Geneva Jane Crawford

I feel like I've cracked the case wide open because I've found personal testimony that is more powerful than the information that I had. Geneva Jane, I believe, is the key to the whole picture.

The family legend - that two boys stole a pig in Scotland, hightailed it for Northern Ireland, holed up there, then found their way to Pennsylvania - is still possible in some form or another. I have assumed that at its base it is at least partly true. They were Scot; they were in Ireland for a while, either in the northern part or in the southern; they were attracted to Pennsylvania and at least some of them ended up there as did thousands of others, and hundreds even from the Wallace clan. I had inferred that the two boys involved would be John and Robert, since they were the only ones we had birthdates for or anything approaching descendants.

In the genealogy are John and Robert's unknown siblings, and then their father remarrying Geneva Jane after they were born; this would make Geneva Jane a stepmother. but I found Janes on down the genealogy and even one great grandchild (I think?) named Geneva Jane; and, even in our line, a John Crawford Wallace who named his son John Crawford Jr., and his son John Crawford III, and down now to John Crawford IV. Wanting to keep that Crawford could just be wanting to associate with the name, but I think originally it was a tribute to Geneva Jane.

So when I read the accounts, which I will reprint in the above posts, I tend to believe them: that John married in the US; his wife died; he returned to Ireland; his children were all born in Ireland; and then he came back to the USA to resettle in Cecil County Maryland. The sons however settled far and wide; our ancestor settled in Wallace Run, where the aunt and an uncle were; John settled in Ohio; William I'm not sure of; maybe the last one was Uncle James, also in Beaver County? I may be getting confused about the generations here.

But in any case that would put the pig boys in the earlier generation. John and maybe his brother James?

Upon his return to Ireland, John found Geneva Jane, married her (probably) and had the four children, then, in Ireland. And this may not have been Londonderry, but rather further south. Her sister Elizabeth somehow ended up in Pennsylvania too. I'll have to read and reread, see if I can make sense of it. I'm tending toward believing these personal accounts over the guesses of our own genealogy. And Geneva Jane is definitely at the center of it.