…is the man I know the least about.
Twenty-one years ago, during a brief foray into the Mormon church, I found myself volunteering in the Family History Center. While I had always been curious about genealogy, I did not know the first thing about it. But there I was, ready to assist our visitors in their quest for answers. Luckily for me, however, our visitors were were seasoned pros.
One such regular turned out to be my paternal grandmother’s long-time neighbor who I had known my whole life. He had actually performed some research on our family tree in the past. One day he brought along the information he had compiled on my family—printed from a dot matrix printer—and handed it to me. I was elated; I knew nothing of my father’s family.
While the information spanned only a couple of generations back, the names were all new to me. Prior to that day, I had not known the names of my grandfather’s siblings, much less his parents’. But the names were now all there in front of me. An array of thousands of tiny dots spelled out the various births, marriages, and deaths of those who came before me. My great-grandfather? He was Griffin Burl. His father was Daniel Burl.
Daniel Burl. There was not much information recorded about Daniel—perhaps just the date of his marriage to one Polly Baker, but I had had a peek into my history, and I desperately wanted to know more. Where to begin? I had no clue. I believe I started with a search on Ancestry.com for him. I was disappointed when the search yielded no results. I do not remember how long it took me to realize that surnames often have spelling variations. And that turned out to be the magic trick.
“Daniel F Burrell” was the name I discovered in the 1850 US census. He was living in some county in Ohio with a wife, Susanna, and two sons, William H and Isaiah. This could not possibly be the same guy, could it? After all, Daniel Burl lived in Michigan with his wife Polly. However, Ohio Daniel had been born in Maryland circa 1811—just like Michigan Daniel. I knew I had to investigate further.
I began looking for other census records. I found nothing in the 1860 census. But I found him in the 1870 census—not as “Daniel Burl,” but as “Daniel F Burrell” just as he had been in the 1850 census living in Ohio. But he was not in Ohio; he was in Ovid Township, Clinton County, Michigan married to Polly, and they had the following children: George and Griffin. Griffin! My great-grandfather!
But how could this be the same man? Ohio Daniel had a totally different family. On the other hand, this 1870-in-Michigan Daniel’s name was spelled exactly the same—down to the middle initial “F.” He too had been born in Maryland around the same time as Ohio Daniel. My budding genealogist brain then thought of an idea: search for Ohio Daniel in the 1860 census. Surely he and Susanna would still be living in that Ohio county with their two boys (maybe more by now).
I searched and nothing. They were not in subsequent census records either. Daniel and his whole family had completely disappeared from Ohio census records. But now I knew that Daniel had not totally vanished; he was in Michigan with his new family. However, it was almost as if Susanna, William H, and little Isaiah had never existed, and that really bothered me. In just over a decade’s time, a family had been created and then ceased to exist. A few years after this, I would learn this was not Daniel’s first disappearing family.
After I realized Ohio Daniel and Michigan Daniel were one and the same, I moved on to the 1880 census to see where he would be this time. The census record showed that Daniel and Polly had welcomed two more children into the family—Chester and Mary A; however, this time around Daniel had disappeared from the record. In 1880, Polly was remarried and had had a son with her new husband.
One may assume that Daniel had died, and that is most likely what happened since, in a land record from 1879, Polly stated she had been widowed. However, after 21 years, I still have not found a death record for him, and the cemetery he should be buried in has no record of him. Perhaps my brain is inclined to believe he purposely disappeared because, with all of these questions surrounding him, he has become this sort of mysterious figure to me.
Twenty-one years later, I am still searching for answers. It is most likely, however, that most of my questions will never be answered. But I will never give up. I believe there are always new places to look; you just have to be creative. My daughter and I have even talked about visiting that county in Ohio someday—to get a feel for the place and maybe discover some records that are not available to me online. Until then I will continue searching for clues in the dark, dusty corners of the internet. But in the end, whether or not I find the answers I’m looking for, through this process, I have found my passion—thanks to Daniel.
Next time I will delve into what I do and do not know about Daniel.