52 Ancestors 2026: What Wasn’t Written Down – A Dearth of Records

 

In digging through various records and using full-text search, I’ve been able to reconstruct the lives of many of my mid-19th-century ancestors. My 2nd-great-grandparents were all born between 1812 and 1843, spanning the period from the War of 1812 through the railroad era. They lived through the Civil War and, for some, into the early years of the 20th century. This was the generation that eventually settled on the Missouri prairie, many having followed migration routes through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee. I’ve been able to write a great deal about this generation, thanks to family writings, extensive analysis of population and agricultural schedules, and probate and land records.

But the trail starts to get spotty with the previous generation, especially my 3rd-great-grandparents who were born in the 18th century and took the more southerly routes from Virginia through Kentucky and Tennessee. I might not have hit brick walls, but sometimes we are left with little more than names and dates. There are some notorious characters, like John Reed, but others, especially women, are shrouded in obscurity. And sometimes a name and a few facts simply stick out and inspire us to find more. One such person is Martha Jane Weatherford, my 3rd-great-grandmother on my mother’s side.

What do we know about Martha Jane? First, she was another Kentucky girl, born in Nicholas County, northeast of Lexington, on March 23, 1823, to Jonas Weatherford and Judith Rawlins. Sometime before 1841, the family moved to Morgan County, Illinois, where 18-year-old Martha Jane married Joseph White, a 54-year-old widower who was said to be a preacher on the Methodist or Baptist circuit. The only family lore handed down was that her parents were unhappy about her marriage to a man 36 years her senior—and older than her father. Not surprising.

What else do we know about her? The family moved to Sangamon County, and she bore eight children—seven girls, including Jane Elizabeth White, who married Anthony Gilmartin, and one boy. Martha Jane lived until 1892, spending her last 28 years as a widow. And then? Her son, James Monroe White, apparently died young, while her daughters took different paths. Some married and migrated west, while others remained in the area.

Joseph was a farmer, and census records show that in 1860 they had a farm worth $1,800. The Agricultural Schedule tells us that this was a relatively small farm, with 40 acres improved and 33 acres unimproved. Their livestock holdings were worth only $40 and consisted of just two milk cows. Somehow, they were able to harvest three tons of hay, 120 bushels of wheat, and 1,000 bushels of Indian corn. With Joseph being all of 73 years old, they must have had considerable help from their teenage daughters, Julia Ann, Nancy Melissa, and Jane Elizabeth.

But what happened to the farm and the family after Joseph’s death in 1864? We don’t know. Either there are no surviving legal records, or they are not accessible through FamilySearch Full-Text Search. The 1870 Census lists Martha Jane and four of her daughters—(Nancy) Melissa, Sarah, Annie, and Alice—but gives no value for real estate. There’s no entry for the family on the agricultural schedule, either.

So what can we discern about Martha Jane, or M.J.? She had two older brothers, but she was the oldest daughter in the family, so she may have assumed more responsibility and perhaps been more mature than her years. Was she smitten with the widower Joseph White? Their first child was born a respectable 14 months after their marriage, so there was no obvious reason they had to marry. One census record indicates that she couldn’t read or write, a condition common among farmers from southern and Appalachian families.

The couple was together for 23 years, until Joseph’s death in 1864. Even though Martha Jane was only 41 years old and had several young children, she never remarried. She was buried as “Martha J. White, wife of Joseph White.” She had family living with her until 1882, when daughter Anna, listed as a member of the household, married.

All we seem to have are households, dates, and a snapshot of her life when she was 37 years old. Were there land sales? Was there help from family? What happened to the farm? Clearly, answering these questions will require more digging and a better understanding of Martha Jane’s FAN club.

Another task for another day.

Photo:

Entry for Martha J. White, 1870 Census, Sangamon County

52 Ancestors 2026: A Document with Personality – A Lively Deposition

 

I wrote about my 9th-great-grandmother, Catalyntje Trico Rapalje, before. She was a Walloon who, in January 1624, at the age of 18, got married and, just days later, migrated from Amsterdam to New Netherland. She and her husband, Joris Jansen Rapelje, sailed on the first ship of colonists, settling first in Fort Orange (Albany) and, two years later, migrating to the tip of Manhattan. Their daughter, Sarah, is believed to have been the first European child born in the colony.

