A Sister Emerges From the Shadows

Although he's not my direct ancestor, George W. Geiger is an important source of information that is helping me pole-vault over my patrilineal brick wall.

Born in 1841, George Geiger was the grandson of Mary (Kirk) Geiger (1774-1832). Mounting evidence has led me to speculate that Mary was the sister of my fifth great-grandfather Thomas Kirk (1778-1846).

George is indispensable to my research because he compiled details about his immediate family's history. Those records endured over time when many others were lost to fire or poor record keeping.

Among his research were exacting details about his grandmother:

Mary (Kirk) Geiger was born in Virginia in 1774. She was of Irish descent and daughter of Joseph and Sarah Kirk. She had two brothers and one sister.

Pinpointing Joseph and Sarah Kirk as Mary's parents has allowed me to infer that they were also Thomas' parents.

If Thomas and Mary were siblings born to Joseph and Sarah Kirk of Virginia, who was the unnamed sister?

Finding family

Although George Geiger's surviving notes do not name Mary's three siblings, there is a candidate up for consideration to be the sister.

When Thomas Kirk died in December 1846, the Licking County, Ohio probate court appointed three men to appraise his estate. One of them was Hugh Ford.

Court-ordered appraisal of Thomas Kirk's estate, names Hugh Ford
March 13, 1847

At the time of Thomas' death, Hugh was his neighbor and lived on a farm to the north in Monroe Township, Licking County.

Detail of 1847 Monroe Township, Licking County, Ohio map
highlighting land owned by Thomas Kirk and Hugh Ford

Fifteen years earlier, on November 29, 1831, Hugh and his wife Ann bought their Monroe Township farm in two separate land transactions. According to their son Hugh Ford Jr., the Ford family moved to the farm in 1832 from Belmont County, Ohio, where they had lived since about 1803.

Curiously, the two deeds were witnessed by, drum roll, please...

Thomas Kirk!

Monroe Township, Licking County, Ohio land deed, purchased by Hugh Ford
witnessed by Thomas Kirk

In 1831, at the time of these transactions, Thomas Kirk lived in Licking Township. He didn't move to Monroe Township, south of the Fords, until seven years later in 1838.

Why would Thomas Kirk be a witness on two land deeds for Hugh Ford who lived ninety miles to the east in Belmont County?

Was there a relationship between the two men?

Identifying the unnamed sister

I began digging into the identity of Hugh's wife Ann.

Again, according to son Hugh Ford Jr., Ann Ford "was born December 26th, 1777, and was married to Hugh Ford September 18th, 1800." Ann lived to be enumerated in the 1850 US Federal Census, which gave her birth location as the state of Virginia (just like Thomas and Mary!).

Junior also wrote that his mother was the daughter of a man named Joseph Kirk.

Kirk!

Ann's maiden name was Kirk!

Ann's father, like Mary (Kirk) Geiger's and likely Thomas', was named Joseph Kirk!

What were the odds that Thomas would be a witness on two land deeds for a man who lived ninety miles away and was married to a woman born in Virginia who was the daughter of a Joseph Kirk?

Prior to his appearance in Belmont County, tax records placed Hugh Ford across the Ohio River in Brooke County, Virginia. Hugh appeared on Brooke County tax records from 1797 to 1802.

It's worth noting that Thomas Kirk was also in Brooke County from 1799 to 1803. It was here that he met and likely married his wife Sarah Bonar.

A brief notation from a Brooke County minister confirmed that Hugh Ford and Nancy Kirk were married on December 18, 1800 [note that this date is three months later - to the exact day - than the marriage date given by their son Hugh Jr]. Also, Nancy was, according to FamilySearch, a common diminutive nickname for Ann.

1800 Brooke County, Virginia marriage of Hugh Ford and Ann "Nancy" Kirk

Presumably Hugh and Ann (Kirk) Ford moved from Brooke County, Virginia to Belmont County, Ohio in about 1803.

According to Bonar family history, Thomas and Sarah (Bonar) Kirk moved to Captina in Belmont County after they left Brooke County. Did Thomas and Sarah follow his sister and brother-in-law into the burgeoning Ohio frontier?

