Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- What Was Your Biggest Genealogy Wild Ancestor (Goose) Chase?

 Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

 It's Saturday Night again - 

Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. 

1)  All genealogists are human, and most of us have gone on wild ancestor (goose) chases in our genealogy research career.  What was one of the wild ancestor chases in your research?  Explain the situation and how you (hopefully!) solved the puzzle.

2) Tell us about your biggest genealogy wild ancestor (goose) chase in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

Here's mine:

When I started doing research in 1988, I was really excited to find all of the information available at the San Diego Family History Center in books (surname books, locality books, how-to books) on the shelf, microfiche (IGI, Ancestral File, PRF, etc.) on carousels, and microfilm (vitals, probate, land, books, etc.) in the drawers.  And I could order microfilm from Salt Lake City!  What a find.

Every Saturday I went to the Center and added many ancestors to my family group sheets and pedigree chart and pretty soon, I knew who all of my 2nd great-grandparents were, and who their parents were (with some exceptions).  That didn't take long.  But then it got harder.  

One of my wild ancestor chases was finding the parents of my 2nd great-grandmother Sophia (Newton) Hildreth (1834-1923) were. There was no record of  Sophia's 1834 birth, but I had an 1850 census record in Northborough, Mass. of Sophia (age 15, born in Vermont) with her mother, Sophia Newton (age 53, born in Mass.).  The Newton surname books and Massachusetts and Vermont locality books had nothing for me. I searched all of the census records, IGI and Ancestral File for Sophia Newtons born in Vermont, and there were several but the mother was not a Sophia.

Then I obtained Sophia's 1852 marriage record to Edward Hildreth in Northborough, Mass. and it listed her father's name as Thomas J. Newton.  When I found Sophia's 1923 death record in during a visit to the Leominster, Mass. town hall in 1990, I found that she was born in Cambridge, Vermont and her mother's name was Sophia (Buck) Newton.  Some records said that Thomas J. Newton was born in Maine.

I could not find any record of Thomas J. Newton until I found a son named Thomas J. Newton born in about 1835 living with another family in Mass. in the 1850 census, and then found his marriage record in 1864 that said his parents were Thomas and Sophia Newton and he was born in Cambridge, Vermont.  

I looked for vital, church, probate and land records without success in Lamoille County, Vermont.  I then looked for Thomas Newtons who might have been in Maine in the 1790s and 1800s.  I found all kinds of Newton surname records, but not one was close to conclusive [I still don't know what the elder Thomas J. Newton's birth date/place, death date/place, or who his parents were!].

We went to New England on vacation in 2006 and visited my Aunt Gerry in Augusta, Maine.  On our way back to Massachusetts, we stopped in Dixfield, Oxford County, Maine because that was one of the two towns where Newtons (originally from Massachusetts) had settled in the late 1700s.  It was pretty, but there was no indication of "my" Thomas.

While researching Sophia Buck (1797-1882), daughter of Isaac and Martha (Phillips) Buck, I found that she had married Lambert Brigham (1794-1834) in 1817 and had two sons, Augustus Brigham (1820-1909) and Aurelius Brigham (1830-1878). So I researched them. Then I found out that Lambert Brigham died in May 1834 in Westborough, Mass., and a man named Thomas J. Newton was in the town records at the same time.  

I also found that Sophia (Buck) (Brigham) Newton married Jonathan Stone in 1862, and he died in 1868.  Sophia died in Westborough in 1882.  

Putting it all together, my current thinking is that Sophia (Buck) (Newton) Stone (1797-1882) married (1) 1817 Lambert Brigham, (2) 1834 Thomas J. Newton, and (3) 1862 Jonathan Stone.  I think she had Augustus Brigham and Aurelius Brigham by Lambert Brigham, and was pregnant with Sophia Newton when Lambert Brigham died in June 1834.  I think she married (?) or ran off with Thomas J. Newton to Cambridge, Vermont and had her son Thomas J. Newton there in 1835.  I think Thomas and Sophia Newton separated before 1850 but I have found no divorce record.  

So there it stands after 35 years - I still don't have any direct evidence that Lambert Brigham or Thomas J. Newton was the father of Sophia (Newton) Hildreth.  I do have a number of AncestryDNA matches with ThruLines, with shared DNA segments of 10-20 cM, from other descendants of Lambert Brigham or his parents and grandparents.  I have no AncestryDNA ThruLines for Thomas J. Newton, and no strong DNA matches for any person with Newtons in their tree.  

You can read more about Sophia (Newton) Hildreth in 52 Ancestors, Week 12: #19 Sophia (Newton) Hildreth (1834-1923) of Leominster, Mass.  

My dilemma is summed up in this paragraph from the genealogical sketch for Thomas J. Newton:

"A problem with these children is their relative birth dates.  If daughter Sophia Newton was born on 14 September 1834, and son Thomas J. Newton was born on 3 June 1835, that is less than nine months apart.  If Thomas was born in 1832 and Sophia in 1834, that would be logical.  Or if Sophia was born in 1834 and Thomas in 1836, that would be logical.  Or it could be that they had two different mothers (say, an earlier wife for one of them, and Sophia for the second child).  Or both children could be Lambert Brigham's children.  Or one or both of the children could be adopted."

'Tis still somewhat of a mystery, but I think I'm right about Sophia (Newton) Hildreth's father being Lambert Brigham because of the DNA matches.  

My wild ancestor chase in this case was following the Newton research trail for so long, but I didn't get the Lambert Brigham death record until 2014 and the DNA matches in about 2019. 

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