Finding Ann McCue

I recently found a brand new family on my family tree, and since several people have expressed interest in learning how to do this kind of research, I thought I'd share my process with you.

One of my fourth great-grandfathers is John Hook Jameson, and this last week, I've been researching his sister, Sarah Ann Jameson. I found her husband (Barney McCue) and two of their kids (Charles P. McCue and Susan Elizabeth McCue) pretty quickly using census records and findagrave.com.

Finding their oldest daughter, Ann McCue, took considerably longer.

The thing about researching your ancestors is that there are literally hundreds--if not thousands--of potential duplicates, and if all you have is a name, a birth year, and a birth state (which is all I had for Ann), the chances of pinning them down are slim to none. So you have to get tricky.

Step #1: Start with what you know.

The 1860 and 1870 censuses had informed me she was born in Iowa in 1855 (or maybe 1856), but by 1880, she was no longer living with her family of origin. The most likely explanation was that she'd gotten married, so I decided to try to find her marriage record.

Step #2: Find a specific record.

When I'm looking for a specific record, I focus on the collections most likely to produce it. To do this, I go to FamilySearch.org, then scroll down to the list of territories at the bottom of the page. For this search, I clicked on United States, then Missouri, since that's where Ann McCue was living in 1870. That brought up eleven collections, one of which was Missouri, Marriages, 1750-1920. (I could have tried Missouri, County Marriage Records, 1819-1969, but if you click on that link, you'll notice that the collection hasn't been indexed, which means the only way to find a record is to browse through ALL of them. It's an option if you're desperate, but I wanted to try the easy way first.) From there, I entered the following information in the appropriate search fields:

--My ancestor's name (Ann McCue)

--Her suspected marriage place and a range for her suspected marriage year (Missouri, 1870 to 1880--I could have specified a town or county but wanted to leave it more general)

That brought up four results, one of which was a marriage record for an Annie Mccue and an Issac W. Nichols. It didn't have a ton of information, but the date certainly could have been right, and the marriage took place in the same county where my Ann McCue was living. In other words, this was a strong contender.

Step #3: Look for more clues.

When I find a lead, the next thing I always do is look for corroborating evidence. If I can find an Ann or Annie Nichols who was born in Iowa in 1855 and also married to an Isaac W., then that's hard to dispute. So I went back to the homepage and searched for Ann and Isaac W. together:

--My ancestor's name (Ann Nichols)

--Her suspected residence place in 1880 (Missouri, 1880 to 1880--if I'd wanted to, I could have searched just the 1880 census)

--Her spouse's name (Isaac W. Nichols)

The top result was a census record that showed an Isaac, an Anna, and a Charles Nichols all living in Des Arc, Iron, Missouri, United States, which is the same town where Ann McCue was living in 1870. You'll notice that this census listed Missouri as her birth state, but I wasn't too concerned. People messed up their birth states ALL THE TIME (or the census workers did).

Step #4: Find a related person, like a parent or a spouse.

Since I now knew a little more about Isaac W. Nichols, I decided to do a general search for him back on the homepage:

--My ancestor's name (Isaac W. Nichols)

--His birthplace and a range for his birth year (Missouri, 1856 to 1858--I always include a narrow range even if I know the year exactly, since birth years can get messed up in census records)

Men are often easier to track, and sure enough, the top three results looked very promising. I was especially interested in the census record from 1910, since it appeared to list some children (but no Ann). The record itself included an explanation--Isaac W. reported he was widowed--and his children also reported that their mother was born in Iowa. At this point, I was all but certain that I'd found my family.

But I had one last place to look for Isaac W. Nichols: findagrave.com. (To get to their search engine, you have to click the link on the right side of the page that says Search 102 million grave records.) In the "Died" field, I entered "After 1910," and in the "Cemetery in" field, I selected "Missouri" from the drop-down menu. That search produced exactly one result, but luckily for me, it appeared to be the right one.

(You'll notice that everything on the headstone matched up except for Annie I. Nichols's birth year. I still can't account for that discrepancy, but since it would have been impossible for a woman born in 1876 to have had a daughter in 1885 (as the 1910 census indicated), I feel relatively confident that this was an error. Besides, the chances that there were two sets of Ann and Isaac W. Nicholses who lived and died in the same small town in Missouri are extremely remote.)

If this seems like a long process, it was. I spent close to two hours going through the steps I just described, since I ran into a few dead ends along the way. But I found Ann McCue, my Ann McCue, not to mention her husband and a bunch of her kids, and that made it all worth it.