Tracking Ancestor Movements: Pining For A 19th Century Ankle Bracelet

Have you ever struggled to pin down an ancestor's movements?

Do you ever wonder, "when did he go from here to there?" Surely I'm not the only genealogist who wishes he could go back in time with an ankle bracelet.

This is the case for my fifth great-grandfather Thomas Kirk.

At some point shortly after the turn of the 19th century, he moved from his purported birth state of Virginia to Ohio where he raised his family, died, and was buried.

Establishing A Timeline of Events
The location and date of Thomas' marriage to Sarah Bonar are unknown, but it's believed to have occurred in approximately 1804 in Ohio County, Virginia where she was born (now West Virginia).

To complicate matters further, even Bonar family histories lost track of Sarah once she married Thomas. The wonderful Bonar Genealogy published by Dorothy Elizabeth Rine Brown in 1969 (and made available online by her son) includes lengthy portraits of Sarah's siblings, but only a few sparse lines for her:

"Sarah Bonar, m ______ Kirk. The records of the late Tabitha Bonar Wilson say that Sarah "Sallie" married a man by the name of Kirk, and that they lived at Captina, Belmont Co, Ohio."

The Bonar family didn't even remember the first name of the man she married! Clearly, the Kirk family was the Bermuda Triangle of documented family history.

Sarah married Thomas, moved to Ohio, and slipped away. However, not without that gleaming geographic clue: according to the Bonar genealogy they initially settled in Captina, Belmont County, Ohio.

I have no idea where the town of Captina is today, but Belmont County is just across the Ohio River from Ohio County, Virginia.

Losing My Census
Frustratingly, census enumerations provide limited help in this case. Census records do not exist for Ohio before 1820, and the situation in Virginia isn't much better.

Virginia's 1790 census is missing and the 1800 enumeration survives for only two counties, and neither is Ohio County - where I might expect to find the Bonars and perhaps a courting Thomas Kirk.

Censuses do provide an interesting indirect clue. Thomas and Sarah's eldest child, Vachel Kirk, was born in Ohio according to the 1880, 1900, and 1910 enumerated responses of his three children, positioning Thomas' family in the Buckeye state by the time Vachel was born in approximately 1805.

Here a Sister, There a Sister
When I read that Thomas and Sarah began married life in Belmont County, I was reminded of another connection to that area.

I've been eyeing a couple - Hugh and Ann Ford - who were Thomas' neighbors in the final years of his life in Licking County, Ohio. Ann's maiden name was Kirk and she was one year older than Thomas.

According to a biography of their son Hugh Jr., Hugh and Anna (Kirk) Ford lived in Kirkwood Township, Belmont County, Ohio in 1815 and "remained until April 1832" when they moved to Monroe Township in Licking County.

Thomas bought 171 acres in Monroe Township beginning in 1838. Was it to be nearer his sister and brother-in-law?

Before that move, Thomas lived on land that he purchased in 1812 in Licking Township. Curiously, he appeared on tax records before that year. In fact, he paid taxes on land in Licking Township as early as 1806, suggesting that he was in the area as early as 1805.

If he was paying tax on land in 1806, does that mean he owned land at that time? Would a resident have paid tax on land they were just renting? This may suggest that there's a pre-1812 land record I need to track down, perhaps in Fairfield County (Before Licking County was established in 1808, Licking Township fell within the boundaries of Fairfield County).

The likelihood that Thomas was in Licking Township by 1805 reminded me of yet another person of interest.

A published history of Licking County included a handful of biographies of prominent citizens. One of those was for Isaiah Geiger who was the grandson of Anthony and Mary Geiger. Mary's maiden name was Kirk and she was about six years older than Thomas. Was she another sister?

Isaiah's biography noted, "His grandfather emigrated to this county from Virginia in 1805, when his father [Jacob Geiger] was six weeks old, and first settled in Licking township."

Did Thomas travel to Licking Township with his sister and brother-in-law in 1805? That theory would fit with my working timeline.

Now the hard work continues to prove or disprove, and without the help of a tracking device...

Ancestor Patronus: Encounters With Spirit Animals

I'm in the midst of a family history road trip in Licking County, Ohio.

My fifth great-grandfather Thomas Kirk settled in the County by 1805. In the years ahead, he farmed and raised a family of 13 children with his wife Sarah Bonar until he was "accidentally killed" in 1846.

