RLP 151: John Isenhour Case Study Part 2

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 151 John Isenhour Case Study Part 2. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the creators of the Amazon bestselling book, Research Like a Pro a Genealogists Guide. I’m Nicole co-host of the podcast join Diana and me as we discuss how to stay organized, make progress in our research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go. Hi everyone.

Nicole (46s):
Welcome to Research Like a Pro.

Diana (49s):
Hi, Nicole, how are you doing today?

Nicole (51s):
Doing well, I am working on a new client project, so I’ve been reviewing the previous report that was done and just putting together all of the starting point information with some ideas of what I would do next. That was a really good exercise to do before finalizing the objective for the second phase.

Diana (1m 9s):
Oh, that’s a really good idea. Especially when you get something that’s been done by someone else before. Good idea.

Nicole (1m 16s):
And how about you? What have you been doing?

Diana (1m 17s):
I am working on some ICAPGen stuff for our listeners. I’m an ICAPGen commissioner. That was my accreditation body. And as commissioner, I have some responsibilities. I actually have been working on the presentation committee ever since becoming accredited and worked with the team to do the ICAPGen YouTube channel and produce those videos and do lots of teaching at conferences. So a new conference that we’re going to have a presence at is the German conference coming up. And I believe it’s the international German Conference Genealogical Conference. There it is. It’s IGGC. And so ICAPGen have a virtual booth and the virtual expo hall and have some information there.

Diana (1m 60s):
We have a lot of regions that people can become accredited in German research. So that’ll be kind of the focus for that. So I’m working with a colleague to put that together, and then I have another colleague that we’re working on doing a course for the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy in January of 2022. And it will be a course all about accreditation. So we’re working on putting that together. That of course takes a lot of thought preparation. So that’s kind of a fun, extra activity that I do outside of family locket stuff.

Nicole (2m 33s):
Oh, that’s neat for this SLIG course. And will it be with SLIG academy or virtual? How will that work?

Diana (2m 39s):
It is going to be with the regular SLIG courses. not academy. Academy is going virtual next year and it will be just once a week. And we felt like what we had in mind for the accreditation course. We wanted to do it all in one week, kind of an intensive look at it in one week. So whether it will be in-person in Salt Lake City or whether it will be virtual again, we will be doing it all in one week.

Nicole (3m 5s):
Oh, okay. Well neat.

Diana (3m 8s):
So today we get to wrap up the case study of my John Isenhour project that I did for the recent study group. And the previous episode, we talked all about the objective and the locality guide and the timeline analysis. And then today we’re going to talk about my research plan and how I used air table to log the research and then how I brought the report and what I discovered. So it should be fun.

Nicole (3m 36s):
Yeah, it should be. Let’s talk about your research plan. You had found some pretty good starting point information, you know, put it all into a timeline. And so what did you learn from that timeline that gave you some ideas for your hypothesis?

Diana (3m 51s):
Well, let me just review for everyone, my objective, and I won’t read the whole thing, but the basic objective was to discover why and when my John Isenhour moved to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, he had been born in Lincoln county, North Carolina, and then died in Cape Girardeau. And so I was trying to determine some migration factors and dates. So from the timeline I learned that he was born about 1784 in Lincoln county, North Carolina, and he’s listed in 1810 as head of household. And he has a wife and children. Now, the interesting thing is in 1810, he was junior, John Isenhour junior, and there’s John Isenhour senior.

Diana (4m 36s):
And so my question always says, well, were they father and son, or could they just be relatives? And one’s older and one’s younger. So I always want to know that. I also had discovered that his daughter Mahayla, the oldest daughter mentioned in his, will had an estimated birth date of 1810, but then he has a second marriage in 1811. So that raised the question of who is her mother, is it Sarah Bailey his wife of 1811, or was she from the previous marriage? So she’s right on that border of, it’s hard to know, you know, time-wise who her mother is. So another subject for another research project.

Diana (5m 17s):
And then I discovered that his son, Valentine, was born in either 1816 or 1820, depending on the census record, which kind of makes a big difference in the research because John Isenhour junior is not on the 1820 census of Lincoln county, North Carolina. So I wondered if he had moved to Missouri by then and his son both times, it says he’s born in North Carolina, 1820 or 1816. So I was kind of hypothesizing that probably 1816 was a better date for his birth if they were in truth, gone from North Carolina by 1820.

