A Mysterious Birth and a Mysterious Death
The aforementioned foray into logic is the tool that will be used in what may ultimately prove a wild goose chase. Its value, however, lies in the fact that such arguments eliminate possibilities and whittle the field of possible answers down to more manageable quantities. Whittling possibilities down is important in situations such as these, when the possible places of an ancestor's birth (or death) encompass an entire country or, perhaps, the much larger geographic areas of several countries and even continents.
Such problems, when confronted by amateur genealogists, are unfortunate indeed when we are confronted with the necessity of "saturation research." Unfortunately, saturation research (and prosopography) is what we are faced with if we have only an inkling of what state an ancestor was born in and we have no death data to point us in the right direction. More information is needed before tackling such an impossibly enormous project, a project that would likely take several lifetimes to complete and may lead in the end to having no more answers than when we started the research.
The most troubling aspect in the case of Wilson Parker Sr. is that he last shows up in the 1849 Minnesota State Census living next door to W.C.D. Harrington, his son-in-law. He is nowhere to be found in the 1850 U.S. Federal Census. Do we then assume he died?
No. If he were dead, we might be able to find probate or other death records that would help us in our search, but there are none in the case of Wilson Parker Sr. So we cannot assume he died in Minnesota before the 1850 census was taken. We would need further proof.
There is another problem with assuming Wilson Parker Sr. died before the census date in 1850: the state of Iowa took censuses in 1852 and 1854. We know that a couple of W.C.D.'s and Mary Ann Belle's children were born in Iowa. In fact, in 1852, the Harringtons are found in the Iowa Census living in Clinton County. Then, in 1854, Wilson Parker shows up living next door to John Terrell. However, it is unknown if this "Wilson Parker" is Wilson Jesse Parker, son of Wilson Parker Sr. and brother-in-law of John Terrell or Wilson Parker Sr. himself. Perhaps it is a third "Wilson Parker" altogether and merely a coincidence. In any case, the net result is that we do not know when or where the elder Wilson Parker died. So we cannot yet look for headstones and cemetery information, which might tell us where Wilson Parker Sr. was born and when. Furthermore, there may be no record of his death and burial if he was laid to rest on his own land. Not everyone was buried in an official cemetery and, depending upon the circumstances of his death, Wilson Parker Sr. may not have been laid to rest at all. What if our ancestor went out hunting one day, got lost in the woods, was mauled to death by a bear and his body never found? He would have "gone missing" and may have, eventually, been "presumed dead."
Basically, in the case of Wilson Parker Sr., we know neither where he was born nor where he died and that is the crux of the matter. Nor does Wilson Parker Sr. show up in any census following the 1854 Iowa Census. Nor is there a valid reason to assume he died in Iowa. The Wilson Parker enumerated in the 1854 census may have been Wilson Parker Sr.'s son or a third, unrelated, man. The Harringtons were in 1850 enumerated in Washington County, Minnesota living near the same neighbors as in the 1849 state census - the only neighbor missing is Wilson Parker. We know the Wilson Parker that had been living in Minnesota in 1849 is not Wilson Jesse Parker because census data show Wilson Jesse Parker to be living in Hancock County in the state of Illinois with brothers-in-law John, Josiah and William Terrell. In 1849, Wilson Jesse Parker married Rebecca Terrell in Hancock County, Illinois, placing Wilson Jesse in Illinois in 1849 and 1850.
Of course, it is possible that Wilson Jesse Parker married Rebecca Terrell in 1849 in Hancock, Illinois, then moved to Washington County, Minnesota in the same year and then returned to Hancock, Illinois in time to be enumerated in the 1850 U.S. census. It is also possible that Rebecca (Terrell) Parker managed to give birth to their daughter, Mary Ann Parker, in Illinois in 1854 and the family later in that same year moved to Lee County, Iowa in time to be enumerated in the 1854 Iowa Census (there are two males and two females and one man of voting age and one male in or a veteran of the military) and then return to Hancock, Illinois just in the nick of time to be enumerated yet again in the 1855 Illinois State Census. Then, in 1856, son, David Parker, is born in Hancock County, Illinois. By 1858, Wilson Jesse Parker had died in Hancock County, Illinois. If the Wilson Parker enumerated in Minnesota and Iowa are both Wilson Jesse Parker, Wilson Jesse Parker certainly had a strange penchant for moving around the country and returning to live in Hancock, Illinois every year!
On the other hand, Wilson Parker Sr. was a veteran of the Black Hawk War, having served in McHenry's Brigade of Spies, an argument in favor of his having moved to Iowa. There were two females and one male in the Wilson Parker household in 1849, an argument in favor of Wilson Parker Sr., since Wilson Jesse Parker had just married Rebecca Terrell and had no children at that point. Suppose the two females in the 1849 household were not children, but related to each other in some other way?
The simple explanation is oftentimes the correct explanation. In our case, the simple explanation is Wilson Jesse Parker never left Hancock, Illinois and the Wilson Parker enumerated in the 1849 and 1854 censuses in Wilson Parker Sr. or another man or men entirely. What does this mean for our brick wall? What this means is that Wilson Parker Sr. either died in Illinois or died in Minnesota or died in Iowa or died in an unknown territory we have yet to discover. A much simpler explanation would be that Wilson Parker Sr. never left the state of Illinois and died either in White or Madison counties.
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