My Maiden Name Unknown

When Chelsea came to me with this project, I agreed readily, and I had a name already ready for it – Maiden Name Unknown. Maiden Name Unknown – is a placeholder genealogists use when a woman’s name can’t be found by them. In genealogy – ancestors and branches of trees can completely disappear because there isn’t a paper trail to support the research. Paper trails can disappear through war, fires, and age. For women, the improvised, former slaves, and other people of color the paper trail was sparse to begin with. Documentation in the United States has favored white men with money – at different times in history only white men were listed on deeds and other real estate transactions, military records, wills, taxes, voting records, and censuses. And of course ancestors who were straight or passed as straight were the only people who had marriage records.

The records slowly diversified where if not all – at least most were given more documentation. But systems of power had already done its damage, and some people will be forever lost. Genealogists in the past tended to favor these systems of power – writing primarily about “success stories” of ancestors who succeeded financially, or socially; and the documentation helped them and backed up their decision to focus on that ancestor. I don’t want to do that – because only certain ancestors throughout history would have been given the accesses needed to succeed; so I can’t ignore my family who didn’t do well.

What this means though – is sometimes it takes a lot more work to write about an ancestor who hasn’t been given an abundance of documentation or been previously written about. Throughout different times in my life, I’ve latched on to ancestor who has had a giant question mark surrounding them, and dug and dug until I filled in as much about them as I can. My current obsession is also my ancestor that is my most recent Maiden Name Unknown – Mrs Preston.

For Mrs Preston I have three pieces of documentation.

The first is a census record from 1850 taken in Bangor, Maine. The 1850 census was the first to list the full white households by name, instead of just head of household and dash marks denoting age and sex of the other residents. In the census she is listed as “Dilaney” what I assume is a phonetic misspelling by the census taker for “Delanie.” It says she was 31 – meaning she was born in 1819 (though typically this could be give or take a year based on what month her birthday was and when the census was taken). It says she was born in Maine. Her husband is Daniel Preston, 10 years older than her. Her children are Alphonso (14), William E (12), Charles H (9), Nancy M (6), and Benjamin F (0 – born in April 1850). The age of her oldest son means she most likely married as a teenager, it could have been a marriage due to pregnancy, and a marriage record would be from 1834-1837. They live next to a man named Ingots Kittredge.

Her youngest son Benjamin Preston is my ancestor. I know one of Benjamin’s daughters has the middle name Delania (a name that pops up a couple times in my family tree) and I suspect she was named after Benjamin’s mother Mrs. Preston.

The second piece of documentation I have is a newspaper clipping from the Bangor Daily News November 6, 7, 8 1850 editions from the local post office in Bangor. The post office listed out people who had letters that needed to be picked up – one of them was Mrs Delano Preston, care of Daniel Preston. I’m working under the assumption that her family may have written to her, meaning that they could have lived outside of Bangor.

(Also – If you are keeping track we now have 4 variations of her first name…but wait there is a more).

My final record for Mrs Preston I found in a property transaction in Bangor in 1853 that involved her husband Daniel. She is listed in one of the paragraphs, giving up her Dower’s Rights (The right she has to a property if her husband dies) as Mary D. Preston. When she signs her name at the bottom of the document it is Mary B. Preston.

(yep 6 choices for a name!!)

I’m currently working on the assumption that her full name is Mary Delania B________ Preston. 

3 documents to get this far!

Here are some additional things I know. Daniel Preston remarried to a woman named Winnie Ann Richards in 1858, which means Mary (as I’m currently choosing to call her) died between 1853 and 1858. Daniel Preston does a real estate transaction with his son Alphonso in 1854, where he doesn’t have dower’s rights listed, so Mary may have died as early as 1853/1854.

I followed the property records a little further to find the Prestons lived on the Kittredge Road in Bangor (named after the Kittredge Family that was their neighbor), with enough acreage to mean that at one point part of their property is now where the Wal-Mart I worked at in college is located (the weird connections genealogy brings out).

