larose575 on Family Tree Circles

Still routinely running searches on this gentleman who is my 3rd great grandfather. What I know is that his name is definitely Jonathan J. Hall and most likely Jonathan Jackson Hall as I have found census records where he actually used Jackson as a first name and another that listed him as Jonathan Jackson Hall Sr. The birth date and death date I have are from his gravestone and may or may not be entirely correct. I suspect the death date is not correct as I have not found documentation of his death in any of the neighboring counties where he lived and is buried. Neither have I found any documentation of his birth. I have found documentation of his marriage to Rachel VanZant on 27 Aug 1835 in Knox County, Ohio.

One day, after going over census records of another family member and noting that families, especially farmers, tended to stay together I took a close look at the earliest census record I have for Jonathan (Federal Census for 1840). I started checking our the neighbors on the census and I might have gotten a teeny tiny niche in this brick wall. After doing some research on on a Richard Hall and a Samuel Hall who were neighbors to Jonathan, I found a gentleman by the name of Lorenzo Garton who ha Richard Hall living with him in 1850. Lorenzo's wife was Hannah Hall and I am thinking that Richard is her father since there is about a 25 year age difference.

This all has me wondering if Richard might have been a grandfather to Jonathan. This would make Hannah (Hall) Garton his aunt and Lorenzo Garton his uncle. My rationale for thinking this way is that Jonathan's children are named: Hannah Adeline Hall; Jonathan Jackson Hall; Lorenzo Garton Hall; and Ida Leilla Hall.

This all clicked after I exchanged email with a distant cousin who married into the family and had researched the way the English generally named their children. Apparently the English naming tradition was to name your children after your aunts and uncles. Unfortunately, I have not been able to connect this family with Jonathan yet. You can bet I will be working on that and hoping to find more bits and pieces as I do.