Ancestry.com indexers create the earliest census-recorded same-sex marriage!

While researching an ancestor in the England 1891 Census, I encountered an anomaly that gave me a chuckle. In the image below, you will see my ancestor, Ann Rands, a 41-year-old widow, who appears to be both a wife and a mother. But she is not what caused me to chuckle.

The five lines above the Ann Rands entry illustrate how an unsuspecting indexer unwittingly recorded a same-sex marriage. You will notice the entry for Emily Harris, a 39-year-old widow, who is listed as a head-of-household. The enumerator went to the trouble to indicate that Emily was a household of one person by including a single slash mark on the line above Emily, and a double slash mark on the line below her. Immediately below Emily is an entry for Elizabeth Hill, followed by her three young children, Elizabeth, Agnes, and Ethel. Elizabeth is listed as a wife. If you glance down at the index, you can see that Elizabeth and her children are listed with a surname of Harris, rather than Hill. In other words, the indexer assumed that Elizabeth was the wife of Emily Harris, and the three children were children of Emily.

In fact, as you can see in the Occupation column, Elizabeth Hill is the wife of a seaman in the Royal Navy who was absent at the time of the enumeration. Normally, she would be enumerated as the head of the household in the absence of her husband, but in this case she is listed as a wife. Emily Harris and Elizabeth Hill might not have been connected in any way at all. So the indexer, without examining the details carefully enough, created both a researcher’s nightmare (Elizabeth Hill would not show up in a search) and a same-sex marriage (between Emily and Elizabeth).

Digitized image from England 1891 census page, Ancestry.com

When I studied this more carefully, it became clear that my Ann Rands was actually Elizabeth Hill’s mother. What appears to be wife mother in the relationship column actually means wife’s mother. Furthermore, I located likely evidence that an Elizabeth Rands married a John Hill in the 3^rd quarter of 1882 in the Portsea district of Hampshire County. I also found corresponding birth registrations for Elizabeth, Agnes, and Ethel. The details will be clarified when the registration certificates arrive from the General Registrar’s Office. This is an index entry from FreeBMD:

In addition, the 1901 England Census had is a listing for John and Elizabeth Hill living in Portsea, with children who match up with Elizabeth’s children in the 1891 census.

My chuckle turned to a pleasant surprise as I discovered a whole new family to add to my family tree.

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Part One of Perhaps Many

This is a curious case where thousands of online tree creators have copied an undocumented tree from an online source, without regard to the validity of the data. Unless someone has personal data from unpublished sources, this case appears to have “gone viral” although little evidence exists to back it up. It is important to remember as you try to make sense of this case, “The absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence!”

In the 1850 U.S. Census—the first census to enumerate everyone in the household—Jessie F. Wixom appeared in Bureau County, Illinois. He is listed as 60 years old, born in New York, a carpenter. His name is followed by that of a 33-year old woman named Rebecca, presumably his wife (relationships to the head of household were not indicated until the 1880 census), born in Ohio. After Rebecca’s name were listed five additional members of the household: 16-year-old Russel, born in Ohio; and 14-year-old Mary Jane, 10-year-old Martha Ann, 9-year-old Matilda, and 5-year-old Adaline, all born in Illinois. Russel was listed as “deaf and dumb.”

Virtually all of the online trees that contain Jessie F. Wixom suggest that Rebecca was his second wife, whom he married in 1829, after the death of his first wife, Mary Morecraft, who died in 1829. (No documentation was provided for any of those claims.) The creator of what probably was the original online tree entry apparently used Rebecca’s age in the 1850 census, 33 years old, to calculate that she was born about 1817. However, whoever made that computation did not make note of the fact that being born in 1817 would make her 12 years old when she married Jessie in 1829.

Genealogists run into anomalies like this all the time. We usually suspect that the enumerator copied down the age incorrectly, or that the marriage date is wrong. We then search for additional sources to try to discover better information. It is often a good idea to have some hypotheses in mind that will help focus the search. In this case, one notion could be that Rebecca’s correct age could have been 43 or 53. Another notion might be that the marriage date was actually closer to the age of the oldest child, Russel, who was born about 1834, based on his age of 16 in the 1850 census. Russel may not have been the first child born to Rebecca, but at least that scenario allows a few more years before being married.

A few of the online trees list Rebecca’s birth year as 1793—without any documentation. That birth year wouldl have her 36 years old at marriage, and only three years younger than Jessie—a nice resolution to the anomaly, but one that raises another anomaly. The youngest child listed in the 1850 census was 5 years old, or born about 1845. This child would have been born when Rebecca was 52. As we say in genealogy, “Possible, but unlikely.”

