Tuesday night, I decided to see if I could possibly find any further data about my 3gg grandmother's sister, Betsey Millet Simmons, and her family. I had tried before, and they all seemed to disappear after 1863, when their son Watson married Mariette J. Brown in Branch Co., Missouri. With a little searching, I found them on the 1870 census in Monroe Co., Missouri. And a bonus find--Hiram Millet, whom I believe to be my 3gg grandfather's brother. Finding him with a child of Betsey adds one more little chink of proof that I am right as I attempt to put this family together.
What I found was a household headed up by "Mary J. Simmons," and which included two Simmon's children (Glen age 3 & Horace age 1), an older Brown couple, Melville Simmons (brother-in-law to "Mary J.", and Hiram Millett (age 74). What a mixed household, and I'd certainly be interested in knowing just how they all drifted from "up north" to Missouri.
Since this was the latest time frame for anyone in this particular family, I decided to do a little more exploring. Going to the 1880 census, they were no longer in Monroe County. I could not find a Millett or a Simmons of the right ages in Missouri, but when I took the birth date parameter out of the search engine, I turned up the two Simmons boys in neighboring Shelby County, with step-dad William T. Carothers and their mother "Etta J." Carothers. Ancestry.com has Missouri marriages at their web site, so it wasn't difficult to find an 1871 marriage between the two, and a copy now resides on my computer. No Melville, although I did find him in Nebraska in 1880. No Hiram Millett, but given that he would be about 84, I would have been more surprised if I had found him.
More sleuthing between Ancestry.com, the Missouri Digital Archives site with their death records online, and the USGenWeb site for Shelby County, allowed me to put most of the pieces of this family together. A Shelby County history on this USGenWeb site confirmed that the two Brown's (Henry & Sarah) were indeed Mariette/Mary J./Etta's parents, and that her first husband was indeed Watson Simmons. Found wives and children for the two Simmons boys, death and burial records for them as well.
Would I have found them without the Internet? I doubt that I would have lived long enough to have found them without the Internet, nor been lucky enough to come across any current-day relatives to share information with.
The saga will continue..............
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