Feeling old?

The assignment for week 3 said "Longetivity". Like many of the writing prompts in this series, it can be interpreted in a number of ways. Was it the longest marriage? The longest one family lived in one area? The oldest person in the family tree? Could be any or all of these things. Truth is, though, the first thing I thought of when I saw the word was a person in my husband's family tree. Records of his life, particularly his early life, are sketchy. That's mostly because of the time period when he was born.The truth is, his life is still something of a mystery and a puzzle, despite me trying to revisit my research on occasion and learn more.

I "met" him in the most ordinary way, at least for a genealogist. I was tracing my husband's family tree, and since it was in the years before children (B.C. - ha!) we had the luxury of running off to far flung areas to track down records or forgotten cemeteries in search of long ago relatives. We were traveling down a little (barely) two-lane country road in Kentucky, and we finally found the cemetery where several of my husband's relatives were supposed to be buried, including a great-great-great grandfather in his mother's line. Given that many of his Kentucky ancestors worked in the coal mines and didn't have a lot of money, it was not uncommon to go looking for a burial site only to discover that there was no headstone because there had been no money to pay for one. This time, we were more fortunate.

Henry Blankenship headstone
Goshen Cemetery, Todd Co., KY

We located an upright headstone with the name we were searching for ... Henry Blankenship. The stone was weathered and worn, as you'd expect from something that had been out in the weather for more than 100 years. Some of it was still fairly clear and readable, despite the sunlight reflecting off the white stone. The problem was, what I was reading didn't make sense. Surely it was a mistake in carving.

Henry Blankenship

Born

March 24, 1776

Died

November 7, 1896

Um ... that would make this man a 120 years old. Really? Somehow it just had to have been carved wrong. So, when I got home, I did a little more digging. What I found was a newspaper death notice.

 

Wow. Okay ... at the very least, we know that the people who lived then and were writing the newspaper blurb must have at least BELIEVED he was 120 years old.

A search of census records was not altogether helpful. Although you expect folks to know the answers (such as how old they are) to census questions, the truth is you never can be completely sure who the information was coming from. Was it being provided by the individual? The spouse? A child in the home? A neighbor? It could be anyone. Census takers were tasked with gathering information, not with making sure it was accurate. Mistakes are common.

At any rate, the 1850 census showed Henry was 50 years old, placing his birth at about 1800. The 1860 census information agreed, placing his age at 60. Ten years in later, in 1870, he had only aged 8 years, and was listed at 68 years old. The years between 1870 and 1880 must have been particularly rough, because suddenly he had aged 21 years, and now was 89. A puzzle indeed. Then I found something amazing ... a picture of the man himself.

Doesn't he look like a man who has seen a lot of living?

I'm continuing to dig for information about this fellow because, needless to say, birth certificates from that time period are not available ... Kentucky did not start requiring records of birth and death until 1911, long after Henry was gone. There are some records prior to that time, but they are not common. Perhaps one day, I will find some sort of documentation that will finally solve the mystery. Until then, the search goes on.

It is likely that his birth was NOT in 1776, but closer to 1800. Even so, that would make him 96 when he died ... quite a venerable age for that time period. If he WAS born in 1776, can you imagine the span of his life? His birth took place in March, 4 months before the Declaration of Independence was approved by Congress. He was born into a Colonial America, and lived through the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the writing of the Star Spangled Banner, the expansion of this nation at it's very foundations, the Civil War and so many other things. Things that would have been invented in his lifetime included things like suspension bridges, coffee percolators, and circular saw blades. Sewing machines, combines, Morse code and baseball. He would have lived in a time period that saw transportation go from barely even a road in the wilderness to widespread train travel. Imagining the changes in such a reportedly long lifetime boggles the mind. But this is why family history researchers do what they do ... to learn about those who came before us, and what our place was in history.