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 this is the135th anniversary of his death 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.

Asenath and James's Wedding Day in 1832

On August 14, 1832, Asenath Cornwell (1808-1897) married James Larimer (1806-1847) in Fairfield County, Ohio. They were my hubby's 3d great-grand aunt and uncle. Their names and marriage date were later recorded in a book that was bound and housed at the county probate court in Fairfield County. The scans are on FamilySearch. 

Asenath was born in Hallowell, Canada, daughter of a Loyalist who fled the Colonies during the American Revolution but then crossed into Ohio years after the war. James was the son of Ohio Fever pioneers who moved from Pennsylvania to the Ohio territory around the turn of the 19th century.

Very soon after their marriage, Asenath and James moved to Middlebury, Elkhart, Indiana, a newly-formed township with fertile farm land. Researching Middlebury, I found a concise history digitized and available on Family Search, with names of early settlers and more. Here's an excerpt about the period when this area was carved out of Allen County, Indiana. 

If James had not died after a fall from his horse on an icy January evening in 1847, he and Asenath and their children would have worked the farm together for many years. Instead, a few years after James's accident, Asenath made the fateful decision to leave her children in the care of kin and neighbors, and head to California Gold Rush country with her brother, hoping to improve the fortunes of both of their families. I told that story here. 

Thinking back 193 years to that day in 1832, when Janes and Asenath were married with happiness and hope in their hearts.

"There Slumbers the Dust of our Father and an Infant Brother"

Traveling to the California Gold Rush in March of 1852, my husband's third great aunt Asenath Cornwell Larimer (1808-1897) wrote in her journal about family members who had passed away and whose burial places she would never see or never see again.

At top, Asenath and two of her children in the 1850 US Census, with unusually accurate info. She was indeed born in Canada (Hallowell, Prince Edward Island). She was 42 years old at the time of the Census, her son James Elmer was 10, and her daughter Nancy Elizabeth was 4. Three other sons were living with family and neighbors, helping as farmhands or learning a trade. She left all her children behind two years after this Census, when she and her brother John Cornwell (1812-1883) set out to seek their fortune in California.

In the first part of their journey west, Asenath and her brother boarded a steamboat that took them past Gallipolis, Ohio, where they had grown up. Asenath looked back on her childhood and thought about the family members she had lost up to that point. She wrote:

There slumbers the dust of our Father [David Cornwell] and an infant brother [unnamed baby Cornwell]. Oh how strangely scattered is the remains of those of us who are dead. Father and brother here [Gallipolis]; Mother at Macarthur's town [Phoebe G Goldsmith Cornwell, buried in McArthur, Ohio]; Sister, her children and my first-born at New Plymouth [Lucinda Cornwell Eggleston, Phoebe Eggleston, unnamed baby Larimer]; my husband [James Larimer], Elkhart, Indiana; brother David [Cornwell Jr.] in Feather River, California and none to care or mourn or look after his remains. 

I've looked for a tombstone or obit for David Cornwell Jr. but found nothing, not surprising in those Gold Rush days. No tombstones for Asenath's infant brother and first-born child, both dead before 1835. They are remembered today because she cared enough to write about them on page 2 of her Gold Rush journal. 

 "Tombstone" is this week's prompt for the #52Ancestors challenge by Amy Johnson Crow.