Finding the Parents of Sarah Merrill Part 1: a Genealogy Case Study

October 20, 2022 Jessica Neaves

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We’ve all got at least one brick wall in our family tree and one of mine is Sarah Merrill, my 4x great-grandmother.

I have very few branches in my tree that were in the US before 1845, and she’s one of them.

I’ve been searching for information about her from time to time for years and hadn’t found anything earlier than her marriage in 1831.

Last year, I made it a mission to figure out who her parents were and finally began making breakthroughs.

How did I get there?

This is the first post in a series sharing a genealogy case study about solving the mystery of who the Sarah Merrill’s parents were.

FYI, there won’t be a set schedule for these posts. As I take a step and find (or don’t find) answers, I’ll be sharing them with you. I hope you come along with me on this journey and can learn from my research.

This first post may be the longest in the series, as I include all the background information.

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Research question

Who were the parents of Sarah Merrill, born circa 1812 in Vermont, married Samuel Jones 24 November 1831 in Lebanon, Grafton County, New Hampshire, and died 20 October 1863 in Woodstock, Windsor County, Vermont?

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Background information

Sarah, as typical for many women in the 1800s, left behind few records and almost no clues about where she came from or the names of her parents. I have found only a few records so far created during her lifetime.

Her 1831 marriage doesn’t give the names of her parents, her residence, or her birthplace. The marriage took place 24 November 1831 in Lebanon between Mr. Samuel Jones and Miss Sarah Merrill by Timothy Kenrick, Justice of the Peace. The town records online are a transcript, and I haven’t located the original record yet.
Samuel and Sarah were living in Lebanon, New Hampshire for the 1840 census. She was 30-39 years old.
By 1850, they had moved to Hartland, Windsor County, Vermont. Sarah was 39 and born in Vermont.
In 1860, Sarah, Samuel, and their kids were in Woodstock, Vermont, where they settled. Sarah was 47 and born in Vermont.
Her death record on 20 October 1863 says she was 49 years, 6 months old, and the wife of Samuel Jones. She was buried at River Street Cemetery in Woodstock. This age would give her a birth date of 20 April 1814. There is no information about her parents or birthplace, and there was no field on the preprinted card for her maiden name.

The record is a copy created in 1919 by the town clerk when Vermont mandated towns send transcriptions of birth, marriage, and death, as well as gravestones before 1870. I’ve searched the original town records but haven’t located her death yet. It’s possible that the return came from her gravestone rather than a death register as it names the cemetery. There could be more information on the original if I can dig it up.

And that’s it. That’s all the vital and census records created during her life that I can find to date.

These few records say she was born in Vermont and give a birth date between 1810 and 1814.

She has no known siblings so far to research.

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Image of Woodstock, Vermont via Pixabay/usmc0491

Genealogy case study step 1: Sarah Merrill’s children

The first step in my process for this case study was to research Sarah and Samuel’s children for clues about either of their origins (Samuel is also a giant brick wall).

Samuel and Sarah had the following children:

Lucy Maria Jones (circa 1832-1874)
George R. Jones (circa 1832-?)
Samuel Henry Jones (1835-1922)
Henry L. Jones (1838-1864)
William D. Jones (circa 1842-?)
Charles D. Jones (circa 1844-1924)
Frank Orrin Jones (circa 1847-1879)
Sarah Martha Jones (circa 1850-1880)
Horace Jones (circa 1852-?)

As you can imagine, with the last name of Jones, they can be hard to trace, and I haven’t found what happened to all of them yet.

George and William disappear after the Civil War. George didn’t serve, although William did and his service record says he left the army in 1865 and wasn’t killed in action.

Horace was a rascal and I’ve found articles about him stealing horses and other things under aliases and serving time in jail. He disappears in the early 1880s and may have changed his name and moved out of the area. Or he could have ended up in jail somewhere and I haven’t found him yet.

Despite their last name, I have found a good number of vital and census records for all the kids. Most married at least twice.

For the records I have found to date, they say she was from Vermont or there was no parental information at all.

Only two give actual clues about where in Vermont she was from.

The marriage of her son Samuel H. in 1918 gives Sarah’s birthplace as Hartford, Windsor County, Vermont. Like Sarah’s death record, this is a derivative copy created by the town clerk on an unknown date. Although, the information on the record matches every other record I have for Samuel.

Samuel was also the most reliable narrator of all the kids. I’ve found a lot of documents on him, including newspaper articles, and as far as I can tell he gave accurate information in them. He was also very consistent in the information he gave. (Of course, consistent doesn’t mean accurate.)

The marriage of her son Horace in 1882 also says Sarah was from Hartford. This source is an original record and most of the information in it matches other documents for Horace. One red flag is that his father Samuel’s place of birth was Woodstock, Vermont (where he was living at the time) while other documents say Samuel was from Massachusetts.

Only one record conflicts with Vermont as where she was born. The 1920 census of her son Samuel H. states she was from New Hampshire. The informant is unknown, like most censuses, and the information is unreliable.

Step 2: Doing a surname study

Okay, now that we’ve gotten all the background information out of the way, let’s get into the next step of my research!

(First, a disclaimer. I began focusing on this research problem about a year and a half ago and am doing my best to remember the exact details for this step.)

Once I found those two marriage records, of course, the first thing I did was look for Merrills living in Hartford from 1800 through 1820, when she would have been living with her parents.

And of course, there weren’t any. There were a couple of Merrill households in the county, but none in Hartford.

So, the next step to take was a surname study. I searched for every single Merrill (and alternative spellings) in Vermont from 1790 to 1830 and arranged the information in tables by county with the family members’ information (Female aged 10-15, 2 Males 15-19, etc.).

I came up with about 65 total results, some of whom were possibly the same person that I had to match up from census to census.

The goal was to find someone who was the right age to be Sarah’s father and had a daughter of the right age in the household. And ideally in Windsor County in or near Hartford.

I went through every person from these censuses and tried to match them up by person when possible. I highlighted the ones that matched the search criteria. Then I eliminated the obvious nopes (they didn’t have kids, were too old, etc.)

This gave me about 30 male Merrills that were possibilities, which is still a lot, yet more manageable than 65.

I then began researching each one. Did any of them ever live in Hartford at any time? Could I identify the girls and see who they married? Did any of the girls live in Hartford? Did any probates mention a daughter named Sarah?

At the same time, I was researching the Merrills that appeared in Hartford censuses after 1830 to see if I could connect any of them to Sarah. Again, I eliminated people as I went and kept closing in on the top contenders.

I came up with a few strong candidates, the best of which was a man named David Merrill, who lived in Hartford – but didn’t appear there until 1830.

I was curious yet also debated about whether he was a possibility because he didn’t show up in Hartford until the time Sarah was getting married. Still, he was the only Merrill in Hartford from 1800 to 1830 so I knew I had to give him a chance.

Could Sarah not have been born in Hartford but grew up there?

Stay tuned for my next post in this series, where I’ll share a record that gave me a couple of clues about Sarah’s family – and created more confusion about her life.

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Final thoughts

Sarah Merrill, my 4x great-grandmother, left behind almost no information about her background. She was born somewhere around 1811 in Vermont, possibly in Hartford, Vermont.

However, no Merrills lived in Hartford until the 1830s – so who were her parents and where were they living before that? Researching all the Merrill households in Vermont gave me some clues to start working with.

Stay tuned for more installments in this genealogical case study series as I research and uncover answers about her family.

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