And Another Mini-Breakthrough into the Research on my Oswalt Ancestors ...

Before I get back to posting on my findings of my newly-found Oswalt ancestors, I want to mention another breakthrough I had in solving a small mystery with my more established Oswalt ancestors. A few years ago, I posted on my difficulty in locating the marriage record for ancestor's third marriage, and I briefly described what I knew about John's third wife. Up until this year, I had not been successful in locating the record for John's third marriage primarily because I had concentrated my search for the record in Michigan, with an occasionally glance into Indiana. More specifically, I had only searched FamilySearch's databases for Michigan and Indiana  marriage since I knew John resided in Michigan during the period that the marriage would have taken place and lived only one county north of the border with Indiana. I had not considered searching the Ohio Marriages database even though I knew from census records that John's third wife was from Ohio .

So, when FamilySearch updated the Ohio County Marriages database earlier this year, I decided to search for my ancestor's third marriage on the random chance that he married in Ohio, and surprisingly, I found the marriage record recorded in Warren County, Ohio. Apparently, John's last wife was from Warren County, and since I had not been able to find her in the census records before, I did not know where she was from in Ohio. Unfortunately, the marriage record did not indicated where the marriage had taken place, although I suspect it may have been in Warren County since the minister officiating at the ceremony resided in the county. I will have to search the newspapers in Warren County for a marriage notice, though, to confirm my suspicions.  The lesson here is that if a bride and groom are from two different states, one should always search for the marriage record in both states no matter how unlikely it might seem that the marriage occurred in one of those states. I had always believed that John's last marriage occurred in Michigan since he resided in Michigan and his first two marriages had occurred in that state, and I had been unable to find this marriage before because I had dismissed looking for the marriage in Ohio as being improbable.

Of course, now I have more questions and a new mystery to solve. How did John meet his new wife, since Warren County, Ohio is nowhere near where John and his children resided in Michigan? Where were John's children staying while John remarried? Did John and his children temporarily live in Ohio at one point? From what my grandfather's aunt told my grandfather, the marriage came as a surprise to the children, and John just showed up his new wife one day. I had always assumed that the marriage had occurred in Michigan as a result of this tradition. I might never know the answer to those questions, although I hope I find some a newspaper article on the marriage that provides a hint or clue to those questions. If I ever find a marriage notice, I will post an update. Stay tuned ...