Week 11 – Brick Wall

For my non-genealogy addicted friends, a brick wall is defined as a place in history where no data appears to exist to connect one generation to the previous. There could be a multitude of reasons – records have been destroyed; it was before official records were required to be maintained; stories that do exist are user-submitted and unverifiable. Regardless of how much time and energy is spent every genealogist will come up against a brick wall (or two, or ten...)

When trying to decide which brick wall to write about, I, unfortunately, have entirely too many to choose from.  Even knowing that, what could I possibly say about any of them? I could tell you about all the places I’ve looked, or all the information I’ve collected, but the fact remains that I’m at a dead-end (currently).  I thought you might be interested to learn of a brick wall that I was able to tear down, so here is the story of William Anthony Patton and his wife, Sarah Williamson.

In the beginning of my journey of proving my descent from a Revolutionary Patriot so that I could join the Daughters of the American Revolution, I had birth/death certificates and marriage records from myself through my great-grandparents.  If you’ll recall, I found the “proof” I needed in the form of a user-submitted, non-sourced tree I’d found on the internet.  According to the information in this tree, my 3X’s great-grandparents back to my patriot was already proven. Right there in the middle were my great-great grandparents. Add to that the fact my great-grandfather’s death certificate only gave his place of birth as Pennsylvania, and the names of his parents were “unknown.”

The last known residence (and ultimately her place of burial) for my 3X’s great-grandmother, Henrietta Hillegas Anthony, was in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. She and her husband, William Patton, were both born in Philadelphia, but William’s father took his family to the central part of the state when he founded Centre Furnace at the end of the Revolutionary War, near what today is State College.  Henrietta’s older sister, Eliza, married and moved to Huntingdon, and when their mother died in 1812, fourteen-year-old Henrietta went to live with her. In 1815, Henrietta and William were married in Huntingdon Presbyterian Church. Together they had three children, two girls and a boy, but their marriage was short-lived. William died in 1823, in Wellsborough, Tioga County, while he was there on business (according to family history records). Henrietta remarried and lived another 47 years.

The two daughters of William and Henrietta were easy to find. They both remained in Huntingdon throughout their entire lives, marrying prominent men in the area.  Their son, William Anthony Patton, however, was mentioned in that same unsourced family history with a birth date in Huntingdon, and a death date in Detroit, Michigan.  There was no birth record in any church in Huntingdon, no census record that put him in either location, and as his stepfather outlived both he and his mother, and William Anthony Patton was not named in his will. It appeared there was nothing to connect William Anthony Patton to either his parents, or to his son.  The proverbial brick wall was pretty stout on both sides.

I began hunting down my great-grandfather, and his sister, Henrietta, across the country. They were both born in the 1850s, and by 1860, each were living in Huntingdon with the sisters of their father. David (my great-grandfather) was enumerated in the home of Rachel Patton Gwin and her family; Henrietta was living with Amelia Patton Wallace and her family.  I decided that their mother, whose name was Sarah, must have died, as well. Why else would these two young children be living with their aunts?  There are 82 David Patton’s (or similar spellings) in the1870 US Census, born in the 1850s; that number increases to 97 in the 1880 US Census. I began searching through all these pages, but it dawned on me…there are far less Henrietta Patton’s. I finally found David and Henrietta together in Kansas City, Kansas in 1880. Kansas City was a hotbed the railroad industry which is ultimately what brought David Patton from Pennsylvania. 

By a shear stroke of luck, Henrietta was enumerated twice in 1880.  Had she not been, I’m not sure I would have ever been able to break down this brick wall.  As it turns out, Henrietta had married Frank Fulton and by 1880, they were living in Bent, Colorado.  Whomever gave the information to the enumerator in Kansas City, named Henrietta and David as brother and sister living in the home of Sarah Wait, with her two children. 

This 1880 census is a lesson in leaving no stone unturned.  I already knew that Henrietta Patton had married Frank Fulton in Ohio County, West Virginia in 1871.  Even going through the 1870 census page by page, I didn’t find either Patton or Frank Fulton.  Then, I noticed that Sarah Wait’s children were born in West Virginia. Coincidence?  Surely not!  I went on a search to find her story.  The first entry that popped up was for Sarah Wait in Wheeling, Ohio County, West Virginia…and in her home were her two children living with her in 1880, along with two more children, David and Henrietta Wait.

Realizing that Sarah Wait was, in fact, my great-great grandmother, my research led me to learn that William Anthony Patton and Sarah Williamson made their home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, until his death in 1857. Shortly thereafter, Sarah’s parents and several of her siblings left Pittsburgh for Wheeling, West Virginia. Sarah left her two small children with her sisters-in-law until she could get on her feet.  In 1861, Mrs. Sary Patton married Albert Wait. She hadn’t died earlier, as I had presumed.

But what truly had become of William Anthony Patton.  If they made their home in Pittsburgh, why would he have died in Detroit, as noted in the family history?  If you’ve been reading my stories, you know how much I love old newspapers, and what a wealth of information they hold.  I make it a point to periodically peruse them in areas that I’m researching, just for fun. Imagine my excitement when I stumbled on a tiny newspaper article from a Philadelphia newspaper:

Philadelphian Killed – Mr. William A. Patton, formerly of Philadelphia, but latterly of Pittsburg, PA., was killed a few days ago since, in Detroit, Michigan, by a large panel of iron railing falling upon him. Mr. Patton was a master mechanic and has left a widow and family.  Public Ledger, Friday, September 4, 1856.

 

It took quite awhile, but eventually I found records to connect my great-grandfather to his parents, and my great-great-grandfather to his parents.  Determination was the key because I wanted so badly to join the Daughters of the American Revolution.  Although I was able to prove this line, there were others that I could have proven much more easily, but my limited knowledge in those early days hindered my research, and I had no one to guide me.  Since that time, I have proven my descent from fifteen Revolutionary Patriots, two of which were “New Patriots” (having never been proven before), one of those is a woman.  I’ve also made it my mission to help anyone wishing to join DAR with finding their own.