The Hillikers

The Reese bible contains several portraits of people with the last name of Hilliker, a strange sounding name.  None of these people or anyone with a similar name is recorded in the bible on the births, deaths, and marriages pages.  I wonder who they are, but there is no hint.  I start searching Adam Reese's daughters in Ancestry.com databases to see if I can get a hit for one of them marrying a Hilliker.  I get nada, so I move on to Adam's granddaughters, however unlikely that seems.  His granddaughters thrived in the early 1900s and these pictures seem much older than that.

   What I love about genealogy is how these things happen.  The Hillikers are a dead end, so I change directions and switch to trying to trace the Reese family back to New York, before they take their pioneer spirit to the Wisconsin wilderness.  This is just a random search for post-Revolutionary War New York farmers.  I stumble across a reference of a William C. Hilliker, a widower from Herkimer County, New York, who marries a Lucretia Reese in Dodge County, Wisconsin in 1848.

  Lucretia appears to be Adam Reese's sister.  Voila!  I find Adam's father Samuel Reese, with family, a farmer in Herkimer County in 1840.  Genealogists know that U.S. census records before 1850 are not very specific, but even to a critical eye this does look like a good fit.  So the Reese's came from Herkimer County, New York, before settling in Wisconsin.
  Adam Reese b.1818 and William Hilliker b.1815 are close in age, they are both from Herkimer, Co. NY, and they likely traveled together in 1845, with their wives and young children.  William and his 1st wife, Nancy Hall 1813-1847 had 3 kids, Adam already has 2 kids with his wife Mary Ann.
We have a portrait of William Hilliker with who I think is his 1st wife, before her death in Wisconsin.  The other Hilliker portraits in the bible are of William Hilliker's and Lucretia Reese's grown children; Evelyn, Ellen and Charles.  I've traced some of their marriages and children.
  I've found the burial locations for William and his daughter Ellen.  I belong to Find-A-Grave.com which is a another good site for genealogy research and I've uploaded Ellen and William's portraits http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7005264 to their on-line memorials.  http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7005017  One day, somebody researching their family will spot these and I'll get an excited e-mail.
   Herkimer County, NY is a good discovery.  I have info on William's parents and a lead on a possible grandfather for Adam Reese too.  The story goes on.