In my efforts to trace my family history, my maternal great Grandfather, Ed Wilkins has been a stumbling block. As I have written previously, he shows up at 18 in Plymouth County as a farm worker. Despite eventually becoming a modest success in both his own business and personal life, the only information he ever reveals in censuses or other formal documents about his past is that he and his parents were born in Missouri. No searches turn up anything further. It is as though a whole branch of the family tree had been lopped off.
There was some unsupported suggestion in one family tree that his mother’s name was Sarah Jane Gray. Trying to connect her with either Ed or Missouri, though, was a bit tenuous. There was a J. Wilkins married to a Sarah, with one child Mary, in Arkansas, and Wilkins had listed his birth state as Missouri, but that was it. It addition, on searches for Sarah Jane Wilkins, the name Sarah Puck kept coming up, but, again, I could find no way to connect her to Ed. For quite a while, I gave up.
Last year, I had a DNA test done with Ancestry.com in order to see if there were any links to people in my family tree, and a small amount of DNA that linked to decedents of Sarah Jane Gray turned up. I decided to renew my search , this time also looking deeper in to Sarah Jane Puck, though she had apparently been married to James Puck for over 40 years. What caught my eye, though, was that the Puck family lived in Sioux City, Iowa, which is where my grandfather, Victor Wilkins, Ed’s son, had been born, so there was a potential connection.
A much stronger bit of evidence came through when I found a document that was a delayed birth certificate for Mable Puck. Mable’s mother was listed as Sarah Jane Gray, born in Arkansas and her father as James Puck. The document was signed by a Mary Emma Flinn who identified herself as Mable’s sister. Ordinarily, this would be no surprise because Flinn was probably Mary’s married surname. Oddly, though, Mary was not listed in any census as a child of Sarah and/or James, though, Mable was. What did ring a bell, though was that the Sarah married to J. Wilkins in Arkansas had a daughter named Mary and their ages matched. Further research on Mary Flinn revealed that her husbands name was Matthew Flinn, and even more importantly, on a record of the marriage of their son, Frank, the name of his mother was listed as Mary Wilkins. Finally, Mary Emma Wilkins’ obituary lists her father as Joseph Wilkinson born in Herbeyville, MO and Sarah Jane Gray of Benton, Arkansas as her parents. . Thus, the connection between Sarah Jane Gray, Mary Emma Wilkins, and seems pretty solid.
But where does Ed fit in to all of this circumstantial evidence? The 1860 census lists Mary as 7 months old, so she was born in 1859. Ed Wikins was born in 1867. We know that in 1860 Sarah Jane was living in Arkansas with her husband Joseph Wilkins and daughter Mary, but by 1880 she was living in Sioux City and married to James Puck. Mary was also in Sioux City with her husband. No records from 1870 have been found to be able to tell when her first husband died or she married her second husband, so Ed is not on any of those records with her. However, in 1880, at 13 years old he was living and working on a farm in Plymouth Co., Iowa, which today is considered a suburb of Sioux City, so it is possible that after Sarah Jane married, Ed was sent out to work. On the other hand, Sarah Jane and Ed may not be related at all. The mystery continues.
Northen History 