Nancy Strader and her Million Children

I have 64 4th great grandparents.

We all do.

I know who most of them are, thanks to years of research. 

One very special ancestor is Nancy Strader.

She is straight up my maternal line.

She is the earliest one in that line whose face I know. I don't see her in my face at all, but I know she's there. She looks a bit sad in her photo, like she's had a hard life.

She probably never even realized that she was creating a strong, thriving, female line.

I have one granddaughter, three daughters, and two sisters. My mom had one sister, and her mom, my grandma, had five sisters. I honestly don't know how many women have descended from Nancy since I haven't researched all the lines of descent, but in my tree there are currently 31 in just my direct line of nuclear families (not counting cousins, etc.). That's certainly a wealth of women!

Here's how this line goes:

Leslie Diane Kienlen (me) b. 1965 in St. Louis County, MO.

Sharon Eileen Aden b. 1942 in Poplar Bluff, MO; d. 2007 in St. Louis, MO.

Norma Lucille Holland b. 1922 in probably Mill Spring, MO; d. 2007 in St. Louis County, MO.

Nelle Naomi Hartman b. 1901 in probably Texas County, MO; d. 1990 in Poplar Bluff, MO.

Mary Naomi Estep b. 1877 in Kilbourne, Mason County, IL; d. 1948 in Ozark, Texas County, MO.

Mary Elizabeth Elmore b. 1848 in Tice Station, Menard County, IL; d. 1922 in Hugoton, KS.

Nancy Strader b. 1822 in Green County, KY; d. 1908 in Tice Station, Menard County, IL.

Nancy came with her parents, John Conrad Strader and Elizabeth Miner, to Menard County, Illinois from Green County, Kentucky. I believe they came with a group of people whose surnames are Strader, Miner/Minor, and Elmore. It has been a difficult task trying to sort out these families, especially the Elmores. But they all came from Green County, Kentucky.

Nancy married James Elmore sometime around 1844. 

They had five children.

Their daughter Mary Elizabeth Elmore was my 3rd great grandma.

James died in December of 1855.

Nancy remarried a few years later, to William K. Million.

Nancy and William had three children: James, George, and Jane Million.

I bet Nancy used to tell people about her "Million children."

I sure would have!

I haven't done any research into the Million children.

I should. We share DNA.

Researching the Million children may give me more information about Nancy. Maybe they have other photos. Maybe they have one where she looks happy. I would like to see that.

Did her daughter, Jane Million, have daughters too? 

How many of us could be out there?

If we count male descendants, are we close to a million yet?

Maybe someday, Nancy will have her million children.

William died before 1870, and by 1880, Nancy was married to John T. Smith from Scotland.

Nancy and John had no children.

The Pennsylvania Cowans

Same Name.

The genealogical problems created because people have the same or similar names are too numerous to count. I have heard that if you find ten online family trees and one of them has a different person, that's the one that may be correct. That person didn't just copy another person's "research."

I recently had to sort through 5 counties in England to determine the correct woman to put into my tree. It's hard work. I even made a spreadsheet, which I avoid as much as I possible. I hate them, but they work well when sorting out people.

This brings me to another example.

In 1971, John Kerr Fleming wrote a book entitled The Cowans from County Down. He states that four brothers, Hugh, David, John, and William Cowan, immigrated to the United States from Ulster around 1720. According to Fleming, they were Ulster Scots, or Scottish people who had settled in Ulster Province in Ireland and had lived there for several generations before immigrating. The four brothers lived near each other in Pennsylvania before their descendants moved around the country.

 Fleming includes transcribed documents in his work, and traces the family history forward to the time of publication. The Cowans from County Down is very often cited in many books about the area around Salisbury, North Carolina, where my Cowan ancestors lived.

Since 1971, our access to information has changed, and we also have the benefit of DNA to guide us in the right direction.

In 2012, Terry Cowan published A Cowan History: The Family of David Cowan (1665c. - 1730 of the Pequea Valley, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, His Antecedents and Descendants. In this book, Mr. Cowan presents another version of the Cowan story using new research and DNA analysis. He argues that Hugh Cowan may have come from Ulster, but David, John, and William were not his brothers (according to Y-DNA analysis) and most likely came from the Chirnside area of Scotland.  Like Mr. Fleming, Mr. Cowan cites many sources and documents to argue his point.

