Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Who Is Your 3rd Most Recent Unknown Ancestor

From Randy over at Genea-Musings:

Dear genealogists everywhere, it's Saturday Night!  Time for some Genealogy FUN.

Your mission this week, should you decide to accept it, is to:

 1) Who is your TMRUA - your Third Most Recent Unknown Ancestor? This is the person with the third lowest number in your Pedigree Chart or Ahnentafel List that you have not identified a last name for, or a first name if you know a surname but not a first name. 

2) Have you looked at your research files for this unknown person recently? Why don't you scan it again just to see if there's something you have missed? 

3) What online or offline resources might you search that might help identify your TMRUA?

4) Tell us about him or her, and your answers to 2) and 3) above, in a blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a comment on Facebook or Google Plus. 

Here's mine:

1)  My Third Most Recent Unknown Ancestor (TMRUA) is #26, the father of my second great-grandfather, George W. Schwalls (January 1, 1837 - January 21, 1908).  

2)  While I haven't searched for this information recently, I am very familiar with what I do know.  Unfortunately, what I know about George W. Schwalls, "ain't much":  

George was born in Germany (One document mentioned Bavaria).  Sometime in the 1850's, he came to America with at least one cousin, maybe more.  His cousin, George Michael Schwall, settled in Sandersville, Washington County, Georgia.  George W. Schwalls (he added the "S", by all accounts, to be differentiated from his cousin) settled in Johnson County, Georgia.  

There are stories that they came to this country because they had gotten into some kind of trouble and had to flee their home.  The stories state that the boys were smuggled over on a ship from France.  I do not know if that is true; however, I do know that I have been unable to locate their names on any ship manifest coming from Europe during the 1850's.  

Thus, with so little information, I have been unable to determine where in Germany George was born and, therefore, unable to identify his father.

3)  I have done exhaustive searches of ship manifests, Civil War records (George fought in the war.), actually any and all records I could find on Ancestry.com and Family Search that might have a mention of George's birthplace recorded by him.  He did not even list the town on his Civil War Pension Application!  I have tried in vain to find a descendant who knows the family history by using the Ancestry.com message boards and this blog to get my query out there.  I have searched at the Georgia Archives, Dublin (Georgia) Public Library (which has a fine genealogy resource room for the geographical area), and NARA in Washington D.C. for any information about George's place of birth and ancestors.  

I have also done numerous searches for his cousin's ancestry, to no avail.

I have come across some message board posts on Ancestry.com with names of possible parents of George W. Schwalls.  However, none of those messages were sourced, and I was unable to confirm any of the information.

4)  Done!  I have written numerous blog posts about my elusive George Schwalls... please visit "Posts by Topic" above and search under "Schwalls."  

The Hypothetical Ancestor Trade-Off

Amy Coffin of the We Tree Genealogy Blog wrote a blog post recently about "The Hypothetical Ancestor Trade-Off."  You can read that post and the one that sparked it here.  I decided to participate, and I ask you, dear readers, as Amy asked hers:

"Do you have an ancestor who is a challenge to research?  Would you like to hand him or her off to another genealogist for a couple of weeks and let someone else worry about it?

Tell us which one and why."

Boy!  Would I?!  I am sure any of you who has read this blog for any length of time can easily guess who I would trade off.  No question. 

My great-great-grandfather, George W. Schwalls.  He is a mystery wrapped in an enigma.  Or however that saying goes.

That is George, front row, 3rd from left.

He, like Amy's ancestor, seems to have landed on this earth, in the United States, in Johnson County, Georgia, with no parents or back story of any kind.  I have hit brick wall after brick wall while researching this man, and I have no idea where to go from here.

While George indicated at different times that he was born in Germany (Once he stated Bavaria.), I can find no record of a naturalization for him.  Therefore, I do not know exactly when he came to this country.  He was born January 1, 1837 and by 1862, he was serving in the Confederate Army.  Where he was at any point in between is anyone's guess. 

To research someone's ancestry in their home country of Germany, it is imperative to know what village or town or city they were from.  I cannot find that information for George.  Nowhere, not on the census nor his Civil War Pension File nor obituaries for his children nor anywhere that I can find, does he or anyone else list the town in Germany where he was born.

I've searched ship passenger lists for him.  The couple of George Schwall(s) I found did not seem to match.  The family legend is that he slipped into this country under a false name.  That may be true since I find no record of him anywhere.

There was a George Michael Schwall living in the next county over that I feel sure was related to him somehow.  Probably a cousin.  I've tried to research Michael's ancestry to find a link.  No luck so far there either.

So I am stuck.  Please, won't someone take his file for a couple of weeks?!  If someone else can figure it out, more power to them. 

Now it's your turn.  Who's file would you like to trade to another genealogist in the hypothetical ancestor trade-off?

(Thanks, Amy and her readers, for coming up with this blog topic.)