It's also worth flagging the naming patterns employed by all three Kirks:

• It appears that Hugh and Ann Ford named their first four children after their parents. Two of the four were Henry and Rachel - the names of Hugh's parents. The other two were Joseph and Sarah. We know Ann's father was Joseph, so can we infer that her mother was named Sarah? If yes, that would suggest Ann was also the child of a Joseph and Sarah Kirk just like Mary (Kirk) Geiger and Thomas Kirk. Furthermore, Ann's last child, a son, was named Thomas Kirk Ford (middle name Kirk!). Was this an homage to her brother?

• Mary (Kirk) Geiger's first two children were named Joseph and Sarah.

• Thomas Kirk also had children named Joseph and Sarah.

The paper trail seems to suggest a family relationship. What do you think? How off the wall are my interpretations?

Next up is to try and find DNA matches - if possible at this distant relationship level - to help prove that Thomas Kirk and Mary Geiger were siblings with Ann Ford. The research journey continues.

Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder: Now Where's That Marriage Record?!

Sometimes the absence of evidence is just as important as finding a record.

I remind myself of this lesson each time I search for the marriage record for my fifth great-grandparents Thomas Kirk and Sarah Bonar.

In genealogy, it's one of the go-to documents. Family historians begin their research with three primary vital records: birth, marriage, and death.

Yet every time I search for the Kirks' nuptials, I come up empty handed. The absence of the record makes my obsession yearning to find it grow unabated.

The Kirk Family's Nuptials in Family Lore 

Kirk descendants have long searched for a marriage bond, banns, license, certificate, announcement, or anything to confirm exactly when and where Thomas Kirk and Sarah Bonar were married.

A family history published in 1992 concluded that they were "probably" married in 1804 in Belmont County, Ohio. A handful of online genealogies parrot this date and location without corroborating documentation.

The date seems likely considering it preceded the birth of their eldest child, Vachel Kirk, who was born in about 1805 in Ohio. In 1880, 1900, and 1910, Vachel's three children each reported to census enumerators that their father's birth location was Ohio.

Furthermore, an 1806 tax record assessing liability for the prior tax year positions Thomas and Sarah Kirk in Licking County, Ohio in 1805.

The Bonar Genealogy, published by Dorothy Elizabeth Rine Brown, details lengthy biographical portraits of each of Sarah's nine siblings, but offers surprisingly little about her. In fact, the genealogy was unsure of her husband's first name.

Brown wrote that, "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 County, Ohio."

Perhaps this is where earlier Kirk family histories landed on the Belmont County location.

Location, Location, Location

Sarah's parents, William and Jane (McCulloch) Bonar, raised their family in the northern panhandle of Virginia (now West Virginia). County boundaries shifted over the years, but by 1797 the area was split between Ohio and Brooke counties.

Northern panhandle of West Virginia, Wikimedia Commons

Last week, I shared my discovery that Thomas Kirk arrived in Brooke County, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1799 and appeared in county personal property tax lists through 1803.

With confirmation that Thomas was in Sarah's neck of the woods, surely they married in the area. Known marriage locations for her siblings support this theory.

Surviving marriage records and genealogies indicate that of the ten Bonar children, at least four - and maybe as many as seven - were married in Brooke County, (West) Virginia.

An elder sister, Catherine, married "before 1803" and is said to have lived "up back of Wheeling" when first married, suggesting that she, too, was likely married in Virginia - bringing the total number to eight. It appears that a single brother, James Bonar, was married in Belmont County, Ohio in 1816. He is the lone outlier confirmed to have married outside Brooke County, and did so twelve years after Thomas and Sarah's likely wedding date.

It seems most likely that Sarah and Thomas would marry in her home county. Wouldn't it raise eyebrows for a single woman in the early 1800s to ride off across the border into the wilds of the Ohio frontier before marrying?

