MUDDIED ROOTS: Sarah Allen's Parents

In this edition of Muddied Roots I will regale you with the investigation behind the parentage of Sarah Allen, my paternal great-great-great grandmother. Last week's inaugural edition told you of a continuing mystery. This week's will tell you the story a mystery solved. It took a long time and a lot of hands on research, but finally the deep, dark secrets were revealed.

About 15 years ago I decided that I should start researching my Dad's side of the family. My grandmother had tackled a good portion of my Mom's side. Now it was time to start compiling Dad's family. This research would be all new and fresh. I had to ask questions of my Dad and his aunt to get started.

With the internet, it became easier to get started. Especially helpful was the Orleans County Gen Web site (http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nyorlean/). This site, in its infancy at the time, had a nearly complete listing of cemetery records from all across the county. I was able to compile a great deal of information in a short period of time. The next step was to verify the data. (Sources are critical in genealogical research -- this will be an upcoming edition).

Once I started filling names into the family tree, I checked additional records to nail down immigration dates, marriages, and occupations. A unique source for me was a series of family trees that were included in 1976 history of the Town of Yates where my family was from.

I had traced my family back to a John Jacobs who had married a Sarah Allen. The Allen surname is a fairly common one which could be an insurmountable task for a novice researcher like me. I dove in and plowed ahead. Initially, I looked at family trees included in the 1976 book.

There was an Allen family in the book whose patriarch was Simon Allen. Simon was born in 1799 and was married to Elizabeth. According to the notes, there were 7 children born to this couple. Between child #1 and child #2, there is a gap that could have been filled with a missing child. The years were perfect for Sarah Allen to fit neatly into that gap. However, she was not listed as a child.

The next piece of data was that Sarah declared she had been born in Herkimer County in the 1855 NYS Census. Additionally, Child #1 and Child #2 on the list were stated to have been born in Little Falls, Herkimer County, New York. I started to believe I had found a connection.

On the Orleans site, there used to be a section where you could connect with someone who was researching the same surnames you were. Of course I sent an email to the man working on the Allen family. His reply was short and blunt -- "Sarah Allen is not a part of this family." That was it. All my research seemed to have been for naught. I tried to pick up other threads to lead me to the parents of Sarah Allen. No matter where I looked, it appeared that Simon and Elizabeth were definitely the right avenue. Now, how could I prove it?

The Orleans County Gen Web had a transcribed listing of the censuses. I poured through them looking for answers. Nothing jumped out at me. I took a break from researching this particular line for what ended up being a couple years.

Finally, several years ago Family Search (https://familysearch.org/) started posting actual photos of the censuses. Ancestry did the same. I decided to look at the real census rather than the alphabetical, transcribed lists. Once I found John Jacobs with his new bride in the 1850 census, I finally had my answer.

In the 1850 census, John Jacobs and his wife Sarah were listed in the Town of Yates as living next door to Simon Allen. The value of the land was listed as $0 with the land being a gift from S. Allen. There was my answer. Once Simon's daughter, Sarah, was married, she was given a small piece of land as a wedding gift. As to why Sarah is not listed in the family tree for Simon and Elizabeth, it is unknown.

Interestingly, John and Sarah's daughter-in-law, Sarah Russell was quite a bit of a mystery as to her date of death. For some reason, the Sarahs wanted to be mysterious. Thanks to so much data being out there waiting to be culled, the answers can sometimes be found a lot easier than they used to.

My biggest pieces of advice? Don't give up. And don't leave any stone unturned. You never know what secrets are lurking beneath.

MUDDIED ROOTS: The Mysterious Patience Irons

Welcome to the first episode of "Muddied Roots." I've decided to start out with some of the roadblocks that have hindered my research. First and foremost I have been trying to figure out who the parents of one of my ancestors were.

I am descended from a woman named Patience Irons on my mother's side. When my grandmother was still alive, she told me the story of her great-great Grandmother, Patience. The story of the woman with the strange name intrigued me. It so happens that I liked the name so much that Wendy and I named one of our daughters after her.

The story is that Patience's father was Reverend Jeremiah Irons. Rev. Irons was the founder of several Baptist churches as he made his way westward from Rhode Island. One of the churches he founded was the Baptist church in Yates Center.  He's buried in the churchyard there.

We know that his wife was Abigail Bowen. Stories about Patience's daughter, Martha, talk about her marriage being performed by her grandfather, Jeremiah. It would appear that all of this is pretty straight forward. But many things in genealogy are not cut and dry.

