Family History Mystery

I've been working on a mystery in my family tree and I'm pretty excited that I've now solved it, at least in part! 

The mystery involves the family lineage of my 2nd great grandfather, Sam Weaver. As I've been working on my family tree, I've run into a fair amount of confusion about his parents. I want to know exactly who they were and what happened to them. 

This photo of Sam Weaver and Mary Hayes, my 2nd great maternal grandparents, was taken in 1930.

My best source of information about Sam and Mary is this delightful family history book which was written by one of their daughters, Mate. Aunt Mate lived to be over 100 and had an avid interest in family history. I am so grateful she took time to write down everything she knew. Her book doesn't include a family tree, but instead features several chapters with colorful stories that bring our ancestors to life. I've read through it many times and discover something new each time. It's a real treasure.

When I first started reading the book, I began putting the names and dates Aunt Mate referenced into my family tree on Ancestry, verifying them with contemporaneous documents. Other than a few typos and slightly off dates, her information has been extremely accurate. In addition to being quite interesting and entertaining, her book has been invaluable as I try to piece together this particular family line. 

So back to Sam. When it came time to write about her father's early life, Mate had very little information. She knew his birthdate and that his parents were William Weaver and "Levina" Biery, so I added that information to my tree. It was at least a start.

 But things got very murky from there!

I also inherited another distant relative's research into this side of the family. I could see in her notes that she had written to a library in Pennsylvania about Levina Biery, but they actually sent her information about a Levina with the MAIDEN NAME Weaver, not Biery. The library materials suggested that Levina had married a man named Samuel Owen. After digging around in many records, I concluded that while this information may be correct for Levina Weaver, it is not at all correct for our Levina Biery. Sadly, our relative passed away before figuring things out.

In addition, some Ancestry trees suggested that Levina had a twin sister named Sovina -- and they were born a month apart. Now...how likely is that? 😏 In researching this I discovered that on old census records, the letter "L" often looks like a letter "S". Turns out there was only one girl -- and her name was actually Lavina.

Meanwhile, in the very old family Bible I found a few other clues to Lavina's (my 3rd great grandma's) life. On a page of pictures, there's a photo of a girl named Amanda Bergstresser, labeled as "father's sister". 

Hmmm... Assuming Mate also wrote in this Bible, then she would have been referring to Sam as her father, making Amanda his sister.

 I'd seen the name Bergstresser before. The relative whose research I inherited guessed that perhaps "Sovina" married David Bergstresser and "Lovina" married Samuel Owen. Of course, both of those theories turned out to be false.

But a quick check online confirmed the facts: David and Lavina were actually married and Amanda was one of their many children. They were married just a few years after Sam Weaver was born to Lavina. It was a second marriage for him and POSSIBLY a second marriage for her, although I've yet to determine if Lavina ever actually married Sam's father, William Weaver.

The lesson here is that when you're doing family research, you must always verify -- and verify some more. It's extremely easy to find yourself going down a completely wrong path and you may never realize it. You can never take someone else's research as fact without verifying!

The other lesson is that when you come up against a "brick wall", as I have with William Weaver, you can often learn a lot by researching others in the family. I want to learn about William, but in order to do that I need to piece together details of the ENTIRE family. In researching broadly, you'll often uncover the missing information you need. 

Since I cleared up the mystery about Lavina and David, I've been able to identify Lavina's parents, too -- my 4th great grandparents. I'm just starting to fill in their family details which will include Lavina's siblings. In the process, I hope to learn more about Lavina's relationship with William Weaver, my elusive 3rd great grandfather. 

Did Lavina ever actually marry William? If so, when and where? If not, what happened to him? Did he leave her to raise Sam on her own with her family, as seems to be suggested by the census records? Or did he meet an untimely death? It sounds a bit like a soap opera...but it's really my family history!

 If you haven't started looking into your family's story, I highly recommend it! It's a fascinating journey and you never know what you might discover!

jp