Diana (5m 58s):
But that’s why I’m doing this project to figure this out. And then there were actually also a couple other records that say that Valentine was born in 1821 and 1823. A marriage record and another census. So, I mean, we’ve got everything from 1816 to 1823, all North Carolina.

Nicole (6m 18s):
Oh Valentine

Diana (6m 18s):
can’t decide how old he is,

Nicole (6m 19s):
when were you born?

Diana (6m 21s):
And this is so often the case that we have these wide range of dates. So then the only other things that I had were records in Cape Girardeau, much later, 1830 census with John and household, the 1831 marriage of his daughter Mahayla and his residence of Cape Girardeau in 1840. And then he died and his probate is 1844. So we have that really significant hole in the records between his marriage of 1811 and the 1830 census of Cape Girardeau. So 19 years that he could have moved from North Carolina to Missouri.

Nicole (7m 2s):
So you kind of figured out what a general answer to your question would be. So how did you go forward with that and writing your working hypothesis?

Diana (7m 13s):
I like to write out my hypothesis, writing it out, makes me really think clearly about what I’ve discovered. So this is why I wrote John D Isenhour likely had moved from Lincoln county, North Carolina by the 1820 census enumeration, as he was not located there. He could have already relocated to Cape Girardeau county, Missouri, or been in transit searching Lincoln county land and tax records could pinpoint a timeframe for the move setting. The history of the settlement of Cape Girardeau could help to determine a timeframe as well as any early land or tax records for Cape Girardeau. Did John D Isenhour migrate with his family or that of his wife, Sarah Bailey.

Diana (7m 53s):
Moses Bailey performed the marriage of his daughter Mahayla and was named as a witness for John’s probate. John likely moved west with Moses Bailey and perhaps others from the community of Lincoln county, North Carolina.

Nicole (8m 4s):
That’s interesting that you brought in that FAN club member, Moses Bailey, who was probably related to his wife and thought about the fact that he probably didn’t migrate alone just with his wife and children, but with a larger community. So I liked that. And that’s a hypothesis that you can test by looking at the FAN club and looking at their records.

Diana (8m 25s):
Absolutely. And I like to put those things in there because this is the hypothesis. These are just all my thoughts and my ideas. And I liked the way you said that that it’s something to test, which is what the research does is test your hypothesis.

Nicole (8m 39s):
So next in your research plan, what did you do? Did you start brainstorming different ideas of things to look at?

Diana (8m 45s):
Yes. In the section for identified sources, I put in everything that I think could be useful and I got the straight from the locality guide for the project. And so it was easy just to copy and paste them right into this area called identified sources. So for Cape Girardeau, Missouri, I put in county history, state census records, court records, land records and probate records. And because my locality guide had specifics on those and the links to the records, which was so nice. I didn’t have to go look that up again. And then I knew I needed to do some research on Lincoln county and I had not done a full locality guide on this. So I just use the FamilySearch digitized collections to help me with that.

Diana (9m 30s):
And so basically I just did a listing of the things that I thought would be useful, tax lists, land records, county histories. So not a ton because I’m really only researching a very narrow timeframe. And I knew that those records were the ones that would likely give me clues kind of relied on past experience about what would be most beneficial.

Nicole (9m 51s):
Yeah. So then now that you had a big list of possible things to search, how did you prioritize what to do in order?

Diana (9m 58s):
Well, I decided I wanted to start in Lincoln county because as I said in the previous episode, I had not personally done any research in Lincoln county on the family. And so I wanted to dig in and see what was there first, because, you know, you start with what you know, for sure. And we knew he was Lincoln county and I wanted to see if I could get some clues about when he left. And so, first of all, I started with land records. They are, and I thought they did have an index, a grantee and a grantor index. I knew that that would be relatively easy to check and it’s digitized. So I could see it from home with my prioritized research strategy. I always want to start with things that are the low hanging fruit, the easier things.

