The greatest unsolved mystery of our Eleven Generations genealogy research has been proving that Anna Elizabeth Hawk (b. 1767), wife of George Hawk (b. 1760), was, in fact, a Walthour by birth. The Walthours were a well documented family in both Pennsylvania and Georgia. Their property in Brush Creek was the site of a famous fort built to defend the new settlers against Indian attacks.
Anna Elizabeth Hawk lived beyond the 1850 Census, which would indicate she was over 80 year old. After bearing 12 children from 1788 (her eldest, Michael Hawk) through 1811, it's no wonder where we derived our fertility. You'd expect a woman who lived that long and supplied the forebears of half the population of the Eastern United States would have a better record of her lineage. Sadly, no.
In our earliest stages of discovering the Hawk history, virtually every "Family Tree" on Ancestry and other sources posted that Anna Elizabeth was the daughter of Stephol (Stophal, Stoph) Walthour and Dorothy (Dolly) Lenhart. This claim was completely unsupported by any documentation: birth records, baptismal records, marriage records, family lore, property records, etc. Some records about Dolly Lenhart show her in the same age bracket as George Hawk; hence, making her too young to be the mother of a child born in 1767. Lineage of Stoph Walthour is nonexistent.
The most reliable source for all things Hawk was the excellent book, "Early German Hawk Families of Westmoreland County, PA" by our cousin and WWII hero, Kenneth Hawk Slaker. In Slaker's book, he writes that Anna Elizabeth (who went by Elizabeth or Liz), was a Walthour; but, he fails to show how. As much as we respect Slaker's research, we were unwilling to take his word for it.
A wild goose chase ensued. We traveled to Western Pennsylvania and spent time in various cemeteries and the historical society digging into books about the Walthours and Hawks. We paid researchers to find birth and marriage records. We found ample material on the most notable of Walthours, as well as Conrad, Hans, and George Hawk, and Michael Hawk and his children, including his youngest, namesake Michael, who served in the Civil War and was a prisoner at Andersonville; nevertheless, we found nothing about Stoph Walthour.
We speculated that maybe Liz was an orphan by the time she married George Hawk. Her parents (or at least her father) may have died of disease or Indian attack, which was certainly common. The baptismal records, which were a rich source of finding connections among family members, show no Walthours sponsoring any of George and Elizabeth's children - which was strange, since if the Walthours were family, at least one of them would be present at their grandchild/nephew/niece's baptism.
Instead, one family became intertwined with the George Hawk family from early on: The Walter Family. Since "Walthour, Waldhauer, and Walter" were likely the same name once Anglicized, maybe Elizabeth was actually a WALTER. There was a plethora of evidence to support this theory: first, the matriarch of the Walter family was named Anna Elizabeth (nee Volick). She married George Hawk's father, Conrad, in 1789. Based on the census records, her sons followed the Hawks from eastern PA to Westmoreland County and fought with George Hawk in the same militia lead by Christopher Truby. Anna Elizabeth Walter's late husband left a will that was posted on Ancestry, and mentions a daughter, Anna Elizabeth.
We know from previous history that the Hawk men married their neighbors and cousins, so the idea that Anna Elizabeth married into the Hawk family is very reasonable. Her mother didn't marry Conrad until after Michael was born, so it wasn't as if she was George's step-sister yet. The Walters appear in several census records, in the baptismal records, and in documented histories of the family. Why not surmise that Anna Elizabeth Hawk II was, in fact, a Walter by birth?
That's my theory and I'm sticking to it!
Showing posts with label Detective Stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Detective Stories. Show all posts
The Stanford Boys
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
I will spare the readers too many details of the process of how I uncovered many of our ancestors and their stories, but suffice it to say, I duplicated many errors of other hack genealogists by linking to the wrong families, accepting others' work without verification (never again!), and jumping to wrong conclusions. Nonetheless, the more I delved into the process, the smarter I became.Serious genealogy requires being a natural sleuth, solving puzzles, noticing inconsistencies and anomalies. It requires more patience with niggling details than with my fellow human beings, like a good homicide detective.
It wasn't enough for me to simply find the right ancestors and post them in a tree - I wanted to know why our forefathers/mothers immigrated to America, why they lived where they lived, how they met their spouses, and who were those strange children living in their house? I wanted to know if they owned slaves, what they did for a living, how many acres they owned, and whether they served in the military. I wanted to know if they lived long lives, how many of ther children survived, and a little about their circumstances in the 1700s, 1800s and early 20th century. I guess I was just ridiculously curious - more curious, sadly, than most of our predecessor cousins, since most of the Cook and Smith family didn't even exist on any family trees on Ancestry.com until I tracked them down.
The Hawk family gave us a smorgasbord of interesting stories.
