Tag Archives: Sarah Ann (Jewell) Rea

Three Cheers for DNA

Since I do not have the time to spend on book writing until the end of this month, I have been using my spare minutes to work on some of my DNA puzzles. I have had lots of genetic goodies land on my doorstep so far this month. Here is one of them.

One mystery in my family tree is the parentage of Sarah Ann Jewell. She was born in Kentucky and later moved to Greene County, Indiana, where she married George Rea on 13 March 1842. Now presumably, my sweet young Sarah Ann did not travel from Kentucky to southern Indiana by herself. In the first half of the nineteen century, Kentucky and Indiana were still considered frontier states. Sarah most likely arrived in Indiana with her parents or other family members.

After combing through census records and other various limited records available online (Greene County does not have a very strong online presence NOR does it have many microfilms available from the LDS library), I determined that there was only one Jewell family in Greene County in the first half of the nineteenth century. The patriarch was Samuel Jewell: a miller by trade and an Irishman by nationality. Born in Ireland around the time of the American Revolution, he immigrated to Virginia where he married Rachel Painter on 31 December 1798. They soon moved west, living in Ohio (1820), Kentucky (1830), and finally Indiana (1840). Samuel and Rachel had at least three sons who followed them to Indiana: John, William, and Isaac.

So my next puzzle was to determine which of Samuel’s sons was Sarah’s father. Isaac was eliminated by pure logic. He was born in 1815, only ten years before Sarah was born. For the same reason, William was too young as well. I have come across several unsourced family trees over the years which claimed that William was Sarah’s father. William was born in 1812. He was too young to be Sarah’s father. (Another reason why one should not trust unsourced family trees!) William married his wife, Mariah Miller, in Shelby County, Kentucky, on 9 November 1835. This left John P. Jewell as the only potential candidate.

John Painter Jewell was born about 1800 in Virginia. He married Mary Hoagland, on 18 October 1820, in Bullitt County, Kentucky. Three nods in John’s favor! John was old enough to be Sarah’s father; he married his wife before Sarah’s calculated birth year; and, he had lived in Kentucky.

John was enumerated on the 1830 census in Greene county. Among his household were two girls between the ages of 5-9 (remember this for later!). Unfortunately, only the heads of household were enumerated by name. Sarah died relatively young, perhaps in childbirth. She did not live in the time of compulsory death certificates. Luckily, a transcription was made of her gravestone in the mid twentieth century. I do not think it survives as I have yet to find a willing Find A Grave photographer to capture her stone. I am still working on locating a will or land records for John Painter Jewell in Greene County, but I have been unsuccessful thus far in gaining access to the records. (If you know of anyone who is willing to do ‘on the ground’ research in Greene County, Indiana, let me know!)

So this mystery has remained at a standstill until now. A few months ago, I was contacted by another researcher who was looking for the parents of his ancestor Rachel Jewell of Greene County, Indiana. He had also come to the conclusion that John P. Jewell was likely Rachel’s father, which would make my Sarah and his Rachel sisters. After several conversations back and forth via email, I finally convinced him to do DNA testing. His results came back this week. The disappointing news is that he does not match either my father or me. However, he does match another cousin on this same branch of the family!

DNA is fickle. The predicated relationships that the DNA companies come up with are just that….predictions. They are based on a mathematical algorithm. In theory, a person inherits 50% of their DNA from each parent; 25% from each grandparent; 12.5% from each great grandparent; and so on. By the time one travels back in time to their third great grandparents, the potential inheritance is only 3.125% per individual. There are 32 individuals in the third great grandparent generation. Even though my father and Mr. Lawson are likely 4th cousins, there is no guarantee that they would inherit the same 3.125% from either John P. Jewell or Mary (Hoagland) Jewell.

The DNA lesson that I would like everyone to take away from this story is the importance of testing as many people in your family as possible. DNA is NOT inherited equally. Had my 3rd cousin not already tested, I would have assumed that my new cousin, the descendant of Rachel Jewell, was not related to me.

