2026-14 Who Were Julia Ann's Parents?

 

Julia Ann, Wife of John Moes Lent

My Maternal Third Great-Grandmother

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 14 

Prompt: Brick Wall Revisited

Some brick walls don’t fall. They shift.

For years, I have been trying to answer a simple question: Who were the parents of Julia Ann, wife of John Moes Lent?

The records tell me just enough to keep me searching—and just enough to keep me guessing.

Julia Ann first appears clearly in the 1850 census in Lagro Township, Wabash County, Indiana. She is forty years old, the wife of a farmer, and the mother of four children. Her birthplace is recorded as Connecticut.

By 1860, the family has moved to Jersey County, Illinois, in the Plasa Precinct near Brighton. Julia Ann is now fifty. Three of her sons have left home, but three daughters remain, including my second great-grandmother, Elizabeth. This time, Julia Ann’s birthplace is given as New Hampshire.

Ten years later, in 1870, Julia Ann is a widow. John Moes Lent died in 1865. She is living in Mercer County, Missouri, in the household of her daughter Mary and son-in-law, William Cox. Her birthplace has returned to Connecticut.

Connecticut. New Hampshire. Connecticut again.

Which is correct?

Following John’s death, a possible clue appears in the 1865 St. Louis City Directory, where a “Julia Ann Lent, widow” is listed. St. Louis sits just across the Mississippi River from where the family lived in 1860, making this a strong candidate. That same year, Julia Ann’s daughter, Lydia Ann Lent, married George Smith in St. Louis on May 26, 1865—placing the family there at exactly the right time.

A more substantial record comes from an unexpected place.

The record that shifted the brick wall—Julia Ann Lent’s Mother’s Pension application.

Julia Ann’s son, Philip, died during the Civil War at Goldsboro, North Carolina, on February 4, 1865. In his widow’s pension file, I discovered five pages relating to a Mother’s Pension filed by Julia Ann.

On July 15, 1867, Julia A. Lent appeared in Probate Court in Putnam County, Missouri, and made oath that she was the widow of John W. Lent, deceased. She stated that she had married John on November 23, 1835, in Onondaga County, New York, by “— — Lake, Esq., J.P.”

She explained that no marriage records were kept in that place at the time and that she could not produce better evidence than the affidavits of her daughters, Mary Cox and Lydia A. Smith, which she asked the court to accept as sufficient proof.

George Smith and William Cox, her sons-in-law, provided written testimony concerning her reliance on her son Philip for support. All of these families were living near Unionville in Putnam County, Missouri.

For the first time, I now know when and where Julia Ann married John Lent.

But even with this new information, the central question remains.

Her birthplace shifts between Connecticut and New Hampshire. No record yet names her parents. No document places her definitively in a family before her 1835 marriage in New York.

This brick wall has not come down—but it has moved.

And sometimes, that is enough to keep going.