An email from FamilySearch this morning was a suggestion to take a look at my family fan chart. If you didn't receive a similar message, open your tree and select the tree version. Change the landscape or portrait view to "fan chart."
Next, open the little icon beside the fan chart selection. It provides the following choices.
Multiple trees continue to report (without any sources) that Isaac Reifsnider married Eleanor Vanderbilt. There have been vague mentions that "a cousin is a member of the famous Vanderbilt family." This week I did another search of Ancestry with her information. One tree seemed interesting because her mother's name was given as Eltje Vanderbilt with many question marks following the name. Eleanor Phillips Reifsnider was the name in that Ancestry tree.
However, there was a photo of a newspaper article linked to Eltje. It was one of those "Did You Know" columns from the Action Flyway Shopper, a five-county buyer's guide published in Waupun in 1994. It begins: "Among the early settlers who came to Waupun in 1845 were the great grandparents of Mrs. James Drummy, the Isaac Reifsniders."
It goes on to explain that "his wife was the former Eleanor Phillips, from one of the most prominent families in New York City. Her mother, Eltje, was a sister of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, steamboat and railroad tycoon." It continues that Eleanor's most prized possession was the Vanderbilt family bible with a record of marriages, births and deaths for centuries.
I am fairly confident that this information solves the puzzle of Isaac Reifsnider's wife's name. Her maiden name was not Vanderbilt, but Phillips. It also provides several clues for further research in my daughter-in-law's family tree!
