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After I was finally able to find the parents of my paternal grandmother’s mother (Fannie Dennis), I quickly hit another brick wall in that line at her mother. According to the earliest record I could find for her mother Mariah (Herod) Dennis (an 1880 US Census record after she was already married), she was born about 1860, which means that she should show up in the 1870 census with her parents. I decided to try using Ancestry’s ThruLines again, this time on a potential father for Mariah that Ancestry had identified, Louis Herod.
One of the DNA matches listed in the Ancestry screenshot is the same match from “Breaking through a brick wall” who helped confirm that Wallace Dennis and Mariah (Herod) Dennis were Fannie Dennis’ parents. However, it wasn’t that match’s tree that I used to confirm Mariah’s parents because they also weren’t in their tree. This second person (who isn’t in my DNA match list) connects records to Louis’ profile to prove his existence and family relationships. Mariah isn’t listed as one of his children in the person’s tree, but when you look at the 1870 US census record used as a reference for Louis’ family (their surname is misspelled as Herred), there is a 13-year-old girl living in his household recorded as M. Herred [sic]. The 1870 census doesn’t list family relationships explicitly, but you can infer them from the surnames and ages of the household members.
One of the records I’ve found for Mariah (the 1900 census) lists her age as 45 (birth year about 1855). In the 1870 census, M. Herred’s estimated birth year was 1857. These two years are within an acceptable margin of error. Also, in the 1880 census, Mariah (now Dennis) is living next-door to Louis and Mary Herrod[sic].
So, I believe that Louis and Mary are Mariah’s parents. I also have another record I can use for verification. Mariah died November 1950, which is recent enough that there was an obituary published in a newspaper for her (the birth year in the obituary is very off, however). The obituary lists the names of three brothers: Robert Herod, Johnson Herod, and Willie Herod (last name transcribed incorrectly as Hearld). Robert and Johnson appear in the household of Louis Herod in the 1870 census. Willie doesn’t show up in a census with his family until 1890.
