According to the History of Houston County, Tennessee (Turner Publishing Company, 1995) Allen Duffel and Susan McCarroll had a daughter named Paralee who was born “ca. 1837”. I was able to find that Paralee Duffel is Delilah Paralee Duffel who married James Anderson Proctor in Clarksville, Montgomery County, Tennessee on September 23, 1869. Delilah Paralee Duffel is the sister of my 4th great-grandmother Emily Jane Duffel. Different census records put her birth year as 1837, 1840 and 1845. According to the 1880 US Mortality Schedule Paralee died February of 1880 in Houston County, Tennessee of consumption. Her husband then married her niece, my 3rd great-grandmother Amanda M Summers.
The other day my mom was skimming the Nashville Christian Advocate (1836-?) for death records and found an interesting one that had been printed in the October 9, 1880 edition:
“DELIA P. PROCTOR born May 10, 1837; died Mar. 6, 1880; married James Proctor (1 child, Mattie).”
I searched the census records for a James Proctor married to a Delia and came up with nothing. And the only James Proctor that I could find in 1880 with a daughter named Mattie was married to a woman named Fannie, and according marriage records they married in 1874 in Robertson County, Tennessee. SO…this means that Delia P Proctor is actually Delilah Paralee Proctor. This also means that she was actually born in 1837. This also means that her death was not in February of 1880, but rather in March of 1880. AND it also means that James and Paralee did have a child together prior to her death.
I still have not found James Anderson Proctor on an 1880 census record, so I can’t account for where he and Mattie might be (though I assume they must still be in Houston County, Tennessee or the surrounding area…if Paralee died in March of 1880 and James married Amanda in December of 1880, then it is assumed that he didn’t go far). I need to find out when Mattie was born. It would be extremely helpful in tracking her!
Something else of interest that was found in the April 19, 1879 edition of the Nashville Christian Advocate had to do with Amanda M Summers’ father Basil Pinkney “Pink” Summers (or so I assume!):
“B. P. SUMMERS born Houston Co., Tenn., Jan. 20, 1821; died there, Oct. 10, 1878.”
I know from census records that Basil Pinkney Summers was born in 1821. And according to...well, I don’t know where the information came from, actually…”Pink” supposedly died November 22, 1878. Again, searching through the census records, the only person that I can find that matches the description (initials, date of birth, place of birth) is Basil Pinkney “Pink” Summers.
The big question that the records for Proctor and Summers leads me to ask is: which dates of the death dates are correct? The dates listed in the Nashville Christian Advocate, or what I find on Ancestry?
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