I have been researching an ancestor named Ebenezer Buck. He was born in 1717 in Middletown, CT. He had a number of children in Hebron, CT. I have a hand-written family history that very specifically states that Josiah Buck was born in 1766 in Hebron to Ebenezer and Deborah Buck. However, there are no official records of his birth. This means that I have to keep looking in order to prove the relationship as more than just family legend. Luckily, the history also names two siblings: Ebenezer and Sally who married a Barnes. Both of them lived in Lanesboro, MA.
I make an effort to track down these siblings because there is usually interesting information that can be found by locating distant relatives. For example, another of my lines recorded family information in a bible, the eldest daughter got that bible and passed it down through her daughters. Without copies of that bible, I would have been unable to confirm my dates.
Well, back to Ebenezer and Sally. To be quite to the point about the second, I can’t find Sally Barnes! Even with the names of her children, Fidelia (who married a Gettinger), Newell, Beulah, Sylvia, and Besty, I can’t find her.
Ebenezer is easier to find because census records of 1790-1830 recorded his name as the head of household in Lanesboro. I am able find records of his marriage to an Anna Talcott in CT in Oct 1784. I am also able to find a cemetery transcription for him; it turns out he is buried in the same cemetery with an Ebenezer and a Deborah who appear to be his parents. The history did not say that Ebenezer and Deborah had moved to MA too! See what great information I have already located?
Since I am certain that I have found the right family, I check some sites and find some other researchers who are looking into relations of Ebenezer Bucks in Lanesboro. I email two of them.
One reports back that Sybil married a Barnes. Ebenezer and Deborah did have a daughter named Sybil! OK, now we are getting somewhere–that means that someone in my family misremembered which sister it was that married Barnes (or the other way around). However, a list of Sybil’s children does not match mine…until…I look at the names of the wives of her children. There I begin to see a similarity. More research is needed on this front to confirm the family relations. Of course, I also can’t rule out that they both married Barneses.
The other reports that she is not sure that the Ebenezer Jr who was living next door to Ebenezer Sr in the 1790 census is in fact the one I thought I had located. She thinks that it is another man who married a woman named Anna Talcott. Her evidence is that the census only recorded two people in the home…husband and wife. Records for Ebenezer and Anna show that they had one daughter by this time. In her book, this casts doubt on the marriage and she thinks she need to be looking for a third Ebenezer.
To sum up, she feels that there are three Ebenezers:
Ebenezer and Deborah Buck
Ebenezer Jr and ????? Buck
Ebenezer and Anna Talcott Buck
I think the solution is simpler. The census taker did not record the daughter for one of two reasons: misinformation or the fact that Mary was living elsewhere. On the 1800 Census there are two children in Ebenezer Jrs home that are between 10 and 16…meaning that Anna must have been VERY pregnant at the time of the 1790 census. Because family was so near, it is not a stretch to think that Mary was living with her grandparents or an uncle so that she was not underfoot while her mother gave birth.
To sum up, I feel that that there are two Ebenezers:
Ebenezer and Deborah Buck
Ebenezer Jr and ????? Buck
Ebenezer (Jr) and Anna Talcott Buck
So, the next step, continue the effort to locate all known children of Deborah and Ebenezer Buck. If or when an extra child is found in the 1790 census, we have located Mary. If not, the census record is one of MANY which were WRONG.