Thursday, April 27, 2017

Interviewed by Geneabloggers.com!


Geneabloggers.com
Geneabloggers.com

I was interviewed last year for publication on Geneabloggers' "May I Introduce You To..." series sometime this year. That time has arrived! Many thanks to Michelle Ganus Taggart of The Southern Sleuth blog who interviewed me for Geneabloggers.com,

If you're interested the interview, it is linked here: 
May I Introduce To You . . . Jo Henn



Saturday, April 22, 2017

RETRACTION: MY LAST POST WAS WRONG.



This is not the post I had hoped to be writing this weekend. However, I found late last night that my last post (April 10, 2017) announcing that I’ve found the family of origin of my third great-grandmother could not possibly be correct. I’ve been wrong before and had to prune my tree. It happens. But usually I manage to do it before I write up the people as a post on this blog, and it’s just a matter of deleting people and records from my tree. This time I get to print a retraction, explain how I got it wrong, and, I think, tag the prior post as NOT CORRECT (yep, in red) and link to this post rather than just delete it because I want to refer to the reasoning in that post in this one.

The first correction: My third great-grandmother, Mariah Williams Bailey Huber, IS NOT Helena Mariah Williams, the daughter of John L Williams and Ruth Welding, and the children listed in the records pictured in my post of April 10, 2017,  are NOT her siblings.

The second correction: while I’m still emotionally certain, given my great-grandmother Pauline’s family notes (quoted below) and the notation in the back of the picture (“full blooded welch” sic), that the picture is of my Mariah, I’m not intellectually sure it is of her; so I have to advise not to rely on that either.

Climbing My Family Tree: Who Are You? Are You Mariah?
Who Are You? Are You Mariah?


I’ve been up way too late most nights the last week and a half trying to figure out which of the many John Williamses and Ruth Williamses and Ruth Weldings in the Welsh Quaker tracts of Pennsylvania were the ones referred to in the records I included in the last post in which John L Williams and his wife, Ruth, were seeking a certificate of removal (to move to another meeting) for themselves and their five minor children: Lewis Welding, Lydia, Helena Mariah, Watson, and Samuel. I did discover, early on, that Ruth Welding died shortly after that removal request in 1819, in Ohio. But there were so many John Williams that I switched to tracing the lives of Lewis Welding Williams, Watson Williams, and Samuel Williams, and eventually found that Samuel Williams and his father, John L Williams had moved to Warren County Ohio, and had helpfully made it into the local history book “The History of Warren County, Ohio, Containing a History of the County; Its Townships, Towns; General and Local Statistics; Portraits of Early Settlers and Prominent Men; History of the Northwest Territory; History of Ohio, Map of Warren County, Constitution of the United States, Miscellaneous Matters, Etc., Etc.”, published in 1882, as well as the censuses, marriage records, and some land records. (You know I love all those county history books that were published in the 1880s and 1920s, and digitized by Google eBooks!) 

Last night, about 2 AM, I found John L Williams’ will in the browseable Ohio probate records on FamilySearch.org, and found out that Helena Mariah Williams could not possibly be my Mariah Williams Bailey Huber. In his will, John L Williams named all of his children and many of his grandchildren. (Thank you, John.) His Helena Mariah went by Helena and had married someone surnamed White. With a little more searching, I found that she had married Hamilton White, and she lived with him, in Illinois, the whole time my Mariah was married to and living with John Bailey in Pennsylvania; and that Helena Mariah died in Illinois, about 20 years before my Mariah did in Pennsylvania.  ....Drat.  So, my Mariah/Maria Williams Bailey Huber is not the daughter of John L Williams and Ruth Welding.

Given my GGM’s family notes on her father’s mother (Mariah)*, and the shared ancestor shaky leaf DNA hits that I mentioned in the April 10th post showing connections further up Ruth Welding’s maternal tree after updating my Ancestry tree with the (now known to be erroneous) information, I do think that I am probably descended from somebody in the Welsh Quaker tracts of Pennsylvania, and possibly even someone in these families I’ve been sorting through, albeit not this one.  Maybe my brick wall has a crack in it, even if it hasn’t fallen.

But now I’ve got to prune my tree and get this posted, and then I think I’ll take a break from genealogy, do some housework and maybe go see a movie.

If anyone reading this has some ideas for me, please leave them in the comments section below. I’ll take any help or hints I can get!
----------------------------------------


*GGM’s notes on Mariah: “Papa’s mother was a straight line descendant from the Roger Williams (who founded Rhode Island). Papa's father was Scotch-Irish. His mother was full blood Welch. Her name was Sarah Williams. Not sure of her first name. May have been Maria. Wonderful woman, Quaker by birth. Later after marriage, she attended Methodist Church.” (Sic)

Monday, April 10, 2017

Meet Helena Mariah Williams, my 3rd Great Grandmother!

