Week 2: Challenge - George W. Patrick, the elusive Great-Great-Grandfather

Week 2 of the 2019 #52Ancestors
Theme: Challenge

When you start out researching in genealogy usually your perspective is building and providing documentation with sources and citations for relationships from "you" outwards to your immediate ancestors, which seems so easy... or is it?

Let's see that's:

Me (Lynda)  >  my mom (Donna Duckworth Dye) >  Grandfather (Paul E. Duckworth)  >

Great-Grandmother (Eliza Ellen Patrick Duckworth)  >  Great-Great Grandfather (George W Patrick)

And then it all comes to a lurching stop when you realize that you there is a copy of the Marriage License from 7 June 1867 for your Great-Grandmother Rachael (Rachel?) Hopper and George W. Patrick but you really know nothing about him.

Photo credit to Phil Tomlinson 

(also a descendent of Rachael & George)

A short look of some of the facts from George & Rachel's marriage:

• June 1867 - George & Rachel are married in Moultrie County, IL (one county over from Coles County where she's lived all her life).
• February 1869 - a son, Lilbern D. Patrick (named for Rachael's Uncle Lilbern Dixon) is born and dies the next month in March.
• January 1870 - a daughter, Eliza Ellen (my Great-grandmother), is born.
• August 1870 - North Okaw Township, Coles County, Illinois. The 1870 US Census [1] records George as 24 years of age, estimating his birth about 1845-46, making him possibly too young to have served in the Civil War which started when he was 15, and lists his birthplace as "Virginia."
• 1873 - Rachel dies and *poof* George disappears. There is no further mention of him in any known records to date. 

This leaves me with some of the following questions:

• Where in Virginia did this George W. Patrick reside? 
• Was this George W. Patrick related to the Dixon family and how is it that he came to Illinois?
• Who actually is this George W. Patrick and what the heck happened to him?  

Finding any trace of George is the challenge that lies ahead.  DNA just might hold some clues.

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[1] "United States Census, 1870," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M64V-G46 : 12 April 2016), George Patrick, Illinois, United States; citing p. 3, family 20, NARA microfilm publication M593 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 545,696.