Genealogy Jottings

Hosea Dunbar (1777-1849) was my ancestor Benjamin E. Dunbar’s younger brother. I have been filling out a Family Group Sheet for Hosea in the hopes of learning more about the greater Dunbar family. Good genealogical research practices tell us to search for members of an ancestor’s FAN club, meaning their family, associates, and neighbors.

Our Dunbar family history, Robert Dunbar of Hingham, Massachusetts by Ann Theopold Chaplin (1992), gave me some of Hosea’s basic information, but it is incomplete and somewhat inaccurate. This genealogy told me that Hosea’s family migrated from Vermont to New York and then on to Michigan.

FindAGrave.com provides the death information for Hosea, his wife Rachel, and all but one of their children. It also names the children’s spouses.

More can be done on this family. Hosea was married in Vermont and some of the children were born there. I should be able to find a Vermont marriage record and birth registrations for them.

I may also be able to locate marriage records for any children married in Michigan, although the older ones may have married in New York. I have heard that New York research is difficult, so that may be a dead end.

The family eventually settled in Lenawee County, Michigan, arriving by 1840. There ought to be a county history, and perhaps the Dunbars are mentioned therein. If I am lucky, I can find one online.

All this means that I have more to do on Hosea’s family before I move on to other Dunbar family members and associates. My research subject for this year is my own ancestor, Benjamin E. Dunbar (1776-1831). To fully understand his life, I must first finish learning about his FAN Hosea.