Keeping track of all the names mentioned in Mary Jane’s diary is a real challenge. She interacted with or mentioned over 200 people in the course of this one year in her life that she recorded. Impressive for a rural Indiana woman!

Saturday, September  15, 1866

Mother and Milton started out to Plainfield to attend a part of Western Yearly meeting. The day has been fair, and Jonathan and Nathaniel have been sowing wheat and preparing ground. Albert Porch and Phebe Ann Hiatt were married this morning at Milton Taylor’s.

-Mary Jane Edwards

Online programs like Ancestry and Family Search have helped sort out many of the aunts, uncles, and cousins. Family Search’s arrows, which expand laterally and vertically, help tremendously by keeping often-repeated first names in the generations where they belong.

I know that the surname Porch shows up in my ancestry somewhere. But now I’m having trouble finding it again. Did I invent that thought? Stranger things have happened in these five months since my husband died- I often feel as if I’m in a fog..

While searching the Earlham Archives last week, I found images of Joel and Anna Cloud from Spiceland, Indiana Friends Meeting. I was thrilled because I remembered the name “Anna Cloud” from our family chart. I thought she was Mary Jane’s grandmother on her mother’s side: That would make her my 4x great-grandmother.

But after referencing Family Search, I stood corrected.

My 4x great-grandmother was Anne Cloud. But by exploring the little carets to Anne’s side on the genealogy chart, I found her brother, Jonathan Cloud (Elizabeth Campbell), who had a son named Joel. He was the one I was looking for! His wife was Anna (Gordon) Cloud. And what a sourpuss she was!

Several Joel Clouds showed up across the chart, but there was only one with the verifiably sourpuss wife.

So by following the connecting lines, this Joel Cloud– the one in the photograph from Spiceland– was Mary Jane’s cousin, once removed, I believe.

From the events listed in his profile, it seems that this Joel was born in Sevier County, TN in 1800, while his wife, Anna Gordon, was born in Guilford County, NC two years earlier. I wonder how they met, as I have closer ancestors from nearly the same two places.

In 1832, after bearing four children in West Grove and New Garden, Wayne County, Indiana, the fourth of their seven children was born in Spiceland, Indiana. Anna herself died nine years later, also in Spiceland. 

Joel Cloud, however, moved to Hamilton County, Indiana. It seems he married again there, although no second wife is named.  Only an intention to be married is referenced on 29 January 1867 at Eagle Creek Meeting. Joel Cloud was buried in Hamilton County in 1883.

How I long to find a photograph of Mary Jane!

FInding photographs of the Clouds gives me hope. In the diary, Mary Jane mentions having her photograph taken with her scholars. Surely one of those still exists somewhere! 

Maybe one is waiting patiently in the archives for me to discover. Or maybe, with the help of related descendants, I’ll be able to locate one!

In the meantime, I’ll be continuing to poke around the Internet, looking for the Porch family connection- and hoping to prove that I can remember something!