Mary Smith Stanbery's Elusive Birth Date

Mary was born in New York City to parents Theophilus Washington Smith, an attorney and later an associate Illinois Supreme Court justice, and Clarissa Harlowe Rathbone, the daughter of wealthy and well-educated New York City merchant John Rathbone. The two were married in New York City on June 7, 1808. (Source: The Evening Post (New York City), Wed., Jun 8, 1808.) Mary was the second child born, after John Rathbone Smith and before Adeline Clarissa Smith.

New York City has no vital records for this time period the likes of The Barbour Collection of Connecticut. Therfore, unless you can find what you're looking for in a newspaper extract, you're out of luck!

I thought maybe I could find an age at death on Mary's death record (usually given in months, days and years), and work backwards from there to a birth date. The age at death on the death record for Charles Stanbery (March 19, 1892) in Delaware County's Probate Court record books allowed me to calculate his birth date as August 3, 1809. I thought I could do the same for Mary, but alas! She has no death record, although she does have a will and probate in the Delaware County (Ohio) Probate Court. I have come to the conclusion that she may have died while away from home. She had family in Chicago and Kentucky and elsewhere.

I next thought of her grave stone at Green Lawn Cemetery in Columbus, Ohio. Even if the stone had a year, it would help to pinpoint some dates. But there was no headstone pictured on FindAGrave. So, after looking up the plot information, I called Green Lawn to ask if they could verify whether a stone still existed. The woman sad she would go look, and if she found one, she'd take a picture of it and email it to me. Within a few days, I got an email with a photo. But alas, again! There are no dates on the stone—only her name, Mary Stanbery, and the wording "The ?? Mother." The middle part is illegible because the stone had been broken in half and later repaired with a concrete mix. The break couldn't have happened in a worse place! (Note: I later saw a faint "ED" on the end of the middle word while zoomed in, and think that the word "DEVOTED" is likely.)

The next thing I thought of was that even though she may have died away from home, she surely would have had an obituary, right? Mary's husband was an attorney, and his brother Henry Stanbery, also an attorney, was Ohio's first attorney general (1846-1851), as well as U.S. attorney general under Andrew Johnson (1866-1868). The brothers' father, Jonas Stanbery (1761-1840) was one of the wealthiest men in Ohio—a founder of Worthington, Ohio, and its library. With the Stanberys being such a prominent local family, I was sure that Mary would have had an obituary in the Delaware Gazette, Delaware County's family-run newspaper, and the obit would have had a nice life story—complete with a birth date, right?

The Delaware Gazette isn't a paper that's easily accessible. It's not one that's been scanned by Newspapers.com. The old copies are on microfilm in the genealogy room at the back of the Delaware County District Library. The heavily-scratched microfilm was done years ago, and the images are not good quality. You can get a skanky-looking print on tissue-thin paper at 25 cents per page. I didn't even get that far. I thought I remembered that there was an index of the obituaries, done by Marilyn Crider, a longtime past volunteer.

The Delaware County Genealogical Society had created a new website recently, and someone had entered in the obituary indexes. Imagine my surprise when there was no entry for Mary under the year range that included 1883. How can that be?! There is an entry for Charles—although they have misspelled the family's name as Stanbury. How is it possible that Mary had no obituary in the Delaware Gazette? Possibly it was small, and accidentally skipped over by Mrs. Crider. Or perhaps Mary's husband Charles sent it to one of the Columbus, Ohio newspapers. Their farm in Liberty Township was in southern Delaware County, just over the boundary line for Franklin County. So I haven't given up hope of finding one yet. (I'm going to try emailing the Ohio Historical Society to see if they can find anything.)

With no birth record, no age at death, no obituary (yet), and no headstone data, I'm back to user-supplied data from Ancestry and elsewhere, which I always take with a boulder-sized grain of salt.

I have seen two birth years for Mary. The first one—on the data associated with Green Lawn Cemetery—was 1812. The problem with that is that her next-younger sister, Adeline Clarissa Smith Thomas, was supposedly born 13 May 1812, which was right in the middle of the year. If that were true, then that precludes another baby having been born in the same year. But was the date for Adeline Clarissa correct? Yes, there is a headstone with the year quite literally "set in stone": 1812. Additionally, from all of the research I've done, I'm not aware that there were any twins in this family. So, I don't believe Mary and Adeline were twins.

The second date I've seen for Mary —on a RootsWeb page—says that she was born in 1810. The problem is that her older brother, John Rathbone Smith, was supposedly born 7 Nov 1809.