Diana (10m 39s):
So with an index and with a digitized collection, that was great land records, same with the tax lists. I wanted to do that because I figured that if the tax lists were kept every year, I could see when John would have moved. That would be really helpful. Then I put in the records of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Now we often say don’t build out too huge of a research plan because things may change right. When you get started. And that did happen. We’ll talk about the full bit more later, but I had to insert some research because once I did number one, I discovered an in-between point that John had moved to Green county, Tennessee, which had been previously unknown.

Diana (11m 23s):
So then I inserted that little bit into my research plan. So sometimes this happens, we get going and then we find something and I didn’t want to do a separate project assigned green county because this was key to when he’s going to arrive in Missouri. So I inserted that into my research plan.

Nicole (11m 40s):
Yeah, we have to be flexible sometimes. You know, when we find something relevant to our research question, we don’t want to ignore that until a future project, because that’s important for answering the research question at hand. So that makes sense to add it in. Exactly. Another thing I wanted to point out is that you prioritize land records and tax lists and Lincoln county, North Carolina. And you mentioned that they were digitized online with a grant or grantee index. So that was a low hanging fruit, but not only that, those records had very high probability of answering your research question and telling you, you know, if he sold land, when he left based on negative evidence from the tax list.

Nicole (12m 21s):
So not only were they easy to access, but they actually were some of the best records to answer your question.

Diana (12m 27s):
Absolutely.

Nicole (12m 27s):
So we have to look at both, you know, we can’t just pick whatever is digitized and put that first. If it’s not really the best thing to answer the question. If the best thing to answer your question is not digitized and it’s only at the family history library and everything else probably won’t answer it then you really need to just get somebody to go do the lookout for you.

Diana (12m 46s):
Yes, you do. That is exactly right. And in this case, I was kind of limited to the types of records that would answer my research question. And so you are right. I was very fortunate that those were available. If that isn’t always the case. And then I put for records of Cape Girardeau county, Missouri, kind of the same types of records, land records, state census records and county histories. So that was my research plan.

Nicole (13m 13s):
Okay. So after the research plan was completed, you began researching and keeping track in your AirTable research log. So tell us about your log and your findings.

Diana (13m 26s):
Well, AirTable has quickly become my favorite thing to do my research log. We’ve migrated from Google sheets over to AirTable because it just has some neat things that really helps you work so much more with the records. And one of the things that I really love is the ability to group and I had several different fields in my log. I have one for locality, you know, wherever the records are. I have a field for the website or repository. I have a field for the date of the event. And then I also would like to put in an attachment. This has been really fun. Once I find the record, I do a little screenshot of it. I use the snipping tool and then I can quickly drag that into the field for attachments.

Diana (14m 10s):
So it shows me a little snippet of the actual record. Then I don’t have to go open that up again on Ancestry or FamilySearch, or even just on my computer. It’s so easy to click on it and it enlarges. And I can go look again at the original record, that’s been kind of my fun, new thing that I like to do makes that research logging a little bit more fun.

Nicole (14m 31s):
Yeah. I’m looking at your log right now, and it’s really fun to see those previews of the documents in that attachment column. And then it’s so easy to click on it and enlarge it and just quickly glance at the relevant information. I think it’s really fun, especially if you’re giving your log to a client for them to be able to see it that way too.

Diana (14m 52s):
Exactly. And you are not limited to just one image within that space. So sometimes I will have a census and you know how sometimes they are on two pages, you know, you have the first part and then those pre-1850 censuses, will go over to the other part, which mentions how many people were working in agriculture or those types of things. So you can snip both of them and put them, drag them both into that box. And then it just lets you go back and forth between the two. So I haven’t tried doing more than two images in the attachments, but you probably could. Hmm. So in my log, I also have the source citation, of course, a link to the record, the full URL. And then I have a couple sections.

Diana (15m 32s):
One is comments and next steps and then one is just results. So basically an abstract of what I found, but I really liked the column for comments and next steps because that’s where I can put all my thoughts about it and my analysis. And then the other column that I love for our table and that, that I couldn’t use in my spreadsheet was a linked field for the FAN club. So every time I would come across a FAN, you know, a witness or neighbors on the census, I could enter them into the FANs column. And then because it’s a linked field, it would show up in the page called FAN club members.

