52 Ancestors challenge Week 5 "Plowing through"

[dragonfly]

My "plowing through" ancestor actually has a bit of a mystery to him. He and his family seem to have changed their name when they emigrated from Wales. And they didn't tell anyone. In fact, of his descendants (and there are many) I and my mom are the only ones who know this, at the moment.

Gad James plowed through Iowa prairie--backbreaking work--and planted wheat. For three years straight, chinch-bugs (and what exactly are those?) destroyed his crops, until he threw it all over and went off to Montana in 1864 when gold was discovered there. Apparently he was wildly successful as a mining contractor because he returned to Iowa with a lot of money. The family story is that he and his business partner didn't travel the usual roads, because "49ers" were being robbed on their way back from the gold fields. Instead, they crossed the border north into Canada, traveled east there, and came back into the U.S. through Minnesota. He bought huge tracts of land, married, helped found West Liberty, Iowa, got better at farming (*g*) and established a dynasty of children and grandchildren who all farmed adjacent parcels of his original land. Many of them still live there and they have periodic family reunions. My grandmother took me to one once.

So that's the "plowing through." Now for the peculiar part. I blogged, not too long ago, my original complaint, that some family on ancestry.com had decided Gad was their own ancestor's long lost brother, even though Gad's family name was James, and their ancestor's family name was Evans. I was annoyed that they would invent this narrative on what was very sketchy evidence (like pictures of the two men, and how much they "looked alike") and so "Evans" started coming up in searches for "James" at ancestry.com and vice versa. Their story was that John Evans, who was recruited by the Mormons in Wales and subsequently hied off to Salt Lake City, preserved his correct surname, but brother Gad and family changed their names to James when they later emigrated to Iowa. Hmph, I thought. That tight-knit family in east Iowa would know if that had happened, and they have no such story. So, I scoffed.

Um, DNA.

Yeah. I did AncestryDNA, and I am a fourth cousin match to not just one, but two now three people who descend from John Evans of Salt Lake City. I was kind of stunned.

I can find Gad James on the passenger list of immigrants on a ship from England. He's there with his father William James and his sister Mary James. Also four other people with the surname James who don't seem to be relations at all (though I'm still working on that). But back in Wales, in the census, I get bupkis. I can't find them. So they all gave the name James on the ship, and never looked back. Why? If the reason was innocuous, they would mention that fact to their numerous offspring, but apparently, the three of them took this secret to their graves.

In fact, three years ago I visited the people who used to organize the James family reunion, and I cautiously floated this idea to them (this was before it had been DNA confirmed, when it was just some crazy rumor from some crazy people out in Utah). They looked blank. Nothing. But, they did tell me an interesting family story that can be interpreted in exact opposite ways. Once upon a time, when Gad James was alive, the outlaw Jesse James came through town (in fact, I found a newspaper article about how he stopped at a barber shop and got his hair cut in Muscatine. Anyway ...). One of Gad's six sons brought up the common family name and suggested to the family that they ought to find out if they were related to the outlaw. Gad shut him down quickly, saying positively that no, they were not, don't waste your time researching that. This story was told to me with a twinkle, and the suspicion was given that Gad knew they were related, but wasn't proud of that fact.

Or, the exact opposite. He knew they were not related, because their family's name had never really been James, and Gad didn't want his sons to find that out.

So, that's where I've left it. I don't know how to let the more direct family know about this. But man, I'd love to know what happened to make them change their name.

Comments

[rainbow]

first a couple questions: is the bio from muscatine the correct gad? (http://iagenweb.org/muscatine/biographies1911/jamesg.htm)

i tend to poke and tug at all the strings i can find as i move backwards, hence these questions.

if the bio is correct on mary's husband's name, is the william james here a match?
Name: William James
Age in 1870: 75
Birth Year: abt 1795
Birthplace: Wales
Home in 1870: Yellow Springs, Des Moines, Iowa
Race: White
Gender: Male
Post Office: Dodgeville
Value of real estate: View image
Household Members:
Name Age
Wm L Roberts 41
Mary Roberts 44
Mary Ann Roberts 10
Jane Ann Roberts 8
William P Roberts 6
Lucelin Roberts 2
William James 75

because i think the same family minus william james IS in macon in 1880:
Name: William Roberts
Age: 53
Birth Year: abt 1827
Birthplace: Wales
Home in 1880: Russell, Macon, Missouri
Race: White
Gender: Male
Relation to Head of House: Self (Head)
Marital Status: Married
Spouse's Name: Mary Roberts
Father's Birthplace: Wales
Mother's Birthplace: Wales
Neighbors: View others on page
Occupation: Farmer

Household Members:
Name Age
William Roberts 53
Mary Roberts 53
Mary E. Roberts 20
Jane Roberts 17
William Roberts 16
Gwesyn Roberts 12

If that's the right william, it gives me a tentative age to be looking for in wales)

and anotehr question: is there no question at all that it was william and the kids who used james who changed their name vs john evans who changed his surname when he left wales?

[dragonfly]

Awesome.

Yes, I have usually accepted that the Mary Roberts living in Yellow Springs with her husband and father, named William James, are the sister and father of Gad, who emigrated when he did.

Yes, the above biography is the correct Gad James. He is well documented in eastern Iowa. One item of that biography is in question. I have never located brother Stephen.

You found the family in Macon! I hadn't seen that, thanks.

Regarding which branch of the family changed their name -- I agree, the single man leaving his family for a life in the far west is the more logical one to decide to change his name. The story his descendants tell goes like this: Well after John Evans's death, when his great grandchildren started to ask questions about his origins, they heard one family fact he told someone. "I used to have a brother named Gad, but he changed his name to James." Reasonably enough, everyone assumed he meant his brother changed his first name. They left it at that until one day recently when someone decided to google "Gad to James Evans." What they found was a lot of documentation on Gad James, and they realized there were enough correspondences to guess this could be their ancestor's brother. (Not that I believed it, heh.) So, going by that story, it sounds like Evans was the original surname.

[rainbow]

welll.... if someone changes their name, and it's for possibly hinky reasons like vanishing from their family, odds are they might not be truthful about it, too. so it could go either way,i think

[dragonfly]

Yeah. The solution would be to find the family in Wales named either James or Evans.

But honestly, right now I'm having so much fun with all this new data you've found for me, I feel like I don't care about the name. *g* But I will care later. I'm going to look again at my DNA data, too.

[rainbow]

be interesting if you have hits on james in wales as well as evanses.

are you on gedmatch?

[dragonfly]

I am on Gedmatch.

[rainbow]

excellent! widest net!

[dragonfly]

How would I use it for this?

[rainbow]

you could contact matches and ask if they have welsh ancestry. granted if you have a lot of matches it takes time. and people don't always respond.