Apr 03 2009
James Patterson, Solving Puzzles
Do you like mysteries? Do you like puzzles?
I love to read mystery stories and try and figure out “who done it” before the end of the book. Sometimes I’m right, other times I go “now how did I miss that clue” that I had the wrong person.
I recently read the book “4th of July” by James Patterson. If you’ve ever read any of James Patterson’s books you know that he has the Alex Cross series which was one of the first books of his that I read, “Along came a Spider,” which I couldn’t put down. Then he has the series that feature the women’s murder club “1st to Die” was the first book in the series.
In the book the “1st to Die,” he introduces the women’s murder club which is actually four women who are friends and each met the other through their work i.e. Lindsay, a homicide inspector in the city’s police department, Claire, a medical examiner, Jill, an assistant DA, and of course Cindy, a reporter who works on the crime desk of the San Francisco Chronicle. It is a good read as are all of James Patterson’s books. The “4th of July” is one of the women’s murder club books which is filled with twists and turns as usual.
So what does reading mysteries have to do with Family History or Genealogy have to do with puzzles or mysteries? Simply—you are always trying to solve the mystery of who done it and you are always trying to find that missing piece of history, that will prove your William Adams is the Revolutionary Solider that settled in Kentucky.
Recently I came across a little mystery while reading the 1858 marriages of Henry County, Kentucky. Old handwriting is hard to read and unless you know the names of the area and have studies the book “How to Read the Handwriting and Records of Early America” by E. Kay Kirkham, you can make all kinds of mistakes and assumptions.
But then there are the clerks who are our elected officials who are not suppose to make mistakes and write so we can read their handwriting, right—wrong.
The clerk had written:
Jan 28, 1858 (Groom) Sterling Thurman (his residence) Henry County (age) 19 (Place of Birth) Henry County and (Bride) Laborena Jane (her residence) Henry County (age) 15 (Place of Birth) Henry County.
In the previous entry, he had written for the bride’s name Sarah Ann which I knew didn’t contain a last name or the one written Margaret Ann or Mary Elizabeth on other entries. So the question was what was her name? The other entries all had last names such as Bishop, James, Chilton etc.
Where do you begin? Obviously, the 1850 Census except there was no last name to look for but I did check all the entries for the surname James and nothing matched. Then I tried the 1860 census for the name Sterling Thurman. Page 368 in Lockport, Henry County the 1860 census showed Sterling Thurman age 24 and Deborah Jane age 18 with a son George W age 1. The other Sterling Thurman was only age 4 on page 361 the son of Joseph Thurman. If you read a lot of census records you wonder how in 2 years Sterling went from age 19 to 24 and Deborah Jane from age 15 to 18—but sometimes it is the date when the census was taken and the date of the marriage license or they may have simply lied.
Part of the problem was solved – the clerk wrote an L instead of a D or else he wrote messy “D’s” which is not uncommon. Messy unreadable handwriting is not uncommon—try reading a Doctor’s signature on your RX.
On the off chance that William’s birth was recorded, I next checked the 1858 and 1859 births for his birth date and the name of his parents, no luck. Although Kentucky in 1852 through 1860 required all the births, marriages, and deaths be reported to the State, only a fraction were recorded and sent in. The next step was to try and find her death certificate. I had purchased from the State of Kentucky a set of CD’s that had an index to all the death certificates in Kentucky. The death certificates start in 1911. There in 1924 was the death certificate of Mrs. Sterling Thurman not Deborah Jane Thurman. So I went to the Family History Library and pull the microfilm for the 1924 death certificate #20570 FHL# 1,912,791 and read:
“THURMAN, Mrs. Sterling died 25 July 1924 Voter Pct Harpers Ferry, Inc. Town, Grub Ridge, Henry Co., Kentucky, widowed, chronic nephritis, born Dec 13, 1842, age 81 yrs 7 mos 12 days daughter of George Mayberry, and Miss Moore informant Ben Mayberry, Harprer’s Ferry, buried Grub Ridge, KK July 25, 1924”
Most of the mystery had been solved. But who was George Mayberry that married a Miss Moore? I’m still working on that.
For a full transcription of the1852-1859 Henry County marriages go the Henry County Genealogy page at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kyhenry/