Diana (16m 14s):
And it was very interesting to start seeing the people that showed up over and over. And one of those was Moses Bailey, who I mentioned that, that he was a witness for the deed of John Isenhour. And he was the man who married his daughter. So he was in both North Carolina, Lincoln county and in Cape Girardeau, which was a huge clue that he migrated with the family that they probably migrated together. And so having that ability to mention the FANs and then have them linked to another page is super helpful. And one of my favorite things about using AirTable to research.

Nicole (16m 54s):
Yes, I’m looking at your FAN club table now. And do you have quite a few family members. It looks like you have 43 people who were either neighbors, witnesses, you have a surety, and a deed, it looks like and witnesses. Yeah. So this is great that you have a lot of the people mentioned in the records for the Isenhour’s listed here and sorted alphabetically so that you can see who’s there. And any patterns like you mentioned with Moses. So that’s a really good strategy.

Diana (17m 25s):
Yeah. It can be really illuminating in your research. The other thing that I really like about the research log is adding the citations right there. You know, I like to have them in my log and I do the positive and negative searches. It doesn’t matter then it’s so nice when I’m writing the report because the citation is done and I can copy and paste that into my report. It makes it so easy. So I really do love my research log and I like the ability to group. So because I was doing research in different locations, cause I had the locality field I could group and put all the North Carolina records together and all the Missouri records together. But then if I wanted to change and see everything that I had found in family search, I could do that.

Diana (18m 7s):
Or if I wanted to just put it straight chronological, I could do that. So just having some abilities to group and sort makes it nice.

Nicole (18m 16s):
Yes, I like that. And you even have in the locality field, you have Lincoln county, North Carolina as gray, and then Green county, Tennessee is pink. So that if you don’t have it grouped by the locality, you can still see the differences by the colors,

Diana (18m 32s):
Right. And AirTable does that for you. You know, they, they assign that nice color for you. So I like that.

Nicole (18m 39s):
It’s a fun thing.

Diana (18m 40s):
It really is. And I think anytime that we can make part of this process, which I know to a lot of people, the idea of doing citations in a research log is so ponderous and sounds so boring. But if you have a fun tool like AirTable, then it’s actually really fun. And being able to look at all of your work on the screen, just

Nicole (19m 2s):
That’s great. Yeah. And another thing about AirTable is that when you’re writing the citation, it’s much easier to write it in AirTable than it is in a typical spreadsheet because you can open up and expand that cell for the citation. And it’s kind of like having a larger document that you’re typing into instead of a small thing. And there are options for making it italicized and all of the rich text editing fields that you need for typing out your citation.

Diana (19m 30s):
Exactly. And the same thing with typing out your results or your comments, you know, you open up that little cell and you can just type as much as you want in there. So it really is easier to enter and it gives you the ability to add more information to it.

Nicole (19m 45s):
Yeah. And you can even copy and paste like a census transcription from Ancestry right into that cell and it will keep it all. Nice.

Diana (19m 52s):
I do that all the time. The more I can copy and paste things the better it makes it go so much faster. Well, let’s talk about what I found cause I did find some really fun things. And when I’m getting ready to write the report, the first thing I like to do is to do an outline. I found a lot of information and I wanted to get my head around everything I’ve found and put it in a logical fashion. So my outline, which as you can imagine was pretty much chronological and geographical. You know, I wanted to do everything from Lincoln county. Talk about all of that. And then everything I found in Greene county and then finally get to Cape Girardeau county.

Diana (20m 36s):
So it wasn’t really that difficult to organize, but I did want to put in all the specifics things that I wanted to discuss in the research, sometimes when we’re doing the research, we come across things that are interesting or good information, but maybe aren’t really relevant to the research objective and don’t need to be in the report. Sometimes I don’t put every single thing that I found in the report, but I want to make sure I have the key things.

Nicole (20m 60s):
Yeah. I’m looking at your outline now and I can see how helpful that would be as you’re preparing to write. Right.

