An Epic Genealogical Goose Chase

by Wanda Tucker~

 Have you ever found a genealogical document that took your breath away?

That one bit of information that tied up a loose end, confirmed a long-suspected connection, or simply pinpointed some lost relative?

Well, I have. But sometimes, the document in question generates more questions than answers.

In genealogy, documents are the gold standard. Any family relationship is merely speculative until a document is located to seal the deal. Family trees can be really incorrect, as people seek to establish their roots, but don’t have the skills necessary to discern between accurate information and wishful thinking. We all want to trace our line back to somebody famous, so things can get a bit confused. We aren’t all related to Daniel Boone or George Washington, after all.

As any researcher knows, even documents can sometimes lead us spectacularly astray. Censuses are notoriously tricky, because census-takers are humans, and make very human errors. But what happens when a document is found that on its face should be fairly reliable, and isn’t? A death record, for example, with information from a spouse, a physician, and government officials? Or the information on a headstone, some of the last evidence of a person left on earth?

Recently, I came across this sort of situation in my own family tree. It was the last really unexplored branch, my maternal grandfather’s line. I traced as far back as his great-grandfather with relative ease. They lived in the same spot in northern Georgia for a very long time. They went to the same church I went to as a child, many of them are buried there. The names were familiar to me from my childhood. But then I ran into Miles Hart.

Miles was a prolific man, in a manner of speaking. He had a lot of kids! About fifteen, spread between at least two marriages. And some were born in South Carolina, others in Georgia. That is an easy puzzle, because after 1850, censuses list all the names of wives and children in a family. Simple, right?

One of the kids I found was Newton C. Hart. He isn’t my direct-line ancestor, but as I have learned from past research, you just never know when you will need something from a distant relative to prove what you really need. So off I went.

Newton was the next-to-youngest of the set of children by the first wife, Mary Scott. He appears on the on the 1860 census with Mary. Ancestry had his age transcribed as 13, an error. Familysearch had his age correctly at three. But then…

There was a death record at Familysearch. Great, another document, gold standard for research!

On the death record transcription, no spouse is mentioned, only parents. Miles Hart, check. Mother, Winnie Fowler.

Wait, what?

Who was Winnie Fowler? I had not run across her name yet. Yet there she was, mother of Newton C. Hart. Is this another marriage? This guy got around, I thought. So I kept digging.

Now, here is the part where some thinking comes into play, and I didn’t do as much thinking as I could have, I believe. But I did think a bit, and what I came up with as a hypothesis was this: maybe Mary died, and Miles married Winnie Fowler. And Newton was so young, he thought she was his mother. And she died quickly, because by 1875 or so, Miles Hart had married AGAIN, this time to Drucilla Goodrum. And she had three kids with Miles that I could prove. Sounded like a working theory to me. Oh, boy.

Only one kid from a marriage to Winnie Fowler. If I could prove the marriage, I had solved the mystery! I began to search. But there didn’t seem to be a marriage record to be found. Drat!

Looking for more on Newton C. Hart, I popped on over to findagrave.com. Findagrave is a great website, but caution is required, because all of the info on it is posted by the public. People photograph headstones, and can add possible family members, stories, obituaries, articles, whatever. Sometimes people just think a person is buried in a certain place, and create a “grave” for them. So you can see the peril. And you can’t always find who you are looking for, since Findagrave is VERY particular about spellings. Unlike Ancestry or Familysearch, it doesn’t seem to allow for any spelling variations.

I searched for Newton Hart, in Franklin County, Georgia. I knew what year he died, and exactly where, so easy-peasy.

Except he wasn’t there.

All of the others I had searched from the family had shown up. I had the death record with his death date. He had to be there. But he wasn’t.

Thinking again, I searched only Hart in the year he died, no first name. And finally, there he was. Who in the world misspells a headstone?

“Newute C. Hart.” Seriously… moving on…

Eureka! There is an actual obituary from a real newspaper attached to his listing. And in the obituary I find… “surviving Mr. Hart is his wife…” no name. Really? Who was she? Did no one think someone might want to know? But women really didn’t have much of an identity for quite a bit of our history, so moving on again… oh wait!

Another obituary attached. God bless whoever uploaded to this Findagrave listing. Newton’s wife was Mrs. Emma D. Hart. BUT she was the former Emma D. Fowler! Now I’m getting somewhere! She was born in 1867. Back to Ancestry I go.

A census might tell me something about her. Was her nickname “Winnie?” Did she somehow get listed as Newton C. Hart’s mother instead of his wife on his death certificate? Good grief. I went looking for more information about Emma.

I found Emma D. Fowler on the 1880 Federal Census, aged twelve. The daughter of Russel W. and Winnie C. Fowler!

The elusive Winnie Fowler, Newton C. Hart’s mother-in-law. I could probably crack a few jokes here, but will refrain.

Whew! Glad that mystery was solved. As you can see, it doesn’t take much of an error to throw a curve ball into research. Of course, after all of this was done, I went into other people’s trees on Ancestry, and found Emma D. Fowler named as Newton C. Hart’s wife. But I try very hard to avoid other’s trees as I am initially researching, as I know how it is easy to be led astray by wishful thinking and erroneous information, posted by other fallible humans such as myself, in search of a relative or two.

Gotta have those documents, you know. The gold standard of research.