Thank you for the holiday cards and contributions to the genealogist! I have several neat things to report for the progress of the work in December. We appreciate the help.
Last year I joined the Bedford Historical Society of Bedford, PA. I did this because as a member you can use the services of the library and the opportunity is available for quarterly newsletter from them. For SOME reason my name did not get properly recorded on the mailing list and I did not receive my newsletters as I should have. Finally in November, I wrote them and asked them to check out why I had not been receiving my newsletters. They promptly got me on the mailing list and because I had been "inconvenienced" I guess, they added an old newsletter for good measure. Had my name been properly on the mailing list, I would not have received that newsletter.
Needless to say, that old newsletter that was thrown in for good measure had a paragraph in it that is extremely important. Last summer I spent several days tracking the children of Mahala Mower Shaw (daughter of Henry Mower Sr.) She was the only child of Henry's who did not move to Nauvoo after Henry joined the Church.
I was able to track all of her children except a daughter, Ruhama, who married a Rohm. She and her husband had a son and then they seemed to disappear. No trace. This has bothered me for 6 months, but I could not locate them, so I moved on to study other family members.
In the old newsletter from the Historical Society, was a request from a Clark lady in Maryland for information on Ruhama Shaw who was the second wife of Philip Clark. She listed 3 children of Ruhama's and Philip's. No wonder I could not find Ruhama, her first husband had probably died and she remarried and had children by another man. I immediately wrote this lady. Some might call it coincidence.
Last week I received letters almost every day of the week with family group sheets in them from our Mower relatives. I have seen to it that these names have been added to our Master File on the computer. I have sent off to the Family History Department, a computer disk listing all fo the Mower information I have received to date. All of the descendants that I have record of belonging to Michael Maurer (father of Andrew Mower) are on that disk---5164 individuals.
I admit it is a bit premature for this disk to be submitted because we are receiving so much information, but the next edition of the Ancestral File is coming out in January 1991 and I wanted our information included. Since it may be that it is several years until another version is released, I did not want to delay. When the new version is distributed would you please go to the nearest FHL branch and check your families and identify any misinformation? This is important to identify misinformation!!
Either submit the corrections yourself or I will be glad to submit them for you, but in any case, please let me know what the corrections are so that I can keep an updated master disk on the Mower line. Just prior to the NEXT version being issued, I will make sure our master file is submitted. Over a period of time (several years), we will be able to have a very accurate, updated, and correct lineage on record with the Church. Please think of the submission I made in December as a "Rough Draft", because I KNOW it contains errors and we need to correct those.
Included in my mail this week was an old letter which contained some information on the descendants of John Amick. The letter I received this week contained a genealogy of many of the descendants of John Amick through his son, Samuel. There were about 162 relatives of John Amick listed in this letter. Most I already had on my computer, but through this letter we were able to identify 49 descendants of whom we knew nothing! Most were grandchildren and great grandchildren of John Amick.
It was pretty hard not to be overwhelmed with the situation as I sat and typed in 49 new names. Since Mary Amick was also a descendant of Michael Maurer (great granddaughter), I guess all of us whether we come through Wheelers, or Huppers, or Amicks are related to the Amicks. Mary Amick (who married Henry Mower Sr.) was the daughter of Anna Maria Brill, who was the daughter of Anna Margaret Maurer, who was the daughter of Michael Maurer.
Using the new Social Security Death Index, I was able to ascertain birth and death dates for several of these 49 Amicks. That material has already led to these names being submitted for temple work. Now that we have the names it won't be hard to collect the needed information to submit the rest for work.
Some people have written to me surprised that the research has shown that the Moor line from New Jersey is not the correct lineage of Andrew Mower. If any of you are in that situation and you would like to receive a copy of the documentation which proves this and shows that our Andrew Mower was born in 1752, the son of Michael Maurer, let me know and I will send you a short paper I wrote verifying the evidence.
This month's "guest ancestor" is Michael Mower (father of Henry Mower Sr.) His family group sheet is duplicated on the reverside side of this sheet. Please note that we have identified several of his children as being born, but as to date we have not been able to name them. We obtained this information from the census records of Bedford County, Pennsylvania 1800-1820. If you have a family group sheet on Michael, take it out and you will probably see only 4 children listed. The additional children we have listed show up on census records, but unfortunately those records didn't name the children. We have some work to do here.