I left you with quite a dangler in my last post back in April. I didn’t mean to keep you on the edge of your seat for so long awaiting an answer. But you see, my Aunt M’s chromosome map is coming together quite nicely now, and I’m finding many new leads to follow for our missing paternal ancestor. I’m sure you understand.

As a quick review, as I was dusting off the mess I’d made of my 3^rd great-grandfather Thomas John Baber‘s parents, I started to question whether the parents of his wife Elizabeth Rogers were really Dauswell Rogers and Phoebe Smith. As I took a closer look, it didn’t add up because… geography. And more.

Dauswell was born in Virginia in 1789 and lived in Tennessee between 1810 until at least 1850. He died in Georgia in 1866. Phoebe was born in Tennessee in 1793, lived in Tennessee all her life and died in Tennessee in 1830. Their daughter Elizabeth was born in 1811 in Tennessee and died in Tennessee. Whoa! That’s a lot of Tennessee.

Our Elizabeth Rogers who married Thomas John Baber was born in 1811, but she was born in Kentucky! Oh snap! How did Dauswell and Phoebe have a child in Kentucky in the vicinity of Lexington, when they were living in Tennessee in the vicinity of Chattanooga?

They didn’t. Their Elizabeth is not our Elizabeth. Their Elizabeth married Lindsey Brown with whom she had five children. He died in 1850 in Tennessee, and she died in 1880 in Tennessee.

Our Elizabeth, who was born in Kentucky, married Thomas John Baber in 1828 in Kentucky. In 1850 they lived in Scott Township, Montgomery County, Indiana. He died in Iowa in 1856. She died in Iowa after 1860. They had six children.

So many words; so many details! A simple comparison pinpoints what separates the two Elizabeths:

Elizabeth Rogers	Daughter of Burgess and Sophia Rogers	Daughter of Dauswell and Phoebe Rogers
Born	1811 Kentucky	1811 Tennessee
Parents born in	Kentucky	Virginia and Tennessee
Lived in	Kentucky, Indiana, and Iowa	Tennessee
Married	Thomas John Baber	Lindsey Brown
Died	After 1860 in Iowa	1880 in Tennessee
Mother of my ancestor Susan Elizabeth Baber?	Yes!	No!

This was painful. You cannot imagine the number of generations of Doswell, Dauswell, and Dowell Rogerses who are connected to Addenston, Addunston, and Addenstone Rogerses. Working out Dauswell’s ancestral line was a nightmare that consumed many of my research hours.

But when it doesn’t add up, you have to move on. And I did get lucky. I found the answer in Elizabeth’s memorial on findagrave.com. Her parents were Burgess Rogers and Sophia Miller. Backing up this information with verifiable records, I found a much more believable scenario to fit the facts of Elizabeth’s life.

Burgess was born in Culpeper Virginia in 1771. By 1800 he was living in Kentucky. He had moved to Indiana by 1840. Sophia was born in 1771 in Pennsylvania and died in Indiana in 1846. Her father, a German immigrant, arrived in Philadelphia in 1748 and served as a private from Culpeper, Virginia in the Revolutionary War.

In the end, my Elizabeth and the other Elizabeth were distant cousins. But please don’t ask me to figure out the relationship. Their most recent common ancestors were John Fitz Roger and Lucy Iverson from England and Scotland in the early 1600s.

In hindsight, besides the geographic discrepancies, I found another overlooked clue that might have helped me. Thomas and Elizabeth named their first son Burgess. In the tradition of the Dauswell Rogerses family names, Burgess is missing. But the name is unique enough that it should have caught my eye as a possible family name. Yes, no doubt young Burgess was named after grampa Burgess Rogers.