{"id":70,"date":"2016-10-09T16:58:13","date_gmt":"2016-10-09T16:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/?p=70"},"modified":"2016-10-09T16:58:13","modified_gmt":"2016-10-09T16:58:13","slug":"wilson-williams-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/?p=70","title":{"rendered":"Wilson William’s Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com 19 Apr 2015<\/p>\n

\"brick-wall\"<\/p>\n

The term \u201cbrick wall\u201d in genealogy means an impasse has been reached and further knowledge is unavailable. \u00a0Conferences are always filled to capacity when the topic of how to break through a wall is presented. Those blocks affect us physically, through wasted time and resources, and emotionally, as frustration and disappointment.\u00a0 It\u2019s no surprise we\u2019re interested to find a way through that obstacle.<\/p>\n

Remember, though, that there are two sides to every wall.\u00a0 The frustration of needing to detour from my intended route may cloud my view of a solution.\u00a0 What I can\u2019t clearly see ahead is probably safe and sound, just not yet accessible.\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that the reason why walls were built in the first place \u2013 for protection?\u00a0 Next time you encounter a brick wall ancestor have a Zen moment and know the missing information is most likely safe somewhere just waiting to be found.<\/p>\n

When a family member invited me to be her travel partner on an upcoming business trip to Salt Lake City I was delighted.\u00a0 The Family History Library has always been on my bucket list but with work and other commitments, a vacation there wasn\u2019t visible on my horizon. With the hotel and plane reserved, I forged ahead with research goal setting and planning, my fourth rule of genealogy.<\/p>\n

\u201cFailing to plan is planning to fail.\u201d \u2013Alan Lakein<\/p>\n

My goal was to find clues<\/em><\/strong> on how to climb over at least one my top 10 walls in the four days I would be visiting.<\/p>\n

To accomplish my goal, I identified who I would be researching.\u00a0 This was difficult as I have a large family tree which results in many walls.\u00a0 I decided to select 5 from my family and 5 from my husband\u2019s side.\u00a0 I cheated a bit and included spouses so my actual 10 was more like 15.<\/p>\n

Then, I followed my number 1 rule of genealogy \u2013 write down everything you know and what you want to know \u2013 for each of the selected individuals. I also added where I found the information to prove what I did know.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Through experience I\u2019ve learned that family lore is just that \u2013 a word of mouth tradition that someone may have misheard, misunderstood or mythologized. Think the childhood game, telephone, where a sentence is whispered child to child with the last player repeating aloud what he\/she heard.\u00a0 The last oral sentence is not the same as the first oral sentence.\u00a0Just like the game, there is some similarities in family lore from the time of the original telling but not necessarily the whole story.<\/p>\n

In the late 1990\u2019s I discovered the truth about family lore the hard way. Happily clicking away on an online tree I had discovered and saving the info to my own tree, I never stopped to look where the poster had found his sources.\u00a0 \u00a0I spent several days adding many individuals to my husband\u2019s side only to learn late one evening that, according to the online tree, he was the great grandson many times removed of Odin and Frigg, the Norse god and goddess.\u00a0 My spouse is an awesome husband, a devoted dad, a dedicated employee and a loyal friend but it\u2019s a stretch to believe his Grandpa was the founder of the runic alphabet and his Grandma was a sorceress.\u00a0 He, understandably, liked what I found.\u00a0 I had to spend many hours deleting the line one individual at a time and have since checked sources before including new information in my tree.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cGenealogy without sources is mythology.\u201d -Unknown<\/p>\n

Definitely a painful but valuable learning experience!<\/p>\n

I have also found it useful to review my previously discovered sources before researching further on a line I haven\u2019t looked at for a while.\u00a0 There may be a hint in plain sight that I missed earlier or by reviewing the record, I may gain a new perspective.<\/p>\n

So in preparation for my trip, I pondered my sources for my husband\u2019s 4th<\/sup> great grandfather, Wilson Williams, born in 1754 in Roslyn Harbor, Nassau, New York.\u00a0 He is found in the 1790, 1800, 1810, 1820 and 1830 Federal censuses as living in North Hempstead, Queens, New York and he has been documented in several texts for his service during the American Revolution, as a witness in two court cases, and for being appointed to maintain the highways as he operated a stagecoach and a ferry to bring visitors between Long Island and Manhattan.\u00a0 An accomplished carpenter, two of his homes still stand and have been on the Roslyn Landmark Society\u2019s home tours several times. What I could not discover was when he died and where he was buried.\u00a0 Collaborating with four cousins I met online, a hired genealogist, two research trips to Long Island and Troy, New York where his son had moved in the 1820\u2019s, calls to numerous churches where he may have been a parishioner, cemeteries where he might have been buried, library and historical society visits and hours spent searching online over 16 years uncovered nothing.<\/p>\n

I placed Wilson as my 10th<\/sup> brick wall as I was fairly certain that the five of us had checked every possibility in determining his death and burial.<\/p>\n