My first stop when I arrived in Licking was to the Beard-Green Cemetery to pay my respects at his grave.

Searching for my family, I combed through the headstones - many of them dating to the first half of the 19th century. There were dozens of stones to eyeball. The first burial dated to 1810, and most of the graves are for descendants of Benjamin Green and John Beard, two of the early settlers of the County.

Beard-Green is surrounded by the Dawes Arboretum with a thick growth of trees defining its border. I discovered Thomas and Sarah Kirk on the edge of the cemetery with the remains of their original headstones at the entrance of a trail leading into the dark woods. Both headstones are broken with the top portion - and any inscription - now missing.

Thomas Kirk (left with yellow flowers) and Sarah (Bonar) Kirk (right with purple flowers)

I was excited to finally be able to pay my respects at the grave of the man who has consumed so much of my brain power as I research the identities of his parents and their ancestral origins.

My excitement doubled when I discovered the footstone for their eldest son and my fourth great-grandfather Vachel Kirk. Genealogies indicated he was also buried in Beard-Green, but it was thought that his stone no longer stood.

Just beyond Thomas' grave I found a headstone with its inscription completely weathered away. The grave had a footstone (which is common for many of the burials in the cemetery). I saw that there were two letters inscribed on the stone. I crouched down to better make out the engraving. To my great delight I read aloud: "V. K."

Vachel Kirk. It was him, I was sure of it. I checked the cemetery census and there was no enumeration for any person with those initials. The proximity to Thomas and Sarah made it certain in my mind.

Vachel was a young man when he died in 1832. He was married with three young children. I speculate that when he died, he was buried on the edge of the Beard and Green families' cemetery at the request of Thomas. In 1835, Sarah died and the family buried her near her eldest son. Thomas followed her in 1846 when he was laid to rest next to the mother of his children.

Vachel Kirk's footstone

Following my discoveries on the cemetery's edge, I wandered back into the main grounds to review other headstones. Just minutes after finding Vachel's footstone, something caught my eye at the cemetery's edge where I had just paid my respects to my Kirk ancestors.

A doe emerged from the trees by their graves, delicately stepped past Vachel's stone and made its way into the cemetery.

The doe's presence startled me at first, but then struck me as a sign - perhaps of thanks for discovering Vachel's grave.

Encounters With Spirit Animals
The encounter gave me chills and reminded me of the magic of Harry Potter.

In the Harry Potter novels, one of the most powerful spells in all of wizardom allows the conjurer to create a protective shield called a Patronus.

The Patronus is "...a guardian which acts as a shield...a kind of positive force, a projection of...hope, happiness, the desire to survive..."

They usually take the form of an animal. Harry Potter's Patronus was a stag, and his mentor Dumbledore's was a phoenix.

Was the doe an ancestral guardian?

What Does The Fox Say?
The young doe wasn't my first encounter with a spirit animal guiding me to my ancestors' graves.

In the mountains just west of Denver is the small town of Idaho Springs - once known for its booming mining industry. In the town's cemetery rests my fourth great-grandparents Thomas and Susan Elizabeth (Day) Stevens.

Thomas was killed in a horrific mining explosion in November 1886.

On a trip home to Colorado earlier this spring, I went to see his burial for the first time. Walking along a dirt path searching for his grave, I stopped at the sudden appearance of a fox. It was completely unafraid and alternated between keeping me under a watchful eye and facing in the direction of the Stevens' graves.

Between the doe and fox, I can't help but feel my ancestors are guiding me with spirit animals as though I'm a Disney character whose genealogy is being guided by an unseen hand.

Hey, I can use all the help I can get. Send me a herd of spirit animals! I just wonder how Elizabeth Shown Mills would advise me to cite my animal friends as a source...

Have you had similar goose bump-inducing experiences during your family history research?

Surname Evolution: A Y-DNA Journey From Ohio to Ireland

My interest in family history was piqued in 2012. That year began a journey of surprises.

Whispered family rumor was finally substantiated by autosomal DNA. A laboratory confirmed that my paternal grandfather was the product of a relationship between my great-grandmother and a man named Samuel Kirk. This was shocking news, of course, because Samuel was not her husband - and he was not the man I had believed, without question, was my great-grandfather.

I quickly learned my first lesson of genetic genealogy: DNA doesn't lie.

In an instant, I discovered my biological patrilineal surname was Kirk.

