Jacob Joseph, Andrew and Thomas Lemon

Jacob Joseph Lemon, son of Joseph Lemon, brother of my ancestor, John Lemon, moved up into Canada.  He had a large family.  At least two of his grandsons moved down into Michigan: Andrew, who settled in Kalamazoo, and Thomas, who settled in Wexford County, not far from where I am now.

There is a Lemon DNA project, and one of Alexander's descendants is part of it.  These are my Lemons.  I can now connect my Isaac Lemon to Alexander Lemon.  Creating new trees for the process of elimination was an excellent idea.  I have not eliminated Lemons and Rubys, I've added to them.

New Trees, Old Trees, Lemon Trees...

 

I've been trying to eliminate Lemons in Michigan.  That sounds bad, doesn't it?  Eliminate them as possible matches to my Lemons, I mean.  But what I'm finding is that it's not easily done.  Starting in the early 1700s, there was a Lemon explosion, kinda.  Joseph Lemon and his wife, Prudence, had 4 children; two girls and two boys.  All were fertile.  My own ancestor from that line, John Lemon, had 14 children with his wife, Elizabeth Titman.  Most of those children had large families also.  Some in Pennsylvania, some in Canada.  LARGE families. 

I started a tree with an Isaac Lemmon as the home person because he was in Macomb County the same time as Abner Lemon, if not earlier.  I thought I had eliminated him, but then discovered that he could possibly be a Lemon "cousin" from Pennsylvania, and maybe the reason the Lemons in Ontario, Canada came down into Michigan in that area.  I have no proof, but my spidey senses are a-tingle.  Then I discovered that that Lemmon family (note difference in spelling from my own Lemons) had married into a Ruby family.  That got me working backwards to see if they could possibly have any connection to MY Rubys.  They could.  That was exciting. 

I believe the person who gave the parents of Silas Nelson Ruby on his death certificate perhaps inadvertly gave the name of Silas' BROTHER, not his father.  It fits time-wise.  I'm not sure how to document the connection for sure.  I do have the coincidence of naming patterns, but that's not really proof.  To think that those Rubys, who married into the Lemmons, could possibly be MY Rubys married into MY Lemons boggles my mind. 

I've started a half dozen new trees for the purpose of elimination or confirmation.  Knapps, Rubys, Lemmons, Lemons...it's fascinating work.

For instance:  Isaac Lemmon had a son, John B. Lemmon who had a son named Frank.  So John M. Lemon (my 2nd great-grand uncle) had a Frank William Lemon (who died relatively young.), John B. Lemmon (who may be related, they were in the same area at the same time.) had a Frank Lemmon (Franklin Pierce Lemmon.), and my own great-grandfather, Isaac B Lemon had a son Frank John Lemon.  Frank was a popular name.  And there's the mystery of the John B. Lemon who was the reporter for Abner Lemon's death certificate.  Could it be John B. Lemmon? 

The quest continues.

A Fruitful Day

I spent most of the day in an orgy of genealogy data-gleaning.  I was still trying to find the reason for the naming of Edward Phelps Knapp and fell into the motherlode of records; An application for a pension for the widow of Edward Phelps of Stoddar, Cheshire County, New Hampshire, who was Eunice Hardy Chase's 2nd husband.  Eunice Hardy was the mother of Margaret Chase Knapp, the mother of Orlando James Knapp. 

Margaret was the oldest of Eunice and Nathan Hardy's children, and was named for Eunice's mother, Margaret.  Unfortunately, I've not been able to find her maiden name, which is astonishing as the places these people lived, to wit Massachusetts and New Hampshire, has hundreds of years of records available, and most of them online. 

Edward Phelps was a soldier in the Revolutionary War.  He collected a pension from the government for serving in that war.  To collect his pension, he had to prove who he was and that he had actually been in the war.  The records he used to prove his claim are all on file in the National Archives.  Then, after he died, his widow, Eunice Hardy Chase Phelps, had to prove that she was his widow.  It was fascinating reading.  The NA had photos of Edward's sworn testimony and those of his wife and other witnesses.  One of those testimonies was made by Ellen Knapp Lowell, Eunice's granddaughter.  She swore her statement in 1853, a year before she died, and the year she gave birth to her 2nd child. 

Also included in the documentation packet was a photo of a page from Edward Phelp's bible, where he wrote the particulars of his marriages, and the deaths of his only child, a son, and his brothers.  This helped me go back many generations on him.  I was "in the zone" for most of the entire day.

After gathering all that information, I hit a dry patch.  I can't find Margaret Chases' maiden name.  I can't find the date Nathan died.  The rest of the immediate family of birth of Orlando James Knapp continues to tease me with tiny bits of information here and there.  I can't find a lot of dates of death for these people.  Once they all moved to New York, information gets sketchy.  People I expect to find in cemeteries simply are not listed, though that doesn't mean they're not there. 

Anyway, an altogether glorious day of genealogical exploring.  I had a good day.

