20 Days til Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy & Research Trip! Brick Wall 1: William Morlan (1821-1878)
Counting down to the best week long genealogy class ever! This will be my 5th year of attending the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (over the past 12 years). Much prep to do and I'll start off with one of my more difficult brick walls: the parentage of William Morlan, born 1821 in Tennessee, married to Louisa Jane Jones in Putnam County, Indiana in 1841 and died in 1878 in Appanoose County, Iowa. (Family Group Sheets below).
Speculation has William's parents as Elijah Morlan and his wife Mary Ann Countz.
Information about William's father being Elijah comes from hints, like these below, that I find as I do research. This is a page from the History of Appanoose County, Iowa, the biography is that of Belinda Jones Morlan, and someone has written in the margin that Belinda's husband was the brother of William, and were fathered by Elijah Morlan.
More reliable is the information I have on William Morlan and Louisa Jane Jone's descendants. Marrying into the Jones family was the best thing he did as they were very good at keeping records and gave birth to quite a few descendants who were passionate about preserving their family history.
The research goal with the descendants is to track them to current as far as possible, filling in as many of the blanks as possible...finding their stories, recording their history.
I sent in a Family Finder DNA test thru familytreedna.com and would like to find some connection to the 100s of results they have provided.
Here is the Family Group Sheet for William Morlan and Louisa Jane Jones:
P. S. If you are going to head to Salt Lake City to get in a few days of reseach prior to the 2012 Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, I hope you have your hotel rooms! There is a HUGE Outdoor Retailer Winter Market Convention that has sold out many of the downtown hotels.
Speculation has William's parents as Elijah Morlan and his wife Mary Ann Countz.
Add to this brick wall the problems of multiple spellings (Morlan, Moreland, Morland, etc).
Depending on whether the speculation is correct, the siblings on the family group sheet could be correct or not! And I have no idea where to go with this research.
Information about William's father being Elijah comes from hints, like these below, that I find as I do research. This is a page from the History of Appanoose County, Iowa, the biography is that of Belinda Jones Morlan, and someone has written in the margin that Belinda's husband was the brother of William, and were fathered by Elijah Morlan.
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| Biographical History of Appanoose County, Iowa |
More reliable is the information I have on William Morlan and Louisa Jane Jone's descendants. Marrying into the Jones family was the best thing he did as they were very good at keeping records and gave birth to quite a few descendants who were passionate about preserving their family history.
The research goal with the descendants is to track them to current as far as possible, filling in as many of the blanks as possible...finding their stories, recording their history.
I sent in a Family Finder DNA test thru familytreedna.com and would like to find some connection to the 100s of results they have provided.
Here is the Family Group Sheet for William Morlan and Louisa Jane Jones:
I do have Louisa's gravestone and obituary (no copyright worries-I took this picture when I went back to Iowa a few years ago and visited the very beautiful Jones Cemetery in Wayne County, Iowa).
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| Jones Cemetery, Wayne County, Iowa |
One goal of this trip is to find any past issues of the Jones - Davis Newsletters. I have seen a copy of a page from the Prairie Trails Museum in Corydon, Wayne County, Iowa.
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| From the Feb 2, 1904, Iowegian. |
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