Who were Elizabeth Rogers’ parents?

20 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by My Blooming Family Tree in Uncategorized

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.

When I’m not doing genealogy you might find me knitting or taking photos.

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.

These aren’t the Babers you’re looking for

13 Wednesday Apr 2016

Posted by My Blooming Family Tree in Genealogy, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Baber, Booth family history, Chew Magna, Sir Edward Baber, Susan Elizabeth Baber

How many Babers have you met in your life? I can’t think of a single one. Very odd considering that Babers were among the earliest settlers of this country. Their progeny thrived and migrated with so many others from Kentucky and Virginia to the fertile farm lands of the Midwest. As it turns out, the farms surrounding Des Moines, Iowa where I grew up abounded with Babers.

And so it came as a surprise that my 2^nd great-grandmother was a Baber. Susan Elizabeth Baber was my dad’s mother’s mother’s mother.

2016-04-12_16-30-02

Susan was born in Indiana in 1840. She married David Morgan Ballard in Indiana in October of 1857, and by 1860 they had already relocated to Marion County, Iowa. They weren’t the only ones. The decade ending in 1860 was a time of explosive growth in Iowa’s population averaging an increase of 48,000 immigrants per year[1].

The paper trail for Susan goes back as far as my 5^th great–grandparents, Thomas W Baber and Elizabeth Lawson from Old Rappahannock County in Virginia. But where did they come from?

Many researchers believed that the progenitor of all the colonial Babers was Robert Baber[2], familiarly known as “Robert the Immigrant.” Robert was 28 years old in 1679 when he arrived in Virginia from Somerset, England. Robert’s line has been traced to the Babers of Chew Magna[3], a village in Somerset, England, where Sir Edward Baber, Robert’s great grandfather, is entombed in St. Andrew’s Churchyard[4].

Many of the trees on Ancestry.com connect their colonial Babers to Robert the Immigrant. Until very recently, mine did as well. Recent DNA testing, however, has proven it is not true.

One type of DNA test identifies the direct male ancestral line by analyzing just the Y chromosome[5]. Only males have the Y chromosome. It’s what makes them males. The convenient thing about the Y chromosome is that it doesn’t often mutate so it’s reliable for many generations.

Thanks to the male Baber descendants who were tested, we now know the DNA markers that identify descendants of Robert the immigrant and know that they tie those descendants to the Chew Magna Babers. We also know that other Babers who were tested, including the Babers in my line, do not match Robert. Their origin is still unknown.

I wasn’t all that shocked that Robert was not the Baber I was looking for. I’ve created a couple other lineages based on other trees on Ancestry.com that did not hold up to scrutiny, either. At least I had not carried this line back to the Middle Ages like I have others. Oh, the agony of delete.

But it serves as a good reminder to check the Y DNA tests for ancestors other than your direct paternal line. If it’s your lucky day, you’ll get an answer that will either extend your line or keep you from wasting time on it.

The bigger surprise came when a strange clue added to a nagging doubt about Susan’s parents, my 3^rd great grandparents, Thomas John Baber and Elizabeth Rogers. Now it looks as if their paper trails lead in different directions than the ones that I, and the majority of Ancestry trees, had given them. Now I’ve sorted it out, and I will write about that next.

[1] THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION OF IOWA: 1833 to 1860

[2] Descendants of John Baber, England

[3] Edward Baber’s London Home. 1611

[4] Sir Edward Baber

[5] Richard Hill’s Guide to DNA Testing (p 15)

Are you related to…?

19 Saturday Mar 2016

Posted by My Blooming Family Tree in Genealogy, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Booth family history, family tree, Genealogy, James Ami Booth

Being asked, “Are you related to that guy?” so often in my childhood surely sparked my initial interest in genealogy. But answering the most logical follow-up question has been even more challenging: If I’m not related through him, then who were my paternal ancestors?

My dad’s family line always carried an air of mystery and uncertainty about our surname. There were the rumors and theories, the various versions of family lore discussed within the extended family about “the problem” with my dad’s lineage. The storyline as I remember it went like this: At some unspecified previous generation, specifically in Alsace-Lorraine, a paternal ancestor had been adopted. At which point, we would have had a switch of surnames.

As it turns out, the possible break in our family line hit a lot closer to home. My great grandfather James Ami was born in Iowa on April 2, 1855. His mother, Sarah Berry, was single and remained single for four more years. In 1859 she married the man who provided a surname for James and his prolific progeny, including me. But is that all he contributed?

GrandmaAndGrandpaUnreadable-with-BoothDaleWendellAndHazel-2-MBFT-story2

My grandma Hazel, dad Wendell, grandpa Dale, great grandma Elizabeth, Lelia, and great grandpa James Ami Booth

Descendants of James Ami are divided about whether Benjamin Franklin Booth (BF) was actually James’ father. Some insist that BF visited his brother who had relocated to Iowa, met Sarah while there, and that thing that makes babies happened between them. Other’s are equally convinced that BF was not James’ father, and they have their reasons, too. My family group is among the latter.

With the information and tools available last century, that was it. We had a short paper trail that didn’t yield an indisputable answer, so we accepted that we would never know how far back our surname was valid.

As to answering the are-you-related-to question, during my school years I learned that famous, even infamous, people have biographies. I found the answer. But back in the 1960s, when questions of legitimacy were only whispered about, my bold and honest response to that question would often produce a shocked look on the face of my school-aged inquisitors: “No, I am not related to him unless it was illegitimately because he was never married and had no known children.” No apologies.

Thus, I could finally deny any link to the assassin who took the life of President Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theater on April 15, 1865. The assassin’s name is well known; I need not mention it.

The answer to the second question still remains elusive despite much research and countless hours analyzing and comparing DNA tests. I continue to search, and I hope that DNA tests will eventually provide the unequivocal truth. Whether it is someone on the current suspect list, including Sarah’s husband BF, or someone as yet unknown, I remain open. I just want to know the truth if it is possible to find it.

About My Blooming Family Tree

18 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by My Blooming Family Tree in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Who wouldn’t want their family tree to be tall and strong, symmetrically branched, and loaded with the perfect blossoms of ancestors who are fully documented and verified with DNA certificates? You could liltingly refer to my blooming family tree and follow it with a satisfied sigh.

Solitary Slipper Orchid

More likely, I’m afraid, as is frequent in my case, the phrase would borrow the old-fashioned British usage, as in, my BLOOMING family tree!! ARGH!

I started My Blooming Family Tree to write about my successes and failures at finding my ancestors and tracing some elusive lineages. It includes stories about the most basic efforts to create paper trails as well as those that connect ancestors through genetic testing.

What I write may interest no one other than my family, and maybe not even them. Perhaps I’m simply writing an online genealogical diary to myself. It would be lovely, however, if my experiences turn out to be interesting, inspiring, and helpful to others who are making their own ways to their ancestors.

With that said, your feedback is welcome.