In the National Genealogical Society's Research in West Virginia guidebook, Barbara Vines Little writes that, "During the colonial period and the first half of the nineteenth century, Virginia law required either the posting of banns or the posting of a marriage bond in the bride's county of residence prior to marriage."

If the law said the marriage had to be posted in the bride's county of residence and most of her siblings were married in their home county, then the search should definitely begin in Brooke County. Fortunately, FamilySearch has digitized Brooke County marriage licenses dating back to 1797.

The Search Is On

I trawled through Brooke County's records eager to find evidence of the Kirk Bonar marriage. But I kept trawling with no discovery. As I neared the end of the record set, I landed on an explanatory slide.

I was given an explanation why I hadn't found - and may never find - their marriage record: "These records probably do not contain all the marriages in Brooke County, as many were not recorded due to laxity or religious beliefs."

In the National Genealogical Society's Research in Virginia guidebook, Eric Grundset writes that, "Although religious requirements for recording marriages have existed since the earliest days of Virginia, surviving pre-1800 documentation is uneven and incomplete. By the late eighteenth century and into the early nineteenth century the records improve, but there are many unions not found in church or government registers."

In other words, despite the religious and legal requirements for recording marriages, the documentation is known to be incomplete. The marriage between Thomas Kirk and Sarah Bonar may have been lost to history due to "laxity or religious beliefs."

There's Always A Fire

What about the church? Maybe the marriage was recorded in a surviving church volume?

It just so happens that a Brooke County chapel with a congregation founded in 1785 still exists today. Kadesh Chapel is a Methodist Church that has served parishioners for more than two centuries.

Many of the Kirk descendants were Methodist. A Brooke County Methodist chapel with roots to the late 18th century sounded very promising.

Does the Chapel have surviving church records that I could review?

I reached out to the pastor to share my quandary and ask for his help in determining whether any records survived. He investigated the question over the course of several weeks while I waited with fingers crossed for good news.

"I have run into a roadblock," came his unfortunate reply. "Our present keeper of the Church records has informed me that her records do not go back further than 1940's. The woman who had possession of Kadesh Chapel's records had a fire in her home and all was lost."

There was a fire and all was lost is essentially - tragically and now comically - how many of my Thomas Kirk research endeavors end.

The Search Is On, Again

Before falling into despair, Barbara Vines Little advises that, "Researchers should check the records of adjacent counties (or states) when the marriage cannot be found in the county of residence."

This turns the research spotlight to three other locations: 

• Ohio County, (West) Virginia, located to the south of Brooke County.
• Belmont County, Ohio, located along the western border of Ohio County, (West) Virginia. 
• Jefferson County, Ohio, located along the western border of Brooke County, (West) Virginia. 

Ohio County, (West) Virginia: Again, FamilySearch has digitized marriage licenses for Ohio County dating to 1790. Unfortunately, Thomas Kirk does not appear in the groom's index and no marriage record was found as I trawled through the volume (in a desperate hope that the indexer had overlooked their marriage).

Belmont County, Ohio: A descendant of Thomas and Sarah Kirk personally reviewed the marriage volumes in Belmont County. She shared that she "actually went through the marriage book in St. Clairsville [county seat for Belmont County] which started in 1803. Someone else looked for me in land grants for the period from 1800 - 1805. Nothing was found."

The digitized marriage index for Belmont County, Ohio, recording marriages between 1803 and 1821 does not include a Thomas Kirk. While I'm willing to investigate in the name of an exhaustive search, I remain skeptical that they married in Ohio instead of her home county in (West) Virginia.

Belmont County, Ohio 1803-1821 Marriage Index for Ks

Jefferson County, Ohio: At the moment, I'm in a holding pattern researching this county. The marriage records are not freely visible online at FamilySearch. I'll need to get myself to the Family History Library or a FamilySearch center with viewing rights.

Foiled By Laxity or Religious Beliefs?

It seems that a marriage record for Thomas Kirk and Sarah Bonar does not survive, perhaps lost in a devastating fire. Or it may never have been recorded for posterity due to "laxity or religious beliefs."

