and Elza’s house.Possibly this is Jane and Elza’s house.Possibly this is Jane and Elza’s property.
It is believed that the above pictures are of Jane and Elza’s home. If it is, then it would likely be in Wirt County, as that is where they settled permanently after the move from Jackson County (and the photograph seem like they was taken in the early 1900s). But, again, I don’t know for sure. I need cousins to verify!
You can see the oil rig in the background of one of the pictures. Oil was a big industry in this area at the time. And, our relatives took full advantage of the money making opportunities when they could by leasing their property to these oil companies. In fact my mother inherited a share in one of the leases, it wasn’t worth much by the time she inherited, and it has since been sold.
Jane and Elza had 14 children together (which included a set of twins), but only 11 of those children lived to adulthood.[1]
This picture is great, you can see the stone under Elza’s stool/chair to keep it even, and Jane, holding the treasured family bible, is a little downhill. I believe this is the earliest photograph of Jane and Elza in our collection.
That’s really all I can say about Jane at this time. She looks like she lived a hard life, but she also looks like she enjoyed her grandchildren. Her family was large and poor, but Jane was a respected and loved wife and mother. She died 12 Mar 1925 in Wood County, West Virginia.
…as you go south from Parkersburg on “old” Route 2, you go up what is called “Limestone Hill”. There is a church to the left, as you reach the top of the hill. To the right is a junction with a dirt road, called Gate’s Ridge Road. It is one lane and, if the weather is dry, is passable. Winding about three miles on this road, you come to a church on the left. The church-yard also serves as a cemetery. Here lie the remains of Elza, Jane and several of their children, as well as many friends and relatives. Where the church sets is the junction of another road coming from the left. Down this road about a mile or so (setting on a rise of the hill) is the old farm. It appears that the old barn may still be there; but obviously the house with its electric wiring and modern siding must be a replacement. Grandmother died in about 1925, I guess. I recall being taken on a long journey during the winter from Verasailles Avenue to Parkersburg, and being presented to Grandmother lying on a bed; she knew me but I not her. (She had cared for me as an infant at the farm). Brother Bud told the story of being chased, as a small boy, by a large Tom turkey in the yard of the farmhouse, it appearing that the bird was about to catch him; but as he ran screaming from the bird (which stood higher than he) it passed the front porch step, where stood grandmother, who had run from the kitchen to see what the commotion was all about. She made a fast grab for the turkey, and seized it by the neck and started to shake it. After a vigorous shaking the turkey suddenly went limp, and Bud, in complete amazement watched her wheel about and carry the bird into the house. They had turkey for dinner that evening!! When grandmother cared for me as an infant at the farm, it was the winter of 1917-18 when a terrible flu epidemic swept the nation. There were deaths in the family at that time at the farm, so I understand. Some time after her death, grandad moved into Parkersburg to stay with Uncle Hod, where I visited with him overnight in the 1930’s. He had a large picture of her by his bed, and he would look at it and say “she was a good woman.”
Notes from a letter to Sally from Zara and Brooks, [currently unknown Shepard relatives].
We are lucky in that we have many images of Jane, although they are when she is older. You can get a good sense of her in the pictures. (Click on first image then you can click through each at its proper size.)
Jane BuchananPastel of Jane from image at left.Jane with son and grandchild.Family Gathering PictureElza and Jane Shepard with their children.Jane and Elza.Jane with her daughters.Jane feeding the chickens.Possibly Jane in front of her parents home. Unknown.Jane with grandchild and Elza.Jane with sons, grandchild, and Elza.Elza and Jane with grandchild.Pastel of Jane and Elza’s photo above.
Sources:
1910 Federal Census, Tucker, Wirt County, West Virginia; Roll: T624_1699; Page: 6A; Enumeration District: 0114; FHL microfilm: 1375712. [Ancestry.com image 11 of 24, lines 11-17, dwelling 94, family 97.]
Jane Shepard entry, Wood County Deaths, Death Record no. 3: 209, County Clerks Office, Parkersburg, West Virginia.
These days the headline is not very PC. But I thought I would share anyway because one of my cousins is in this article, James Nevitt. He is my grandmother’s nephew through her sister Evelyn Shaw who married Bob Nevitt. (So, maybe a 1st cousin twice removed, to me?)
There is no date on the article, so, speculating from the date of their marriage and birth of James soon thereafter, early 1940s is when, the place is in Ohio.
I think I am a bit jealous, my dream job was to be an archeologist, and they didn’t even have to try! (I think all the schooling I would need put me off pursuing it though.)
Thank goodness I have had more family than just myself DNA tested.
