Tangled DNA, Mystery Woman: 52 Ancestors

They are step-children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews and cousins. They are foundlings and orphans and even Orphan Train riders. They are the mysterious children who are attached to our families. You may have one that is an ancestor or your ancestor may have cared for one.

Our ancestors had difficult lives, especially before the advent of modern medicine. When they died and their children were orphaned, family and neighbors had to raise the children or find homes for them. These children may not have known anything about their parents and often no records exist to help researchers.

DNA matching is the best hope for identifying the parents of mystery children who were born within the past few generations. But even with mystery children, awareness of family intermarriages and puzzles is important.

Within the southern branch of the Allee family, there is a family cluster with two generations of orphans. Descendants of those orphans need to be aware of the various possibilities within the family.

Missouri Ann Allee was born in Alabama about 1838. The 1850 census shows her at age 11, living in Saline County, Arkansas, with Merrill Allee and wife Esther or Easter, age 70. Esther's age was closer to 64, based on later census records. Nonetheless, she could not have been Missouri's mother, though some online trees show that relationship. It was much more likely that Merrill Allee was Missouri's grandfather, uncle or great-uncle.

There is an unexpected name in the jury records of Saline County, Arkansas. A man named Nicholas Ally [sic] served as a juror in 1841, along with Merrill Alley [sic] and other men who were allied with the Allee family. There is no other known mention of Nicholas in the county. Was Nicholas an unknown son of Merrill? Was Missouri Ann the daughter of the mysterious Nicholas?

Missouri Ann Allee married James Hitt on August 4, 1853. They had two children: James Milton Hitt (born 1853-1854) and Susan Missouri Hitt (born 1855-1856). By the time of the 1860 census, Missouri had died. James and the two little children were living with the family of Abraham Allee.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, many members of the Allee family relocated to Texas. The 1870 census shows [James] Milton Hitt and [Susan] Missouri Hitt, without their father, living with Abraham Allee in Collin County, Texas. Most likely, James Hitt had died in the war or during reconstruction. Abraham Allee and his wife, Margaret Gamble, finished raising the children.

James Milton Hitt married twice and had several children.

Susan Missouri Hitt's life is a puzzle. It is possible that she married Winfield Scott Chambliss and had three children before her death. However, that possibility is likely to be proven only by DNA matches between descendants of the Chambliss family and those of James Milton Hitt.

The parents of Missouri Ann Allee will be challenging to figure out. Perhaps Merrill can be proven as an ancestor or perhaps she was a child of Joseph Allee. Y-DNA is not useful for this problem. Autosomal DNA, such as the AncestryDNA test, with cousin matching, will be the most useful to identify the origins of this mystery woman.