Every Obituary Tells a Story

Every obituary gives us more information about our relatives and often the details and clues we need to better understand their lives and where they lived.

Obituaries, Evening Post newspaper article 16 September 1846
Evening Post (New York, New York), 16 September 1846, page 3

Look at all the details provided in these brief obituaries:

Thomas Ward died on 14 September 1846 at age 39 and was “a native of County Cavan, Ireland.”

Rudolph Yenni died at age 57 and was from Switzerland. “For many years a resident of this city.”

Louisa Starr was the “daughter of James G. and Ann Maria Barbour, and grand-daughter of Charles Starr, Esq.” She was “aged 10 months and 8 days.”

Thomas L. Hartness, age 37, died in Albany, New York, on 13 September 1846 but was “of Jersey City.”

Philip Halsey died on 4 September 1846 at Windsor, Connecticut, at age 86. He was “a Revolutionary pensioner. He belonged to a Long Island regiment, and at the time of the evacuation of New York, was one of the last who left the city.”

Deacon Champion Spalling died 7 September 1846 at Whitesboro, Oneida County, New York, at age 93. He was “among the militia men of Connecticut, he hastened to the scenes of Saratoga and assisted at the taking of Burgoyne.”

Conerod Elisk, age 86, died on 12 September 1846 in Frankfort, Herkimer County, New York. “He was a soldier in the Revolutionary war, and fought at the battle of Oriskany, and was in several other engagements.”

Samuel O. Parker died at age 23 “at the mouth of the Rio Grande” on 13 September 1846. He was the “son of the late Cortland L. Parker, of Perth Amboy, N.J.”

Isaac Smith, Esq. “formerly of the firm of Dana & Smith” died in Portland, Maine, at age 62. “His death was occasioned by a fall from a carriage.”

Boon Buchanan “aged 113 years, a colored man, better known as ‘Old Booty,’ died at the Poor House of Washington County, Pennsylvania. “He was a waiter in the army at Braddock’s defeat, the year 1755.”

Every obituary tells a story and adds to the legacy of every person who has ever lived. GenealogyBank’s Historical Newspaper Archives contain more than two billion records of our ancestors.

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