Genealogy Jottings

In American research, we have a notoriously difficult time documenting the lives of our women ancestors. They obscured their birth families by taking a married name, and they left few footprints in the records available to us.

This week I have encountered a problem with one of my female ancestors. Her name was Mary/Polly Templeton Carter, and at least I know her maiden name.

She and her husband John left Wayne County, Kentucky to become pioneer settlers in Coles County, Illinois about 1830. John died eleven years later, in 1841. She lived on until 1857. Both are buried in the Ashmore, Illinois cemetery.

By my calculation, Mary/Polly lived for sixteen years in widowhood with several minor children. Yet I cannot find them on the 1850 U.S. census. Where were they, and how did the family earn a living?

I know that three of the young daughters, Thenia, Jane, and Elizabeth, married and set up households in Coles County during the 1840’s. Thenia and Elizabeth died before 1850, and Jane (my ancestor) is listed on that census with her husband Caleb Reed. Two other daughters, Nancy and Catherine, were still young enough in 1850 to be living with their mother. Because Mary/Polly was buried at Ashmore, it seems likely they would have remained in that area. But I find no record there of any of the three.

I have a few options as I research this question of what happened to them:

• Look at the 1850 households of Mary/Polly’s married children for a parent and nieces. I already know they were not living with Jane and Caleb Reed.
• Search for Mary/Polly on the Illinois State census for 1855.
• Search for a probate record for John Carter for clues.
• Search the Coles County land records for clues.

I enjoy working on these genealogical puzzles. Surely Mary Carter generated some records during the years between her husband’s death and her own. I just have to find them.