Person:Harriet Woodworth (1)

Her headstone as Harriet Stewart, wife of Arthur A Stewart, Lowell Cemetery, Lowell MA cites her DOB as 1 October 1880. This is currently (2019) a mystery, as her mother Lucia Mahala Brooks Woodworth gave birth to an infant ("Hattie") that was born and died in June/July of 1880 making a birth of 1 Oct 1880 impossible. The 1910 census lists the number of children born to her mother as 5 with 2 living. This excludes this Harriet as a baby born to her mother if we consider A.B. Jr, Henry, Lucia, Lizzie and Hattie as her five natural births. Was she an adoption? She is not listed in "List of Persons Whose Names Have Been Changed in MA" so current speculation is she was born to a Woodworth relative and taken in by her "mother" as a newborn, and her surname would not have needed to be changed.

Another summation of research:

My great great grandparents (Artemas Brooks Woodworth and Lucia M Brooks Woodworth) cemetery plot and another nearby contain headstones for 6 children. What I know to be true is that the 2 oldest children, boys, lived to adulthood. Then three children, girls, died as infants or toddlers. And after the death of the the 2nd girl, 4th baby who lived from 19 Jan to 27 Feb 1872, they adopted a daughter and changed her name. Here it starts to get weird. The baby that died before the adoption was named Sarah Elizabeth but her headstone says Lizzie. The adopted baby's birth name was Lizzie McBaine which was changed to Lizzie Woodworth on 12 Nov 1872 (page 198 of Persons Whose Names Have Been Changed in Massachusetts under Middlesex County), but her headstone says Elizabeth.

All that can be documented. Then in 1880 I have town birth and death records for a baby, "Hattie" on the headstone, born 21 June, died 13 July 1880. Yet there is a daughter named Harriet listed starting in the 1900 census as age 21. I believe her to have had an October birth. This would be a DOB of Oct. 1878. Her marriage record in 1902 says she is 23, also DOB Oct 1878 and that she was born in Charlestown, MA (all the others were born in Lowell, MA). BUT there was no Hattie or Harriet listed in the household in the 1880 census! In 1878 the father is made guardian to an inheritance left by the grandfather to three children who were the 2 boys and the adopted Lizzie. What about Harriet, if she had been born? The next hint are the 1910 and 1920 censuses which give her age as 30 and then 40, so DOB Oct 1879. Then in Jan 1923 she has died and both her headstone , which is not in the same cemetery, and her death certificate indicate a DOB of 1 Oct 1880.

For another little twist, the cemetery has the baby Hattie being 22 months old (DOB Oct 1878) not 22 days. But that 1880 birth and death records are the only true records regarding Hattie, and she was not left money by a grandfather and she was not in the 1880 census so I've ruled out the idea that there was a Harriet born in 1878 at all. Do you agree?

And we all know that a woman cannot give birth in both June and October the same year. There could not have been two Harriets born in 1880 with the Oct. baby named after the deceased baby. And if the living Harriet had been born in 1878 the deceased baby who came in 1880 would not be given the same name.

In the 1900 and 1910 census they asked "how many children" and "how many living". In 1900 the answer was 5 children, 3 living being the 2 boys and Harriet? (adopted Lizzie died in 1893 as had 3 babies so the number doesn't add up). The answer in 1910 makes more sense if Harriet was a second adoption. The answer was 5 children, 2 living (the boys) and no mention of child #6 or 7.

I hope I was concise enough. I have spent HOURS on this and even paid for the death certificate. My conclusion is that after their own Hattie died my great great grandparents adopted Harriet. There is no proof as there was with Lizzie. And I really don't know if she was born in 1878, 1879 or 1880. They are listed as her parents everywhere so I even wonder if Harriet knew. So this is my mystery of dates.