April 4, 2018
My cousin Captain Stanton Prentiss (1750-1826) fought in “the whole of the American Revolution, both by sea and land.”
While looking at my family tree on FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com recently, I saw that his date of death did not agree on both sites. Thanks to GenealogyBank I now have the accurate date, from his August 1826 obituary: “21st ult.” – the “ultimo” or “ultimo mense – in the last month” 21st being the 21st of July 1826, in Marietta, Ohio.
And I also have his great quote reacting to the deaths of President John Adams and President Thomas Jefferson on the same day – 4 July 1826 – just a few weeks earlier:
“He lived long enough to hear read to him the accounts of the death of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Adams on the 4th of July, and on that occasion, raising both hands, he remarked, that ‘the hand of Providence was visible in this extraordinary coincidence – the day was now made more sacred by the death of these great men.’”
Terrific.
It gives you an immediate sense of the values of this man.
At age 75 the newspaper account was “read to him” – perhaps at his age he was no longer able to easily read the newspaper – but he was still sharp as a tack to exclaim on the “extraordinary coincidence” that these two founders had both died on the 4th of July.
These are the stories only found in America’s old newspapers.
They each need to be documented and added to our family lore.
Thank you GenealogyBank!
