This is a very fun week because the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks writing prompt actually says I HAVE to prattle on about my latest find, no matter whether or not anyone wants to hear about it. Most days, I am encouraged to keep my prattle to myself lest friends and family doze off and spontaneously fall to the ground or, worse, spill their liquor. So, prattle mode engaged.
Don't say I didn't warn you!
I'm so excited about my latest finds -- the parents of my great-great grandmother, Matilda! You may remember that I wrote a bit about Matilda earlier, in the context of her husband and sons, who seemed determined that the family see as much of the Civil War-era western frontier as possible from horseback and likely shank's mare (that's "on foot" for those of you who haven't yet celebrated your eleventy-first birthday.) Then, not longer after they all settled down for a bit, Matilda died. Her grave marker still stands in a tiny, mostly-forgotten cemetery next to a town that no longer exists. It read "Matilda, wife of G.C. Thomas. Died July 4, 1873, Aged 57 years and 10 months." So Matilda is accounted for during her life married to George C. Thomas Sr, but where and who was she before that? We knew that George's parents had moved to the village of Onandaga on the banks of the Grand River in what is now Ontario, Canada, around 1817, and it appears that all their children were born there, so it seemed reasonable to guess that was where he met Matilda. But what was her maiden name? Who were her parents?
We had a few clues; unfortunately, they dated from well after both Matilda and George had died and their accuracy was highly suspect. George Jr.'s obituary in 1905 said he had been born in "Osandage," Brant County, Canada West. In the 1914 History of Boone County, Iowa, his biography said that his mother was Elizabeth, maiden name Strowbridge. However, it also said his father had died in Arkansas (it was actually Kansas -- so only two letters and many hundreds of miles off.) Eldest son, Harvey's, 1933 death certificate gave his mother's maiden name as Matilda Strowbridge, as well, but was that just a parroting of the information from his brother's information?
I banded together with other descendants of George and Matilda and we scoured everything we could find, looking for evidence of a Matilda Strowbridge. There were a scant handful of Strowbridges in the Onondaga area -- well, Strobridges, really, although it seemed that Strawbridge, Strobridge and even Trowbridge were all considered equivalent. But none gave any sign of having a daughter named Matilda. And then Canada made "Marriage Bonds of Upper Canada" available online, and I found this:
Can't read it? No, me neither, although I could at one time. It is a marriage bond -- a sort of promissory note indicating that two people agreed to wed, saying they were free of other encumbrance. Further, should the man break off the engagement, he would be responsible for payment to the woman, to compensate for any damage to her reputation and for the time she was 'off the market.' Can you imagine? Anyway, this Bond was dated 26 December 1838 in Dumfries County, Haldemand Township, Upper Canada, witnessed by Hiram Hawley and David Sage between George Thomas of Dumfries Township and Matilda MORRIS of Brantford.
Well, I thought -- that was the answer. We'd been looking for a Strowbridge, but her name was actually Morris -- no wonder we'd not found her! So, much to the chagrin of my research partners who felt I'd tossed aside that Strobridge surname much too quickly, I started the hunt for Matilda Morris... and found that even less rewarding than the (absolute bupkis) search for Matilda Strowbridge. Oddly, despite the relatively common name, there just weren't any Morris families hanging about Upper Canada circa 1800-1820.
And that's where things stood for a decade or so. In the meantime, I'd taken several DNA tests and, eventually, began to learn how to apply their results to genealogy. However, it took the longest time for me to try to use them to identify Matilda's antecedents. For whatever reason, this seemed much harder than my previous efforts. I just couldn't seem to find an "end" to begin unraveling the tangle. Maybe I'd already used them up solving my other mysteries.
Or maybe my subconscious was just trying to point out the obvious: "Strowbridge" is a relatively uncommon name. Shouldn't it be possible to leverage that fact with DNA matches to get faster results?
Now, understand, I have been known to lecture unsuspecting innocents at length on how surnames just don't matter with DNA. Because the whole point of following a DNA inheritance trail is that if the DNA contradicts the traditional paper records, you have to be willing to abandon those and follow the DNA.
Of course, by now, you've guessed the end of the story. After literally years of dithering and pining, a simple, basic surname search showed me I had several dozen Ancestry DNA matches whose family trees all included the same "Strobridges" in Brant County in the early 1800s: Benjamin Strobridge and wife Nancy Hawley. On 23andme and MyHeritage, my brother and I not only had shared matches that all descended from the same Strobridges -- some from Benjamin and Nancy, others from one or the other's parents -- that I'd identified on Ancestry, but I was able to use the chromosome browsers to pinpoint the genetic space they and other of Matilda's descendants had all inherited: a bit on the first third of chromosome 3, that's the Strobridge and Hawley contribution. So in the Morris vs. Strobridge debate, I concede -- y'all were right and I was wrong!
Nancy and Benjamin were, like the parents of George Thomas, the children of "Late Loyalists," emigrants from the newly-hatched United States who decided well after the fact to decamp to the British Territory of Upper Canada and acquire land. Benjamin and Nancy's marriage date is as yet unknown, but they would have been a very credible 19 when Matilda was born in 1815 (according to the computation on her grave marker in Iowa); their first "known" child, Jane, was born in 1819, so there could easily be another child or two whose birth records have been lost. And Hiram Hawley, who witnessed the marriage bond for George and Matilda? He was Nancy's younger brother, Matilda's uncle.
Genealogical standards of proof require that I come up with paperwork to support this in order to call it a fact. Unfortunately, I think it quite likely at this point that no such evidence remains. I'll look forward to checking through what archives there are at some point, but if it were there, I think we'd have seen it by now. The next step, then, is to try to untangle the confusing history of Matilda's Loyalist ancestors. Neither side appears to want to claim them. The Hawley's indecisive actions -- decamping from New York with General Howe, himself, in 1778 but only going as far as New Brunswick before jumping ship and then returning to Connecticut until finally leaving the United States for the Loyalist territories of Upper Canada -- help one to understand why that is. On the Strobridge side, Benjamin's father, Crispus, was stricken from the family Bible and his father's will for taking the side of the British during the Rebellion, but he was so late in leaving the US that many Canadian peers suspected his true motives.
As I researched Matilda's children and husband and learned about the years she spent traversing the wilderness, keeping house out of tents (if she was lucky), preparing meals without benefit of nearby market or garden, caring for her family as they flogged their way through brutal terrain, unfriendly flora and hostile fauna, and, most of all, no antibiotics. Did Matilda realize what she was signing up for when she married George?
I think she must have been a strong and resourceful woman. But who was Mr. Morris? Presumably, Matilda was married to him -- and widowed -- prior to her marriage to George? I hope I can discover the rest of her story.
Comments