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.]