I find as much joy in helping other folks break down their own brick walls as I do my own. I have to admit that I was a bit excited when I came across a DNA match who descends from a woman named “Naomi Dalton“. It was clear, looking at his family tree and other trees on Ancestry, that Naomi was a brick wall shared by quite a few folks. She had married a man by the name of Lawrence Grehan with whom she had at least five children. She was born in Mississippi about 1850 and was living in Memphis at the time of her death in 1891. Not much else was known about her… certainly not the identities of her parents 100+ years since her passing. That is until now.

Looking at DNA matches Naomi Dalton’s descendant shared in common with me and my dad, I knew pretty much instantly who Naomi Dalton was without knowing who she was. The shared matches were all descendants of Spencer Pearce and his wife, Naomi (Choate) Pearce, my 4th great grandparents. Spencer and Naomi had a daughter named Jane who married a man by the name of Thomas Dalton. See how easily this brick wall started crumbling?

DNA certainly pointed me in the right direction but I needed some sort of written evidence tying Naomi to Thomas and Jane her suspected parents. So I started scouring census records from 1850 hoping to find Thomas and Jane and a child who would have been about Naomi’s age. After hours of searching, Thomas and Jane turned up in the 1850 census of Tippah County, Mississippi, which was a popular destination for folks who’d left Lawrence County, Tennessee. They had several children by then, the youngest being an infant female recorded simply as “Omey”. BINGO! I had successfully reunited Naomi with her parents. I messaged all of the folks who had Naomi in their trees about my discovery. A few updated them immediately. Most didn’t reply but that matters not to me.

There’s more to the story here. It wasn’t lost on me that both Naomi and her grandmother Naomi had both died at a relatively young age with young children. A sad sign of the times perhaps. I am also fascinated with how family names often get passed down from one generation to the next. Obviously, Naomi Dalton was named for her grandmother, Naomi Pearce. But it didn’t end there. Naomi’s daughter, Heber Mae, named one of her daughters Mary Naomi. Her son, Robert, carried on the “tradition” naming one his daughters Naomi. The latter is the 4th great granddaughter of Naomi (Choate) Pearce. Something tells me, given how little folks knew about Naomi Dalton, that she has no idea just how far back her namesake stretches.

All in day’s work for an amateur genealogist.

Kenfolk: Trantham
Relationship: 1st cousin, 4x removed
Common ancestors: Naomi Dalton is the granddaughter of Spencer and Naomi (Choate) Pearce, my 4th great grandparents