My leads/My guesses/My dead ends

My dead ends:

Frustratingly one of the places where the mother’s maiden name is listed – marriage certificates for her children – were all issued before that piece of information started being included.
Another common lead is death records – I have death records for 3 of her 5 children. 2 died early – Charles and Alphonso, where no parents’ names were asked for. One child – William Preston, frustratingly had his mother’s name left completely blank. Most likely meaning his survivors didn’t know their own ancestor’s name (lost in 2 generations). Benjamin Preston – my direct ancestor – I have yet to find a death record for (outside of a letter from his widow). And finally Nancy Preston, the only daughter, somehow has disappeared from the records. I’m hoping that she got married, and her records can be found someday. Obituaries weren’t fully en vogue yet at that time of the family member’s deaths so nothing has shown up on that end. Daniel is the longest-lived dying in 1906. I also haven’t been able to find a burial or cemetery record for Mary.

My guesses:

Guess #1 – Often neighbors are in-laws or relatives. I’ve started researching some of the neighbors of the Prestons to see if anything manifests.

Guess #2 – Families often marry into other families. Daniel Preston married his second wife who was a widow and had a large brood of children. I’ve looked to see if Mary was a relative of Daniel’s second wife Winnie Ann Richards, or her first husband Almon McKenney.

Another lead on a similar vain Charles and William both married two sisters Frances and Rhoda Cobb. The Cobb sisters lived in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, while the Prestons were located after Mary’s death in Benton, Maine – about 90 miles from each other. I’m wondering if the Cobbs were first or seconds cousins to them and that is how they met (I know – super weird, but that is how the world operated back then).

Guess #3 – The newspaper clipping where her name is listed as Delano, might mean that Delano is a family name. Women often gave their first born child their maiden name as a middle name, and they would go by that as a nickname. If the newspaper clipping is the correct spelling, and everything else is a derivative than Mary’s mother could possibly be a Delano (Side note – I have one ancestor on another side of the family who was named Matthew Coffin Crowley, and went by very creepy name Coffin Crowley).

Guess # 4 – Mary and Delanie/Dilaney both sound Irish in nature. Mary could have been an Irish immigrant. The Irish were pretty heavily persecuted in Maine during the time she would have been alive. She could have lied and said she was born in Maine but was actually an immigrant. My mother and I have some Irish DNA but have yet to find Irish ancestors.

My (hopeful) leads:

I have records of Daniel Preston selling the property he lived on in Bangor, but no records of him or another Preston actually buying it. My hope is that Daniel’s father-in-law was the purchaser of the property, and gave it to his daughter and son-in-law and that if I find who owned the property before Daniel, I can find who Mary’s family is. I’m currently trying to find who the owner in the 1830s sold the property to, before Daniel had it in the 1850s.

Finally asking around for Benjamin’s death certificate. This means calling the town offices where Benjamin lived and asking for a copy.

Someday finding Daniel and Mary’s marriage certificate. Daniel is from New Hampshire – and there are a lot of question marks surrounding him as well. I’ve pursued filling in his information as well, because his life prior to living in Bangor is mostly a mystery. Right now there is a bit of a lack of New Hampshire newspapers that have been digitized – hoping as more come online something will appear.

Figuring out what happened to Nancy Preston, leading to the breakthrough with her mother.

I’ve also been combing the family trees of people who have matched with me and other confirmed Preston descendants on DNA sites, looking for a place Mary might fit in. This is called a triangulation method to find your most common recent ancestor.

I’ve been working on finding more out about Mary and the entire Preston family for about three years. Even when it hasn’t provided conclusive answers it’s lead to finding interesting information about them and their descendants (this is also an explanation on why some of my material on here might seem hyper-focused on one part of my family – it’s the content my research is producing). I sometimes feel like I’m up against the clock when it comes to the research – though more information is coming online, some paper trails are giving away to age. I’m hopeful that I can find Mary’s branch by the end of the year and move on to another family mystery.