Finding Amanda
Sometimes it can be really difficult to prove a line of descent for an individual, especially when that individual lived during the mid 1800’s. This is a period I often refer to as the black hole of records, as the folks who produce books of church records usually concentrate on records before 1800 and the census information does not become really helpful until the late part of the 1800’s. I have wished for years that some of my own ancestors had been a bit better about listing details in the records they left behind, such as where family members were buried.
A case in point is my great-great-grandmother, Amanda Gregg, born in 1835. From information copied from an old family bible years ago, I knew that Amanda was the daughter of Isaac and Hannah Gregg and that she had married David M. Reynolds in 1857, but I was having real difficulties proving anything substantial about her. 
I even knew what she looked like as the picture to the right, handed down to me by my mother, hangs in the hallway at my house. The 1850 census shows her in Kennett township in Chester County with her parents, Isaac and Hannah Gregg, at age 15. By 1860, she had married and shows up in Fulton township, Lancaster County with husband David Reynolds. By 1870, she’s back in Kennett, a widow with three children: Mary C., Albert and Isaac. Without the bible record, I would have no clue about Amanda and her husband and children, as I have yet to discover where she was married, or where she and David were ultimately buried. From the same bible record, I know that Isaac, the youngest son, was born at Peach Bottom in 1864 and lived for most of his life in West Chester and is buried at Oaklands Cemetery in West Chester, so perhaps Amanda will turn up there as well but I have my doubts as she is not anywhere to be found near Isaac’s grave at Oaklands. Both the Reynolds and the Gregg families were Quaker, so the most likely places to look for her and David will be in the Quaker meeting burial grounds in the area. I’m going to set an official goal of finding them this summer. My best guess is New Garden meeting, as the death notice for Isaac Gregg, Amanda’s father, states the he died in New Garden, though London Grove is also a possibility as David’s parents were married there in 1795.
It would be interesting to know just when the picture of Amanda was taken, as that might also provide some clues about where she ended up, but as it is, the picture will serve as a reminder to me that she remains a somewhat intriguing mystery to solve as she outlived her husband by nearly 20 years.