Over the past week I’ve been a little all over the place with my research. I suppose we can thank my ADHD for that.

I was recently invited to view the AncestryDNA results for the brother of the cousin that I’ve been in contact with lately, so I’ve spent some time looking through his match list. I knew he and I matched (we share 9cM), but there was a big surprise when I found out he also matches my grand uncle Joe Hamm (they share 11cM), who doesn’t descend from the Michael family, indicating we all have an additional shared connection outside of the Michael connection.

The connection is allegedly on the cousins’ maternal side while it’s allegedly on Joe’s maternal side as well, that side being the family of Velma (Hendricks) Hamm. This is supported by another shared match who descends from Velma’s parents Joseph & Edith (Abram) Hendricks. After searching my cousin’s tree again, I did come across a very distant alleged connection in the Covenhoven family going back to the mid-1600’s, the Covenhovens being on Joe’s maternal side as well as the cousins’ maternal side, thus aligning with what AncestryDNA suggests. Each match, of course, is also very small, which could imply a very distant connection.

The cousins do also have a Hendricks in their tree, but their Hendricks family is Dutch from New York while mine, as far back as it’s been traced, goes to Maryland, so I’m currently thinking it’s unlikely our Hendrickses connect. We also share the surname Robinson in our trees, and both theirs and our families are traceable to Virginia, but I don’t even know where in Virginia mine were from, just that they were from Virginia according to the 1850 U.S. census, so I have no idea if those families are connected.

It’s been fun trying to figure this out, and I hope to look more into it soon.

I’ve also still been tracking the religious and political affiliations of the Michael family. Something I learned that was really interesting to me is that the affiliation with the various Baptist faiths and the Whig & Republican parties goes beyond Henry Michael/Mikel, Sr.’s family and into the family of Henry’s brother William Michael. William and his wife Catherine had a son David Michael, who became the husband of Eva Schutt, and David & Eva were Baptists while David was also a supporter of the Whig and Republican parties. Going further, David & Eva’s son David Michael, Jr. was a Republican as well.

I decided to finally start a chart showing the various Michaels and their religious affiliation. I already made a chart for political affiliation, so I figured it was time to start a religious affiliation chart, too. I really like making charts and I find them really helpful, especially when I’m trying to visualize a lot of information, which is often the case with the Michaels.

I’ve also spent a little time lately working on my Beech Creek Township OPS. I added a transcription of a delinquent tax list for 1884 that I found in an issue of the Bloomfield News. Greene County newspapers are typically behind paywalls, so I’m thinking about focusing on extracting data from those newspapers and transcribing it to my OPS on WikiTree. Between vital statistics, tax lists, real estate transfers, court proceedings, legal notices, town/village columns, and other local news items, newspapers are a treasure trove of information.

To reminisce for a moment, newspapers are actually where I really started my family history research. Of course, I was on Ancestry as well, but I spent countless hours spread across countless days, weeks, months, and years in the Indiana Room at the Monroe County Public Library (MCPL) in my hometown of Bloomington, the Bloomfield-Eastern Greene County Public Library in Bloomfield, the Public Library in Shoals, and the Indiana State Library in Indianapolis, all dedicated to researching in newspapers on microfilm. I have a dedicated binder from this time for obituaries and death/funeral notices for my paternal relatives that’s filled with nearly 200 clippings; I also have a smaller binder dedicated to the same kinds of clippings for my maternal relatives. When I tell you I spent a lot of time doing this, know I mean that. I’m really grateful that, in the time since I started in 2013, a lot of the newspapers I researched in at that time are now digitized somewhere online. It’s especially helpful now that I live in Maryland and can’t access MCPL or any of the other libraries whenever I need to anymore.

Anyway, returning to the OPS, I’m also using newspapers from elsewhere to search for articles mentioning the villages in Beech Creek Township, specifically Newark at this point. I thought it would be really interesting to see what local events made national news. I already found the following in the 4 February 1870 issue of the Cleveland (Ohio) Daily Plain Dealer:

“On Wednesday an old man named Berth was chopped to death with an axe by John Ross, at Newark, Ind. The cause was a misunderstanding”

This was reported in many other newspapers across the country as well, but nothing ever gave any additional information. I’ll have to check Indiana newspapers from the time to see if I can find out anything else.

I also spent some time this week inquiring to the Pawnee County, Nebraska Clerk’s office about my ancestor Eliza Jane Butler. See, Eliza Jane was twice married: first to Reuben Waldridge in 1855 when she was only 14 (how was that even legal?), and second to John Franklin Hendricks in 1865. Both marriages took place in Indiana, the marriage to Reuben in Monroe County and the marriage to John in neighboring Greene County.

At some point in the late 1850’s or early 1860’s, Eliza Jane moved to Pawnee City in Pawnee County, where her brother David Christy Butler served in the territorial legislature (and later served as the first Governor of Nebraska), and where her & Reuben’s daughter Nancy A. Waldridge was buried in March 1864. Nancy was born in 1860, but I’m unsure where. That I can’t locate Reuben, Eliza Jane, or their son George Washington Waldridge in the 1860 U.S. census might hint that they were on the move while the census was enumerated, but that’s just speculation. Of course, that still leaves Nancy’s birth location up in the air as well.

Reuben & Eliza Jane were apparently divorced or in the process of divorcing by the time Nancy died, as Reuben married Elizabeth J. Hanley the next month, April 1864, in Vigo County, Indiana. Reuben went on to marry for a third time in 1867, this time to Amanda (Bell) Martin. He & Amanda remained married until his passing in January 1919.

I’ve searched in Indiana for Reuben & Eliza Jane’s divorce case but have had no luck, so I reached out to Pawnee County on Friday to ask if they can tell me if they have the case in their records. If it turns out they weren’t divorced in Pawnee County either, then I’m really going to have to go back to the drawing board to figure this out.

Another family I’ve been wanting to work on again is the family of my ancestor Samuel Cooper. No one on Ancestry ever had any leads for who Samuel’s parents and siblings were, so I spent some time a couple of years ago and again earlier this year researching into those questions and made a lot of progress. Of course, my research led me to the burned Cocke County, Tennessee, so things have kind of hit a wall there, but I won’t let that stop me. I’ll just have to take some time again soon to look through Joe’s match list for other Cooper relatives. I’ll figure this out the same way I figured out the Michaels: with a hell of a lot of time and determination.

Anyway, this post has been just about everywhere now, so I’m going to wrap it up here. Reach out if you’re a cousin!