Person talk:Catherine Ellison (4)

Alternate birth and christening dates [21 July 2025]

I have tried multiple times to change the Christening event to Alt Christening but WeRelate keeps changing it back and then flagging inconsistent dates. Fix your bug or stop bugging me. What is your approved process for making this automation warning go away? The order is wrong because most likely the given christening date is wrong. --Jhamstra 22:11, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

I have provided a "filler" Christening date (Bef 1837) which allows me to enter the problematic date from Shaw as Alt Christening. This makes the warning go away but in my opinion it is just noise. Not the first time in my career I have entered useless "data" to make software perform 8-(. --Jhamstra 13:44, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

When was she born? [21 July 2025]

I went with the dating from her burial and death records (for the year) and her census records (for the month) which indicate she was likely born later rather than earlier. The given Christening date may be incorrect or is possibly the wrong person (this happens). However your system will not let me enter a tentative date unless there is also a preferred date. Sorry but in this case I do not think your changes have improved the data quality but likely broke what I had carefully considered when I created this record.--Jhamstra 03:29, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

The reason I changed the data is that I suspect it is the 1835 birth date that is incorrect. Her age in the 1851 census (actually taken in 1852, and probably inconsistent in terms of whether people reported their age as of 1851 or 1852) suggests she was born no later than 1834 (age 18 in either 1851 or 1852). Given that her baptism date has been reported as Jan 1834, I actually suspect she was born in Oct 1833, not Oct 1832, but not being able to see the cited source, I left it as Oct 1832.

She was older than her second husband by a few years, giving her incentive to underreport her age, as she clearly did in the 1881 census, and, I believe, did at her 1874 marriage, when she implied that she was born in 1835 (age 38 in Jan 1874). My best guess is that she led her second husband (and thus, her children) to believe that she was born in Oct 1835 rather than Oct 1833 (or Oct 1832), and this information persisted in later census records and her death record.

I am inclined to believe in the accuracy of the Jan 1834 baptism date, given that the name of the Reverend is given, suggesting the author used either an original source or a transcript of one. Of course, the year could have been copied incorrectly, but we generally don't assume that to be case without good reason. I would suggest that her age in the 1900 census (after marriage to a younger man) and even in her death record (given by survivors who were likely misled about her age) isn't sufficient reason to question the year of her baptism.

Also, her age in the 1851 census is why I don't believe that the Jan 1834 baptism date was for a different child who died young - it fits perfectly with the first census record that exists for her. In my experience, census records from when a child was young tend to be more accurate than those from later life, although 18 is already old enough that it might not be accurate. Since in this case, her age is consistent with her baptism date of Jan 1834, it seems to confirm that she was indeed the child baptized in Jan 1834.

On the other hand, she died at an advanced age, and accepting an Oct 1832 or Oct 1833 birth date makes her age even older - but 91 or 92 is still not unbelievable.

BTW: I notice that her birth date is given an 5 Oct 1832 on her first Family page, from a source whose link is broken, making it hard to evaluate.

I would be curious to know exactly what the cited book says, as it might give an indication of how much research was done on this specific family.--DataAnalyst 03:03, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

I was the creator and until recently the only contributor to this page, so its history reflects the evolution of my own conclusions as additional sources became available. The subject of this page was an ancestor of one of my daughters-in-law who asked me to research her family history. My original starting point included the work done by a relative of said daughter-in-law, to whom I reached-out for information. She was willing to answer some questions but was reluctant to openly share her large collection of source material, nor to publish her results. The citation on the first Family page (now a broken link) was from this more distant relative's piecemeal posts to another web site. The broken link in an earlier version of the current Person page pointed to similar material posted by this more distant relative. I initially followed her trail of crumbs (despite challenges) until I found other published sources. It is difficult to collaborate with someone who hoards rather than sharing data.

For a time I had access to the relevant chapter of the book by Shaw but I no longer have access to it. It is very detailed and very readable but I could not determine its sources in the available time. It is possible and even likely that Shaw corresponded with descendants of these early settlers to gather their private data from family Bibles, etc. This method was used by the compilers of books about my own ancestry. It is even possible that the aforementioned distant relative was one of his correspondents. I wish I had copied the relevant excerpts from another book that was lent to me. A decade onward these sources are no longer available to me and are disappearing online.

Regarding her third marriage, it appears circumstantially that the third husband was the older brother of the first, and if not then a close relative (same names as her father-in-law and one of her sons by her first husband). So there should have been no confusion within the extended family about her age relative to her first and third husbands at the time of their marriage. These people were a very close community. And the extended family around her at the time of her death included sons William and James from her first marriage. It is likely that one or both of these sons provided the information found in her California death record.

Regarding Christening records, I can show you other extended families where multiple cousins shared the same names and close births. In one case (documented here) I was able to correct one of the most widely respected genealogy sites for that time and place, by carefully comparing ancillary data from published baptismal records to determine which of three cousins with the same name, were the offspring of which of their fathers who were brothers. In this case I have not been able to locate the relevant baptismal records of the Reverend Harris, though transcriptions of some of his marriage records are available. There are online articles about Harris who lived an interesting life. In that time and place it was common for the parson (who rode circuit among many small churches) to maintain his own baptismal records. My own father followed the same practice - he had a record of everyone he baptized.

In the end I decided to go with the publicly available sources rather than the first sources I found. I admit this is a close call, which is why I included the other sources on her Person and Family pages. And I do understand the problems with census data that wander over time. In many cases I suspect it was a matter of who answered the door rather than intent to mislead. By design WeRelate does not make it easy to publish multiple problematic conclusions as equally valid. Otherwise I would do so in this case.

I have updated the Person page to explain the rationale for my conclusions. I have nothing further to add. This is a wiki. If you still believe the 5 Oct 1832 birth date is more likely (and you may well be correct) then feel free to make whatever changes you deem to be best.

--Jhamstra 04:14, 22 July 2025 (UTC)