Same Name—No Connection

One of the most common mistakes for a new genealogist (I’ve been there, believe me) is to assume that people with the same surname living in the same neighborhood must be related. The thinking goes, "on the frontier, there weren’t a lot of people, so all these folks were related."

Just how dangerous this is was underscored a year or two ago when Hall researcher Jim Patrick solved the riddle of Zachariah Hall who married Mary Hall in Jefferson County in 1815. Everyone tried to link Zachariah to the family of William Hall, the Revolutionary War soldier from Pennsylvania, who was Mary’s father. They had to be related. Right?

But guess again, Jim found a biography of Richard in a Marion County history which unequivocally states that Zachariah’s father was Henry Hall, who immigrated from Germany. The history further states very explicitly that there was no relationship.

Stuff like this can just ruin your day if you’ve built a family around such assumptions. And there’s nothing wrong with making these assumptions. You can’t research unless you limit the scope of work by advancing a theory. Still, it’s easy to get caught up in trying to lump people of the same last name together, especially if they live in the same neighborhood. After all, on the frontier cousins often married. In the family of Aaron Van Cleave and Elizabeth Griffin of Shelby County, Ky., and later Montgomery Co., Ind., seven of their eleven children who survived to marry, married relatives named Van Cleave, while two of the remaining sisters married brothers named Hedden who were their first cousins. But as the Hall example shows, you can’t count on people of the same name being related, even if they live next door to each other. There’s nothing peculiar to this lesson to Jefferson and Switzerland County, but for the record, here are some samples of common names in which there are multiple lines in the area.

There are Hutchinsons from New York who lived in Lancaster Township, and Hutchinsons from North Carolina in Milton Township. A researcher in Jefferson County tried to link the family of the Rev. John Graham of Switzerland County, and later of Delaware County, Ind., to the Grahams show settled around the Dupont area. But while John’s family was from Pennsylvania and had been in the United States since the mid 1700s at least, the Grahams around Dupont appear to stem from men shown in the 1860 census as Irish Immigrants. Oh yes, toss in a family of Grahams from Scotland who were living in Milton Township from the 1830s on.

There are Neals from Scotland in eastern Jefferson County and Western Switzerland County; Neals from North Carolina (earlier from Maryland) whose origins are unknown in Milton Township; Neals from New England in Lancaster Township and Neals from Ireland in Madison.

There are at least three unrelated McKay families who passed through the area. There’s the large group stemming from James McKay, who died in 1797 in the Shenandoah region of Virginia, probably a Scotch-Irish who settled heavily in Craig and Milton Townships. There was a group of apparently Irish McKays, who came from Nelson County, Ky., who settled in Milton Township, and who went against the grain, returning to Kentucky to leave few if any descendants in Indiana. There was a group of Scottish McKays, via North Carolina, who settled around Smyrna and Republican Townships.

One of my favorite examples is the Rogers surname. I can find at least five different Rogers families eastern Jefferson County and western Switzerland, most within a few miles of Pleasant and Moorefield.

Benjamin Rogers, born in North Carolina, settled on Greenbriar Ridge in Milton Township. John Rogers (1792-1882), buried at Brushy Fork cemetery, lived near Pleasant and had a brother Elijah who settled in Brown Township in Ripley County

Rev. war soldier Stephen Rogers, who had sons John and Elijah, geographically overlapped with the family just mentioned and to some extent also overlapped the Benjamin Rogers crew. Stephen Rogers family was from Northern Virginia (but may tie back into the southern Virginia crowd)

There’s a William Rogers from Pennsylvania, who lived on Halls’ Ridge, whose family also overlaps with the groups around Pleasant. (Oh yeah, one of William’s sons married a daughter of John Rogers 1792-1882) Finally, there’s a Jeffrey Rogers from England, who lived in the Canaan area

We could fill several pages with examples. But let’s end here. You’ve had your warning.