Patriarch Guards Brick Wall in Ohio

With a hard-earned appreciation for genetic genealogy, I was careful not to make any assumptions about my new paternal ancestry. In other words, I didn't hop a jet to Scotland, buy myself a kilt, or enroll in bagpipe lessons. Although Kirk clearly seemed Scottish, I was cautiously discerning in my ancestral origins research.

Instead, I carefully traced my newfound paternal line back several generations, studiously pairing the paper trail with DNA tests. I left nothing to chance or assumption - the results of the lab and archives reinforced each other. Every preceding generation was confirmed in blood (okay, not really blood, but saliva or cheek swab sample doesn't hit the same dramatic note). Suffice it to say, there was an abundance of autosomal and Y-DNA testing involved.

Ultimately, the pedigree ground to a halt at a man named Thomas Kirk - my fifth great-grandfather. Thomas was born in 1778 in Virginia (most likely) and died in 1846 in Licking County, Ohio, where he lived much of his life.

Who were Thomas' parents and what were their ancestral origins?

Damaged and heartbreaking records loss have foiled efforts to move beyond Thomas. Ohio census records before 1820 are non-existent. An 1875 fire in the Licking County courthouse destroyed many probate records, including the bulk of Thomas' file. There is no known family bible. County tax and property records are interesting, but do not include any obvious smoking gun.

The paper trail is frustratingly sparse when it comes to the question of Thomas' parentage and ancestral origins. Except two curious bits of information.

A Census and Family Lore Pinpoint the Emerald Isle

In the 1870, 1880, and 1900 US Federal census enumerations, Thomas' children gave their father's birth location as US-based and, beginning in 1880, the majority specified Virginia.

However, in 1880, his daughter Jane (Kirk) Tracy Bottenfield went rogue and indicated her father was born in Ireland (contradicting her US-born response in 1870).

What should I make of her response? Was Thomas of Irish descent?

Perhaps Jane's Ireland response hints at her father's ancestral origins and not necessarily his actual birth location. As author and family historian Barry McCain noted, "Scots-Irish in Colonial America ... often described their ethnicity as simply Irish."

Dovetailing nicely with Jane's answer, is a second fragile clue regarding Thomas' ancestral origins. It comes from a snippet of family lore. A third great-grandson of Thomas shared with me his family's understanding of our Kirk history:

"I was told the following: The family originated in Ireland. 4 or 5 brothers left in the potato famine for Scotland. They changed their name to Kirk (very common name) and emigrated to America. I have no dates for any of this. 3 or 4 landed in Ohio near what is now Cincinnati."

A lot of history was packed into those few short sentences.

We know Thomas was in the US well before Ireland's Great Famine (1845-1852). Records show he paid taxes in Fairfield County (the predecessor to Licking County) as early as 1806, and purchased land in Licking County in January 1812.

Perhaps, if there was any truth to the lore, the "4 or 5 brothers" leaving Ireland during a potato famine for Scotland were Thomas' father and uncles (or even grandfather and great-uncles) and the famine was an earlier event - maybe the Irish Famine (1740-1741) known in Ireland as Bliain an Áir, the year of slaughter.

Most curious to me was that the family purportedly changed their Irish surname to Kirk.

I began to wonder what role there was for DNA in helping me leapfrog beyond Thomas Kirk and his Ohio brick wall. Could genetic genealogy help me find my ancestral homeland in the Emerald Isle?

Y-DNA Recreates Thomas Kirk

Thomas Kirk had seven sons who lived to adulthood and had children of their own. Fortuitously, there are living direct male descendants of each of these seven sons.

After a great deal of sleuthing, I tracked down seven of these men living in seven states. Each were distant cousins who were third and fourth great-grandsons of Thomas Kirk. Committed to uncovering our shared ancestral origins, they all agreed to complete a Y-DNA test.

The Y-DNA (111 Short Tandem Repeat) results of the seven men allowed us to control for genetic mutations - a naturally occurring phenomenon - and identify Thomas' likely original Y-DNA markers.

Having essentially pinpointed Thomas' original genetic signature, we could now confidently search for other men who matched him in the hopes of identifying new family members - perhaps even in Ireland.

Something Kind of Quirky

Thomas' recreated Y-DNA results did indeed identify two close genetic matches.

The first high-level match was to a man who shared the Kirk surname. But this man was not a direct descendant of Thomas Kirk (1778-1846).