So what's a Cowan researcher to do?

Do your own research, of course!

Just because people have the same surname does not mean they are related.

Just because people with the same surname are living fairly near each other does not mean they are related.

You can always use family histories that you find as clues, but remember, they may not be correct. New documents may come to light. New technologies like DNA become available. 

While I tend to believe the updated research by Mr. Cowan, I plan to fully analyze both books and their sources, plus any additional sources I come across, to develop my own argument. 

It's okay to be different!

John Dunsford and Mary Ann Ware, My Third Great Grandparents

Genealogical research is never set in stone. There are always new things to discover. With that in mind, I decided it's time to update my information about John Dunsford and Mary Ann Ware of Devon, England.

My original post about this couple was way back in 2015. Recently (as in this past week), new information has come to light. But that's the great things about blogs. I can always go back and delete the old and post the new in order to keep my contribution to "fake news" at a minimum.

As I mentioned probably too many times, my daughter and I are going to Devon in July and I'll probably have to update this again, most likely with my own photos. But until that time, I'll have this post to refer to when I'm there.

So, here goes!

French Colonial Kaskaskia Illinois

Imagine the courage it took to leave an established settlement and venture into the wilderness. There was so much risk involved, no guarantee that you would ever make it back home. I have a lot of admiration and respect for all of my ancestors, but especially those who had the courage to travel so very far away from everything and everyone they knew and loved. I also credit these brave men and women for my sense of adventure and curiosity. At least one of my ancestors just disappeared, never to be heard from again. I have found The Jesuit Relations (title shortened by me) to be a great resource in studying this time period  HERE.  There are plenty of genealogical tidbits found no where else buried in the text of this book.

In many cases, money was a motivating factor. People took a chance in order to get rich. I'm thinking specifically of those French fur traders who left home seasonally to seek wealth in the interior of the North American continent. There was a world-wide demand for fur, especially beaver. The pelts were used not only for the fancy top hat everyone thinks of but also for military and tricorn hats as far back as the early 17th century. The trappers and traders would go out to collect pelts and then take them to merchants or the companies they worked for.  They were always at risk of being robbed of their pelts, or killed, and if they took too long in getting them to market, the skins could rot.

Named for an indigenous tribe, the village of Kaskaskia was founded in 1703. Catholic missionaries had been in the area known as Le Pays des Illinois earlier, but this was the first European settlement in what is now Illinois. It was developed by French coureur du bois, or runners of the woods, Catholic missionaries, and members of he Kaskaskia tribe. The French got along well with the Kaskaskia. As a result, some European and indigenous marriages occurred and metis families were established.


European governments profited from the fur trade too, and they took steps to protect the trappers and traders working in the wilderness. One of the first forts established in Illinois was the French Fort de Chartres, very near Kaskaskia, in 1720. It's worth a visit, especially when they are hosting their annual Rendezvous (June 6-7 in 2020).
Of course, settlement sprung up around the fort, and the government sent French women and families to come to the colonies to discourage intermarriage with the Native American tribes the men encountered. Use of products imported from France, like housewares and wine, was strongly encouraged. The government wanted to keep the French people French.

This is a picture I took of the site of Fort Kaskaskia in 2015. 
The village lies under the Mississippi river now.

Kaskaskia and Fort de Chartres, Cahokia, and all of the early French villages couldn't have been farther from home, though.  They were isolated, and help came slowly or not at all, even for those in the military. People had to trust each other, and rely on each other in order to survive. As a result of this isolation, the settlers created a unique American culture of diversity, a blend of European, Native American, and African traditions in what is now Illinois and Missouri. They even developed their own music and language, known today as Missouri or Paw Paw French which was spoken throughout Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. This version of Frenchness remained, even when Spain took over the lands west of the Mississippi.


Being so far from home, and being isolated, was not easy, but the resulting communities that developed are worth remembering. One example is Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. Unlike St. Louis, which saw rapid expansion and destruction in an effort to accommodate the rush of Americans moving west after the Louisiana Purchase, Ste. Genevieve was able to preserve much of its French heritage. In fact, it will now become a National Historic Park.
I can't wait to see how the additional funding helps the site, and I hope more Americans are able to learn about this important and overlooked aspect of our
U. S. history. It wasn't all East to West. There were people out here in the middle of the country way earlier than most people realize!