Climbing My Family Tree: Helena Mariah Williams Bailey Huber  (abt 1815 – after 1901)
Helena Mariah Williams Bailey Huber
 (abt 1815 – after 1901)
Posted with permission of Christina Inman



THIS POST IS NOT CORRECT. DO NOT RELY ON IT. 
RETRACTION (& EXPLANATION) is linked here: Retraction: My Last Post Was Wrong

Meet Helena Mariah Williams, one of my third great grandmothers, on my Mom's paternal side.  Most of her life she went by Mariah or Maria, so I call her Mariah. I’ve written about her before [here (link fixed): 52 Ancestors: #14 Mariah/Maria Williams Bailey Huber (abt 1815 – after 1901), Strength in Tragedy]. At that time, I had to start her story with her marriage to my 3rd great grandfather, John Bailey, because I had no idea who her parents were, or whether she had siblings. I did have this picture, given to me by my mother’s cousin, but I didn’t know for certain that it was of Mariah. My mother’s cousin thought it might be but she wasn’t sure. I am now convinced it is Mariah.

As I noted in my first essay my first introduction my 3rd great grandmother was through the family notes written by my great-grandmother, Pauline Bailey Snyder (hereafter “GGM”). They are about six pages long and appear to be memories of several generations of family members and stories about them, written down at someone’s request.  As I’ve pursued my research, GGM’s notes have proven to be not entirely accurate, but overall, decent clues. In Mariah’s case, her notes have been less helpful. In reference to her grandmother, GGM wrote “Papa’s mother was a straight line descendant from the Roger Williams (who founded Rhode Island). Papa's father was Scotch-Irish. His mother was full blood Welch. Her name was Sarah Williams. Not sure of her first name. May have been Maria. Wonderful woman, Quaker by birth. Later after marriage, she attended Methodist Church.” On the back of the above photo is written, “Full blooded Welch.”

I’ve been trying to find her family for years, so I'm really celebrating! I’m still not able to prove or disprove whether she is a “straight line descendant from the Roger Williams” yet,  but I think I’ve found her parents (and about three generations further back on her mother’s side)! Yes, she was born into a Quaker family, John L Williams and Ruth Welding Williams, and she has a sister and three brothers.  [I will tell her parents' story once I'm certain I've isolated which records belong to my particular people -- there are a lot of John Williams-es, and Ruth Williams-es and Ruth Weldings, in the Welsh Tracts in Pennsylvania, and they aren't all mine.] 

I found, through Ancestry’s U.S. Quaker Meeting record collection, three records of varying degrees of readability, from February and March 1819 in which John L. Williams and his wife Ruth were applying for a Certificate of Removal for themselves and their five minor children, Lewis Welding, Lydia, Helena Mariah, Watson, and Samuel, from the Gwynedd Monthly Meeting in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The Gwynedd meeting is within one of three Welsh Tracts sold to Welsh Quakers by William Penn in the 17th century. Their application for a Certificate of Removal likely meant that they were planning to move to another area or visit someone in another area because Quakers used to get a Certificate of Removal from their home Meeting ("meeting" is similar to a church congregation) and recommendation to another Meeting somewhere else.

Climbing My Family Tree: Gwynedd Preparative Meeting Record, Montgomery County, PA, 16 Feb 1819
Gwynedd Preparative Meeting Record, Montgomery County, PA, 16 Feb 1819
(Click to Make Bigger)

Climbing My Family Tree: Gwynedd Monthly Meeting, Montgomery County, PA, 25 Feb 1819
Gwynedd Monthly Meeting, Montgomery County, PA, 25 Feb 1819
(Click to Make Bigger)


Climbing My Family Tree: Part 1: Part 1: Gwynedd Preparative Meeting, Montgomery County, PA  17 Mar 1819 (p119)
Part 1: Gwynedd Preparative Meeting, Montgomery County, PA  17 Mar 1819 (p119)
(Click to make bigger)

Climbing My Family Tree: Part 2: Gwynedd Preparative Meeting, Montgomery County, PA  17 Mar 1819 (p120)
Part 2: Gwynedd Preparative Meeting, Montgomery County, PA  17 Mar 1819 (p120)
(Click to make bigger)

I was excited when I saw the “Welding” as the oldest son, Lewis’ middle name (later confirmed to be Ruth’s maiden name – her father is Watson Welding) because there is a middle name that repeats in my Mom’s family over several generations. It was my grandfather’s middle name, “Weldon”. Welding isn’t quite the same, but it’s closer than anything else I’ve found to date, and as I’ve reviewed historical documents it seems to me that spelling used to be more of a creative art than a precision requirement. ... I might be close to finding "Weldon".

When I saw Mariah's older sister, Lydia, in the list of the minor children, it explained to me where Mariah’s second daughter’s name came from and helped confirm to me that this was my Mariah's family.

The last thing that helped persuade me that I’d found the correct parents for Mariah happened a few days after I entered the connections in my Ancestry Tree, when I received notification that two people I’d already shared an AncestryDNA match with, I now had a 'Shared Ancestor' shaky leaf hint with, which showed a connection with a name further up Ruth Welding’s maternal line. (I've been able to take her maternal line up several generations.)  I realize that isn’t dispositive as we could connect somewhere else I haven’t found yet, but it is a persuasive consideration.

I’m still missing about 23 years of her life, from this point to her marriage to John Bailey. I’d love to hear from anyone else researching Helena Mariah Williams Bailey Huber. Do you know where she met John Bailey? Or where she was for my missing 23 years?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Swarthmore College; Swarthmore, Pennsylvania; Men's Minutes, 1811-1823; Collection: Quaker Meeting Records; Call Number: MR-PH 235

Ancestry.com. U.S., Quaker Meeting Records, 1681-1935 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.