Instead, he was, I believe, the descendant of a man named Vachel Kirk (1783-1836) who lived in Fairfield, a city in Ohio that stretches across both Butler and Hamilton counties. Fairfield is about 20 miles north of Cincinnati.

Yes, Y-DNA testing found a Kirk cousin who descended from a Kirk, a contemporary of my Thomas, who lived near Cincinnati - the city identified in the family lore.

Suddenly the family lore was earning its spot in the library's non-fiction catalog. The alleged Ireland origin increasingly seemed more plausible.

A second high-level Y-DNA match was to an American man with the surname Quirk. His ancestry traced back to a Thomas Quirk (1802-1882) who was born in Ireland's County Tipperary near Cashel. Thomas was the son of Michael and Catherine (Keating) Quirke, also of County Tipperary, Ireland.

If Quirk's genealogy paper trail was correct, this close genetic match may have helped my Kirk family pole vault over the Ohio brick wall and land in southern Ireland. 

High Level Y-DNA Testing

Both this Quirk match and two of Thomas Kirk's descendants completed Family Tree DNA's Big Y-500 test, which "tests thousands of known branch markers as well as millions of places where there may be new branch markers." The higher level Y-DNA test identified unique (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms) markers shared by the Quirk and Kirk men. 

A Family Tree DNA group administrator who helped guide me through this process offered congratulations: "This is just what you were looking for. The results cement the relationship between your Kirks and the Quirks."

Another researcher noted that our shared haplogroup (what the International Society of Genetic Genealogy defines as a genetic population group of people who share a common ancestor on the patriline), "is Southern Irish in origin." She added that it "is considered to be strongly the origin of the Eóganacht dynasty with great numbers of our members [other tested members of the group] in this sub-branch having Eóganacht surnames." 

I had to quickly brush up on my southern Irish history. According to Wikipedia, the Eóganacht was an Irish dynasty based near Cashel that ruled southern Ireland (now the province of Munster) from the 6th to the 10th centuries.

There was a hiccup in linking this geography and my family. Kirk is not a southern Irish surname. It is a Scots Anglo Norman surname. Is this where the name change comes into play as suggested in the family lore and Y-DNA results?

What's In A Name?

A third researcher weighed in: "O'Quirk, by the way, is a Munster (Eóganacht Cashel) name and a Munster origin of your family is highly likely."

I subsequently learned that O'Quirk is believed to be a derivative of the original Gaelic surname O'Cuirc.

Did the O'Quirks leave Ireland for Scotland, as the lore suggests, where their name was Anglicized to the phonetically similar Kirk? That doesn't seem too far fetched.

The Quirk family that is a genetic match to my Kirks may have protected the integrity of their surname by bypassing migration through Britain and heading straight for America. 

Whatever the circumstances, the Quirk (or Quirke) surname is still prevalent in southern Ireland, particularly around the Cashel area. Are these Quirkes distant genetic cousins and the roots of my Irish patrilineal heritage? 

A Path Forward

The journey is not over yet. I want to link my US-based genetic family (both Kirks and Quirks) with Quirkes in Ireland.

Accordingly, the next step is to identify male Quirkes in the Cashel area willing to participate in Y-DNA testing to help substantiate these research claims.

While all signs point to my Kirks having southern Irish origins and a DNA link with the Quirk surname, I need genetic proof to anchor the theories in the Emerald Isle. 

A Quirke male from Cashel, Ireland could play a pivotal role in confirming my ancestral origins, and bringing the evolution of my surname to its final conclusion - back to where it all began.

Mapping Your Ancestry: A Genealogist's Quick Guide to Google Maps

Do you ever find yourself on the road in a new city and wonder: did I have ancestors in these parts?

Last week I wrote about a road trip I made to West Virginia and how a map of ancestor burials I plotted on Google Maps reminded me of the nearby graves of my sixth great-grandparents Anthony and Margaret (Messersmith) Rosenberger.

Whether tracking burials, births, marriages, or even homesteads, Google Maps is an essential tool for the family historian. Below is an easy-to-follow 12-step process for creating your own genealogy map. Click on any of the images to enlarge them.

Step 1: Load Google Maps at https://www.maps.google.com/maps and click on "Sign In" in the upper right hand corner to log in to your google (Gmail) account.

Step 2: Click on the three horizontal bar "Menu" icon on the left hand side of the screen. This will open up the Google Maps menu.