Born in 1605, Catalyntje lived a long life and, in fact, was the only person known to have lived through the entire history of the colony of New Amsterdam, which became New York when the British took it over. Unfortunately, much of the history of New Amsterdam, including the records of the Dutch West India Company, was lost after the papers were sold for scrap.

But two documents did survive. Because of border disputes, officials were interested in learning about the early history of New Amsterdam/York, and they found an eyewitness to those early days: Catalyntje. The second deposition, made on October 17, 1688, when she was 83 years old, described the ship, the splitting up of the colonists, and their eventual settlement in Fort Orange, now Albany.

Unfortunately, the transcript is a summary rather than a word-for-word account of her life in the New World. Still, Catalyntje described the friendly relations with the local Indigenous tribes, as well as the successful trading and assistance the colonists received during their years at Fort Orange.

[T]he said deponent lived in Albany three years all which time the said Indians were all as quiet as lambs and came and traded with all the freedom imaginable, in the year 1626 the deponent came from Albany and settled at New York where she lived afterwards for many years and then came to Long Island where she now lives.

She had a remarkable memory and named the local tribes with whom they came in contact:

The Mahikanders or River Indians, the Maquase, Oneydes, Onnondages, Cayugas, and Sinnekes, with the Mahawawa or Ottawawaes Indians.

Unfortunately, these tribes clashed with each other and with the colonists, contributing to the decision to move downriver to Manhattan.

The details she recalled about those early days—events that had happened 62 years before the deposition was taken—are remarkable. She must have told her story over and over again to her children and grandchildren, and to anyone else who came to visit an original settler and was curious about the olden days.

To be a survivor, a mother and grandmother, a tavern keeper, and a farmer in a growing frontier colony took more than a little mettle. With so many stories of conflict between Indigenous peoples and colonists coming to the fore in the 17th century, it is especially interesting that Catalyntje remembered a time when relations were much friendlier.

Such a small glimpse into the past, but so meaningful.

Photo:

Catalina Trico Deposition: https://encyclopedia.nahc-mapping.org/document/deposition-catilyn-trico

52 Ancestors 2026: A Small Detail I Love – Adding to the Story

 

One of the joys of genealogical research is finding someone who is not on a collaborative tree, such as the one on FamilySearch, or uncovering a relationship, especially an unusual one. These kinds of discoveries enrich a family’s story and can be a big deal. But sometimes a minor detail, such as something found in a will or probate record, adds a little more light.

I’ve been trying to break through the Reed–Harrison brick wall for some time, and I’ve gathered quite a bit of information about that dishonest family steward, John Reed. But what about the Harrisons? We know that George Harrison was an early Ohio settler, arriving in 1802, and that some time later he was joined by his brother Alexander, the father of Sarah Harrison Reed. Both Harrison brothers had several named offspring, so the story should be fairly straightforward.

In digging through the county’s legal records using FamilySearch’s Full Text Search and feeding the transcripts to NotebookLM, a couple of facts stood out. First was a relationship that was assumed but turned out to be wrong; second was a daughter who had not been included on the family tree. The mistaken relationship involved Alexander Harrison, born in 1789, who was assumed to be the son of Alexander Harrison. My digging, however, revealed a partition record for the estate of George Harrison that clearly showed that Alexander (b. 1789) was George’s son.

But it was the will of Alexander Harrison that contained two nuggets of information. One was rather straightforward, but doubly revealing:

I do hereby obligate my Son James Harrison to pay or cause to be paid with Jane Harrison wife of George Harrison, at the death of my wife Susannah Fifty Dollars Current Money of the State of Ohio.

Jane Harrison? Wife of George Harrison? Jane was not on the family tree. And George? He was George Harrison Jr., son of our George Harrison, who had migrated to Ohio in 1802. George and Jane, husband and wife, were also first cousins. On the frontier, cousin marriages did happen. So we now have Jane as my 3rd-great-grand-aunt.

But there was another tidbit of information in Alexander’s will:

I leave and bequeath to my Daughter Jane Harrison wife of George Harrison the Bed which was her mothers to be given to her at the death of my Wife Susanna.

This small detail is also revealing. Jane gets an important piece of furniture—her mother’s bed—and she is also named first among the daughters. It’s possible, therefore, that she was born a couple of years before her sisters Ann and Elizabeth. With a birth year for James of 1786 and the twins born in 1790, perhaps we can tentatively place Jane’s birth around 1788.