Progress – September 27th

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Well, this update is not about the book because I am on book hiatus until the end of October. [Insert crying face emoticon here] I have too many other projects on the stove cooking at the moment to devote time to the book. I am frustrated by this lack of time. I want to be able to focus on the book completely instead of stealing a moment here or there. But the time just is not there at the moment, and I have to be realistic.

My main focus is writing my proof argument for my ProGen Study Group. The first draft was due September 25^th which I turned in a few days early. After I wrote mine, I had to review the four papers of my group mates. We have such different writing styles and research problems. It is great to see what we are all working on. This next month we have to take the comments and suggestions of our group mates and polish up our first drafts into the final arguments.

I chose a research problem which I have been working on for 20 years, since I first starting working on Gladys’ family. One branch of her family has Quaker ancestry which stretches back to the early days of Pennsylvania and William Penn. Due to all the various migrations across the eastern part of the United States in the early years of the nineteenth century, some records are non-existent. The purpose of a proof argument is to gather indirect and direct evidence together in one place, and to write an argument “proving” whether or not events occurred. In my case, I have been searching for the parents of Alfred M. Dicks, Gladys’ great grandfather.

I believe I have a very solid argument. My first draft was 18 pages long, and over 6,000 words. I received some good feedback from some of my study group mates, and now I am beginning to make some corrections and additions. It is also my plan to publish the argument as an eBook when I am done in October.

In my genetic genealogy work, my father’s mtDNA results came in last week. I have two exact matches, but I think they are several generations too far away to help me at present. Mitochondrial DNA is the type of DNA which was used to prove that the bones buried under a parking lot in England belonged to Richard III. My goals are a little less lofty, but no less important to me. I am hoping to prove the connection between Sarah Ann (Jewell) Rea and her parents with mitochondrial DNA. The most plausible candidates are John P. Jewell and his wife Mary (Hoagland) Jewell. My father’s haplogroup is H1g1. This haplogroup appears to be more common in Germany and the Northern European countries. If Sarah’s mother was Mary Hoagland (who was of German ancestry), and I can find another of Mary’s descendants who matches, then I may have solved this mystery.

Last night, as I was searching for more information about Crawford and Clark counties (in Illinois) where Gladys’ family lived, I discovered that the Marshall Public library has begun digitizing the local county newspapers, back to the 1850s. This is AMAZING news! I have been stymied by the lack of records access in these two counties for the last two decades. I finally had to step away from the computer at midnight, but I could have gone on for hours more. The website says that they are still scanning and adding more newspapers, so patrons should check back often! [Can you see me doing Snoopy’s happy dance?] I was able to find the obituary of Gladys’ great grandmother, Belinda C. Foster, which previously I had only been able to find in a transcription, and many other little tidbits of gossip about my ancestors.

I will leave you with a small sample from the weekly news gossip column of West York, Illinois, from March 1896, announcing the marriage of Gladys’ parents.

Foster-Lawhead Marriage Announcement, 1896

Clark County Herald (Marshall, Illinois), 11 March 1896, p. 5, col. 2.

Post originally found: https://genealogylady.net/2014/09/27/progess-september-27/

Book of Me – Prompt 14: Special People

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The Book of Me – Written by You is a weekly blog prompt created by Julie Goucher of the blog Angler’s Rest. This is a fifteen month writing project to highlight my life so that I will have something to leave behind for my descendants. Week fourteen’s prompt is also Special People and is a continuation of the last prompt.

If you had to hold a dinner party and could invite a maximum of 12 special people who would you invite?

You CAN include family this time. Perhaps they are ancestors you have never met or people that you know/knew.

What meals would you serve and why?

Perhaps include the recipe or a photo if you decided to actually cook the items.

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My dinner party would include family members who have all passed on at this point. Most of them I have never known. I have lots of questions for them because they didn’t write anything down or leave much for me to discover about their lives.

