The Daugherty Candidates

Children and Grandchildren of John Henry and Emma Augusta (Jonas) Daugherty
Viable candidates for my mother's father are outlined in blue, click on
the image to enlarge.

ZERO.

Zero percent matching DNA.

Those were the results of Rick Denney's DNA profile as compared to my mother, Carol (DePrato) Crumet, received on 20 August 2014.

I don't have to describe the rush of adrenalin I get when I find out that new DNA sample results are available. I have already done so. But as I got closer and closer to identifying my missing grandfather the trembling hands, the immediate facial flush, and the engorgement of the singular vein that runs down the middle of my forehead, became more and more intense. And because Clarence Ryder was such a perfect match, I was just certain that I'd see my biggest number match to date. As Clarence Ryder's nephew, and potentially my mother's first cousin, I was hoping for an approximate 12.5% match between my mother and Rick Denney. Even a 10% or higher. If I received a number down to eight percent or so, there could be some generational questioning, and testing another Denney sibling might be necessary, but I was just hoping to see double digits. I felt like I was in Vegas betting my savings on a number.... "Come on double digits! Given 'em to daddy! I'll take a pair of snake eyes! One and one is an eleven... I'll take it!"

But zero?

Ugh.

Having discovered only after collecting Rick Denney's DNA sample that Clarence Ryder had left Indiana for Michigan in 1944 or 1945 - before my mother's conception - I had known that this was possible. Was I shocked? Maybe not as much so as disappointed. It felt like I was starting over. But I had to tell myself it was not the case at all. Just like the earlier test of Paul Robinson that came out a zero match, I had to tell myself that this was the sign at the fork in the road again. When the road split to Ryder or Daugherty, Rick's test told me that the yellow brick road to the Emerald City was now "Daugherty Boulevard."

And I now had to adjust my terminology. From the very beginning of this genetic saga with the initial half-percent match with Brian Ryder, I had been calling my mother's paternal genetic material "Ryder DNA." It was now "Daugherty DNA."

And since my mother carried no Ryder DNA, not only could I eliminate Clarence L. Ryder as a candidate for my mother's father, but I could also eliminate Richard Eugene Buck, whose mother was a Ryder.

And so then there were four.

Or really two. At least two family groups. Going back to my discussion regarding the results of Kenneth Eugene Ryder, recall that his 4.26% match to my mother made it likely they were second cousins. Second cousins share the same set of great-grandparents, and we had now effectively eliminated three out of Kenneth's four sets of great-grandparents. I had removed the two sets on his maternal side because they were Germans in Russia with few descendants here in this country, and the German matches that Ken had in the 23andMe database were not shared with my mother. That left his Ryder great-grandparents, and his Daugherty great-grandparents, and with the Ryders out of the running by this latest test, it meant that my mother was definitely a descendant of John Henry Daugherty, and his wife Emma Augusta Jonas.

But also recall that in addition to a second cousin, my mother and Ken Ryder could also be half-first cousins, once removed. Both degrees of relationship would results in an approximate 3.25% genetic match. And although there were no male candidates for this degree of relationship to hold true on the Ryder side, there were suspects on the Daugherty side.

Also mentioned previously, I was damn lucky that neither the Ryders nor the Daughertys in this generation were very prolific procreators. Finally, I had a reason to rejoice for making my task easier! If Ken Ryder was my mother's second cousin on the Daugherty side, it meant that one of my mother's grandparents was a sibling to Ken Ryder's grandmother, Bertha (Daugherty) Ryder Rieder Prestidge Merrifield (1881-1918), whom we have discussed earlier.

Bertha was the second child of John Henry Daugherty and Emma Augusta Jonas. She had three brothers and one sister, and a nomadic lifestyle she had inherited from her father.

John Henry Daugherty was born 18 July 1852 in the area of New Boston, Mercer County, Illinois. Or in the area of Muscatine, Muscatine County, Iowa. It really depended on when he was asked what answer was given, and it is likely that even he wasn't even sure of the exact location. His father, Daniel Daugherty, was just as much a rolling stone as his son and granddaughter proved to be, and he had business dealings in Rock Island and Mercer Counties in Illinois, and in Muscatine County, Iowa, throughout the 1850s. Surprisingly, he can be found in records of all counties within days of each other, indicating the man wasn't setting down strong roots in any three of the locales. Where his wife, Elizabeth (LeQuat) Holston Daugherty, stopped to give birth to their first son together was likely wherever Daniel had dragged her on that mid-summer day in 1852.

John Henry Daugherty's early life was that of a wanderer. While his father wheeled and dealed in Iowa and Illinois shortly after his birth, John was still a toddler when Daniel Daugherty moved the family to the brand new town of Homer, Minnesota, on the banks of the Mississippi River in 1855. By the time Daniel Daugherty arrived with his family, Albert Bunnell, the first permanent white settler of the county, had been living there for six years. Bunnell had begun building his new dream town on the river named Homer for his hometown in New York, and had even erected a hotel there in 1853. But what Bunnell had forgotten to do was to file a claim for the virgin ground with the United States government. Daniel Daugherty did, and he did so on the land that contained the hotel and other town buildings. In the government's eyes, the land belonged to Daugherty, and Bunnell had to leave. Needless to say, Albert Bunnell was none too pleased with these arrangements and engaged Daniel Daugherty in a fight. During the argument, Daniel "seized Bunnell's thumb in a vise-like grip and held on until Bunnell surrendered. Bunnell lost not only the fight (and his land) but also his thumb, which was so mutilated it had to be amputated." (Source: Laying the Foundation).