Her husband died in 1826, and there are no records of the couple having any children. Jane also outlived her father, who died in 1829, but we don’t know whether she outlived her mother, Susannah, who died in 1846 at the age of 78.

Nowadays, we have rooms full of furniture, and today’s heirs have the challenge of trying to dispose of their parents’ belongings. But 200 years ago, a bed was special. This small detail—a bed found in a will—gives us both information about a family and a glimpse into the past.

52 Ancestors 2026: More than a Name – Days in a Life

 

My New England families have always intrigued me, and I’ve been fortunate that many of their lives during colonial and early American times have been the subjects of extensive research. I could even tie this into last week’s prompt, A Spot on the Map. There are lots of spots on maps of northwestern Europe, especially the British Isles, and what became the United States that are significant in my nomadic family. But I’m choosing one spot that is important to my New England family—Jericho, Vermont—and one family name: Samuel Day, father and son.

The elder Samuel Day was born in 1748 in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and grew up in Massachusetts and Connecticut. He married Eunice Fay on June 16, 1772, and a month later, on July 15, Samuel Jr. was born. When war broke out in 1775, the elder Samuel joined the Patriot cause as a minuteman. Whether he served after that is a matter of conflicting records, but we know that by the end of the war he had become a Vermonter, living near the Massachusetts border in Whitingham, Vermont. Between 1800 and 1804, the family decided to move north to Jericho.

Being on the frontier, Jericho was a target of Indian raids, and one of the founding families, the Browns, suffered greatly, with family members being captured and ransomed. With peace, however, the farms were safe. By the time Samuel Day moved to Jericho, Vermont had become a state and settlements were expanding.

Meanwhile, Samuel Jr. was still in Connecticut, where he married his first cousin, Elizabeth Munger, in 1793 and remained there until after the 1800 federal census, when the family moved to Jericho. Samuel Jr. put down roots and got into the ashing business, making potash and lye from tree ashes, borrowing money to get started and expand his business.

Both Days then experienced hard times. Samuel Sr. became a widower when Eunice (Fay) Day died in 1808. In 1809, Samuel Jr.’s note came due, and when he could not make the payment, his property and goods were seized and sold. The young family may have stayed with Samuel Sr. for a while, but then Samuel Jr. was “warned out” of town.

As an aside, much of this information comes from the writings of Mary Richmond, who writes:

"Warning out of town" was a procedure used by local governments to rid their jurisdictions of undesirable people. What had Samuel done to warrant being labeled undesirable? The bad debt had been paid. There must have been more.

Did Samuel abuse Elizabeth? Was he often drunk? Did he owe debts to many people? Was he dishonest or a thief? Were his older boys a problem in the community? Did he have undesirable friends, maybe Indians, who aggravated his neighbors? Had he been practicing medicine and running afoul of local laws or other, more qualified doctors? There may be no way to ever know.

We do know more about the practice now. New Englanders in the early 1800s had inherited from their Puritan forebears the idea that communities had a responsibility to care for their members, but there were limits to their generosity when people became a financial risk. That appears to have been the situation with the Samuel Day Jr. family.

Samuel, Elizabeth, and their family ended up in Madison County, New York, where the Munger family had moved. Unfortunately, Elizabeth died in 1812 at the age of 38. As was common at the time, Samuel quickly remarried, this time to Hannah Robbins, who was ten years his junior. They had 11 children together and moved westward through New York State. Their daughter Hannah Robbins Day was born in Genesee County, New York, and the family eventually ended up in Huron County, Ohio, where Samuel Jr. became Dr. Samuel Day and practiced medicine.

Dr. Day died in 1839 at the age of 67. His second wife, Hannah, lived until 1845. Their daughter Hannah Robbins Day, of solid New England stock, married John Jay Fast, who was from solid German stock. They moved west and became the patriarch and matriarch of the Fast family of Barton County, Missouri.

And what about the family back in Jericho? Samuel Day lived to the ripe old age of 81, dying in 1829. Samuel Jr.’s brother Benjamin prospered in Jericho, and his son Hiram Benjamin married into the founding Brown family.

Two generations of Days, two very different experiences in Jericho, Vermont. For Samuel Sr., Jericho was his final home, and he lived out the rest of his life among friends and family. For Samuel Jr., however, Jericho was a place of misfortune. Yet he and his family were able to head west, reinvent themselves, and make their marks in New York and Ohio. Eventually, their descendants did the same in Missouri.

