If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you may have noticed that most of my most detailed findings have been on my mother’s paternal side and include her Gibson, Morgan and Riggs ancestors. I have been able to trace them as far back as 1811 because of letters, journals and probate and other written materials by and about John Palfrey and family of Boston, Mass. and later St Martin and St Mary Parishes in Louisiana.
Similarly, much information was uncovered on 1/2 of my mother’s maternal family which includes the surnames: Guy and Jenkins and my paternal ancestors: Fournice and Shoals ancestors. These names were included in probate records of the Weeks, Meade and Weightman families.
The other 1/2 of my mother’s maternal tree were uncovered through 2 female DNA matches in Ancestry.com and Gedmatch.com: CG and Destinysmom12. These 2 DNA profiles and the family trees that were pieced together cemented our Calvert County, Maryland heritage. I ‘d been able to find my 3rd great grandmother, Charlotte Phillips’s family alive on the 1870, 1880 census still living in the vicinity of Solomons Island, Calvert County, MD.
After my success finding Charlotte through DNA profiles and matching members on family trees, I focused next on finding the family of Charlotte’s husband, Joseph ‘Young’ Smith, my 3rd great grandfather. Joseph had been born about 1835 Kentucky and as per the 1900 census data, so were his mother and father. Back in 2015 in Ancestry.com there were 2 profiles of relatively high matches (67cM and 40cM on 2 segments) whose family trees included people who lived in Kentucky. These 2-profile people were related to one another. Their family trees included the surnames: Sutton, Ray, Merimee, Gardiner, Roth, Elder, Hamilton, Higgins Howard, and Mayfield. These 2 profiles were my mother 3rd cousin or half 2nd cousin 1x removed. The two matched a third profile who was a 105cM match on 4 segments. This third profile was for a man who stated that he was adopted and so had no family tree.
So, my niece Latrice and I determined that we could maybe connect Joseph ‘Young’ Smith to these 2 Kentucky DNA-profile families by figuring out the family tree of this third profile. If we could then connect him to the other 2 profiles, we would then know how we all were connected.
I found a DNA profile for that third person also in Gedmatch.com. In Gedmatch, I was able to see his highest shared matches with my mother and his highest matches that did not match her. He had several very high matches with people whose family trees included people who lived in Overton, County, Tennessee. We next compared his high matches with each other and were able to triangulate on 1 surname, Harges sp Hargis.
So, we tracked men and women from this family to see who moved west and lived in Iowa, Nebraska, California and Arizona. We found obits, marriage records, and newspaper articles that helped in our search. Sometime in mid-2019 Latrice and I had connected the Overton County, TN branch of profile #3 to the 2 Kentucky profiles. The names that all three profiles had in common were Gardiner and Merimee.
The Gardiner family was from Charles County, Marland and this branch had moved to Nelson County, Kentucky by late 1700s or early 1800s. The Gardiner family lineage has been very well documented going back to the late 1600s and is quite extensive. Many Gardiner descendants have moved to St Landry Parish, Louisiana and lived somewhat near my Smith-Phillips family in Iberia Parish.
The Merimee family was harder to trace. The patriarch of the family was William Merimee who was reported to have been born about 1750 in France. By 1798 he was in the United States and living in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. He was reported to have married Mary Magdalene LeBrun a native of France. He moved with his family to Nelson County, Kentucky sometime after 1800.
Which of the 2 surnames Gardiner or Merimee had a connection to Joseph ‘Young’ Smith?
As the years passed between 2015 and 2019, more and more DNA profiles appeared in Ancestry.com that all included the Gardiner-Merimee surnames. As we compared each of the new profiles, we were perplexed because each of the new Gardiner-Merimee profiles seemed to match only one another, my mother and her immediate family.
We could not figure out how none of the 15 or more profiles failed to match any of the known Gardiner families in Louisiana or a Gardiner family living anywhere!!! There were so many Gardiner descendant DNA profiles that we found among the Public Member family tree section in Ancestry.com. Not one of them matched my mother. Similarly, we found several of family trees that included the surname Merimee. William Merimee had at least 2 sons; Frederick and Thomas and 1 daughter Prudence. All the DNA profiles in Ancestry had Thomas Merimee at the top of their family tree and his wife Maria Eliza Gardiner.
At the time my niece and I kept saying that either Maria Eliza is Joseph Smith’s mother or Thomas Merimee is his father. But we did add either to our family tree. We moved on to researching the connection of other members of our family.
Months and then a year or 2 years passed.
