This week - I'm writing about my 2x Great Grandmother, and my introduction to AncestryDNA.
This starts with spitting in a tube....... I was so excited to get the AncestryDNA kit. Dismayed at seeing how big the tube is, then relieved to find out that the "bottom" of the tube is really not where you think it is! Thank Heavens! I spit in the tube that night and sent it on its merry way the next day.
Then - days and days and weeks...... of waiting! Then one night - the results arrived! And I had matches! Double bonus!!
So - I start going through the matches. At that point - just figuring out what it all meant when I see a familiar name. Not a name of a relative, but the name of someone that I had been watching for weeks! Crista Cowan from Ancestry.com, the Barefoot Genealogist! OK - now I was completely excited - I have some sort of actual family connection to CRISTA COWAN!?!?!? Wow!! I had been watching videos featuring her for weeks on Youtube!!!
OK - Open it up and ummmmm....... yea, no idea where the actual DNA match is and that tree is one SERIOUSLY large tree. I looked for awhile - the moved on to some other matches, planning to come back to it later - after I got the hang of how this all works and maybe learned a trick or two to help find links and how these matches work!
Then - I get a notification that I have a message! Weeeeeeeeeeeee! And wow - its from Crista Cowan! How very exciting!!
As exciting as that was - the information it contained was fantastic and helped solve a brick wall, and revealed an sad, but very interesting story about my 2x Great Grandmother. Had it not been for DNA and Crista Cowan - I'd still be trying to hunt down Jeanette Taylor!!!
So now - onto the story of Jeanette Jones, aka Jeanette Taylor.
Jeanette Jones was born in 1864 in Utah to John Markland Jones and Elizabeth Smith Mulliner. While she was very young, her parents moved to California. The family was never reunited. I saw several versions of what may have happened - but it seems nobody really knows. What is known is that her father died enroute to California in 1871. Her mother may or may not have returned to Salt Lake City and may or may not have married again, it's all quite mysterious.
There is no indication that Jeanette was formally adopted by John Taylor, but she did take on the Taylor name.
In 1884 Jeanette married Charles Ross Howe. The couple had 8 children and Nettie filled her days taking care of her children, cooking and homemaking. She was an active member of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. Several articles in the Salt Lake Tribune mention various functions she attended and participated in as part of her duties of that organization.
Nettie Taylor Howe, as she was known, died in 1943.
Sources:
https://sites.google.com/site/allredhistory/home/elizabeth-smith-mulliner
www.ancestry.com
www.billiongraves.com
Amos Howe, Foundryman, by Margaret Cannon, 2005, Family History Library
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