One method for clearing up this kind of anomaly is to look at the censuses prior to the 1850 census. Unfortunately, from 1790 through 1840, only the name of the head-of-household was listed; the rest of the members of the household were not listed by name. All members of the household were tallied by sex and age. Of the several Jessie Wixoms in the 1840 census, not one contains the minimum tallies to match up with Jessie’s 1850 listing. Extrapolating back to the 1830 U.S. Census, I found the same results—no entry for a Jessie Wixom that could match up to the 1850 results.

The next approach was to try to track down a death record or obituary for Rebecca. After a bit of digging, I located a photo entry online that could be that of Jessie’s wife. The stone is old and broken, but the top half contains the name Rebecca, and the bottom half says, “wife of …F. Wixom.” The stone is in the Ottville Cemetery, in Hall Township, Bureau County, Illinois. Hall is the of the township where the Wixom family lived.

Normally a headstone entry would help resolve many of the questions. This particular headstone image does little to help. The critical details of Rebecca’s death are covered up by dirt and grass that was not moved aside when the photo was taken. I contacted the individual who posted the photo to see if a new photo could be taken, but the response was that “the cemetery is on private property and there is no going back.” Essentially, the last two digits of Rebecca’s death date are covered up, as is her age at death.

UPDATE, 1 SEPTEMBER 2015: Well, it turns out that a whole bunch of online trees have bad information about Rebecca, the wife of Jesse Fletcher Wixom. As mentioned above, a photograph of her headstone showed the last two digits of her death year and her age at death obscured by dirt and grass.  A letter sent to the Bureau County Genealogical Society in Princeton, Illinois, was answered with the following:

“Your research request arrived today.  The cemetery part is easy since I recorded all the gravestones in this cemetery with a co-worker 3 years ago.  Rebecca’s gravestone states the following:

        Rebecca Wixom, wife of J. F. Wixom, d. Jan 12, 1857, age 46y

The stone is laying flat and not in very good condition, but this is exactly what is written on it.

Carol McGee, Researcher”

This delicious piece of information indicates that Rebecca was born about 1811, rather than 1817.  This puts her marriage age at about 18, far more possible than age 12, and it confirms her death as 1857, which matches the census data.

Thanks to Carol McGee!

(This post was powered by Dark Chocolate M&M Peanuts and four pieces of Dove dark chocolate).

Where in the World Was Aunt Betty?

While tidying up some loose ends on a recent project, I came across a notation I had made earlier on a census analysis worksheet for the family of a man named Carl who lived in Illinois. My census analysis followed the family through the 1920 and 1930 U.S. censuses, when Carl was married to Marjorie and they had two children. It was the entry for the 1940 U.S. Census that seemed odd to me, but not totally out of the ordinary.

The 1940 U.S. Census for their town in Illinois indicated that Carl now was married to an Elizabeth. The problem was that the family was certain that Carl never was married to anyone other than Marjorie.

I checked out Carl’s 1942 World War II Draft Registration record where he listed Marjorie as a person who would always know where he was – fairly strong evidence that Carl had not remarried an Elizabeth before 1940. No other records helped resolve this conflict.

Fortunately, I knew one of Carl’s granddaughters, who grew up down the street from Carl and Marjorie’s home. I showed her the 1940 census record listing Elizabeth as the wife of her grandfather. She was certain her grandfather had married only once – she knew the death dates of Carl and Marjorie and had attended their funerals. 

So who was Elizabeth?

Without any hesitation, she said, “Oh, that would be Aunt Betty.” Aunt Betty – the nickname for her Aunt Elizabeth – traveled by train from her home in Connecticut to visit her brother Carl and his family in Illinois every year. When the census enumerator came, Marjorie “was probably out in the field tending the beets,” and through some miscommunication Elizabeth was mistaken for Carl's wife.

I then searched for Elizabeth in the 1940 census  where she lived in Connecticut with her husband – and there she was, in Connecticut. Could the same woman be in two place in one census?

The Connecticut census listing was enumerated on 10 April 1940, wheras the Illinois family was enumerated on 20 April 1940 – a ten-day difference. The famous Twentieth Century Limited train ran between New York City (a brief train ride from her home in Connecticut) and Chicago overnight in 16 hours, arriving daily at 9 a.m. at Chicago’s LaSalle Street station. Elizabeth could have made the trip in less than three days.

Proven? No. But resolved to our satisfaction? Yup.

(This post was powered by dark chocolate M&M Peanuts, which sure can be difficult to find.)