At the Family History Library, I shared my information on Wilson with a genealogist and asked for her suggestions on where to go next.\u00a0 She recommended checking microfilms of birth, marriage and death records for any church denomination of which Wilson may have been a member.\u00a0 I narrowed the search to Presbyterian, Quaker and Dutch Reformed as Wilson\u2019s grandchildren were members of those churches and his wife, Margaret, was buried in the Dutch Reformed Church Cemetery.\u00a0 Many of the microfilms did not have indexes and the process was exhausting.\u00a0 After several hours I got a text from my family member who asked if I was ready to go to dinner.\u00a0 \u201cOn the last microfilm, be done soon,\u201d I responded.\u00a0 \u201cMeet you there,\u201d she replied.\u00a0 Minutes later she appeared on the scene and asked if she could help.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m looking for a record for Wilson Williams.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been through this film already but found the index at the very end.\u00a0 I\u2019m just double checking that I didn\u2019t miss him.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ll do that,\u201d she volunteered as I collected the other films to refile.\u00a0 In less than 30 seconds she asked, \u201cIs this who you\u2019re looking for?\u201d\u00a0I glanced at the screen.<\/p>\n

\"wilson1\"<\/p>\n

Stunned, I couldn\u2019t respond.\u00a0 I reread the words.\u00a0 Tears of joy moistened my eyes.\u00a0 If I had not found the index and double checked, the wall would have remained. \u00a0Ironically, the family member who found the record is a DAR because of Wilson.<\/p>\n

The next day I found another microfilm source for the cemetery where Wilson\u2019s wife is buried:<\/p>\n

\"wilson2\"<\/p>\n

So the \u201cW.W\u201d on the \u201ccommon field stone\u201d buried in the same plot as wife, Margaret Hicks Williams, was Wilson Williams and he had been where he should have been the whole time.\u00a0 The answer was clearly right there but none of us had found it.\u00a0 How had Wilson remained invisible for so long?<\/p>\n

\u201cLeave no stone unturned.\u201d -Euripides<\/p>\n

Most likely, the field stone with just initials was either missing entirely or not noted by the Find-a-Grave volunteers transcribing and photographing the cemetery because they would have no idea what W.W. stood for.<\/p>\n

When I returned home and was adding the pictures and citation to my tree I noticed that the cemetery was in Success, New York.\u00a0 Success?\u00a0 I thought the cemetery was in Nassau.\u00a0 The microfilm noted that North Hempstead became Success which became Manhasset.\u00a0 Sometime after the book was published it became Nassau.<\/p>\n

So why weren\u2019t the records at the church?\u00a0 The church secretary I had contacted told me the church does not have records of the burials.\u00a0 Doing a google book search I found that Onderdonk\u2019s (1884) History of the Dutch Reformed Church<\/u> mentions that the early records were sketchy.\u00a0 To complicate the situation, a minister had died and the congregation was not in agreement on hiring a replacement.\u00a0 Half wanted to have a new pastor sent from the Netherlands while the other half wanted to hire a pastor from New York.\u00a0 Consequently, the church ended up with 2 pastors.\u00a0 After ten years, one pastor took half the congregation and started another church a few miles away.\u00a0 He took the records with him.<\/p>\n

The records I was viewing were a transcription from the 1940\u2019s copied by a Josephine Frost.\u00a0 She noted that her transcript was from a book by Onderdonk that was in disrepair.\u00a0 Frost was unable to find the original church records that had been donated to the Long Island Historical Society but they were available when Onderdonk published his book.\u00a0 There are only 12 copies of Frost\u2019s book.\u00a0 They are in Cincinnati, OH, Indianapolis, IN, Harrisburg, PA, Ann Arbor, MI, 2 in Chicago, IL, Ithaca, NY, Independence, MO, Edmond, OK, Albany, NY, Provo, UT, and La Jolla, CA.\u00a0 The Family History Library in Salt Lake City has a microfilm of one of these books.<\/p>\n

Wilson Williams spent his entire life in Long Island, New York yet the 13 records of his death do not reside where he lived and died.\u00a0 Sometimes looking in the most logical place will not give you the answer.\u00a0 I had to detour more than 1900 miles to get over the wall.<\/p>\n

The microfilm record gave me far more information on Wilson then just his date of death.\u00a0 Next time, I\u2019ll tell you more about the meaning of Wilson\u2019s fieldstone marker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com 19 Apr 2015 The term \u201cbrick wall\u201d in genealogy means an impasse has been reached and further knowledge is unavailable. \u00a0Conferences are always filled to capacity when the topic of how to break through a wall is presented. Those blocks affect us physically, through wasted time and resources, and emotionally, as … Continue reading “Wilson William’s Wall”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,20],"tags":[46,49,47,48],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brick-walls","category-organizing-and-planning","tag-brick-wall","tag-dutch-reformed-church","tag-genealogy-planning","tag-genealogy-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions\/74"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}