Uncovering a Productive Paper Trail

William Walling of Keyport, Monmouth County, New Jersey died 31 July 1870.  An obituary provided an interesting tidbit that he was "the largest property holder at Keyport."

Trenton State Gazette
9 August 1870
GenealogyBank.com

Now that New Jersey probate records are readily accessed online, I have a lot of work ahead of me, sorting through his estate transactions, which took over 26 years to finalize.



Monmouth County, New Jersey
Surrogate's Proceedings Index

Also of interest was a newspaper article run just four days before William Walling died.  He was physically digging a well as he constructed a store on the corner of Broad and Front streets.

Trenton State Gazette, Trenton, New Jersey
27 July 1870
GenealogyBank.com

Wondering if the building was completed and if it still stood, I again wandered online and found the structure, called Walling Hall at some point, now housing McDonagh's Pub at 2 West Front Street, Keyport.

Keyport Online
"Village History"
Walling Hall

William Walling appears to have left behind quite a paper trail for us to follow . . .

Finding Parents

The Wallings of Monmouth County, New Jersey are an interwoven bunch that I am trying to sort.  Of particular interest at this point is proving the parentage of William Walling, who died in 1870 (the second entry in the Estate Index below).  The Monmouth County Genealogy Society publishes a newsletter, The Monmouth Connection.  The September 2012 Newsletter provided a transcribed will for William Walling, written in 1823 and proved in 1824.  I looked for the original will at Family Search in the New Jersey Probate collection.  The digitized collection is not named-indexed yet, so you need to browse through the images to locate a usable index.




Estate Index for Monmouth County, New Jersey.
I am sorting the Wallings.  William was a popular name among the Wallings of Monmouth County.
The first entry is the transcribed will that I noticed in The Monmouth Connection.



Proceedings Index.
William Walling, 1824, is file number 27096 from the Estate Index.
His will is in Volume B, page 396.
Monmouth County, New Jersey

Will of William Walling, signed 3 December 1823, Volume B, page 396.
Monmouth County, New Jersey.

From the will, we learn that this William Walling had a wife named Rebecca.  He had children under the age of 21 and he had at least three sons whom he named as executors: Isaac, Amos, and William.  It is possible that this William Walling (died 1824) and Rebecca were the parents of William Walling who died in 1870.  We need more records before we can be certain.

The transcribed wills in The Monmouth Connection contained additional numbers not in the Surrogate's index.  William Walling's will was number 9571M.  I browsed through other images of wills organized by number and not volume and located the original will and inventory.



Will and Inventory filed as 9571M
Monmouth County, New Jersey



Inventory of property of William Walling in 1824.
He had $16 in cash and an assortment of household items.
His most valuable asset was firewood.



Accounts owing to William Walling 1824
Several of these people are related in more than one way.

DNA Matching: Mystery Second or Third Cousin

My third cousin, R.S., has a new closer cousin in his DNA matches at 23andMe.  They share 1.37% over four segments.  They are likely second or third cousins, though the prediction of the site is second through fourth cousins.

Second cousins share a pair of great grandparents, while third cousins share great great grandparents.

Let's hope that this person responds to my request to communicate.  Absent an adoption or non-paternal event, we should be able to figure out the connection.

Relative Finder top genetic matches for my third cousin, R.S. at 23andMe.
This mystery person could be a closer match than my father and R.S.

AncestryDNA: The Genetic Matches

AncestryDNA provided genetic matches for M.S., who is adopted.  No close matches appeared.  The closest match is a predicted third cousin.  Two predicted fourth cousins are also reported, followed by several distant cousins.  Because this is autosomal DNA testing, the matches could be from any of M.S.'s ancestral lines.

Top genetic matches for M.S. at Ancestry.com

 

I reached out to these three people.  One person responded.  We see no common geographical areas at this time.

 

AncestryDNA compares your surnames and tree to the surnames and trees of your matches and highlights results for you.  Because M.S. was adopted, I have no surnames or tree for her, thus precluding me from exploring this feature.  If you would like to see a screenshot of compared surnames, please see CeCe Moore's post here.

 

I am disappointed that I cannot see the amount or location of shared DNA among the matches.  23andMe allows such views and comparisons.

 

I will keep you posted if anything promising develops.

Indexing Project: New York City Death Ledgers, Part Two

The indexing continues of the New York City death registers for the Italian Genealogical Group.  This set includes the years 1837 and 1838.  They are not as clear as the previous set.  The city directories over at Fold3 are proving useful for deciphering some names.

April 1837 Register of Deaths for New York City.
Individual death certificates were not created during this time.

Some names are difficult to decipher for the transcription.  This surname looks like BIBBY.
The first name could be Cathy, Walter, Arthur.

A check of the city directories shows that people named Bibby were indeed living in New York City at this time.
So Bibby the name shall be.
[1838 New York City Directory by Longworth.  Available online at Fold3.]

Online transcriptions are an invaluable resource to genealogists, but the difficulties illustrated here demonstrate that mistakes are likely and you need to seek the original source.  In this particular project, the original record includes place of burial, cause of death, and nativity- additional pertinant information that will not be in the online index.  If you are unable to travel to New York City to view these ledgers, you can order the microfilm through a FamilySearch Center [catalog numbers 447544-447568 and 1314271-1314289] or wait for the images to appear online at FamilySearch.