Who are the parents of my third great grandfather, Thomas Worthington Sanders?
Others' work has shown them to be Thomas Moorman and Sarah Ham. No less than 14 family trees on Ancestry.com besides mine had listed it that way. My one-time intense researcher Ohio cousin who now has seemingly given up the craft filed his family chart with the Ohio Genealogical Society showing it that way too.
I showed it that way until this week too.
I'm a skeptic now though. Call it group think at work as the reason so many of us where following the same branch.
The problem wasn't immediately obvious, but a few items point to the signs being there.
For one, TM and Sarah were in the 1850 Census but their nine-year-old son was not listed in the family. That's sign one.
Plus, the Hinshaw Encyclopedia of Quaker Genealogy and the microfilms of Clear Creek Monthly Meeting records show TM and Sarah's family but no Thomas. In fact, the 1840 birth date used for Thomas overlaps with TM and Sarah's listed son Hezekiah Ham Sanders.
Some of the 14 posted trees list 22 Aug 1840 as his birth date. Others, perhaps encountering the Quaker records conflict, list 1844.
Turns out the 22 Aug 1840 birth date, collaborated by a family bible referenced by another researcher, matches to a Winfrey Thomas Sanders who lived in the neighboring county in the 1850 and 1860 Census. He went by W.T. in 1850 and Thomas in 1860.
My theory that I'm posting for the sake of debate is that this person is our Thomas Worthington. When he got married in 1863, he was going by Thomas Worthington Sanders.
There's more research to do, but posting the theory is the start of challenging the current one.
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UPDATE: My Eastern Ohio cousin who produced much of this research pre-Internet told me before Christmas this year that he wasn't sure where the name Worthington as Thomas W. Sanders middle name. As a result, I'm taking down use of that name.
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