What Wasn't Written about Daniel's "Consort," Mildred

Gotta love in-laws. I was taking another look at Daniel Harvey Timberlake Mosse (the father-in-law of my husband's 1c4r) because the 135th anniversary of his death is on September 28, 1891. Daniel was born in Kentucky in 1816. 

Daniel married Mildred Yarbrough Pickett in Ogle County, Illinois, in 1838. It wasn't difficult to find a transcription of the marriage register showing this wedding. You can see an excerpt at top of this post. To decipher it: According to the abbreviations listing (at front of the microfilm of this register), the :: symbol means a marriage, the s (see arrow) means "single" or "miss," and "same" means married by the officiant just above (T.S. Hitt, Minister of the Gospel). So Mildred was single and married Daniel on August 27, 1838.

I knew Daniel had relocated to San Francisco before 1855, but I had no exact dates. 

Mildred's final resting place

Then, redoing my newspaper research, I discovered a sad death notice for Mildred in the Courier-Journal newspaper of Louisville, Kentucky. Published in September of 1849 on p. 3, it reads (creative spelling and all):

DIED. On the route to California, on the 7th of July last, of cholera, MILDRED YARBROUGH PICKETT, consort of Daniel Harvy T. Moss of Galena, aged 24 years, 7 months and 3 days. Her remains were interred fourteen miles from Fort Laramie.

In fact, with more research, I found that Mildred's grave marking was included in one man's compilation of burial sites passed enroute to the Gold Rush in California, republished in "The Kansas City Genealogist" in 1965 (digitized and searchable on Ancestry). So many deaths on the trails leading to Gold Rush country. 😓

As shown below, Mildred was buried as "Mrs Mildred Moss, wife of D H T Moss, late of Galena, Ill, d. July 7, 1849, age 25." [Creative spelling]

Questions about Mildred

Mildred's succinct newspaper death notice, published in Kentucky where Daniel was from, filled in some gaps for me but raised a few questions as well. 

First: A consort? Her grave marker called her "Mrs. Mildred Moss" (creative spelling). But it seems "consort" referred to "wife" at the time. Why not write "wife" in the newspaper notice?

Second: Why was Mildred's full maiden name used in the newspaper notice? Her married name was in the burial marker but not written in the newspaper notice. Odd.

Third: How old was Mildred on her wedding day? With a parent's consent, a woman could marry as young as 14 in those days. Calculating Mildred's age from the death notice, she would have been born on December 4, 1824 and that puts her just shy of 14 on her wedding day. No parental consent was noted on the marriage register. So either the death notice got her age wrong by a few months/years--a definite possibility--or she had a parent's consent that was fudged in some way. 

Daniel must have been grief-stricken as he continued the journey to San Francisco with their 3 children, arriving as the Gold Rush was filling the city with newcomers. After a few years, he remarried and had another child. Daniel established a book and stationery store that thrived for two decades. When he died in 1891, he had 6 grandchildren. I hope Daniel told them all the stories of his travels across the country and his experiences in early San Francisco.

"What wasn't written down" is this week's 52 Ancestors prompt from Amy Johnson Crow.