I've joined several DAR groups on Facebook, including one for DAR members interested in submitting Supplemental Applications. (If you have one Revolutionary Patriot in your family line, chances are good there are others. You must submit separate fully-documented applications to prove all relationships.) This morning I was surprised to see a FB inquiry on a surname in my husband's family line:

I am trying to find information about my paternal great-grandmother, Ella Jane White Rowan. She was born in Indiana on 18 June 1858 and died in Northfield, Greenvale, Dakota County, Minnesota within a month or two of giving birth to my grandfather John Joseph Rowan, Sr. who was born 24 May 1892.

I hired genealogists (and paid a substantial fee) to find her records and they came up with nothing more than I gave them. The did say they aren't sure if her father was William Thomas White or Martin Richard White. I have her mother as Mary Ella Major. Apparently Ella Jane White shows up in census records living with other William Thomas and Martin Richard - one could be grandparents. My cousin told me she was always told that Ella Jane was adopted from a reservation. The genealogists I hired paid no attention to that information.

I have DNA from a 3rd cousin. My father was an only child and that's the closest male relative I could find. I see lots of 3rd, 4th, and 5th cousins in my DNA results but nothing closer and haven't made any real connection with any of them in my tree.

I would appreciate any help anyone can give me because I have several supplemental patriots that I would like to submit, but Ella Jane is the brick wall.

I've replied with what I know about "our" Rowans of Greenvale Township, Dakota County. While I've done no research about the White family, there's a chance we'll find a helpful hint,