Not 143 years ago today
It ain’t necessarily so
It ain’t necessarily so
The t’ings dat yo’ li’ble
To read in de Bible,
It ain’t necessarily so.
— Ira Gershwin, “It Ain’t Necessarily So”
There is a Family Bible owned for many years, generations even, by a branch of my Baker family, and it carefully records the death of the oldest member of that branch of the family.
“Josias Baker departed this life November 22nd 1871.”1
Now maybe we’d have some trouble accepting all of the birth information in the Bible as … well… gospel truth. After all, the entries report, among others, Josias’ birth in 1787 — nearly 60 years before that particular Bible was published. And all the births, up to the last reported in 1834, are in the same handwriting.2
But the deaths… those are different. At least four separate hands involved in those entries. They sure look like at least the later ones would be contemporaneous with the events.
So we’d certainly be justified in accepting today as the 143rd anniversary of Josias’s death, wouldn’t we?
After all, it’s exactly the kind of record that people did keep, at the time, of important events in family history, and they’d certainly record it correctly.
Right?
Um…
To quote Ira Gershwin, “It ain’t necessarily so.”
You see, Josias Baker left a will when he died, and that will was submitted to the Ellis County, Texas, District Court to be admitted to probate there.
And it was admitted to probate in the Fall Term.
Of 1870.3 Not 1871.
And his son-in-law Josiah Porter carefully told the court, there on the 7th of December 1870, that Josias had died on the 20th of November. Not the 22nd.
Even with something as ordinarily reliable as a Family Bible…
Well…
“The t’ings dat yo’ li’ble
To read in de Bible,
It ain’t necessarily so.”
SOURCES
- Baker Family Bible, 1787-1878; The Holy Bible (Philadelphia : Jesper Harding, printer, 1846); Bible Records Collection; Dallas Public Library, Dallas, Texas. The Bible was owned by a daughter of Josias and Nancy (Parks) Baker, Barsheba Matilda (Baker) Strong Porter. Mrs. Porter’s great granddaughter, Louise (Rosser) Garrett of Richardson, Texas, inherited the Bible after the death of Clara (Price) Rosser, her mother and Mrs. Porter’s granddaughter. Mrs. Garrett donated the Bible, along with other family Bibles, to the Dallas Public Library c1985. ↩
- Ibid., Births column. ↩
- Ellis Co., Texas, District Court, probate case no. 330, “Jonas” Baker (1870), application for letters of administration, filed 7 Dec 1870; FHL microfilm 1673847. ↩
Darn! Looked so good, too. Sigh.
Of course, now you’d like to smack up the back of the head of whoever wrote the incorrect day and year, eh?
Research will out the truth in the end.
Considering how many errors creep into records of all kinds, if we slapped everyone who caused one, our hands would hurt. (And our heads!)
I have a Kaneaster ancestor who has the wrong year on the headstone with the same proof reason. No one seems to care….
Ouch. That hurts!
Thanks Judy. I love your blog and it makes me feel so good. And justified. Why? Because I have shot down more then one date of death using, those “pesky” court records as proof, that so many armchair researchers seem to know nothing about. Research long ago in the Bushong family was done by, of all things, writing letters back and forth and some of it wasn’t correct. Trying to correct it has been an uphill battle because I am not by blood, a Bushong, just married in, and some of those Bushongs are the most stubborn in the world when it comes to facts over some blood “expert” from long ago who drummed up tales of the spelling of the name being originally Beauchamp. What a joke that has turned out to be amongst other things.
Stubborn southerners… gee… where have I heard that before…? 🙂
They always said.they were married Oct 12, 1912 in Ogden, Weber, Utah. But nope…they were married on Oct 12, 1912 in Davis county, Utah, one over from Weber county by the Justice of the Peace and then they got married on Nov 20, 1912 in Ogden, Weber, Utah at her parents’ house by her local pastor. All because of a dare…yup, gotta check those dates!
Ooooh… sounds like a wonderful story!
Our family Bible hides a huge scandal. It implies, by omission, that my (alleged) gg-grandfather had 9 children with his wife. Actually his wife was married to his younger brother who was the father of the oldest 3 children (including my g-grandfather). And he (really my 3x gt-uncle) ran off with his sister-in-law and they then had the other 6 children. It was getting my g-grandfather’s birth certificate that revealed that to me, although I suspect others in the family knew but weren’t saying.
Oh my… that is just a tad on the scandalous side, isn’t it? Great family story, though…