LDS Genealogy

During the past few years, I’ve struggled to resolve a widely researched family history mystery. When I moved to the area where the disputed ancestor lived, I was certain I could find the evidence I needed.

The mystery involves a child named Rebecca Bloomfield. The town clerk, also her uncle, listed her as a member of a prominant family. However, she appears nowhere else with this family and is not named in her father’s will. Her parents both died when she was young and there is no further record of her until she marries.

I began with the will. I had read the will on the internet as it was transcribed. Since I was an hour or so from the capital, I took a trip to the state archives and studied a microfilm of the original will. This was to be certain it had been properly transcribed. When at all possible, always track down the original or a photograph of the original document.

The transcription had been correct. I searched for birth and death records, but there were none, her birth being in the early days of the country when records were not consistently kept. No marriage records were found either. There are normally a number of records of any event, so always search for each possibility.

I then turned back to the internet to see what other researchers thought. I found several theories. A Rebecca had died as an infant several years earlier and some thought she was the only Rebecca, and this death had somehow led others to connect her to a different Rebecca. This family had a tradition of naming children after dead siblings, although they did not do so for another child who died. There were several other Rebecca Bloomfields in the family and some believed this Rebecca was really one of them. However, I couldn’t reconcile the dates. It is, however, common for ancestors to be placed in the wrong family. The other family members with the same name should always be carefully analyzed to see if this might have happened.

I tried to find out what happened to the children when their parents died. Rebecca was only nine at the time. She had two adult (barely) brothers, and a number of brothers who were minors. There were only two girls. However, records for the year the mother died were destroyed, so there are no court records showing where the children went.

I noted that the family had children born in New Jersey, then North Carolina, then New Jersey again.  I wondered if some of the children wound up back in North Carolina.

I have, since that time, researched the other children, hoping to find clues in their lives. When one ancestor stumps you, work on the siblings, since much of their lives were shared. Most of what I know about Rebecca’s grandmother, for instance, comes from research done on the men in her life, since fathers, brothers and husbands left behind far more records in those days.

If you’ve chased all the documents available for both the mysterious ancestor and her family, rely on intuition and inspiration. We are entitled to inspiration when we do our genealogy. Since making my search public, I’ve heard from many people who feel as I do, that something deep inside says she belongs in that family. It may never be proven through earthly means, but we can at least prove it to ourselves. A friend of mine suggested she might have been a relative who was adopted when her own parents died. If she came with her own inheritance, her adoptive parents may not have felt the need to include her in their own wills. This felt right to me, and I’ve decided at this point to accept her uncle’s record–after all, he was family and certainly knew who was in that family in a small town.

Search diligently and strive to prove through facts, but in the end, remember that God knows what family she belongs to and will share that with us if we need to know.