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| Clarissa (Clara) Alice McDonald |
Week 13, Apr 2 – Apr 8, 2026
#52ancestors
Prompt: A Brick Wall Revisited
One of my brick wall was my great great grandmother, Clara Alice (Clarissa) McDonnell. She was the
only 2x great grandparent whose parents I did not know. I knew her maiden name from from her marriage certificate. However, doing research in Tazwell County, Illinois where she married, gave no results. So, I moved onto other research until I learned about the Full Text Search on familysearch.org. Full Text Search is powered by artificial intelligence. It can search the almost 2 billion records on familysearch that are not indexed or transcribed. It can also transcribe the records and summarize them for you.
I started by entering “Clara McDonnell” into the name box with quotation marks. Then using the filters on the left after searching, I narrowed the search down to Tazewell County, Illinois. The only records that came up pertained to her marriage. Before I had their marriage as an indexed record, but this included a copy of the handwritten index in the filed Tazewell County marriage books. While it was not new information to me, it was a primary document.
Next I searched for her husband’s name, Jonathan Wilcox. There were too many results so I narrowed it down by adding the quotation marks around his name and narrowing it to Tazewell County, IL. The first record listed was an 1876 warranty deed for property that Clara A and Jonathan Wilcox were selling. The warranty deed said Clara was conveying the property “in her own right”. I didn’t know the property laws in Illinois so I checked with chatgpt (AI) to find out what it meant for her to convey property in her own right. In 1861, Illinois had passed a Married Women’s Property Act which entitled married women to own property. How did Clara (McDonnell) Wilcox come to own property in her own name? My first thought was that she inherited it. Women rarely worked at a paying job at that time which would give her money to buy land. So, the probability was that she inherited land or money which she used to buy it.
The next search should be estate records, however I had already searched for maiden name in the records. So, I searched for her married name, “Clara Wilcox” in Tazewell County. Among the few results was a petition to sell property to satisfy debts. Clara was listed as a defendant. The plaintiff was Moleston Fisher, administrator of the estate of William G. McDonald. None of the documents pertaining to this land mentioned the relationship between William G McDonald and the named defendants. The other defendants mentioned in order were Catherine McDonald, James McDonald, Margaret Kinsey, Milton Kinsey, Jane Knox, A.B.C. Knox, Clara Wilcox, J.M. Wilcox, Nancy McDonald, Isora McDonald, Maggie McDonald, and Hattie McDonald. My hypothesis was that William G was her father and Catherine, for various reasons was her mother.
I expected to find William G McDonald on the 1870 census easily since this document stated he died on the 30th of December in 1874. I did not find anyone in either the 1870 or 1860 census that stood out as William G in Illinois or Ohio. From later census records, I knew that Clara was born in Ohio. I did find him in the 1850 census in Urbana, Champagne, Ohio.
Wm G was 21 years old living with Alexander (52) and Catherine (44) McDonald. Also in the household was Jane (18), Margaret (14), James (11), and Clarissa (8). We can assume from this that Alexander is his father, Catherine is probably his mother. Jane, Margaret, James, and Clarissa are his siblings. In the estate petition, Margaret would be Margaret Kinsey, Jane would be Jane Knox, and Clarissa would be Clara Wilcox. Clarissa’s age fits with what I already knew. Alexander was not mentioned in the petition so I will be searching for a death record for him before 1874. I tracked Alexander in census records from 1820 to 1870. In the 1870 census, the family is indexed as McDonnell. In looking at the record it looks more like the final D was not closed making it look like McDonalil. Perhaps it was a Scottish drawl that made it sound like an L to the census taker which may have happened in Clara's marriage record.
With this information, I am confident that the Clara A McDonnell who married Jonathan Wilcox was really Clarissa (Clara) McDonald, daughter of Alexander and Catherine McDonald.
