Long-lost George long rediscovered

A DNA cousin recently noted a shared match among number of our Long cousins. This new match descends from a George Long from Ohio. I suspect that this George is the "long-lost" member of our James Long-Mary Bearmore family from Greene County PA and Guernsey County Ohio. 

George married Barbara Yoho and had a son John W. Long, born about March 1850. They are recorded in the 1850 census (5 September) in Union Township, Monroe County Ohio. I believe that John W. Long next appears in the 1860 census in Jasper IL in the household of Margaret Long (Garrison Long's daughter) next door to my GGgrandfather Jackson Long (all Long cousins). Because we cannot find George or Barbara after the 1850 census, I presumed that they died in that decade.

This detailed biography tells the story of our new DNA cousin's ancestor George (note that there are two mentioned in the bio), and the pieces all seem to fit together with our George: 

"George H. Long is a business man of Kansas City, Kansas, where he has been located for the past eight years. As an undertaker he has built up a large clientage on the basis of thorough and competent service, and has given to that profession the best of his energies and his conscientious study for a number of years.

Mr. Long is a native of Ohio, born September 30, 1875, at Ripley in Brown County. He was the oldest of the five children of James A. and Jemima (Fluharty) Long. Both parents were natives of Ohio. James A. Long had a brother, John, two years older. They were left motherless when children, and their father, George Long, soon afterward determined to seek a home in Kansas. He came out to the state by ox team and wagon and married here and soon after getting his home established he went back to Ohio to get his children. On returning to Kansas he found that his second wife had died during his absence, and he himself fell a victim to cholera about 1854. His children, James and John, went back to Ohio and were reared there by separate families. John was in the regular army, was injured during service in the West against the Indians, and his subsequent record became lost to the family. James A. Long was a lumberman in Ohio, and for fifteen years served as deputy marshal of Ripley, Ohio. He was a democrat and a man held in the highest esteem throughout his community. He was a Methodist and an active supporter of church and school."

http://www.accessgenealogy.com/kansas/biography-of-george-h-long.htm

James A. Long was born in June 1852, according to his 1900 census entry, making him 2 years and three months older than our John W.

Searching the census records yields a George Long, age 30, farmer, with wife Clementine, age 21, both born in Ohio in the January-February 1855 Kansas Territory census. 1855 would be a more reasonable date for them to have died than 1854, because Kansas territory opened for settlement only in May 1854. George Long married Clementine Eagon 26 October 1854 in Guernsey Ohio. She reportedly died 16 May 1855. Several of Clementine's siblings, John, Margaret, and James were with Phllip T. Hupp and wife Maria, also in the 1855 census near George and Clementine. These sources validate the story about George and his second wife.

Records also show a John W. Long, age 21, from Noble county, Ohio, enlisting at the Omaha barracks in 1869. He is recorded in the 1870 census as being a soldier age 22, born in Ohio to a father of foreign birth (similarly marked on over 1/2 of the soldiers). He is recorded as a deserter twice, in 1871 and 1872. More study of his records may document his injuries. The long, egregious wars against Indian tribes on the Plains made service both dangerous and monotonous during this period, with isolation, sickness, and desertion being commonplace. Given the same name and birthplace, along with a similar age, I suspect this is our John W., although the stated nativity of his father does not fit.

Mother of Mary Bearmore?

Jonathan Bearmore's wife Kezia South was reportedly born about 1760-1770, with a typical age of 1765 given in various family trees. I suspect that she may have been a second wife, in part because the will for her father, Joseph South, left money to her children Samuel and Joseph, but no other children. Samuel and Joseph were both young adults at that time. Note that the administrator, Benjamin South, was Kezia’s brother, and a son of Benjamin, Elijah South, was the executor of John Long's estate in 1833. A Lydia Crownover appeared as one of the creditors receiving a share of property from Jonathan Bearmore's estate in 1798. That woman may have been Lydia Predmore Crowonver, reverting to her first husband's name, as she had been married a second time to Richard Prather, who had passed away in 1789. It would seem unusual for the time for a woman to be a creditor unless she were a widow.

Naming Patterns

Another child of Jonathan was Lucretia Bearmore, born 1783-1784 according to family trees, who married a James Rice in 1799. James and Mary's two youngest children were named George and Lucretia, after their mother’s two full siblings. Their oldest child was named Lydia, which does not appear higher in the Long family that I have seen, so I suspect that might have been the name from the family of his first wife. Lydia is also a name given by George Bearmore to one of his daughters. The name Kezia appears in the children of Joseph Bearmore.

 A Hypothesis

Family records for Lucretia Long (from a descendant who has since passed away) identify her parents as James Long and Rachel Crownover, but this does not seem to make sense, since I have not found any other records linking such names in Greene County PA, where Lucretia would have been born. Also, she seems to have been named after the sister of Mary Bearmore, her presumed mother. But perhaps this record was really referring to her grandmother--the mother of Mary Bearmore. The Crownovers (aka Covenhavens/Covenhovers/Conovers) are quite prominent in New Jersey, and the Crownovers were apparently linked to Jonathan Bearmore. What's more, there was a Covenhoven/South marriage that might even have produced a Rachel Crownover of the right age to have been Mary's mother. This is a lead that I am currently pursuing.

Going Public

I decided to make most of my pages public to invite more collaboration from potential family members seeking information.  Thanks to everyone who has helped to pull various pieces of information together, including the DNA results, trees, records, and hypotheses!

Are our Long ancestors really Longs?

This was the question that arose after DNA tests indicated that the Y chromosome inherited by all the male Longs in our family was not related to ANY other Longs who had done the same test. But within the past year, another kind of DNA test, autosomal, which is inherited from all of one's ancestors, suggested an interesting twist. The results provided strong evidence that we really our Longs, but perhaps in a somewhat non-conventional way.