UPDATE: Anna Merriman Busby: Who's Your Daddy? (52 Ancestors #8.1)

UPDATE: This was originally posted Thursday, February 26, 2015. Anna Merriman Busby: Who's Your Daddy? (52 Ancestors #8)  Good news!! I found her daddy! And I can answer a few more questions!

It began with a comment, left on the original post. I had not looked at this family in quite some time and got to thinking - maybe it was time to re-look. It's always a good idea to re-look, especially when something is a bit of a brick wall, you just never know what might turn up.

I decided to reexamine Micajah Merriman, the man most attributed to being Anna's father. In the past the scant information just did not line up. I noticed a War of 1812 Pension Application Files Index on Ancestry that I had not seen before. Light Bulb Moment! I knew that Fold3 had Pension Applications, and more importantly Widow's Applications digitized.  Something that wasn't available in 2015 when I first wrote the post. Two seconds later I had that bit of historical magnificence pulled up on my computer in the Cave. All 45 glorious page of it! If you subscribe to Fold3 (and you should!) take a gander at it for yourself here.

What I learned, Anna was born July 22nd 1807 to Micajah Merriman and Sophia Snyder. She was their first born child. Micajah and Sophia were married May 22nd 1806 in Maryland. The family removed to Ohio in the winter of 1815. Anna would have been 7 years old, so she came as a child.

I learned that Micajah's father was Nicholas who was a soldier in the Revolutionary War and his mother was Deborah.

And I found his signature!

The old Family Tree just sprouted a new shoot!

Always an exciting moment when a hunch get substantiated!

Onward.

©2017 Anne Faulkner - AncestorArchaeology.net, All Rights Reserved

"We Found You New Ancestors - Just By Looking At Your DNA!"

That is the bold cry from my AncestryDNA page.

New ancestors!

With my DNA!

Wow!

"Now your DNA can tell you something that was never before possible" Ancestry proudly declares in a recent email. "Go back as far as the 1700's in an instant through your AncestryDNA test".

Amazing!

How do they do it, you ask?

"New Ancestor Discoveries are made through a unique combination of AncestryDNA results and the millions of family trees shared by Ancestry members".

Uh - oh.

You mean those PUBLIC and frequently unsourced Family Trees? Hmm. Something is just not right here. This is a HUGE can of worms just waiting to be opened.

Michael John Neill tells us in his brilliant blog post All You Need Is Spit that you can now "find ancestors from the past using just a DNA test, no genealogy research is required" Yup. NO research required. None. Zip.

You though it was easy to go back to Adam and Eve in an afternoon before? Well now.

I am afraid.

And disappointed.

This just does not seem responsible to me. If you are going to supply the tools you have some sort of obligation to supply instructions for use. And warnings.

And NO! No, No, No - it is not that easy. (this reminds me of the saying "just because you can, doesn't mean you should")

My particular experience with this newfound wonder of science is completely incorrect. But I would never know this if I hadn't done the research. The hard research. The digging in books, writing letters, waiting for replies, hitting brick walls research. This particular "match" I spent over two years trying to prove before getting the proof I needed to disprove it.

But here it is. Presented to me proudly by AncestryDNA as a "new ancestor".

Sophia Snyder and Micajah Merryman have been declared on dozens of Public Trees on Ancestry as the parents of Anna Merriman, my third great grandmother. I wrote about her here.  

I am NOT related to Sophia Snyder. Or Micajah Merryman. And I have done the research to prove it. The 6 of 9 members I match more than likely have Anna Merriman as our common ancestor. And, they are Public trees. Certainly unsourced. Obviously unresearched.

No I am not in any circles. Circles would require me to have a Public tree on Ancestry. While I appreciate and understand the importance of a good sourced Public tree, mine has more than a few wild theoretical branches. I would not be practicing responsible genealogy if I allowed that to see the light of day. The few public trees I do have on Ancestry are sourced and proved. Available for all to see. But I do not have my DNA linked to them (you can only have DNA linked to one tree at a time).

 DNA is just another research tool. Another source to glean information. The results are only as good as the information it is being compared to. GIGO, as Michael John Neill reminds us: Garbage in, Garbage out.  

Please, practice genealogy wisely.

And be careful out there!

Anna Merriman Busby: Who's Your Daddy? (52 Ancestors #8)

Anna Merriman Busby is my 3rd great grandmother. Another female brick wall. A really tough one. There are quite a few people looking for her parents. There is a great deal of confusion surrounding the facts that have been discovered. This will be a short post.

Anna Merriman (or Merryman) was born 28 July 1807 according to her headstone on Find A Grave. Census records indicate she was born in Maryland.


Anna Merriman married John Wisner Busby in Harrison Co OH in April of 1826.


By 1840 the couple was residing in Carroll Co OH, where they remained until death. It is reported that they had 14 children.


Anna is buried in the Palermo Cemetery on the grounds of the former Palermo Methodist Protestant Church in Carroll Co, OH.

Over the years there has been lots of talk, theories, speculation on who Anna's father was. Some say it was Micajah "Cage" Merryman/Merriman. This has been discredited as "Cage" and his wife Sophia Snyder were actually married four years after Anna was born. "Cage" and Sophia did have a daughter named Anna and did live in Ohio in 1820, hence the confusion. There has also been another name bandied about, "Page" Merriman, but I am unclear as to the origin of this line of thought.

I must admit I have been away from this branch of the family for several years. With the Genealogy Do-Over I am jumping back in and working my maternal line once again.

So the questions remain.

Who is Anna Merriman's father?

How did she get from Maryland to Ohio, and why?

When did she arrive in Ohio? Was she an adult or a child?

She's buried in a Methodist cemetery, was she a member of the Methodist church?

To date there are a lot more questions than answers. I hope with time, and as more and more records are being discovered, we will one day know who Anna Merriman Busby's daddy was!