Written In Stone
The idiomatic expressions abound: Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see.*, Take it with a grain (pinch) of salt.**, A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.***, admonishing us to take nothing at face value. Experienced historical researchers know that nothing they find is 100% true and that is why they diligently seek corroborating proof before a thing is called a fact.
There are certain things we sometimes feel we must believe as fact, among these birth, death and marriage records, gravestones, even census records. The awful truth is that none of these things are infallible. This is especially true the farther back in time we go. Not even taking into account illegible spelling and damage to records which accounts for more bad transcriptions than we can fathom, who amongst veteran researchers hasn’t found misspellings in old vital records? Confused dates, or even no dates? Who hasn’t found a case of a lady, or a gentleman for that matter, who hasn’t shaved a few years off their ages with each subsequent census they took part in?
Old records, the older the more certain to be true, were written by hand, The hand of a living, breathing person, who is almost certain to have made a mistake at least once in his life, more than once if this person was actually human, which we must assume they were. Bad penmanship, spelling patterns of the day (17th century ships manifests? Need I say more?) and the tendency to spell phonetically. Well, anything could have happened! For example, let’s say Charlie the Census Taker goes to Mr. Hinkle Whosiwhatsis’s (the recent immigrant who happens to be illiterate) house. He probably asks how to spell the name, and being met with blank stares, proceeds to sound it out. Or, Charlie, having ridden all day on his old swaybacked mare, sees the sun is going down and knowing the last homestead on his list is miles down the old dirt track, decides to ask the nearest neighbor, where he’s now taking the census, about the Dinklefitzes down the road: “Well, I heard tell they had another kid awhile back, oh, a year or two I think…Probably a boy – or a girl. Boy I think. We haven’t been to Church in a while – crops needing to be put in and all…”. Or more realistic variations on the theme. Not even taking into account the people that hid or “weren’t home” when the census man came around, or the “next of kin” giving the information for a death certificate that were barely related or not at all, such as the next-door neighbor or the lady down the hall (Mr. Smith’s mothers name? “Mrs. Smith”). All of these records, and more, must be taken with the proverbial grain of salt and further evidence found to corroborate the facts. But gravestones? Surely they can be believed? After all, they’re written in stone, right?
We’re sometimes given to believe that if something is “written in stone” it’s permanent, irrefutable, dare I even say it? True! Especially a gravestone! Except the same people who gave the information for the death certificate, if there’s no living family or they can’t be found, may be giving the information for the gravestone (Date of birth? “I think he was 70 or 71…born in December…I think). In fact, many variables have led to a whole lot of name misspellings and incorrect birth dates – more than we’d probably want to know if the truth be told. But date of death? Seriously, how could they mess that up? It’s not like they’d be doing that years later, or anything…except…when they did.
The digital photo restoration portion of my genealogical services business has me very involved in the history of a small town in the eastern part of Tarrant County, now a part of the city of Fort Worth, called Handley. The town of Handley was established in 1884 by a former officer in the Confederacy, Major James Madison Handley. Major Handley started a plantation seven miles Southeast of Fort Worth, on land that was, according to the Fort Worth Gazette in 1888, only good for hunting foxes. Major Handley brought the railroad into Handley in 1876, convincing the Texas and Pacific to open a depot. The post office opened in Handley that same year. By 1901, the big town of Handley boasted 80 residents and 12 houses, a church, a school and a half dozen businesses, and by 1903 the population had grown to 156. By the mid 1940’s the population had grown to more than 3,000 and it was annexed by Fort Worth in 1946. While restoring many historical photographs for the town paper, museum and gallery display, my researcher gene kicked in and, fired by my curiosity, I began to research many aspects of Old Town Handley history.
One major aspect of of my research has been, indeed, Major, as in Major Handley himself. I began to dig into his past and his ancestry. I began at his end. Upon his death he was interred in the Handley cemetery, but his final resting place cannot be found there, today. For reason’s unknown to me, many of the original settlers of Handley, including Major Handley, were exhumed in the 1930’s and reburied down the road in Rose Hill Cemetery, a commercial cemetery founded in 1929. In 1976 it was decided that Major Handley deserved a better grave marker than the original which was a bronze plaque that was placed in a stone wall near his grave. An appeal was made to, and granted by, the Veterans Administration. On March 25, 1976, a new marker was placed on Handley’s final resting place. The details on the stone read: 1836-1906. The date of the dedication was supposedly on the anniversary of the date of his death. That’s wonderful! Admirable! Copied far and wide and throughout the internet! It’s also wrong.
Once upon a time I was looking through a website called “Historic Handley” thinking, “Wowser! That’s got to be chock full of historical Handley goodness!”. Unfortunately it was quite sparse, as it’s a site made mainly to promote the town of Handley itself, not to share the history, but there was one page of history, which held the transcriptions of two letters that had been printed in a Randolph County, Alabama, newspaper, informing Mr. William A. Handley of his brother, Major James M. Handley’s death. The transcriptions named the original source, the Roanoke Leader newspaper of Randolph County, Ala., the date: 1 & 8 April, 1906, the page numbers (both page 3), the name of the transcriptionist and the place the files were held on the internet. Naturally, I jumped on over to this internet repository, the U.S. Gen Web site for Randolph County, Ala., and what to my wondering eyes should appear? The dates didn’t match. The original copies of the original transcriptions (I’m not sure how many times removed the “original” really is, but the transcription was added to the web site in 2001) had the date of the newspaper articles as 1 & 8 April, 1908, not 1906. So now I’m curious. Texas death certificates are readily available on line. However, even though a law was passed providing for the registration of a death in Texas on the State level in 1903, it was not actually required until 1921. Prior to 1921, even 1925 or so, existence of a certificate is rather spotty, at best. Luckily, the Tarrant County Report of Death book was kept up rather well – at least for the 31st of March, 1908, for that is where I found the certificate for Major J. M. Handley of Handley, TX, aged 71 years old.
While I’m not sure what led to the mixup that caused the gravestone to be incorrectly inscribed, the facts are pretty indisputable that the inscription is indeed wrong. I’m also not certain if the dates on the letter transcription on the Historic Handley site were changed because the date didn’t fit the date on the gravestone, but that seems likely that it was thought the original transcription date must have been wrong. After all, the date of 1906 was written in stone, so it must be right… Right?
Now that I’ve pretty well established that the date of death on the grave marker is wrong, well, what do I do about it? I obviously can’t contact every person that has copied the erroneous information throughout the inter-webs. I don’t have that many years left! I’ve had a few people tell me it’s not that big of a deal – it’s just an honest mistake and I really should leave well enough alone…but I don’t see it that way. I believe we, as historical researchers should not only do our best to find and prove facts, but we should also attempt to see that the corrected information is made known. I’m still hoping to uncover an original copy of the newspaper article, with the dateline intact, to corroborate the facts even further, but for right now, the copy of the original record of death not only stating the year twice on Major Handley’s record, but also on the attached record for another individual directly above his record is proof positive as far as I’m concerned.
The moral of the story: Even information chiseled in stone is not necessarily “written in stone”!
*Attributed to Benjamin Franklin
**Origins: Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia
***Attributed to Mark Twain
Tags: Genealogy, History, Research, Restoration
November 23rd, 2009 at 11:55 am
Excellent!