It wasn't enough for me to simply find the right ancestors and post them in a tree - I wanted to know why our forefathers/mothers immigrated to America, why they lived where they lived, how they met their spouses, and who were those strange children living in their house? I wanted to know if they owned slaves, what they did for a living, how many acres they owned, and whether they served in the military. I wanted to know if they lived long lives, how many of ther children survived, and a little about their circumstances in the 1700s, 1800s and early 20th century. I guess I was just ridiculously curious - more curious, sadly, than most of our predecessor cousins, since most of the Cook and Smith family didn't even exist on any family trees on Ancestry.com until I tracked them down.
The Hawk family gave us a smorgasbord of interesting stories.
How Regina was the Key - Part II
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Once you think you have identified an ancestor, you can't be satisfied you are correct until you have undergone a sort of scientific method of attempting to *disprove* your hypothesis. Without absolute proof of someone's identity, you are making many assumptions that can be wrong! Therefore, when I thought I had identified the perfect Smith family living in Maryland but having hailed from Pennsylvania, with the right "Catherine" born the right year, I had to make sure she was really our Katie. The best way to disprove a woman is an ancestor is to find her either married to someone else, or alive or dead at the wrong time.
If the Catherine Smith born to George and Elizabeth and living in Taneytown, MD in 1870 was our Katie, she should not show up in 1880 in Maryland married to someone else! However, while searching for the mother, Elizabeth Smith's maiden name, I found her daughter, Catherine married to a man named Dorsey, who happened to be relatively well-documented. I therefore had to eliminate that wonderful Smith family from contention, after hours of researching them. Heck, I practically knew the names of their pets by the time I realized my mistake. I had to bid a fond farewell to the wrong Smiths. Auf wiedersehen!
If the Catherine Smith born to George and Elizabeth and living in Taneytown, MD in 1870 was our Katie, she should not show up in 1880 in Maryland married to someone else! However, while searching for the mother, Elizabeth Smith's maiden name, I found her daughter, Catherine married to a man named Dorsey, who happened to be relatively well-documented. I therefore had to eliminate that wonderful Smith family from contention, after hours of researching them. Heck, I practically knew the names of their pets by the time I realized my mistake. I had to bid a fond farewell to the wrong Smiths. Auf wiedersehen!
How Regina was the Key to Identfying the Smith Family - Part I
In previous entries I introduced you to Regina Smith, youngest daughter of Charles and Eva Smith, youngest sister of Katie Cook, who was counted in two censuses in 1900. She lived with the Cooks and the Evers for almost 30 years as a maiden aunt/housekeeper/seamstress.
Regina was a cipher, really. She had no husband, no children, no job outside domestic duties to her niece and sister (which was surely voluntary). She left her home and family in PA at age 30 to live in Cleveland with a sister with whom she did not grow up, and a niece whose husband and she were the same age!
We know Katie Smith had left home before Regina was even born in 1870. We find Katie in the Sprigg household in Maryland, and we don't find Regina at all. Regina does not exist in the 1870 census, even though she was born June 2 of that year. We learned later that children born after June 1st are not counted in that year's census. If she had been born one day earlier, I would have saved hours of searching! Fortunately she does appear in the 1880 census with her family in Somerset County, PA listed as "Virginia M. Smith" when her name is actually Regina G. Smith. Fun, fun, fun with the idiotic census-takers. (Oh, you have no idea.) Regina Smith appears in censuses as Virginia M. in 1880, Ragina L. in 1900, Raeina in 1910, and finally, correctly as Regina in 1920. Never mind that her age is listed differently in every census.
These are the kinds of challenges you face in genealogy, and you have to be a bit of a masochist to bother with it at all.
Regina was a cipher, really. She had no husband, no children, no job outside domestic duties to her niece and sister (which was surely voluntary). She left her home and family in PA at age 30 to live in Cleveland with a sister with whom she did not grow up, and a niece whose husband and she were the same age!
We know Katie Smith had left home before Regina was even born in 1870. We find Katie in the Sprigg household in Maryland, and we don't find Regina at all. Regina does not exist in the 1870 census, even though she was born June 2 of that year. We learned later that children born after June 1st are not counted in that year's census. If she had been born one day earlier, I would have saved hours of searching! Fortunately she does appear in the 1880 census with her family in Somerset County, PA listed as "Virginia M. Smith" when her name is actually Regina G. Smith. Fun, fun, fun with the idiotic census-takers. (Oh, you have no idea.) Regina Smith appears in censuses as Virginia M. in 1880, Ragina L. in 1900, Raeina in 1910, and finally, correctly as Regina in 1920. Never mind that her age is listed differently in every census.
These are the kinds of challenges you face in genealogy, and you have to be a bit of a masochist to bother with it at all.
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