2025 was a new year and I narrowed down my list of “have to knows” from the myriads of things to just 2 things. One of those things was, “who were Joseph ‘Young’ Smith’s parents.
So, I set out to figure out who Joseph’s parents were. There were two things that had always been great curiosities about Joseph: the name with which he was documented and that he was listed as a Mulatto male on the 1870 census, but not the 1900 census. On the 1870 and 1900 census records for Iberia Parish, he was listed as Joe and then Joseph. But he was referred to ‘Young’ Smith on the 1872 purchase of land with Charlotte and on his 1878 marriage record to her. Both the deed and marriage record were legal records of a sort and he was referenced as Young and not Joseph. Why? Had his father been Joseph Smith Sr? Had Joseph originally been on a plantation or farm owned by a Smith and he was just one of the young boys living there? Had he been on a plantation owned by the Young family?
My niece built a Gardiner-Merimee tree in Ancestry. She researched the original William Merimee and discovered that he had a brother and/or a son who went by the name Lewis Marymee. A Lewis Merimee had lived in Pennsylvania in 1800 and a Lewis Marymee had married in Bullitt County, KY in 1822 and later died 1834 or 1835 in Sullivan County, IND.
I started adding to the tree the Latrice had started, focusing on Lewis Marymee’s descendants. I traced each of his 5 sons and added their families to the tree. Newspaper articles, marriage and death records helped trace the families through the decades. I traced one branch of his family to Houston, Texas by 1900 and added those names to the family tree.
Finally, I added a surname to the tree that flashed in my memory. I’d recently seen that name as a new addition to the now more than 70 DNA profiles that matched the Gardiner-Merimee group that I’d created in Ancestry. Some had family trees, some had useable profile names, other had gooblety-goop for profile names. This new DNA profile name used the surname that I’ d just added as a new name to our research tree. This profile also matched 7 profiles of the known descendants of Thomas Merimee and Mary Eliza Gardiner. This profile shared only 12cM on 1 segment with my mother. Per Ancestry, she is my mother 4th cousin or half 3rd cousin, 1x removed.
This new profile was a descendant of Lewis Marymee, who was the brother, son or grandson of William Merimee. In any case, we now knew that Joseph Smith’s connection to this large Gardiner-Merimee group was through a Merimee and not a Gardiner.
And so I called Latrice and said again what we’d both said years before, “Thomas Merimee has to be Joseph Smith’s father!”
I then wanted to know all about Thomas Merimee. All that I had known was that he was born about 1802 in Nelson County, KY, that father died about 1805 and that his mother died about 1841.
Additional research uncovered a Bond Book in which Thomas and his brother Frederick were listed as orphans. In 1813, William Shadburn, the young husband of their older sister Prudence was appointed to be their guardian. I could not find much information on Thomas’ mother Mary Magdalene Lebrun. What I did find was: an 1810 Nelson County, KY census record for a household of 4 and a 1812 marriage record of her daughter Prudence to William Shadburn; and a record of Mary Magdalene ‘Prudence’ birth of 1765 and death in 1841 on a tombstone in the St. Joseph Cemetery in Bardstown, KY. The tombstone inscription included the words ‘Wife of William Merimee’.
I found Thomas Merimee living in Jefferson County, KY at the time of the 1830 census. His household included him, his wife and 2 male children under the age of 5, 1 male child over 5 and 1 female slave between the age of 10 and 23. Joseph ‘AKA’ Young Smith was born about 1835. By 1840 Thomas was again living in Nelson County, KY. His family now totaled 8 and include 1 female slave between the age of 10 and 23. If the female slave listed in 1830 and 1840 were the same person and for her to have been between 10 and 23 for both census terms suggests that the was 12 years old in 1830 and 22 years old in 1840. If she was Joseph’s mother, then she would have been 17 years old when he was born in 1835.
Thomas was listed on the 1850 and later census as a blacksmith. He most likely owned a blacksmith shop either on or near his home. The only additional information that I have found regarding Thomas is the marriage and death records of his daughters and sons and their descendants.
I am curious to know who was the 10-23 year-old female slave counted in Thomas’ household in 1830 and 1840 and what became of her. Was she Joseph Smith’s mother, his sister, an aunt or related to him at all?? I’ve been looking at probate records for Maria Eliza Gardiner’s family members to see if Thomas Merimee may have acquired this young female by way a dowry.
So, Latrice and I have figured out who was Joseph ‘Young’ Smith’s father–Thomas Merimee 1802-1878. Now to find his mother and perhaps the reason he was called “Young Smith”.
Best,
My Maryland-Louisiana Roots 