Untangling the Vines

This past week I have been fairly busy going through my husbands DNA matches and trying to make sense of what I found. In the process I have found a lot of tangled vines that are going to take some work in untangling. Thus the reason for this post topic.

I am sure most of us who have been doing this for any length of time will discover at some point or another that they have a lot of common surnames. Names such as JOHNSON, MILLER and SMITH as well as JONES are quite a few that come to mind.

But what do you do when you not only have a common surname but a common first name as well? Research this week has turned up a gentleman named Henry WIMER. As I set out to conduct my research I ran across four possible wives for this man. The more I dug the more confused I got. I finally was able to come to the conclusion that there are two men with the name Henry WIMER. Both look to have been born about a year apart and both were born in Pendleton County, West Virginia. These are my husbands relatives. It is going to be necessary that I sort out just how these folks connect. That is going to take a lot of time and effort on my part. If you are in a similar situation there is a wonderful online article published HERE that might help you formulate how to conduct your own search.

As to what I have done in this situation. I have created two documents. One for each gentleman and I plan on forming a timeline as suggested in the article for each one. With the two of them having similar years of births as well as the exact same location it may prove hard for me to discern between the two.

The first Henry WIMER that I have located which I believe is my husbands relative was born about 1793 in Pendleton, West Virginia probably Dry Run area. I show a wife for him by the name of Elizabeth THOMPSON. They were married 25 September, 1817. It looks as though his parents are Henry WIMER and Catherine LONG. There is another Henry WIMER who was born about 1794 in Pendleton, Highland, Virginia. His fathers name is said to have been one Phillip WIMER and I have seen his mothers name stated as either Sarah SIMMONS or Sarah Catherine HARPER. I believe this second Henry WIMER is also a relative of my husband as he has HARPER and SIMMONS relatives in this line as well. I have also see the WIMER surname spelled as WYMER.  I note there are marriages between a Henry WIMER and a Susannah JUDY as well as a marriage record between a Henry WIMER and a Margaret MILLER. I am in the process of untangling all of these vines. As soon as I have them sorted I will post the corrected and sourced information to this blog.

If anyone out there has ties to this family and has documentation as to which one is who, I would appreciate hearing from you!