I've been thinking about the two lines of descent my wife has from Revolutionary era ancestors. And after some thought, I've decided which line will probably be easiest to prove. Unfortunately it is not the Jones line that I have been working on the past several days.
The Jones line has two problems. The first is connecting the Benjamin Jones of Stokes County, South Carolina, with Revolutionary service with the Aquilla Jones who was in Tennessee and Missouri. I think they are father and son and can make a reasonable case, but there are still holes in it. I'll continue to work on it as it is an interesting problem--but I think it will be a while before it stands a fair amount of scrutiny (unless there is a document out there just waiting to be found). The second issue with this line is proving the connection between the Aquilla Jones (of Howard County, Missouri) and the Wesley Jones of Macon County, Missouri. .
The other line may be easier--partially because the last name is not as common as Jones.
Conrad Wickiser (variant spellings) of Luzerne County, PA had military service. Connecting him to his son Abraham Wickiser will be easier than making the Jones connection. Abraham migrated to Delaware County, Ohio, leaving no neat and easy records proving his children either and he and his wife are apparently both dead by the mid 1850s. However, there are a series of deeds that fairly clearly indicate Abraham's daughters, including Lucinda Wickiser Kile, of Mercer County, Illinois.
Lucinda had many children, including a daughter Nancy. Nancy never married but had children and herein lies the problem. Long story short is that Nancy had several children with the same man, clearly evidenced by various records. One of these children is my wife's great-grandmother, Jennie Kile Smith Trask, born in Mercer County, Illinois, in the 1870s. From there until the present day the line is pretty easy to establish.
I'm not certain how DAR deals with out-of-wedlock issue. Nancy and her children's father were clearly not married. It is not just a case of a missing marriage record (the father was married, but to someone else).
I'll have to add work on the early generations of the Wickiser family to my list for Salt Lake.