The Guests

Alfred M. Dicks and his first wife Ruth Reynolds: They were Quakers. Their families were part of the Quaker migration to North Carolina in the mid 1700s. After staying in the south for several generations, the Quakers began migrating north again. Slavery was a huge issue in the early 1800s. Some remained in the south but many moved in the decades before the Civil War. Some of the North Carolina monthly meetings were decimated by migration. Ruth’s parents migrated a few years before she was born. Alfred traveled as a young man in the 1830s, sometime after the death of his father in 1833. Ruth died young after bearing six children in the 1850s. I know very little about her. Her name appears in very few documents. When she and Alfred married in 1840, their marriage was a civil one which got them disowned from the local Quaker Monthly Meeting. I suspect the meeting was too far away which made it difficult to attend regularly. Also there were lots of strong political feelings and divisions between the monthly meetings in eastern Illinois and western Indiana at that time. I have lots of questions for Alfred, too. He managed to avoid the census takers in 1860. I do not know exactly when Alfred or Ruth died or where they are buried.

John Alden and Priscilla Mullins: I have always known I was a Mayflower descendant. The lineage of John and Priscilla was the first that my grandmother proved. We “know” so much about their fabled courtship and little else. John’s parentage is unknown. We have very few dates for this couple, including when they married, the births of the children, and when Priscilla died. Hearing about their daily struggles to create a new life in this country would be fascinating.

George Rea and Sarah Ann Jewell: George Rea was an Irishman by birth. He journeyed to America and settled in Greene County, Indiana. So far I have uncovered little information about George’s life in Ireland. He was a presumably successful farmer who owned a sizeable acreage of land in Indiana. George was about 20 years older than his wife Sarah but she died first, perhaps in childbirth. I am currently trying to prove Sarah’s lineage. There was only one Jewell family in Greene County and I think I know how she fits but I have no direct evidence. Again, I have lots of questions for this couple.

David Yegerlehner and Magdalena Strahm: The patriarch of the Yegerlehner family in America and his wife left their homeland to settle in America in 1851. Why? Where & when did Magdalena die? David was a carpet weaver. I would have enjoyed watching him weave. Perhaps they could teach me Swiss or share stories of their life in the Alps.

Michael Schiele and Elizabeth Krieble: I think I have enough questions about Michael and his German ancestry to warrant an invitation to this dinner. Elizabeth’s daughter Nancy raises lots of interesting questions as well. Nancy’s descendents would certainly like some answers about her father.

Roscoe S. Yegerlehner and Gladys Foster: Now that I am old enough to ask the hard family questions, my grandparents have long been gone. Since starting this project, the number of questions that I would have liked to ask my grandparents has increased exponentially. Even sitting with my grandmother for a few hours and having her identify people in the sea of photographs would be a treat.

The dinner

I would like to have a potluck picnic like I remember from all the family reunions of my childhood. Every summer we traveled to Indiana to visit my grandparents. Generally, at some point, a family reunion would be held during our visit. A few times, the reunion was held at my aunt and uncle’s house. At that time, their house was on the outskirts of Centerville. The house was surrounded by corn fields on the two sides, the road to the front, and a wooded area to the back. All my mom’s cousins would come over and all the second cousins would run around for hours. Everyone brought some kind of dish to share.

Since my family does not have a tradition of family recipes being passed down, I would like each of my ancestral couples to bring a family dish that was special for their family and time period. One dish sticks out from my childhood. It appeared on the table for most picnics or special occasions. I am not sure which side of the family the recipe came from. Since my own children have an aversion to food with “sauces,” the tradition hasn’t been continued.

The recipe –

Five Cup Salad:
1 cup crushed pineapple
1 cup mandarin oranges
1 cup of shredded coconut
1 cup of mini marshmallows
1 cup of sour cream

Throw all the ingredients in a bowl and mix together.