52 Ancestors Week 44: Shadows

 I missed last week's topic of "Organization" which I was going to use as a starting point to talk about all of the many organizations that we in my family have belonged to, but I came down with a cold in the middle of this and found it all a bit uninspired when I looked over what I had written.   So, I deleted all of that, except for the mention of this individual who has been lurking in the shadows ever since I first realized that you could look at census records to do genealogical research.  

We were living just outside Washington DC at the time, and it was possible to take the Metro to the National Archives stop, walk into the Archives, and make requests for records.  This was 40 years ago and I don't remember the details except for getting a bit lost in the soundex system.  However, one person I did find was James McDuff, my maternal grandmother's paternal grandfather (my 2x great grandfather):  I had never heard of him despite owning a picture of his widow, Anna Katherine Roberts McDuff.  Well.  Depending on the year you looked and the child who was claiming him as father, he was born in either Ireland, New York, or Connecticut (looking back this year with more experience of the census data, I realized that he was probably born in New York).  Theoretically he was born in 1830, wherever it was.  He apparently married Anna in 1858 in Green County, Wisconsin.  His oldest child was born in 1861 in Wisconsin.  The youngest child was born in 1867 in Minnesota.  I think we can safely say that he was still with Anna Katherine at that point.

And then he just sort of disappears.  I found a James McDuff who was buried in Arkansas in an Odd Fellows cemetery.  

Updating:  I was a little sicker than I thought and never finished this off, but this is actually the sum total of all I know about James McDuff.  He disappeared back into the shadows at some point--my suspicion is that he was not a reliable fellow but that is based solely on the fact that no one talked about him, including my grandmother.  Maybe someday I'll break through that brick wall and find the man!

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