For 2023, I’m writing responses to the 52 Ancestors in 52 Days prompts provided by Amy Johnson Crow on her ”Generations Café” website and Facebook page.
I wrote about my 2nd great-grandmother Mary Ann Botts a number of times in my responses to the 52 Ancestors challenge for 2022, and it looks like I’ll be writing about her again this year. She just fits so many categories, and I identify with her for a lot of reasons.
Here’s what I know about Mary Ann through records I have found:
Mary Ann spent her entire life in Hancock County, Illinois. All of the significant events of her life – the birth and death of her parents and grandparents, the birth and death of her siblings, two marriages, the birth and death of her children, the death of her husband, and her own birth and death – occurred in this county.
A few years ago, I was working on a genealogy research project I called “1900.” My goal in this project was to identify where all of my ancestors were living in 1900. My father had been born in Hancock County, Illinois, in 1918, and all of his family – parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins going back two generations – were living in Hancock County. Filling out this part of my tree was mostly a matter of identifying people from census records and then finding them in other records to paint a more complete picture of their lives.
But I had one gaping hole – I couldn’t find Mary Ann Botts in the 1900 census. As you can see from this table, I would not have expected her to be anywhere else. All of the significant events of her life had taken place in this country. Where was she and why couldn’t I find her?
I set this puzzle aside for a while as I built out the rest of this part of my tree. I had all of this part of my family in place – including information about people who moved away from Hancock County. I wasn’t very interested in collecting information on my collateral ancestors who no longer lived in Hancock County – my research focus was on people who were there in 1900.
However, one day I had a reason (I don’t remember what it was right now) to look up some information about Mary Ann’s siblings. Mary Ann was the third of 10 children born to her parents, so she had a lot of family members around – only one of her siblings had died before 1900. As I was checking out these collateral lines, I found myself looking at the 1900 census record for Mary Ann’s younger sister Amanda Jane Botts – and there was Mary Ann!
Amanda was seven years younger than Mary Ann, with three brothers between the two sisters. Amanda had married in 1865, and she and her husband had moved to Missouri by 1870. They had moved to Kansas by 1900, and by 1920 they were in Oregon. I hadn’t paid much attention to them once they left Illinois.
All I can figure is that after her husband’s death in 1894, Mary Ann had decided to spend some time with her younger sister, Amanda (known variously as Jenny or Mandy), whom she may not have seen since Amanda left Illinois with her family in 1870. A quick look at railway lines in that era shows that it would have been possible for Mary Ann to make this trip by train, although it’s hard for me to believe that she would have made this 500+ mile trip alone in her 60s. Although what little I know about Mary Ann suggests that she was tough and independent. She may have been up for this adventure.
Mary Ann was really out of place in 1900. Finding her accidentally the way I did taught me to look in unexpected places for ancestors. They are a wily bunch.
Good morning, Karen. I grew up in Algonquin, Illinois, a small village incorporated in both McHenry and Kane county, quite a distance from Hancock county. Regardless, while there are gaps in my family history, what I found interesting in your article today was the possibility that Mary Ann may have made that train trip! What I know of my ancestors, I think Mary Ann made the trip!