Diana (21m 7s):
So in my report, I started off with the objective restated that, and I did put in the limitation. I had clocked my time on this and decided 30 hours was where I was going to be. It didn’t have unlimited time. Sometimes if these reports could add another 10 hours for perfecting and adding more and so I just needed to limit it and say, oh, this is good, which is what we do with our client work too. We have to have a limit. So I also mentioned the limitation of research from online sources and the Missouri contacts, because I did have a contact who helped me. And then I did my results summary, where I went through and summarized all the different things I had found.

Diana (21m 49s):
Then I did the background information, discussing what we knew previously. And in my background information, I did talk about the spelling. If you can imagine Isenhour’s spelled so many different ways, it starts off and North Carolina being spelled with E I, but then John changes it when it comes to Missouri and it’s always spelled with just an I. But then the hower part is O W, H A U, H O U so many different variations. So I like to put that at the beginning of the report, how the surname, whatever surname it is is spelled a variety of ways. And then I just use one spelling, etc, and coding records so that it’s not really distracting to the reader to have all these different spellings mixed throughout the report.

Nicole (22m 38s):
Oh, that’s a really important thing to do. Often I’ll read a document or a report that has all these different spellings and they can be confusing. So it’s nice to have that.

Diana (22m 49s):
Yeah. Just to let people know and have it be standardized. Then I talk about the origins of John D Isenhour in North Carolina, Lincoln county. And I talked a little bit about online trees, because like I said before, the Isenhour line had been researched from North Carolina back to Germany, quite extensively because of the connection to President Eisenhower . So I just give a little bit of background about that, but I wanted to introduce John Isenhour senior. And I had discovered when I did the land research, that was first in my research plan.

Diana (23m 32s):
I discovered that John got an original land grant from North Carolina. And that was fun to find that that’s on the North Carolina archives, they have a place to get the land grants and they are digitized. Their index is wonderful. Well, I found that John was granted this in 1792 and it was 350 acres of land on the branch of Lyle Creek. So we love it when we have a place, right? Yes. It makes sure we have the right people and the right place. And it’s all meets and bounds, which was the land survey system of the original colonies. So when I looked in the deeds, I found that 15 years later, John Sr, he was called Sr, he divided this land between John Jr., Phillip, and Daniel Isenhour.

Diana (24m 22s):
And each deed was the same date. And they all mentioned the land joining Lyles Creek. So I knew this was the same group of people, the same land, but I thought it was really interesting that only Phillip Isenhour’s deed stated his son. So I thought, wow, does this mean that John Jr and Daniel were not his sons? Why would he call Phillip his son and not the other two when these deeds were all drawn up on the same day?

Nicole (24m 49s):
Yeah, that is interesting. You know, I wonder sometimes when you see inconsistency is like that, it’s hard to make evidence from that because it could mean something or it could just be nothing.

Diana (24m 59s):
Exactly. And so we have to keep researching and keep fitting the pieces together. Now I had found the 1810 census, which had a bunch of Isenhour men. It had John Jr. and John Sr and it had Daniel, George and Valentine. So we have some others mixed in there. But the one I was really concerned with was John Jr. Because I felt like that would be my John Isenhour and he was of the right age. And that one did show, I’d already seen this in the timeline, but I wanted to mention it in the report, how he had this family in 1810, but then he got married in 1811 to Sarah Bailey.

Diana (25m 41s):
So this would be a second marriage. So, you know, I listed that out in the report and put that in there clearly in case I forgot that little key piece of information and right there in that paragraph, I state future research could explore candidates for the first wife of John Isenhour, junior and children from that marriage. And then I also put it in future research suggestions. So when something comes up like this, I like to put it right in the report, that idea of future research so that I don’t have anybody reading it thinking, well, they didn’t figure out the first wife it’s right there. I’m going to just, not yet.

Nicole (26m 19s):
It’s good to record those future research items in the body of the report. And then right, when you write them, you can add them to the future research suggestions list at the end of the report too.

Diana (26m 30s):
Right. That’s exactly what I like to do. And then you have that section filling up for you. 1820 census does not show two John Isenhours. It just shows one. And he is age 45 plus. And I was very curious to see if my John Jr had moved. That census also named George, which we saw in 1810, Phillip and Daniel, who we saw in the land division. So John Sr deeded land in 1817 to Phillip, Daniel and John Jr. But John, Junior’s not there in 1820 census. So what is that telling us?

