Most vexing problems

After looking into this family in this era for a while, I've run aground on a few recurring problems. First, the background: Wallaces came to the USA, particulary Pennsylvania, by the hundreds in this era, and in many cases documentation is thin. If we have no documentation of their death, do we assume they went back? Or were buried on the hilltop behind the farm? Or their death was one of the hundreds of others with the same name that died somewhere in PA or nearby in that era? It's hard to say.

One very positive account of those early days comes from the History of Beaver Falls, and was copied here on this blog. At first, when I found out that James also had gone back, and there seemed to be no such Hugh, I figured this entire post was bogus and dismissed it. But now that I know that it's from Beaver Falls, I surmise that it was probably gotten from the family account of young Charles, a brother of one of the great grandfathers, and includes what people knew at the time, exaggerated or not. Some other genealogists in the family (I have now perused more trees) have worked from there and simply found the four brothers that they thought were the right ones. In one tree I found a Hugh that was born just a year or so from John; the Hugh could also be an older brother's son; these guys actually landed and settled before John did.

It makes sense to accept as much of the story as possible. If John married and had a William before returning and marrying Geneva Jane in Scotland, there is no record of that William, or of his grandparents, or of the marriage, or of the wife. Nevertheless it could have happened that way, and there could be people in Carlisle that I simply didn't know about. Of the arrivals in New York, one has it 1770 and one has it 1774, with the second one documented; I may try to track down this alleged documentation, and the earlier date would make more sense if he were to have time to go back and marry Geneva Jane at any of the dates that are often given for that.

By far the most vexing problem is what happened to the family after arriving in Cecil county. There is no documentation of death for either John or Geneva Jane. Both John Jr. and Robert seem to have ended up in PA, John on his way to OH, Robert marrying a New Castle girl and going to Beaver Falls. There were two daughters in the family who could have stuck with them to the end, or followed them if they moved, but there is no record of either of those happening. It would make sense that they became disillusioned with Cecil County and decided to track down one of their relatives up in PA where there were already better established farms. Nathaniel and Hugh maybe? James or William? Maybe I'm missing something, one who latched on in some visible way somewhere, but the only thing I can come up with is Geneva Jane's sister who clearly made it in Wallace Run, and would provide a shelter and a place for someone named Mary Wallace or Jane Wallace to disappear or marry into another family. My only problem with that theory is that if John or Geneva Jane died there, surely we'd know. The identification of Butler as his death location seems to be from another John, one who actually lived there.

The most repeated death date for Geneva Jane is 1844, which would have made her 100, or almost 100. That alone would make her a rock star in that era. But both Geneva and Jane reappear down the genealogy trees, so I surmise that she was a well respected family member, and probably mother of John and Robert, in spite of a tree that implies she wasn't. At least Charles, and probably most of his family, believed she was too. It is not hard to believe step-fathers, step-mothers etc. in this era as people didn't go long unmarried if they could avoid it; life was tough out in the mountains of PA. And half the time, if they married a Wallace, they might not even be related.