Brick walls in genealogical research are created often when we do not analyze information closely and instead make assumptions about what we are visualizing.

Such is the case with my third great grandfather, John Mayel Simpson.

In over thirty years of research, I’d made little progress on this family.  And the reason?  John rarely used his first name; he often went by Mayel.  However, I’d interpreted the census-taker’s handwriting as Magul which contributed to my lack of progress in learning more about my grandmother’s paternal family. 

Unfortunately, nearly all online family trees have replicated my error, but have also created more confusion by stating he was born in England.  No, the Simpsons were here at the time of his birth, and I’m pretty sure he was born in or around Vermont.  Our family also has genetic ties to the Simpsons of Merrimack, Rockingham and Grafton Counties in New Hampshire, who were emigrating to the New World in the 18^th Century.  More work will determine if the DNA is due to that of Mayel or his wife, Charlotte Mary (Bornan?) Simpson.

So what do we know about this mysterious John Mayel Simpson?

• Birth and death dates – thanks to his son, Wallace Ralph Simpson.  (A typescript of the original Bible entry was provided to me through the hands of a distant cousin in the early 1990s).
  
  
• He was a cooper – a person who made barrels.
• He had at least three sons:  George W., Wallace Ralph, and William M.  There may have been a daughter named Mary as well, who was listed as a child and enumerated with her own children in 1855 along with Mayel and his wife, Charlotte Mary.
• He appears to have been in the lumber industry, and when leasing land in 1847, lumber was mentioned with his permission to take with him what he accumulated when the lease expired.
• In 1834 he was elected to the town offices of Saxton and Path-master for Wilmington, Essex County, New York
• By 1839, Mayel was living residing in the neighboring Black Brook, in Clinton County, NY.  He was paid $6.25 for services to the town.  He stayed in the Adirondack region awhile longer, as it was in Black Brook that he was enumerated on the 1840 census, immediately preceding the family of Job Perry.  Mayel was again paid for services to the town in 1841.
  
  
• Mayel Simpson testified on behalf of Henry Perrier in Plattsburgh, Clinton County, New York in 1843; joining him was one Joseph Perrier.
  
  
  

• The Simpson family moved to the neighboring county of Franklin by 1845, where Mayel is included on the state census in Fort Covington.  It is likely here that his son (my 2^nd great grandfather) met his future wife, Achsa Sisco; Mayel Simpson was enumerated adjacent to Asa Wilson, Achsa’s maternal grandfather.  Note Joseph Perry/Perrier mentioned above is enumerated on this same page of the state census.
  
  
• Mayel Simpson of Fort Covington leased land and a home in Lawrence, Saint Lawrence County, New York, from Joseph Tyler in 1847.  The lease was for five years, but the family did not appear to stay the full duration; they were enumerated in Hopkinton, Saint Lawrence County, New York in 1850 next door to son and daughter-in-law George and Achsa (Sisco) Simpson.
• In 1855 the family relocated to Brownville in Jefferson County, New York; the census taker noted they had only been there for 1/12 months.  Included in the household was 30-year-old “child” Mary Simpson along with her presumed daughters, Charlotte (age 5) and Cornelia (age 1).  Was Mary his daughter or daughter-in-law?
  
• By 1859, the family had moved on; Mayel is buried in the McConnellsville Cemetery in Oneida County, where he presumably died. Note the stone’s image is mostly illegible, but thanks to the 1931 efforts of Charles E. Wardwell, we have the transcription below which was published by the Long Island Historical Society in 1955.
  
  

So the work continues on, as my Simpson leads have dried up.  My current focus is seeing if research of his friends, associates and neighbors yields clues to his origins.  While there is still much to be discovered about this mysterious Simpson, one thing is known for sure: he was born and died on American soil, not abroad in England, as online trees would have you to believe.