Picture:

Image generated by Google Gemini

52 Ancestors 2026: A Spot on a Map – The Ghosts of Verdella

 

As I’ve mentioned before, the various branches of my family settled in Barton County, Missouri, within a decade or so after the end of the Civil War. Union Army veterans mixed with Confederate sympathizers and families of bushwhackers. There may have been some hard feelings, but within a few decades, families were intermarrying. There are a lot of places in Barton County to choose from, but one that stands out is Verdella, which was in the center of Barton City Township.

At its height, Verdella was a collection of stores, a church, and a school, but it was also at the center of my family’s life in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This 1886 plat is a snapshot in time.

At the southeast corner (Section 22) of the crossroads was the farm and orchard of my 2nd-great-grandfather, B.C. (Ben) McWilliams. He had returned from the Civil War, and after his travels took him from the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania to Iowa, he settled on a farm and tilled the rich soil of the Missouri prairie.

Going east and a little north, in Section 10, past the Mayfields, was the 160-acre farm of my great-grandfather, David Cassatt. Across the road, from Ben in Section 15, was the 40-acre Krimminger farm. Heading west and then north, in Section 7, at the very edge of the township, was the farm of my 2nd-great-grandfather, S.D. Reed. The Reed farm was divided in two by the Nevada and Minden Railroad. Heading south and then a bit west from Verdella were the farms of John Jay and (William) Marion Fast, my 3rd- and 2nd-great-grandfathers.

For me, this helps ground my family—and their farming neighbors—in a specific place. It is also interesting to see the various landowners and compare them with the list of people who opposed Ben’s request for a Civil War pension.

Forty-four years later, in 1930, there had been many changes. There was no longer a McWilliams farm in Section 22, but the Cassatts had expanded their holdings. According to family lore, David had accumulated enough money to buy additional land and eventually handed the farms off to his three sons, Orville, Virgil, and Bascom. We can see their lands in Sections 9, 10, and 11. Bascom continued the family broom-making industry.

The Reed farm had become Barton City, another collection of houses, stores, a church, and a school. The town changed its name to Hannon and, according to family lore, was named after S.D.’s wife, Hannah (Brown) Reed.

It appears that the Gilmartins had moved to the township and established themselves in Sections 22 and 27. The Fasts were able to acquire additional farmland in Sections 32 and 33 for the children of Marion Fast, including O.T. Fast. Another landmark in the region was Bryan School, in Section 26, just down the road from the Fast farm. My grandmother and her family lived on part of the farm, and my mother taught at the school in the 1930s before moving east to the city.

Just like most of rural America, the shops and businesses in these small towns have closed and the farms have been consolidated. The Nevada and Minden Railroad was absorbed by the Missouri Pacific Railroad, and then abandoned. But the history is still there to discover. Through maps, census records, and family stories, we can uncover the ghosts of the past and learn more about our families—and American history.

52 Ancestors 2026: Long-Lasting – Vox Populi

 

The American experiment has a foundation based on a government that expresses the voice of the people, or vox populi. We’ve never achieved perfection, but one of the positive changes in our nation, arising from the colonial period, has been the idea that government should represent the interests of the people, by the people (and for the people, to round out the phrase). This ideal distinguished the British colonies from the monarchies of Europe. In Great Britain, colonial government was expressed through the companies that bankrolled the colonies and the charters they were granted.

But my family had to have some troublemakers (maybe that’s a long-lasting trait as well). Many of my ancestors were Reformed Protestants who ran afoul of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches and the crowned heads of France, Spain, and England. Their heretical ideas reflected the rise of the middle classes as feudalism waned and included a distrust of human nature such that they believed power should not reside solely in one figure of authority, such as a king or a pope. When the colonies opened up, they were among those who sought refuge away from the royal courts.

The Reformed Protestant churches moved away from hierarchy and toward greater representation. Pastors were still important, but churches themselves were governed by elders (elected representatives) or by congregational votes. These republican and democratic forms of church government provided a foundation for our current system.

But I think my ancestors took it a step further. As I’ve written before, Stephen Hopkins made his second journey to the New World on the Mayflower and was a signer of the Mayflower Compact, which distributed governing power among the adult males of the colony. Interestingly enough, it was the non-Puritan passengers who insisted that, since they had landed somewhere other than their intended destination, they were free to do what they wanted. Stephen Hopkins had witnessed the debacle that was Jamestown and may have been one of those advocates for self-governing. With the Puritans being their own rebellious selves—and highly educated—we do not need to wonder why New England became a hotbed of revolution in the 18th century.