Diana (27m 11s):
He moved, probably had moved so next I wanted to look at tax lists to see if I could break that down a little bit. And when I looked at the text list of Lincoln county, North Carolina, I did see that John had moved from the area by 1818. And so that was really helpful. And in fact, it was interesting because John Isenhour senior paid the property tax on land enrusted for John Isenhour Jr. who was not residing in the county. And so right there, I saw that he still owned this land in North Carolina, but he wasn’t residing in the county.

Diana (27m 51s):
And there was, there was no poll tax, which was your resident text. That was cool to figure that out.

Nicole (28m 0s):
That’s really, really good evidence because what helps you link together the John Isenhour junior that was given the land and the land division with the John Isenhour that left the county.

Diana (28m 13s):
Absolutely. And the tax list, name, the situation, they’re all on Lyles Creek. So that puts us right at the right place. And of course we have Phillip and Daniel and John and John Jr. All with this land on Lyles Creek. So it all makes so much sense. So doing the tax research was so helpful. I also wanted to find if John sold his land. Right. So I can always just keep that land from having John Sr, probably his father paying that. So he’s probably going to have a land record. Oh. But before I talk about that, I did find in one of the tax lists in 1819, it looks like, it says John senior entrusted for his son, John Isenhour.

Diana (28m 58s):
It’s one of those things that the handwriting’s, writing’s a little tricky, but I don’t know, it could say his son or his on John Isenhour. I’m not sure. What do you think you’re looking at the image too.

Nicole (29m 9s):
I think it says his son,

Diana (29m 10s):
I like to think that it seems like

Nicole (29m 14s):
it doesn’t look like there’s another S but maybe there’s two S’s that ran together or they just were lazy, but I don’t see what else I could say besides his UN.

Diana (29m 26s):
Yeah. Yep. I agreed. That was really fun. You don’t often see that in a tax list, a little bit of relationship there or a hint at relationship. So searching the deeds, I found in 1819 that there was a deed between John Isenhour Jr. of Green county, Tennessee and Daniel Moser of Lincoln county, North Carolina. So that was exciting because we had an in-between point, which we often don’t have. He had began his move west and was in Green county, Tennessee, which was really just over the border of Tennessee and North Carolina, not that far away. And the deed identifies the land as being originally granted to John Eisenhower’s senior by a state patent and conveyed by the said John senior to John Jr.

Diana (30m 13s):
So I mean, it was obviously the same person at the details for the land was exactly right. And mentioned that Lyle’s Creek again. So that was really fun to find that and to see we have another location of Green county, Tennessee.

Nicole (30m 31s):
Wow. So that deed of 1819 was really important for pointing you to a new residence for John.

Diana (30m 38s):
Absolutely. And it did give me a couple of witnesses too that I mentioned in my research log, Daniel Hoke and Avel B you know, anytime we have witnesses, they’re important to the case somehow. It’s important to record those and see where else they might pop up.

Nicole (30m 53s):
I’m always curious, in a deed like this, you know, why did John leave the county and moved to Green county Tennessee before he sold the land?

Diana (31m 2s):
Good question. Was the going with a group? Were they maybe going out to Missouri and then they just stopped in Green county? And there’s so many questions. Every record you find brings up more questions.

Nicole (31m 13s):
Yeah. I’ve seen this in the deeds, you know, quite a few times where people have already moved and then they’re selling their land and the place where they used to live. And I don’t know if it just takes a while. Maybe they had an agreement before they left, but it takes a while for the deed to get finished and recorded or who knows? I don’t know. Maybe they just hadn’t sold it yet. They just were ready to leave and just figured it would eventually sell who knows.

Diana (31m 40s):
Yeah. And because he still had family there, maybe the group was taking off and he decided to go and knowing that his father and brothers could take care of selling the land for him,

Nicole (31m 48s):
Especially if it wasn’t the land where he was living on. And it was just an inheritance that he would like to sell and get the proceeds from, but wasn’t necessarily needing the money in order to purchase new land. Who knows.