The first wrench into this scenario is Jeremiah's age at Patience's birth date. He was born October 1764 in Nova Scotia. He would have only been 14 years, 7 months old at the time of her birth. That would make him only 13 years, 10 months old when she was conceived. Even with earlier ages for marriage at the the turn of the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, this seems extremely unlikely, especially for a man who ultimately became a Baptist minister.

The supposition then was that maybe Jeremiah adopted Patience. Considering he was a man of the cloth, this assumption may not be far from the truth.  So, there must be another explanation. Jeremiah's wife, Abigail Bowen, would be the next logical place to search. She and Jeremiah were married 19 March 1790 in Rhode Island.

According to several family trees, Abigail Bowen was born 1 October 1769 in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, the daughter of Levi Bowen and Alethea Hicks. This would make her even younger than Jeremiah and even less likely to be the mother of Patience. The mystery deepens.

But wait a minute. Jeremiah and Abigail's granddaughter, Amanda Brown Tuttle, kept a diary that had important family dates written in it. She had Abigail's true birth date listed in it -- 2 January 1762. that would make her 17 years, 4 months, 4 days at the time of Patience's birth. This is a far more likely scenario for the parenthood of Patience. At the same time, this birth date excludes Abigail from being the daughter of Levi and Alethea.

Abigail's advanced age of 28 when she married Jeremiah is an unlikely age for a first marriage. Another supposition is that she was married before she married Jeremiah and that Patience is the daughter of that union. Since there was a war going on, perhaps that first husband died in that conflict and she married Irons afterwards. Was this mystery man Patience's true father and Jeremiah adopted her when he and Abigail wed?

As for Abigail, with the birth date supplied by Amanda's diary, there is no chance that she is the daughter of Levi and Alethea. So, the question now is, who are Abigail's parents? The mystery deepens. I cannot find an Abigail with the correct birth date in the Rhode Island Vital Records. However, I did find a record in Connecticut of an Ebenezer Bowen and Martha Young who had a daughter named Abigail in 1766.

A marriage record for Ebenezer and Martha states a year of 1761. Abigail could very well be the daughter of these Bowens. In addition, they were married in a Baptist church in Thompson, Connecticut, a mere 10 miles Jeremiah Irons' hometown of Foster, Rhode Island. Pieces are starting to come together.

Unfortunately we are left with just as many questions as when we started. Hopefully, once more records come to light after being locked away in some old town hall attic, more of this mystery can be solved. Until then, we will continue to wonder where the truth lies.

One interesting note is that nothing about Patience appears in Amanda's diary. If Patience was Abigail's natural daughter, she would be the half sister to the children of Jeremiah and Abigail who came later. However, Patience's absence among those pages indicate that it is likely she was a foster child of Jeremiah and Abigail.

Maybe some things we'll never know.

Genealogy Series Coming

I've decided to make a regular feature here on my blog. Every Wednesday morning, I will be posting about Genealogy. It is one of the largest search items on the internet these days, staying neck and neck with pron (trust me that is spelled correctly). There are now television shows dedicated to the subject, even though they are the worst things ever to happen to a genealogist (More on that later, maybe even a post dedicated to it).

I haven't quite nailed down what I want to do with this article yet, but helping people get past certain roadblocks would definitely be a main component. In fact, I will be starting off with a couple of my own roadblocks and how I got past them. Or in some case, how I'm still struggling with them.

First up will be about a girl named Patience and how we're really not sure who her parents are. Many sources state Reverend Irons is her father with an unknown mother. Other sources have Abigail Bowen as her mother with an unknown father. To make matters even more confusing, there are two Abigail Bowens around the same time period. Which one is our Abigail?

I've been researching family history for 25 years. Ever since I saw my grandmother's folders on her family, I've been enthralled. She gathered a lot of information on her family by writing letters and talking to people -- an art lost these days.

Today, genealogists can utilize the internet to aid in their research rather than waiting for snail mail to return, or without having to travel to the far reaches of the globe seeking out traces of our ancestors. There are some dangers to internet research and I will detail them in some future postings.

So check Wednesdays for my new genealogical series "Muddied Roots." I'm sure there will some interesting stories. Feel free to share yours. Maybe with a few more heads working the mystery, we can figure out some of those stubborn and mysterious ancestors.