I remember one time when I went with my parents to put flowers on gravestones at the cemetery and asking my mom who these people were. She would tell me how each person was related – and how she knew that so-and-so was related, but wasn’t exactly sure how. I also remember seeing a couple of gravestones (Orrin Jones and another for William Jones) that we were not putting flowers on and I asked why not since they had the same surname as my grandmother’s maiden name. Her response was she didn’t think they were related, but somehow I had the feeling they were. Little did I know then that my feeling would turn out to be true, although I wouldn’t find that out for about 30 years. It was also probably my first experience with a feeling which I get when researching or visiting areas that ancestors lived in and that would become more pronounced as I worked on my family history years later. But more on that in another post.

I also remember when I had been digging into the family history for a few years and talking to my mom about what information I had finally found on her Hickmott ancestors. She was thrilled with the information that I had found and then started asking me about specific people. One of them was her grandfather – Aaron Jones. I told her that I hadn’t found anything other than his dad was Thomas and frankly I wasn’t gonna look. She gave me a bewildered look and asked why. My response was that it was too common of a name and I really didn’t have anything to go on other than their names. I told her that if something fell into my lap, then I would of course pursue it, but otherwise it’s way too hard to figure out one Jones from another.

Of course every so often I had tried to find more information – but really had not made much progress. Then suddenly one day, when looking at my DNA results on ancestry.com guess what happened. Something fell into my lap.

AncestryDNA has a feature called “New Ancestor Discoveries” where they suggest someone who might be your ancestor. A name appeared there – Sarah Thursa Hibner. The name meant nothing to me, and a quick look didn’t reveal any interesting connections. So, I dismissed it. Then I looked in another area that AncestryDNA developed called “DNA Circles”. The premise of this feature is to look at the public family trees of your DNA matches and propose a possible ancestor based on the DNA connection. Well, guess what, Sarah Thursa Hibner showed up again. Ok, this is getting serious – I really need to check this lady out. So, I started looking at the family trees of those DNA matches. I see that she is the daughter of George Hibner and Emma Groff and her first husband was John Jones and her second husband was Henry Lester. To say that bells started going off in my head was an understatement. Both Groff and Jones are in my family tree. I start digging.

Well, after about a year of researching this connection, I am no closer to proving that her mother Emma Groff is related to my great-great-grandmother Emeline Groff. However, that has to be the connection. See, all of the descendants that I have a DNA connection to Sarah are her grandchildren (some great, some great-great) from her second husband Henry Lester. This is why I believe the connection is actually in the Groff line. But in stumbling about to find the actual connection, her first husband John Jones jumped out at me. And of course, because he was jumping out at me, I had to pursue it.

It turns out that John Jones was born in 1838 and died in 1873. He was the son of Orrin Jones and his wife Dorothy Cates. His siblings were Royal (1826-1893), George (1829-?), Thomas J (1830-1893), William (1834 – 1903) who had a wife Harriet and Stephen (1845-1918) who had a wife Nancy. Orrin and William both have headstones in Taymouth Township Cemetery. Now bells are really going off in my head along with a few fireworks.

I’ve known for a while that Aaron’s father, Thomas was born about 1830 and had probably died in 1893 (although I still have to actually prove this). I also knew that  in 1880, when Aaron was about 20 years old, he was living with a Stephen Jones and his family. Aaron was listed as a border – but I had wondered if there was a family connection. Also, I knew that Aaron’s father-in-law, George Lawhead, had hooked up with Harriet Jones – the wife of William Jones (a subject for a different blog post). In addition, in George Lawhead’s civil war pension file, there was an affidavit from Nancy Jones saying she was Harriet’s sister. Nancy Jones is the wife of Stephen Jones. Nancy’s maiden name was Savage – just like Harriet.

See why bells and fireworks were going off? My great-great-grandfather, Thomas belongs to that Jones family. Now, I know that my great-great-great grandfather is Orrin Jones (and his father is Thomas). I know that Aaron was living with his uncle in 1880.

Oh, and that part in my title about “unknown family rumor”? I say unknown because until I started down this rabbit hole, I didn’t know it. I traced the descendants of Sarah Thursa Hibner more into the present and found one Hazel Almarria Morse being her grand-daughter. Sarah had a daughter, Elizabeth with John Jones, and that Elizabeth is Hazel’s mother. Hazel first marries William Judge Hunter. At this point, I wonder if this is the same Hazel Hunter that married my grandpa after grandma died. So I keep checking and sure enough her second marriage was to Raymond Hickmott (my grandfather). So, grandpa, after grandma dies, marries her third cousin, Hazel. I relate this to my sister who said, yeah, she knew that and then goes on to say “I knew grandpa married grandma’s cousin, but didn’t know how they were related.” You see, I only knew that grandpa married Hazel Hunter – I never knew that part about Hazel Hunter and Marie Jones being cousins before. Needless to say, my response to that was “What other family rumors have you not told me?”

You can’t hide things from a genealogist….