Yet I can't help but remain hopeful that a bound volume of marriage registers will be discovered tucked away in the dusty nether-regions of a courthouse attic, or a family bible will finally surface, or Jefferson County was in fact where they tied the knot, or... 

The possibilities are endless yet the search seems to have concluded that there is no surviving marriage record to be found. So now, if you'll excuse me, I'm skulking off to a dark corner to shed my tears and let it go.

Virginia Is For Lovers: Finding Thomas Kirk In His Father-In-Law's Hometown Tax Records

For 15 hours over two rainy days, I researched my heart out at Salt Lake City's famed Family History Library.

I stared at digitized records on computer screens until I was bleary-eyed, and trawled through enough miles of microfilm to circle the earth, twice.

Slowly, my steadfast research surfaced exciting new details integral to my chief genealogy obsession: my fifth great-grandfather Thomas Kirk.

An Exciting Discovery
On Saturday, with a few short hours before closing time, I made an exciting discovery - a collection of tax records that spanned 1797 into the early 1800s.

"Tax records?" I hear you asking with a yawn.

Admittedly, tax lists don't sound that exciting, but, I believe these particular documents account for five previously unaccounted years of Thomas Kirk's life. Five!

Furthermore, these records position him, for the first time, in the state of Virginia, corroborating the birth location given by his children to census enumerators in 1880 and 1900.

Thomas and his wife Sarah Bonar were early settlers in Licking County, Ohio. An 1806 Licking County tax record was, before this weekend, the earliest known record for Thomas. It indicated that the Kirks were in the Buckeye State by 1805 (the year the 1806 record assessed).

My speculative pre-Ohio timeline for Thomas went something like this:

• Born in Virginia in 1778, 
• Married Sarah Bonar in about 1804 (perhaps in Brooke County, Virginia or maybe Belmont County, Ohio), and 
• Their first child, my fourth great-grandfather Vachel Kirk, was born in Ohio in 1805.

Thomas' exact birth location in Virginia or any of his whereabouts before his arrival in Ohio were a mystery. I feared records of his pre-Ohio movements might have been destroyed during the Civil War.

On Saturday night, I walked away from the library's hallowed stacks with five new records that just might fill in missing years in the timeline of Thomas Kirk's life and give my research new avenues of pursuit.

Snooping Around His Father-In-Law
One of my primary research goals for this trip was to examine land, tax, and probate records for Brooke County, Virginia (now West Virginia).

Sarah Bonar's parents William and Jane (McCulloch) Bonar lived in Brooke County. According to the Bonar Genealogy, compiled by Dorothy Elizabeth Rine Brown, "Brooke Co was referred to as the 'wilderness' by frontiersmen" and William Bonar was documented as one of the county's early "home-seekers."

Brown wrote that the Bonars spent their entire lives in the county: "Here on their plantation William and Jane lived and died and reared a family of four sons and six daughters." Among those daughters was Sarah, Thomas' soon-to-be wife.

Surely Thomas Kirk would eventually bound onto the scene in Brooke County. How else was he going to meet and marry Sarah? The question was would he stick around long enough to leave his mark on the paper trail.

Brooke County's personal property tax lists, dating to 1797, survive and are available online.

I opened the first record and began my review of names. The lists are in alphabetical order by surname.

I quickly found Sarah's father William Bonar on the 1797 tax list, but there were no Kirks enumerated that year.

1797 Brooke County (West) Virginia Personal Property Tax List

I moved on to the 1798 tax list. Again, there was William Bonar yet no Kirks.

I loaded up the 1799 tax list. William Bonar was there as expected, but there were some new names under the Ks. Making their first appearance in the records were three Kirks. One of them was - drum roll, please - named Thomas!

1799 Brooke County (West) Virginia Personal Property Tax List

In addition to Thomas, the list included a John Kirk and a Caleb Kirk.

The first column in the tax list denoted, "White above 16". All three Kirks have a mark in this field.

The fourth column (the only other field with a notation) tracked the number of "Horses, Mares, Colts & Mules." John Kirk had none and, accordingly, was assessed no personal property tax. Both Thomas and Caleb Kirk had one and were each assessed a 12 cent tax.