But that is not all. I have found many ancestors who fought for the Patriot side during the American Revolution, and the more I dig, the more I find. Our Declaration of Independence, now 250 years old, represented the views of the elected Continental Congress. Through bumps, twists, and turns, and even changes in who has a voice, that ideal has endured. It was the inspiration for Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, delivered to dedicate the cemetery for those “gave their lives so that that nation might live.”.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Photo:

Great Room of the National Archives

52 Ancestors 2026: Multiples – Threes

 

The number 3 has all kinds of meanings. In folklore: “Third time’s the charm.” In Christianity: the Holy Trinity, Peter’s three denials, and the Resurrection on the third day. In public speaking: making three main points or using three examples. For this prompt, I thought I would use three examples of ancestors who married (sort of) three times. I’ve written about these three people before, but each example tells us something about the era and the circumstances of their lives.

The first is Susannah Shattuck, my Puritan ancestor who lived from around 1643 to 1717 and represents the second generation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. I’ve written about her remarkable life before, including her three marriages to Joseph Morse, John Fay, and Thomas Brigham. She was twice widowed and found a way to raise her six Morse children, her four Fay children and three Fay stepchildren, and seven Brigham stepchildren. I haven’t found any contemporary descriptions or remembrances of her (men seem to get more attention), but the names of her children reflect her Puritan piety, while her widowhood and sheer number of children demonstrate her perseverance and family-raising skills. She seems to have been one thread of continuity in her community. It’s also notable that the Shattuck, Morse, Fay, and Brigham families were prominent New England families, and she had ties to all three, not to mention the other families her children married into, such as the Larkins, Joslins, Newtons, and Holbrooks.

My second example is not a direct ancestor but a cousin, Artimesia Curry, my Kentucky relative who lived from 1824 to 1914. Her first marriage was to John Gabhart, with whom she had four children. Artimesia was widowed and then married George W. Bennett, whom she divorced in 1871, just days before marrying Hiram Cunningham. We learn a great deal about the times from her story. The Commonwealth of Kentucky was entering a promising phase but was also embroiled in the Civil War as a divided and fiercely contested border state. Hiram was loyal to the Union and served in the U.S. Army. It was gratifying to see his loyalty to his country and his contribution to preserving the Union, but it was also remarkable that Hiram and Artimesia persisted in their efforts to obtain pensions (veteran’s and widow’s) for his service. Pension records are often the stuff genealogists’ dreams are made of. Thanks to Artimesia’s precise memory, I was able to learn about another branch of the Curry family into which Hiram had married. Her depositions, combined with the fact that she had one of the relatively rare 19th-century divorces, contribute to a picture of a strong and determined woman.

My grandfather, Stephen Anthony Reed, and his marriages break the pattern a bit. His second relationship, with a woman identified as his wife in the 1940 census, may not have been formalized with an actual marriage certificate. We do, however, have a marriage certificate for his last pairing. Grandpa Steve was born in 1892 in Missouri and married Ruby Fast in 1911. They were both young—19 and 17 years old, respectively. They had five children, although their eldest died young.

His second relationship was with Margaret Branstuder Stephenson, and this household, which included Margaret’s two daughters—one who had previously married at sixteen and another who apparently had special needs—appears in the 1940 census. By 1950, he was living with Verna Fultz Verbeck. Like Margaret, her husband was still living at the time of these census records, although he was living in a different household. Interestingly, Verna’s husband was reported as “widowed” in the 1950 census. Steve and Verna married in 1961, and he died in 1973. If nothing else, I learned about some very complicated relationships, perhaps brought on by difficult circumstances.

Massachusetts, Kentucky, and Missouri are three important states in my genealogy, and in this essay they represent three different regions in three different eras. Family trees are complicated, and a lot gets buried as family stories fade and records become sporadic. It’s easy to talk about the “good old days,” but success was never guaranteed. Life required hard work, perseverance, and sometimes being in the right place at the right time. But if we dig deeply enough, we can sometimes piece together a broad picture and catch a glimpse of the past from the information that survives.

Picture:

Created by the author using Google Gemini (2026)