Wallowing? Take a breather

Yes I've taken a little break from this business. I'll explain.

I was deep into the family of John Wallace (~1750), the one who came over from Northern Ireland. Born in Scotland, he had apparently arrived in the US right before the Revolution (1770?), touched down in Carlyle, PA, went back, married and raised a family in Northern Ireland, and then brought the whole family over to Cecil County Maryland in 1797. By that time some of his children (the first allegedly born in Pennsylvania) were already grown and may not have come with him. His wife, Geneva Jane, daughter of a Northern Ireland fisherman, disappeared and may have gone back to Ireland. Her sister settled in Wallace Run and is a likely reason for young Robert's ending up there. Young Robert, the youngest in this family, was only one when he arrived in Maryland, but ended up being the pillar of our line which then stayed and flourished in Wallace Run, New Castle and the area (western Pennsylvania).

But records are very scarce of the other people in that family. His oldest brother William may have been born in PA or may have been born in Northern Ireland, but seems to have disappeared, though there are thousands of William Wallaces, needless to say, PA was full of them. Another brother goes unnamed, unfound - that is rare. A third brother John is well documented and ended up in Ohio. All the sisters seem to have disappeared, though there are several possibilities for Jane. What of the others? Did they die young or just fade into the woodwork?

Genealogists, grasping at straws, associate these people with various Wallaces who were kicking around Maryland and Pennsylvania in this era. I was about to do that too. This must be our Jane, or, I think this guy is ours. But I have only intuition and what other people say, and I don't fully trust either, though I'm leaning toward the first. People just copy what they've found, and you probably wouldn't blame me for doing the same. But I'm not sure I want to; I'm mulling it over.

Meanwhile I've found a bunch of good stories. No question, enough for a book. As I take my breather, I organize the book a little. I figure, if there are lots of unknown mysteries, I'll just put them right in there.

For example, there's John Joseph Wallace. He was born around the same time as ours, but in Pennsylvania, and died in 1808, whereas the story in our family is that our John died in 1810. Lots of things are attributed from one to the other. One person swears his wife was Geneva Jane; often they say ours died in 1808.

But he was part of an interesting family of Wallaces that had actually emigrated from Antrim, in the middle of Northern Ireland. Could he have ancestors among the Cairnhill Wallaces or be a distant relative of ours? There are Janes in that family too, and they ended up in Washington County, down southwest of Pittsburgh. Ours all seemed to end up in Wallace Run and New Castle, but the families cross a lot.

It's a frustrating thing about middle names; if ours had one, he'd be easier to identify. And those middle names probably point back to other ancestors making the path clearer going back. Most likely our John did have a middle name, but it's lost to history, and in fact there are no middle names for any of the people we know who came over, with the exception of Geneva Jane. Why? It just seems to be a lost generation. I am not totally positive any of them came over, or stayed, with the exception of Robert and John; Robert and John had well-marked trails. The others, especially the girls, may have gone back when their mother did (if she did), early enough to recover some kind of life on the rugged north shore of northern Ireland.

In northern Ireland, it's especially hard to find their trail. But that may just be because I haven't figured it out yet. Wish me luck.