John Henry Daugherty's childhood was spent in Homer, Minnesota, and although just a nine-year-old at the outbreak of the Civil War, his half-brother Silas V. Holston (aka Holstein) enlisted from Homer. But before the war was over, he had moved with his father back again through several counties in Iowa before settling in Jefferson Township in Poweshiek County, Iowa, by 1870. An older teen by this time, and already accustomed to being an adventurer and a wanderer, John Henry Daugherty's whereabouts in the 1870s are still clouded in mystery. Although possessed of a number of half-siblings by both his mother and father, his only full sibling was a younger brother, Ira, born during their stay in Minnesota. Ira died shortly after the family's arrival in Poweshiek County, as did his mother in 1873. Several years later, John Henry Daugherty's obituary stated he had spent three years in college in Illinois, while one family story said he was a teacher at a school, chased away with threats of death for having an affair with another professor's wife, but somehow by 1875 he had found his way to Michigan.

How John Henry Daugherty ended up in Michigan is currently unknown. Somehow his path crossed with that of Emma Augusta Jonas, a teenager born during the first year of the Civil War in St. Clair County, Michigan, bordering Ontario, Canada. Born of a German immigrant father, Friedrich Wilhelm Jonas, who married a New York girl shortly after his arrival to America in 1851, Emma spent her early childhood over the international border in Ontario before her family moved to Calhoun County, Michigan, when she was nine years old. She grew to womanhood in the city of Marshall.

No marriage record has been located for John Henry Daugherty and Emma Augusta Jonas. Later census records - when they can be found - indicate they married sometime between 1875 and 1877. Perhaps they never formally married at all. And there is no explanation for how fifteen-year-old Emma gave birth to her first child, Albert Emery Daugherty, in far-away Clay County, Missouri, in 1877. John Henry Daugherty would have been twenty-five years old. They cannot be located in the 1880 census to even begin to make sense of how their stories can be neatly summarized over a geographical span of Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Michigan, in a few short years.

Nor can the family be followed easily thereafter. John Henry Daugherty and Emma Augusta Jonas would have five children in vastly different localities - and one of these children was certainly my mother's grandparent. As stated, the eldest child, Albert Emery Daugherty, was born in Clay County, Missouri, in 1877. The next born was Bertha Daugherty whom we have discussed, born in 1881 in her mother's childhood home of Marshall, Calhoun County, Michigan. In 1884, John Henry Daugherty Jr. was born in Walkerton, St. Joseph County, Indiana. In 1886, their third son Ira Daugherty was born in Madison Township, Williams County, Ohio. Their last child, LaVina Veatrice Daugherty, was born in 1890 in Isabella County, Michigan.

In a span of just over twelve years, five children were born in four states. The family cannot be found in either the censuses of 1880, nor 1900. And it is only beginning in 1902 that the family can be pinpointed in a specific locality on any regular basis. And even that changed frequently. While family lore indicates that John Henry Daugherty had some college education, he found jobs only as a common laborer, and worked mainly in factories or doing odd jobs. For almost three decades, the family can be found in directories of Benton Harbor, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Niles, Michigan; and in South Bend, Indiana; with no two entries ever having a matching address.

John Henry Daugherty and his wife,
Emma Augusta (Jonas) Daugherty,
951 Pine Street, Niles, Michigan,
Summer 1937

It is only in the 1930s that John Henry Daugherty and his wife quit moving all over southwestern Michigan and northern Indiana. They spent the remainder of their lives at 951 Pine Street in Niles, Michigan, living with their son, Albert Daugherty and his wife. Next door to them was their daughter, LaVina (Daugherty) Schrader and her children. And next door on the other side was their grandson, Rollie Ryder, whose mother, Bertha (Daugherty) Ryder had died in 1918. Surprisingly nomadic until their old age, they did so usually with their grown children in tow, and they died surrounded by family. Emma died on Halloween 1937, not long after the above picture was taken. John Daugherty followed just two weeks shy of two years later. They were both buried in Silverbook Cemetery in Niles, Michigan.

These were definitely my great-great-grandparents. The question then was which one of their children was my great-grandparent?

The Daugherty boys made my research easier by not reproducing. When son Ira Daugherty died in a car accident outside of Niles, Michigan, in 1943, his obituary named only his stepchildren by the wife he had married five years earlier. Son John Henry "Jack" Daugherty Jr. married twice, and died childless in Dowagiac, Michigan, in 1953. Son Albert Daugherty, although married twice, never had children and always lived with his parents, and upon his death in 1960 his surviving heirs were his nieces and nephews by his sister, Lavina.

So if Kenneth Eugene Ryder and my mother, Carol Sue Crumet, were second cousins on the Daugherty side, which seemed to be the only conclusion one could come to with the DNA results to date, that would make LaVina (Daughery) Schrader's sons the only men of that generation to be my mother's father. And of the five boys LaVina gave birth to, three were living in 1946 when my mother was conceived: Theodore Schrader, born in 1912; Edward Schrader, born in 1915; and Joseph Russell Schrader, born in 1920.

But as mentioned earlier, we had to factor in the half-first cousins, once removed, so that meant Bertha Daugherty could still be my great-grandmother, as she had three children by three husbands. Since her youngest daughter, Mary Prestidge (aka Prestige), died at the age of sixteen, I had only the sons of Catharine (Rieder) Hath Dorn to consider. Catherine had four sons: two by Frank Hath, and two by Jack Dorn. The eldest Hath son had died in 1941, and the two Dorn sons were too young to be my mother's father. The only one who could be considered as my grandfather was her second son, Russell Tom Hath, born in 1924.

So my mother was a Schrader or a Hath. It was just that simple. The DNA had taken me this far, and there was no way else for the numbers to mathematically fit anyone else. The numbers of candidates were dwindling, and an answer would soon be forthcoming.

If it were only that simple.