My sister and I were recently having a discussion regarding our Irish DNA percentages. I knew that I didn’t have much of any, but I wasn’t sure about her’s. Today I decided to check into the matter. The answer is, none to speak of. So both my sister and I inherited miniscule to none of our Irish DNA. That answered that question. [Update: Oooops. Wrong…my sister actually has a good percentage of Irish, they updated the charts.]
But while I was there, I decided to check through her matches and looked at any trees that were available (one of my pet peeves with folks who get their DNA tested is few to none have any kind of decent tree online, which makes their match of no use to us who are trying to find DNA connections to surnames!!!). Anyway, one of her matches that did have a tree included the surname WARNER. Hmmm, that rang a loud bell in my brain. In fact I think my adrenaline started pumping. Further investigation on this WARNER line in his tree showed a Daniel WARNER married to Ann PEMBER, and this match’s ancestor was their son Thomas who was born in 1756 in Tolland, Connecticut. BINGO! Full on rush going on now.
Screen capture of my sister’s match’s tree from FamilyTreeDNA. Daniel WARNER and Anne PEMBER are right there in black and white.
This one little DNA match has broken down one of my brick walls! And inside I am so jumping up and down with great excitement and joy. The best news I have had all year! (Well, other than being able to get my vaccine.)
I made sure to look over his tree with more diligence, but the WARNER surname is the only commonality between us that I was able to find. So, this means that Zerviah WARNER, wife of Joseph CROSS, and daughter of the same Daniel WARNER and Ann PEMBER in our matches’ tree, was indeed our ancestress. No question about it. Which also means that we descend from Joseph Cross, her husband. (We have their marriage record and we know that when he died, she was still married to him.) Unless she had an affair we don’t know about. I’ll assume she didn’t.
Previous to this DNA find, the only connection we were unable to make was that of Zerviah and Joseph CROSS’s possible daughter Clarissa CROSS, (who married Garret ROSA), to this couple. DNA has sorted it out for us.
I am still doing that happy dance inside my head every time I think about it! Thank you many times over to my family for donating their DNA to help in me my obsession, because if they hadn’t, I would have missed this connection. You see, I have no DNA that matches this person, but my sister did.
Yes, I know. It has definitely been a while. COVID-19 is all to blame. Can’t go anywhere, can’t get research done, can’t get records, or access to them. It has put a crimp in my work flow. But, I do try to plug away at it once in a while.
In fact, recently while going through my tree on my FamilySearch.org site, I kept seeing a picture of a Barry family that someone had posted about 4 months ago, I always ignored it. But this week I asked myself why was it here, and could this Barry family possibly be related to me? So, I actually did a little investigation into the matter. Come to find out one of my great Uncles is in this photo. One of my great Uncles I do not have a picture of, at all. This photo’s label was focused on the Barry family, which is actually no relation to me other than by marriage. And, the reason I didn’t understand why it kept showing up on my page.
William Cain was Gertrude Cain’s brother in fact he was the eldest son of John Cain and Carrie Rosa, born right after Gert. He married a woman named Lovina Philomena Barry in Oconto in 1902. William, his wife and family eventually moved out to Oregon and Washington state (a place a lot of other John and Cain cousins, aunts and uncles ended up).
William Cain is standing, his wife is next to him.
What is weird about this discovery is before I decided to investigate the photograph I had found the entry shown below regarding this same Uncle’s marriage to Lovina.
I had to read this document over several times before I was sure it was the same William Cain, because some interesting information shows up in his marriage record. Such as, his mother is named as Catherine Lavallee. If the clerk filled out the form, then Catherine could have been misheard for Carrie, or the record was transcribed incorrectly into the index. But, even more interesting is the reference of his mother’s surname as Lavallee. This was his grandmother Jennie’s surname at the time she died in the 1870s. And Carrie and her sister Ida were Rosas not Lavelleys. So I can only imagine what stories Carrie was telling her children, or how even she didn’t really know what was true. There was already the story being told, and passed down by her children, that Carrie’s father had died during the Civil War. We know that was not true, and it was her mother who probably told her girls this when they moved to Wisconsin, without their father.
Anyway, the marriage record does not contain earth shattering news or anything, it is just interesting. And, another reason to not always trust official records as the purveyors of truth. Sometimes they are just plain wrong. This is also a good reason to see actual records and not indexed ones. I have no idea if the transcription is correct, but, I don’t really care enough to see the actual record in this case. He is only an uncle, and I, apparently, know more than he did about his own family history.
In this case it is the picture that is a true treasure, and I thank the person who uploaded it very, very much. William was a very handsome man. As were all the Cain children so far as I have seen.
jen's ancestors 