Minor vent

[Mark F. Jenkins]

One of my genealogical frustrations is a great-great-great-grandfather, James Watson, of eastern Ohio. The family story is that he married my great-great-great-grandmother, had three children, and then lost my great-great-great-grandmother and her youngest daughter in a house fire about 1860; he placed the two surviving children, a girl and my great-great-grandfather John "Doc" Watson with relatives and then went off to fight in the Civil War... but when he came back, he never came home again and settled somewhere in Michigan. Supposedly, we have some cousins up there as a result. However, I've never been successful in chasing down this James Watson in any of the enlistment records, etc. (It doesn't help that the name isn't really an uncommon one, plus there's some question as to whether he enlisted under his own name or an alias...)

 

[Littlestown]

That's a tough one to trace. Do you happen to know what Ohio county he was living in before the war?

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

I don't have it handy, but it might have been Licking County. I'm more buried in Henry Walke research than in genealogy at the present time, but I'm sure I'll come back around to it sooner or later.

 

[Nathanb1]

You really do have my deepest sympathies! Don't you wish he'd show up from beyond the grave so you could give him a piece of your mind?

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

I'd refrain till after I drained him of information, but after that, yes.

 

[James B White]

My wife has been searching for information on an ancestor's supposed trips to California in the goldrush era. He always managed to get home for the census, and she couldn't find him in any ship's records, but family stories said he'd gone out several times.

Just recently, she found a period deposition where he'd been sworn under oath, and the interrogator was asking questions like: when did you leave for California? When did you get back? Where was your family staying while you were out west? What did you do out there? He gave all the answers, to the same questions that my wife would have asked him if she'd had the chance.

Genealogists live for moments like that.