Step 3: Select "Your Places" from the Google Maps menu.

Step 4: Click on the "Maps" option on the far right hand side of the menu.

Step 5: A new map will be created that is ready for you to personalize. Click on "Untitled map" and rename it. For example, "Ancestor Burials".

Step 6: You can also provide a description of the map. For example, "A map of all of my ancestor burials." Hit save.

Step 7: Search for a cemetery (or other location that you are plotting) and select it from the drop down menu.

Step 8: After selecting your cemetery from the search menu, click "Add to map".

Step 9: Click the pencil icon to add information about your ancestor(s) buried in the cemetery.

Step 10: After adding the names for your ancestor burials, hit save.

Step 11: In the menu on the left, place your mouse near the cemetery name and click on the paint can to make additional edits.

Step 12: This will open a menu that allows you to change the color or even the icon for the marker that plots the cemetery on your map. For example, I changed my icons to be a yellow flower. 

After making all edits, you're ready to add more locations to your map. Return to Step 7 and repeat the process until you've added all of your desired locations. The map saves in real time and will be in your Google Maps archive for future reference.

Happy plotting! Here's to successful family history road trips.

Mapping Ancestor Burials: Hitting The Road And Paying Respects

I don't live near my family. Nearly 1,700 miles separate me from the Rocky Mountain home where I grew up.

However, when I put my Family Sleuther deerstalker cap on, I'm much closer to my people. True, they're not living and most of them rest eternally in the ground, but they're closer'ish.

Whether for work or leisure, I'm occasionally on the road. As a family historian, it would be a gross dereliction of duty if I overlooked my ancestors during those travels.

Using Google Maps, I've pinpointed the cemeteries where my ancestors are known to be buried. I reference this map when I'm traveling somewhere new, so I can assess just how close I may be to an opportunity to pay my respects to those that have come before me.

Ancestor burials mapped out using Google Maps

West Virginia: Wild and Wonderful
Last weekend, a quick getaway trip to West Virginia unexpectedly put me in close proximity to my sixth great-grandparents Anthony and Margaret (Messersmith) Rosenberger. They are the closest known ancestral burials to me on the East Coast.

My first stop was to Martinsburg, West Virginia. You may recall that I just wrote a blog two weeks ago about Anthony's public opposition to the presidency of Andrew Jackson. His 19th century viewpoints were only known because of their publication in the Martinsburg Gazette.

Buried in the German Lutheran Reformed Cemetery, Anthony, who passed away in 1853, rests eternally beside his second wife Nancy (not my direct ancestor). After entering the grounds through the wrought iron gate, I wandered among the markers - most of them well over a 100 years old - until I found his stone.

His headstone no longer stands upright, and the engraved text is weathered away, largely illegible. In fact, the only way to identify his stone was by comparing its shape to a copy of a photo that was taken years earlier - when the inscription was still discernible - and uploaded to Find A Grave. It helped, too, that he's buried beside his wife Nancy and her marker is still legible.

German Lutheran Reformed Cemetery, Martinsburg, West Virginia

Anthony Rosenberger (1771-1853)

Anthony's first wife and my direct ancestor, Margaret (Messersmith) Rosenberger, pre-deceased him in 1830. Her Find A Grave memorial mistakenly states that she's also buried in Martinsburg at the German Luthern Reformed Cemetery, but I discovered this is not true.

I noticed a comment online that flagged that she was actually buried about 15 miles away in the Union Church Cemetery in Middleway, West Virginia.

A short drive later and I discovered that, sadly, her headstone is one of the few no longer standing upright - just like Anthony's. I was further disappointed to discover that her stone - facing skyward - is now fractured into several pieces although largely intact. This unfortunate development must have happened since 2008 when a photo uploaded to Find A Grave showed the stone flat on the ground, but still in one piece.

Union Church Cemetery, Middleway, West Virginia

Rebecca Margaret (Messersmith) Rosenberger (1772-1830)

I count myself fortunate that I had my ancestor burial map to remind me that I had family in the area - less than 100 miles from where I live. After seeing firsthand the rapidly deteriorating condition of the stones, I'm very glad I made the visit when I did. Time is brutal to stone markers. Nothing lasts forever.

Don't you think it's time to draft your ancestor burial map and hit the open road (don't forget flowers and to upload photos to Find A Grave!)?