I’ve chosen to define “church record” loosely for today’s post. The marriage record in question comes to us in actuality from a county courthouse in Ohio, but the officiant at the wedding was a clergyman. So that’s good enough for me.
Today we are looking at the marriage of my 4G-grandparents, Cornelius Davis and Matilda Furrow. From their marriage record we learn that they were united in marriage on 7 September 1837 in Clark County, Ohio, by Lewis A. Davis, “a Minister of the Gospel.” I suspect Lewis was some relation, but I have yet to determine exactly which one. They had obtained their marriage license the day before the wedding, and the marriage record further states that both parties were of age.1
Cornelius was, in fact, 29 years old, having been born 23 April 1808 to Joseph S. and Hannah (Sutton) Davis in what would later become West Virginia. He was married first to Rachel Loofboro in 1829, and they had two children, Louisa Jane and Stephen. Stephen died in infancy, and Rachel died sometime between Stephen’s birth and Cornelius’s second marriage, though I don’t know exactly when.2
Matilda Furrow was born between 1817 and 1818 in Miami County, Ohio. Her parents were John and Mary (Simpkins) Furrow, who were originally from Montgomery County, Virginia. She and Cornelius would have eight children: Lewis H., born November 1838; John H. (my 3G-grandfather), born 4 April 1840 (exactly 102 years before Dad and exactly 134 years before me); Lucinda, born 5 May 1842; Hannah Ann, born 23 March 1844; Charles C., born 23 June 1846; Rebecca, born 25 August 1848; Francis Marion, born 28 October 1850; and Ananiah, born 7 March 1852. Ananiah only lived to the age of five, but the remaining 7 children survived at least to adulthood.
Cornelius was enumerated in Jackson, Shelby County, Ohio, in 1850, and in Washington, Harrison County, Missouri, from 1860-1880, but Matilda appears in only the first of these census records. From The Sabbath Recorder (the newsletter of the Seventh Day Baptist Church) of 29 March 1855, we learn that Matilda had died on 19 February of that year in West Union, Iowa. Her cause of death was consumption.3
In another instance of “genealogy is a never-ending pursuit,” I should add here that until about five minutes ago, I was prepared to wrap up Matilda’s life by saying she died sometime between 1850 and 1856 since in the latter year Cornelius appears in the Iowa State Census, listed as a widower. I didn’t know exactly when Matilda died, and I assumed it was somewhere in Ohio. And instead I stumbled across the Sabbath Recorder file which provided the real story. The final detail regarding Matilda’s place of death is made even more interesting in that I’ve actually been to West Union, Iowa, on a genealogical field trip. Of course, I was not looking for Matilda there, since I had no idea that’s where she died. Instead I was looking for her…let’s see…her great-grandson’s great-grandmother, Caroline (Caryl) Taylor. And I managed to just stroll right up to Caroline’s headstone without any searching. As I said in another post about this visit, it was definitely genealogical serendipity.