From Time to Time

 From time to time an exciting find.

I wasn't even looking.  I was looking for anything I could find about Peter Wormuth who lived in Callicoon and was married to Grace Deighton Ramsey and, previously, to whom the family knows as Harriet Barecolt.

But, instead I found the marriage of Joseph Wormuth and Miss "Helen" Debeck; in a brief marriage announcement in the The Republican Watchman, June 16, 1846, page 3, in the New York Historical Newspapers project.  They were married Apgil 9, 1846 n Callicoon.  Her name was actually Eleanor, not Helen, as published.

So before I continue with this little bit of family history, just a few words about names and media and censuses, etc.:

• So-called "official" documents and all the censuses are rife with unbelievable errors, bad handwriting, terrible photocopies, poor transcriptions; but, they're what we've got.  In both cases, the information is written by someone other than the person about which the document is concerned.  In some cases, the information is not given by the actual individual but by a family member or even a neighbor.  In addition, there are omissions because the person supplying the information didn't know or didn't want to answer.
• People don't listen; they listen to what's in their head, not to the words of the person they're facing.
• Errors are repeated because fact-checking requires an interest in facts and in accuracy and most people will just copy something that's already out there rather than doing the research; for example, most Ancestry family trees, that are mostly worthless.

If you see a person's name in print and it's different in one place than in another, obviously, if you care about accuracy, you look for the name in as many places as possible and in as many different kinds of documents as possible; then, you can figure out what the actual name is.

Eleanor appears in one census as Ellen, in all the others she appears as some spelling of Eleanor.  I have a transcript of her death record and her name is Eleanor.  So, this newspaper heard what they wanted to hear or somehow had her name as Helen.  They were incorrect.

Now, the surprise:

According to the clipping, Eleanor was married before.

So, I will do some research and find out more about her, supposed, former marriage.  Did she have children from the previous marriage?  Who was her former husband and what happened to him?

More later....