James and Susannah’s oldest son was born in 1836 in Darke County, Ohio. I have searched for years for William Smith. It is bad enough that Smith is such a common name, then add William, another common name to the mix and you will understand how my “needles in my haystack” formed. During my search, I obvious had more luck looking for some of the other kids who had more unusual, less common names. William was in the large melting pot with all the other William Smith’s in America. You can image my shock, when he suddenly appeared in the 1870 census living next door to Branson and Emily in Madison County, Indiana. It was like someone dropped him from the sky into my lap!
It took me a few weeks to determine that he was for sure our William but according to the census information he she fit into the family well. The siblings in this family and the previous generation tended to migrate together. It should not have surprised me that William and Branson settled in the same area but it did. It would not take me long to find out that William and Branson married sisters from the Kinnaman family. William married Hannah Kinnaman and Branson married Emily Kinnaman. The information about the brothers seemed to boil up to the surface and came raging out at me in a torrent. One thing that I have learned about Genealogy research is it often comes in wave after long dry spells. I was able to obtain obituaries for both Branson and William which state that they were born in Darke County Ohio! It was my proof that they were the brothers I was looking for.
William married Hannah J. Kinnaman in 1860 in Madison County, Indiana. They had three children; Sarah Jane Smith born in 1866, William Smith born 1871, and Lenora Smith 1878.
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