The relationship, if any, between Thomas, John, and Caleb is unknown. Research needs to be done on the identities of these other two men.

Curiously, neither John nor Caleb were names that my Thomas Kirk gave to any of his sons, initially suggesting to me that they were not family names and raising some doubts about a familial relationship between the three men. But, alas, the tax records provide no answers on this front and only raise more questions. It remains interesting that three men surnamed Kirk appeared in the same county in the same year.

Over the next four years, Thomas Kirk was enumerated in Brooke County's personal property tax lists.

In 1800, Thomas and John Kirk were enumerated one after the other. John still didn't own any horses, but Thomas now owned two and paid a 24 cent tax. Caleb Kirk disappeared from the tax list entirely.

1800 Brooke County (West) Virginia Personal Property Tax List

In 1801 and 1802, Thomas and John Kirk appeared again - the only Kirks enumerated those years. In both years, Thomas paid a 24 cent tax for his two horses. John still did not own a horse.

1801 Brooke County (West) Virginia Personal Property Tax List

1802 Brooke County (West) Virginia Personal Property Tax List

In 1803, both men were enumerated for the fifth year in a row. However, John's personal fortunes were finally on the upswing. He now owned two horses, like Thomas, and was assessed a 24 cent tax (congratulations?!).

1803 Brooke County (West) Virginia Personal Property Tax List

In 1804, the year after Ohio became the 17th state to join the United States of America, Thomas Kirk was on the move. He no longer appeared in the tax list, although John Kirk remained with his two horses.

1804 Brooke County (West) Virginia Personal Property Tax List

John Kirk disappeared from Brooke County's personal property tax list the following year in 1805; himself now on the move.

Inference Is All I Have
How do I know that the Thomas Kirk enumerated in the Brooke County personal property tax lists between 1799 and 1803 is my fifth great-grandfather?

I don't, definitively.

The records simply don't afford me the luxury of a clear-cut answer.

However, when I triangulate this information with other research and family lore, the appearance of a Thomas Kirk in this particular area during this particular time is certainly eyebrow raising.

Just consider the facts:

• My Thomas Kirk married Sarah Bonar in about 1804.
• A Thomas Kirk appeared in Sarah Bonar's home county between 1799 and 1803.
• A Thomas Kirk disappeared from that county in 1804, the same year family lore speculates he married Sarah and moved across the Ohio River to Belmont County, Ohio.

This Thomas Kirk was simply in the right place at the right time.

I have also reviewed Brooke County's land tax records for this time period. It's noteworthy that Sarah Bonar's father, William Bonar, appeared on those lists and paid tax for sizable amounts of acreage. However, no men surnamed Kirk appeared on those lists. Thomas' absence from these lists doesn't strike me as unusual. He was a young man of 21 just starting out in the world. He would need to amass some fortune before he could purchase land.

Perhaps Thomas and Sarah saw greater opportunity for their new family in the wilderness of Ohio where vast amounts of land lured young pioneers with promises of wealth. That narrative would fit with known Kirk family and American history.

Pulling At Threads, Stitching a Research Path Forward

I would be remiss if I didn't also flag that among the tax lists were two other men who played a role in the story of Thomas Kirk:

• John Beard, who was married to a Margaret Kirk and sold Thomas Kirk 100 acres in Licking County, Ohio in 1812, was enumerated on Brooke County's tax lists beginning in 1798.
• Hugh Ford, who was married to Ann Kirk - an alleged sister to my Thomas Kirk, appeared on the tax lists from 1797 to 1802.

Hugh and Ann (Kirk) Ford moved to Belmont County, Ohio. Did Thomas and Sarah (Bonar) Kirk follow them there before continuing on to Licking County?

Although no marriage record has surfaced for Thomas and Sarah in either Brooke or Belmont counties, perhaps an 1804 tax record survives for Belmont County that enumerates Thomas Kirk.

Oh the possibilities! With new clues at hand, the sleuthing continues with renewed vigor.