Now let me pause a moment to say that I once worked as a research associate for a March of Dimes-funded study of premature births at the Ohio State University College of Medicine, Department of High Risk Obstetrics. So I know that a full-term pregnancy is 40 weeks (ten months), and that babies born before 36-37 weeks often have problems resulting in a trip to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (among them: immature lungs, trouble regulating their body temperature, underdeveloped suckling reflex).

My background made me curious one day about how many preemies were born in the nineteenth century and earlier, and what the outcome was. So I did a search, and found that preemies, even as late as the end of the nineteeth century, were nonviable. There simply weren't yet the advances in technology or medicine to keep these babies alive. Considering that ten percent of babies today are preemies, this surely explains the large number of tiny headstones near parents' tombstones.

So, returning to Mary's proposed birth date of 1810, I found that it was exactly 30 weeks and five days after the birth of John Rathbone. If born between 30 and 31 weeks, Mary would not have survived.

While researching this, I found that John is buried next to his parents in Rosehill Cemetery and Mausoleum, Chicago. His Find A Grave memorial page carried the date 7 Nov 1809. So, back to the drawing board for Mary.

There remained the U.S. Federal Census data. Mary's census records from 1850 through 1880 seemed the most promising. The early census records for Mary's father would be too inexact to glean a definite birth date.

The rules for the census say that a person's age should be reported as of the official census date, which—with the exception of the earliest censuses—was June 1st of the census year. But, most people did not follow the rules. Instead, they reported their actual ages as of the date the census-taker visited—in other words, their age as of the date at the top of the census form.

Let's take a look at Charles and Mary Stanbery's census form ages from 1850 through 1880, the years that Mary was still living (below). For comparison against the ages on the forms, here are the actual birth dates of the other family members, and their sources: Mary's husband Charles: August 3, 1809 (age at death); oldest daughter Clara: May 31, 1834 (death certificate, son as informant); oldest son John Rathbone Stanbery, my second great grandfather: June 19, 1836 (my mother's records); son Charles Jr.: July 18, 1844 (death certificate, Edward Scull Mendenhall, niece's husband, as informant); son Edward: February 18, 1846 (cemetery record); son Frank: December 15, 1848 (cemetery record).

Mary Stanbery's Census Data

Out of all of the ages on this form, the only one that was wrong as of the census collection date was Frank Stanbery, in both census years 1850 and 1860, whose ages should have been 1 and 11, not 2 and 12. But with all the rest of the ages being so consistently correct, this makes me believe that the December 15, 1848, birth date that I have for Frank (from Greenlawn Cemetery data, as I recall) must be wrong. I propose that his birth date may have been 15 Dec 1847, rather than 15 Dec 1848, in which case the ages for him would both be correct.

Now, in order to calculate the person's age as of the collection date, it's necessary to take into account whether they've had their birthday that year. If they have (marked in bold red), we subtract the year of birth from the census year. And if not, then we subtract the year of birth from the last year in which they had a birthday, which would be the year previous to the census year.

Note that in the 1850 census, which was collected late—on October 12th—everyone had had a birthday except for Frank, whose birthday fell on December 15th.

Now, let's examine the record for John Rathbone Stanbery, whose birthday was on June 19th, according to our family records (he was my second great grandfather). On the two censuses collected earlier in June—on the 11th (1860) and on the 17th (1870)—his age ends with a 3. But in 1880, the census was collected on June 22nd, which fell after his birthday, and his age ends in 4, Ditto the census for October 12, 1850.

Edward, who had a February birthday, had already had his birthday across all census records. And Charles Sr. and Jr., other than in the census of 1850, had not had their birthdays, which fell in August and July, respectively.

Now, look at Mary's age across her records. In two of the years, Mary's age ends in 9, rather than 8, indicating that she had had a birthday by those dates. (I have marked these in bold green to distinguish them from the others.) And, just like John R., her age seems to change within the month of June. It appears that, just like John R., her birthday fell between June 17th and June 22nd. Therefore, it appears that her birthday must have been on June 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st or 22nd in the year 1811. This narrowed it down to just a five-day window.

I selected the date that is right in the center of this range—June 20, 1811. I believe these census records are accurate for four reasons: 1) Mary and Charles the head of their household; 2) they were not yet old enough to be senile; 3) they surely knew when their own children were born; and 4) the data is remarkably consistent from year to year. The first two are important, because it means that the data wasn't being supplied by a third party who didn't know them or the family well. The data, in its consistency, feels accurate. This birth date could be off, at most, by one or two days in either direction.