After spending all of that time and typing explaining why I couldn’t just assume that Nathan was Josiah’s son… I came across a couple new pieces of evidence that make it almost impossible for me to refute this possibility anymore.

First of all, and this was like striking gold – a photo of a gravestone for a Nathan Thomas appeared on findagrave.com!  Better yet, this stone has a birthdate of June 13, 1809 – our Nathan’s estimated time of arrival on Earth – and is located in a huge cemetery in the middle of Allentown.  This city is not far from Bucks and Montgomery County, and the fact that this cemetery is not affiliated with a church plays into the speculation that Nathan’s involvement with the church was limited, either voluntarily or due to his birth out of wedlock (his presumed parents were married Nov, 21, 1809, four months after this Nathan was born). The page on findagrave has the following note: “Although Nathan’s tombstone gives a death date of 2/22/1898, the Allentown, Quakertown, and Doylestown papers all say he died 2/19/1899 (his obituary appears in the Feb 1899 editions of all three papers).”  I am working on tracking down the obituary, which will solidify once and for all whether this Nathan is our Nathan or not.

The second piece I found was an 1810 census record of Josiah.  Back then, names of others in the household were not listed.  Instead, the number of people within a certain age range was recorded.  This 1810 record of Josiah’s house reads (with my anecdotes):

The rest of Josiah & Elizabeth’s children’s names are known, and none of them were born in 1810 or earlier.  Therefore, the probability of this nameless child referenced on the census being our Nathan is pretty high.

Findagrave also came up with a photo of Hannah (Renner) Thomas’s gravestone in the cemetery of St. John’s Ridge Valley.  I had searched there before and never found it – guess I just never looked far enough.