Playing Hunches

 

Having a subscription to ancestry.com is a wonderful thing.  I was looking for Artemas Lowell in the 1850 Federal Census in Marlow, Cheshire County, New Hampshire, but I didn't find him.  He married Ellen Knapp, sister of Orlando James Knapp, Knapper's 2nd great-grandfather.  Ellen Knapp is not to be confused with Charlotte Ellen Knapp, another of O.J.'s sisters.  The hard copy genealogy I have states that Ellen married Aretmas Lowell on the 6th of March, 1851.  I believe she met him in New Hampshire because she can be found in Stoddard, New Hampshire in the 1850 Census staying with a couple with the last name of Phelps, which I believe were cousins of her mother, Margaret Chase Knapp, who was born in Stoddard.  There is some type of family connection there because Margaret and Isaac Palmer (Knapper's 3rd great-grandfather) named one of their sons Edward Phelps Knapp. 

The genealogy also says that Ellen had two sons: Olcott Willis Lowell (who it says is from her first marriage), and George Lowell.  Since I have found Ellen's birth year to be 1827 (from her memorial on Find-A-Grave and the 1850 census), and Olcott's birth year was 1851, I tend to disbelieve that Ellen was married before she married Artemas Lowell.  The 1850 Census doesn't show her anywhere except with a couple named Edward and Eunice Phelps in Stoddard. 

Ellen died in 1854, a year after delivering her son, George Lowell.  She's buried in Joslin Cemetery in Stoddard.  While looking for Artemas in 1850 in Marlow, I stumbled upon a Nathaniel and Lucy A Adams.  This was intriguing because in the 1860 Census Artemas is shown married to a Lucy A Lowell, with children Frank and Lyman Lowell.  Frank is 8 and Lyman is 7.  I later found a Lyman Adams with the family in a later census.  So when I saw Lucy A and Nathaniel Adams in Marlow, New Hampshire in 1850, my spidey-senses started tingling. 

I plugged Lucy in as the 2nd wife of Artemas Lowell and found confirmation that she died as Lucy A Lowell in Marlow, New Hampshire in 1895.  Is it proof positive that Lucy Ann Harrington Adams Lowell was Artemas' 2nd wife?  No.  But it's a strong circumstantial connection, and I believe it's correct.  Artemas himself is shown to have died in 1898.  

Knapp, Lobdell, Lobdell Knapp

So it looks like my Knapps married into the Lobdells at least twice, if not more often.  They sure do get around.  I'm running into age difficulties--who was born when, was it possible due to the mother's age...that sort of thing.  It can get frustrating.  I like documentation.  No, I LOVE documentation.  If I were rich, I'd send away for every birth, marriage and death certificate on every one of the over 4000 people in my trees.  But I'm not rich.  I'm me.  So I use Census records , and people NEVER lied to the Census worker.  And the Census workers had excellent, readable penmanship and never got anyone's name wrong.  Uh huh.

I continue working on the Knapps, working around the Lobdells, going from Essex County, New York to other states and places, and back again.  The Knapps used Black River Cemetery for their final resting places.  I've found many there, as well as quite a few of their allied families.  I wish they had more photos of the graves.  There's hardly any, but the transcriptions are helpful.

Something funny I've been meaning to mention here; Ancestry.com lets you look and compare other people's trees to your own.  There is one Lobdell tree that has a great deal of information related to the Lobdells I'm researching.  The photo they have representing that family?  Two rabbits.  I didn't understand at first, but I sure do now.  Those Lobdells are like the Knapps!  They're seemingly in everyone's gene pool and all over the world!

The Knapps and the Lobdells

Anna Eliza Knapp, daughter of Lucius Knapp, mentioned in his will as being the wife of Sylvanius Lobdell, is buried in the Black River Cemetery in Essex County, New York, with her brother DEACON ISAAC KNAPP and her husband. 

I discovered this today while looking through the list of every person recorded online as being buried in the Black River Cemetery.  This is a big thing.  To me it is one more link that proves the relationship of DIK (DEACON ISAAC KNAPP) and Lucius Knapp as father and son.  (Or son and father.)

Last night I posted about going through way too many names in a Ferris family genealogy.  I used the handy "find on this page" feature in IE to search for Knapp and Michigan, both words I found numerous times.  Knapps.  With the Ferris families.  In Michigan.  One of the places mentioned in Michigan was Hillsdale County.  Ferrises lived there.  And, I discovered today, Lobdells, of the Knapp-Lobdell family, lived, or at least visited there during the 1850 Census.  I also found a family of Ferrises in the same town, not far away. Hannah b. 1808 in N.J., John b. 1833 in NY, Anson H. b. 1833 NY, Lewis S. b. 1837 in MI, Melissa b. 1838 in MI, and George b. 1842 in MI.  So the husband of Hannah must have died in Michigan between 1842 and 1850. 

I made these discoveries while searching for Elvira Lobdell, daughter of Seymour Boughten Lobdell, son of Anna Eliza Knapp and Sylvanus Lobdell.  Elvira never married, though she told Census takers she was widowed.  I found one tree on Ancestry that said she'd married William Wallace Lobdell and gave birth to a daughter, Ruth, but I haven't found that to be true.  It's not impossible, but it's improbable. 

The 1850 Census in Hillsdale County, township of Somerset is rife with mistakes on Ancestry.  Names are transcribed incorrectly, families are listed out of order from each other.  Did the transcriber just get tired and say 'ta hellwithit?  Hard to tell.  But looking at each page was illuminating.  Many familes I'm researching are all clustered together.  I think some might have been there to celebrate the wedding of a female Lobdell relation.  There are a lot of Palmers and Chases around that area, too.  Are they related?  I don't have the energy right now to investigate.