WILBANKS-L Archives

From: <>
Subject: [WILBANKS-L] re: Hiram and Sarah
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 08:22:29 EST

Thank you, Patricia Howard, for posting the census records of our Hiram. It
is good to find him getting so much attention on the list.

The few with whom I have communicated seem to reach the same conclusion,
Hiram tread lightly and left a very faint trail from NC or SC abt 1800 to
Sumner
Co. TN in 1822 to Henry Co. TN in 1830 to Washington Co. Mo.in 1840, to
Newton and Jasper Co. Mo. in 1850 and 1860, leaving no date or record of
death.

So we grasp at clues from family tradition and make observations:

We find it curious that the children of Hiram and Sarah referred to Hirams
father as Uncle Bill.

Hiram and Sarah named a son William C.
William C. named a son William

Hiram and Sarah names a son James MacDonald who was known as
Mack Wilbanks in later years when he was a business man at Sarcoxie,
Jasper Co. Mo.

The transcribed marriage license of Hiram Woolbanks and Sarah Dowell
lists John Dowell as bondsman.

Hiram and Sarah finally got around to naming their last son John Wilbanks.

I also find it curious that the twins, Lousia J and Sarah J. shaved their age
until they lost track of their birth date. Fourteen in 1850, b. c 1836 in TN
and accounted for in the 1840 Washington Co. Mo. census, they claimed
to be 18 in 1860 and in 24 in 1870. In 1880 Lousia J., my g-grandmother,
owned up to being 36 (b c. 1844) and Sarah said she was 34.

On an affidavit as Civil War veterans widow, May 9, 1917, Sarah J.
stated:
That she was one of ten children of her parents, there being three sons and
seven daughters of her parents. That she was advised and velieves that she
was on of twins born on the first day of January Eighteen hundred and forty-
four
(1844); that she was informed by her parents that when she was about the age
of two years that her parents moved from the state of Tennessee to
southwestern
Missouri; that her father died about the year 1863, her mother having died
about
eleven years previous to that date; that each her brothers and sisters have
been
deceased twelve years or more, and that she does not know of any public church
or family record which would give the date of her birth, as the family record
was
destroyed during the war, and she does not know of any living person by whom
she can prove the date of her birth, that her age was well understood and
declared
by her parents and other members of her family, to be as herein before stated,
and she has understood from her first recollection that her birth was January
1st
1844, that she now believes that she is past seventy-three years of age.
signed Sarah J Blood

The obvious inaccuracies in Sarahs statement clearly show why trying to find
Hiram is such a frustrating occupation.

On the census of 1900 Sarah claimed to be born Jan. 1845, the same date is
on her tombstone.

thanks for listening, bill

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