Interesting, interesting...

Still just dabbling around with my new project a bit today and decided to look around with the Ohio side of things. In the last post, I had taken on a new project in finding out the approximate birth date and origins of Isaac "Will" Atkinson who married in an Indiana-Ohio border county in 1885. At this point, Isaac is a brand new person in a branch of my in-laws family that I haven't done much work on. Pretty much all I have to go on right now was a copy of his daughter's marriage license application stating his name and that was about it. Isaac has not been positively identified in any census enumeration and his wife, Emma Batchelor, appears to have gotten remarried prior to 1900 who could be signaling either a death or divorce for Isaac in the 1890s.

So I started just doing fairly simple searches for an Isaac or a William in Ohio in the 1870 and 1860 census enumerations. In 1860 I found an interesting entry for a family living in Clinton County, Ohio.


The interesting part here is the name of 3 year old Isaac's presumed mother- Esther. Isaac W. Atkinson and Emma Batchelor's only daughter was named Esther. I should probably add a side note here that I'm not jumping to conclusions and saying yes, I've found the right Isaac. That would just be silly. But after doing this kind of thing for quite some time now, I'd be doing a pretty shotty job if I didn't take note of naming patterns and keep my eyes open for children named for parents, grandparents, etc. With good reason, reusing names is an extremely common thing. So I'm taking note of this family and will keep it in mind but for now, that's all.

I did try to find Temple Atkinson and his wife in subsequent census records, since they are fairly young in this 1860 enumeration, but didn't have much luck. There were other Atkinsons living in Clinton County however so it's possible that they were relations of some kind. Again, something to take note of for the future. Thinking ahead in that vein though, if Temple and his family left Ohio or something happened to them and Isaac was left behind, it would seem to connect with the only Atkinson previously found living in Randolph County, IN (the place of Isaac and Emma's marriage in 1885) in the 1880 census working as a farm hand with the Smith family rather than with parents.

Interesting, interesting...(I just love these mysteries!). Can't wait to hear back from the volunteer about whether record of Isaac's death has been found!