Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Genealogy of the Rich and Famous -- Not

While engaged in another project altogether, I discovered some unanticipated vital records -- in minutes of the La Porte County, Indiana, commissioners:
  • January 1836: The commissioners ordered that Anthony Torbert be paid 50 cents "for hauling the corpse of Solomon Pates, Deceased Pauper, to the grave."1
  • 4 January 1838: The commissioners ordered that May and Jewell be paid $20.25 “for coffin and sundries furnished for George S. Small a Pauper who died in Michigan City.”
  • 4 January 1838: The commissioners ordered that Haynes Denton be paid $86.50 “for keeping and attending Arthur M. Cauley [McCauley?] procuring coffin and c. for same a pauper in Michigan Township.”2
  • September 1838: The commissioners ordered that various individuals each be paid $2 “for Guarding the Jail on the night of the 14th June before David Scott was executed.”3 More information on the murder Scott committed in Jasper Packard's history of La Porte County.4
  • 5 September 1838: The commissioners ordered that Rodney B. Field be paid “six dollars for coffin for John Scott pauper in Michigan Township.”5
  • November 1838: The commissioners ordered that several people be paid for professional services “furnished John Wells and family, paupers in New Durham Township,” including $3.75 to Benjamin Underwood for “three coffins.”6
  • 6 November 1838: The commissioners ordered that Church and Dodge be paid $2 for “horses and waggon to convey the corpse of John Forley to the Grave a pauper of Michigan Township.”7
  • 7 March 1839: The commissioners ordered that Geo. W. Allen be paid $90 for keeping Jacob Deerduff for ten weeks, plus doctor bills and funeral expenses in Scipio Township.8

Never assume you've looked "everywhere"! Sometimes the best-documented people are at one extreme or the other of the social spectrum. And sometimes the only record we can find of an event is actually a record of its "fiscal shadow." If the county had not paid for these burials etc. there might well be no record of them.
 
1 La Porte County, Indiana, Commissioners' Record A:266; Recorder, La Porte.

2 Ibid., A:499.

3 La Porte County, Indiana, Commissioners' Record B:5; Recorder, La Porte.

4 Jasper Packard, History of La Porte County (La Porte: S. E. Taylor & Co.), 47; digital image, Internet Archive (http://archive.org/stream/historyoflaporte01pack#page/n27/mode/2up/search/packard).

5 Ibid., B:11.

6 Ibid., B:18.

7 Ibid., B:21.


8 Ibid., B:52.

Photo credit: spodzone's photostream at flickr.com, http://www.flickr.com/photos/spodzone/1289057202, per Creative Commons.

Harold Henderson, "Genealogy of the rich and famous -- not," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 14 October 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

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