Diana (32m 3s):
True, lots of things we can conjecture. Well, of course, once I discovered the Green county connection, I wanted to research in Green county. So I had added that to my research plan, to work on the tax, the land records in Green county, because I was hoping he had maybe purchased some land or beyond the tax list. So I could find some evidence of him in Green county, but Tennessee is difficult in that area. And the 1820 census for that Marshall’s district of east Tennessee was lost. So he’s not going to be in the census and then textbooks also does not survive. And so, you know, it just was one of those things where not enough records survive to show him actually they are, but I conjectured, he had likely arrived in the county about 1818 and had moved to Missouri at least by 1828.

Diana (32m 54s):
It’s just one of those things. Again, you’re not sure. And I was hoping that there would be a land record, but again, I did not find a good record to show me anything about him buying land. But I did find a really interesting record kind of what you were talking about with deeds and different locations. And it was an 1835 and it names a John Isenhour and a Persis Isenhour in Green county, Tennessee. And they are heirs of a Phillip Henkel. So I put that as future research. How does Phillip Henkel and all of his other heirs, which were a bunch of other Henkels, what’s their connection to John and Persis Isenhour.

Diana (33m 35s):
And could this Persis be an older son that we don’t know about? Oh, again, another record to explore and see what I can figure out. Yeah.

Nicole (33m 47s):
I wonder if this could be his first wife’s family.

Diana (33m 51s):
Yeah. It is just another, another little piece of the puzzle that really I’m going to have to work on. Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah. Without getting a lot of information from Green county, I moved to Cape Girardeau and my research plan was there again, working on the land records and the tax lists. So that was a little tricky because again, looking for surviving records early, I did find that he was taxed in 1828. So that was helpful to know he was at least there by then. And the fun thing with this was that I reached out to one of my colleagues, Phil Edelman, who is a Cape Girardeau researcher.

Diana (34m 37s):
And he had compiled those deed books. I had mentioned earlier, and because these were not available on FamilySearch and I wasn’t sure what was going on with the tax list. I reached out to bill and he told me that the early tax list had been filmed, but large portions of them are illegible. And he had photographed the originals at the Missouri historical society. And he let me know that John was there from 1828 on. So that was an example of me being very lucky to have a contact that could do some research. And that knew about that county. So sometimes we get stuck with online and we do have to contact people who have more knowledge of the records than we do.

Diana (35m 20s):
Yeah. That is

Nicole (35m 21s):
I’m really helpful. And it’s good to think about the possibility that even though it looks like a record is not available or not legible, that it could be available and legible somewhere else. If we just do a little digging.

Diana (35m 36s):
Exactly. And so I did the research in the grantee books and the grantor books, but did not find anything about John Isenhour, but luckily Bill had read all the deeds and put them into his book and he did have an abstract of a deed that mentioned John Isenhour. So that was fabulous to know. And the interesting thing was that the deed was not formally issued until 1831, but it seemed like he probably had gotten that land earlier because he was taxed for it in 1828. So sometimes we see that as well, that the deed isn’t taken into the courthouse and formally written up when actually the transaction took place earlier, getting the location of the land actually helped me put John in a place.

Diana (36m 26s):
So that’s what we want. We want to find that place because that can help us to determine their community. These county boundaries are large and we’re talking thousands upon thousands of acres and trying to pinpoint them within a county can be impossible unless you’ve got some clues from tax or land records. Right. So what I found when I was really looking at the land and I had the 1830 census, which also gave me a specific place, I discovered that John’s land was not in present day Cape Girardeau , but as in present day Bolander county.

Diana (37m 8s):
So Bolander county was created in about 1850, I believe. And so I realized that I needed to do some research, then in Bolander county about its history to learn about the early settlers then. So isn’t it so interesting how their research kind of takes twists and turns? Yeah.

Nicole (37m 26s):
You know, there’s all kinds of new locality’s popping up here.

Diana (37m 31s):
Absolutely. When I really dug into that locality, I discovered that this was a group of German immigrants who came from Lincoln county, North Carolina, which was the exact origin and John Isenhour was from a group of German immigrants. So I found in a county history, which was in Bolander county where it talked about this and talked about the first settler was George Frederick Bolander of Lincoln county, North Carolina. And he was the namesake for the county and talked about Lawrence township, which was where John was living and that they traveled to the area in 1805 and settled along the big little whitewater rivers.

