Easy Rebecca Paxton (1817-1897)

I was fortunate to start out my genealogy with quite a bit of good information from several sides of my family. However, some family information did not get passed down, such as the parents of my 3x great grandmother, Rebecca Paxton. Often, even when my family information is depleted, some other online researcher will have filled in the gaps and shared their research online. However, I could find no trees that even attempted to name Rebecca’s parents. It was exciting to start researching a totally new line. This was very early in my genealogy research and fortunately the mystery of Rebecca’s parent’s turned out to be fairly easy to solve.

               I’ll start with what I knew about Rebecca. From family information and some children’s records I knew her maiden name was Paxton. She married Henry McKeown a before 1850. Their marriage was described as follows in a local history: “Henry entered the land on which he lived for many years. After securing his home he returned to Ohio and married. His wife came with him to his western home, but she lived only a short time. Later he made another trip to Ohio, and married Rebecca Paxton.” Henry lived in Iowa, but according to the bio he married Rebecca while visiting his parents in Ohio. Henry’s parents, Alexander and Rose Ann McKeown, lived in Harrison County Ohio so I knew to look in that area for the Paxtons. I also had two other hints, Rebecca always listed her birth place as Pennsylvania, and also she married a bit later in life at the age of about 30.

               I was looking for a Paxton family, living in or near Harrison County Ohio, from Pennsylvania, and possibly with children who didn’t marry young. I began scanning the 1850 census, which would have been taken just a few years after Rebecca’s marriage. Sure enough I found a family the fit almost exactly. John and Margaret Paxton were living in Harrison County Ohio with three unmarried children, and everyone in the household was born in Pennsylvania. As much as this fit what I was looking for I still didn’t have anything tying Rebecca to John and Margaret. So I began to look for probate records.

               This was one of my first real experiences with family search’s unindexed records. They have a wonderful collection of digital images that can be view for free. Not everyone uses these records because they can’t be searched automatically, but often Will or deed books will have an index in the front. That is how I found the will of John Paxton. He made his will in 1840 and apparently did not update it until his death in 1851. His will mentions two sons and seven daughter including one named Rebecca! While I would have preferred a will that used her married name this was enough evidence for me to add John and Margaret as Rebecca’s parents. Since then I’ve had quite a bit of DNA evidence to show this correct.

               More recently I came across a little booklet on Rebecca Paxton written by her oldest granddaughter. It doesn’t give any information about Rebeccca’s family, but it does give a lot of information about what Rebecca was like, at least in her older years. It also included copies of photos of Rebecca and her husband Alexander. I’m going to post that booklet below: