Sometimes when dancing with the ancestors, things get a wee bit complicated. Such is the case with my paternal great-great grandmother Rebecca Ann Adock-Smith. She married great-great granddad John Smith. No, these were not their Motel 6 names! Ha!
Anyhow, in one of the cemetery books for Warren County, Tennessee I found the cemetery records for John B. Smith and his wife (Rebecca) Ann Smith. Her parents were listed as William Miller and Margaret Shanks! Great! Fine! Dandy! Can I have a big WOO HOO?
Well, not so fast, dear readers, because, when I got in contact with on of my 1/2 great aunts (complicated story, more on that in a later post) - one of my grandmother's half-sisters - descendants, they dropped a bombshell on me. Great-Great Grandma Rebecca Ann wasn't a Miller, but an Adcock!
Say What????
Okay, I think I used a few cuss words when I found that out, but that's beside the point. I later found out that sometimes the information in the cemetery books aren't correct.
And, there's always the possibility that Rebecca's father died when she was young and her mother remarried William Miller. So, the Shanks line might be correct, but the Miller line is not.
So what's someone dancing with the ancestors to do when he doesn't have a clue as to the name of great-great grandmama's father? Well, thanks to TNGenWeb, he - well, me - prints out the 1830 Census Records that have been transcribed online, as have the 1840, and then highlights all the Adcock names that have a Female between 10 - 15 since Rebecca would have been 12 in 1840.
From that point, I'll start researching the male Adcock lines and see if I can't discover my ancestress somewhere in the mix.
So, when dancing with the ancestors, don't give up when you hit that brick wall. Figure out a way around that wall.
S
Update ~ sometimes I'm my own worst enemy. Since some of Rebecca's children died after 1910, I have access to those death records, and on at least two of those records, her maiden name is listed as Adcock! Woo-hoo!
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