Diana (38m 14s):
So if they were there already in 1805, John would have probably heard about this German settlement out in Missouri because they would be writing letters back and forth, or maybe even traveling back and forth between Missouri and Lincoln county. I decided that was a really good reason why he was moving west. Oh, so

Nicole (38m 34s):
You found kind of the answer to your why question?

Diana (38m 36s):
Yes. And one of the things that we look for also in migration is land conditions. And this was right on the edge of the Ozarks. So it was hilly land and it would be much the same as the hilly land in Lincoln county, kind of the same type of agricultural opportunities. The histories talked about how they grew orchards and it was really good for growing apples, pears, peaches, apricots, strawberries, and grapes, and the land wasn’t the best for farming. It was very heavily wooded. So it gave me a little picture into what it might’ve been like. Yes, yes.

Nicole (39m 12s):
You know, we always pictured these ancestors as farming, but it’s a little different, I guess, to have an orchard or raised stock, who knows exactly what he was doing, but something a little different maybe.

Diana (39m 25s):
Right, right. So I’ve talked a little bit about Moses Bailey, who we figure that he is a connection to Sarah Bailey, John’s wife. And I found a one of the county histories that he was the minister and founder of the Marble Hill Baptist church, and talks about how it began at his residence on hog Creek, about five miles northeast of Marble Hill, which is right where John’s land was right in that area. So this was getting the community put into this certain place. And I also noticed on the census records, all the neighbors had very German names. We had Hans and Nels and all sorts of different names that had German origins.

Diana (40m 9s):
So what I learned in the histories was that this group of Germans actually kept their customs and their language for a long time. I’ve talked before in the podcast about the book that I read about the Ozarks. And in there, I talked a little bit about how this group became known as the Whitewater Dutch, because they settled in the Whitewater river area. And because they retain their German customs and language people called them the Whitewater Dutch.

Nicole (40m 38s):
Oh, that’s a fun little tidbit. Yeah.

Diana (40m 39s):
And so, although John, you know, they had retained the head of this little group of German settlers. John did anglicize his name and it said that that was the pattern of this group that they Anglicised their name eventually. And his children did not keep those German roots alive. As far as we know, they all became Isenhour with an I. They moved on to Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and those German roots, as far as we know, didn’t come through our family. Right.

Nicole (41m 9s):
I think they kind of took on more of that Western United States, rugged farming, migrant like a new culture, right. Frontiers

Diana (41m 19s):
Frontier people. Absolutely. So it was fun. And kind of the final thing that I put into the report was the thing about the hogs, which I thought was really fascinating from my book. I had learned that hogs were just so important to the farmers. There are, well, I guess we’ll call them farmers, even though I’m not, maybe didn’t grow as many crops as we thought, but they grew corn. And that fed the hogs as well as people. And it was fun when I read his will, that he did indeed have a lot of hogs that he left to all of his children and left 27 to one son, 12 to a daughter, 14 to another. So it was just fun to tie together what I had read in the histories about the animals and see that come through in the probate and the will, what he was leaving, gave me just a little bit of a feel for his life.

Nicole (42m 11s):
And that is a lot of hogs.

Diana (42m 13s):
That’s a lot of hogs. They did very well in the Ozarks. Well, I finished up the report with, with a conclusion. And then of course those future research suggestions. So lots of avenues for more research on this family, but it was such a fun project to really answer the question of pinpoint much more closely at when he came, find that extra place of Tennessee, that he stopped off that and to find a reason going to join this group of German settlers out in Missouri.

Nicole (42m 40s):
Well, I love this report. I think it’s fun to have about our family. And so I’m glad you did it. Thanks for sharing that with us today. And hopefully everyone listening can make a goal to research a question or an objective in your own research and finish it up by writing a report.

Diana (42m 56s):
All right. Well, good luck everyone in your work.

Nicole (42m 60s):
We’ll talk to you guys again next week. Bye bye.

Diana (42m 59s):
Bye bye.

Nicole (42m 60s):
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