A year to the day after his March 1852 departure for California, David Bryte was “shot by the Indians while engaged in the mines” and died.
“The other men pursued the Indians,” said Springfield’s Daily Republic of Friday morning, July 5, 1853, “but they fled into the mountains and escaped.”
Flossie Hulsizer doesn’t relish in the misfortunes of Springfield and Clark Countians of the 1850s. But she is interested.
One of the many ardent volunteers in the Ohio Genealogical Society’s Clark County Chapter, she’s doing her best to close the gap in Clark County death records that yawns between 1853 and 1867.
She’s doing it by going through the Republic page by page.
In 2008, she and husband Bob put together what they’d found doing that for the years 1844-1851.
“Right now I’m in 1853,” she said.
The goal is twofold: To help people working on family genealogies find their forebears, and to help introduce history of that time into the Clark County Historical Society’s archives.
In recording that “Mrs. Celia Rosser, wife of William Rosser, of this city (died) at the residence of her father in Green County, Sunday, Aug. 14” of “inflammation on the brain,” she makes that information available to the Rosser descendants.
From another report, she informs the community of the inflamed feelings caused when the Rev. J.C. Schulze lead a group of German families away from St. John’s Lutheran Church in 1852.
After Schulze for reasons unknown had provided information on the St. John’s history for a local pamphleteer, the St. John’s council wrote a corrective letter in which it called Schulze “a disturber of harmony among neighbors” and a liar.
The polite phrasing said Schulze would evince “a greater love of the truth … if he will cease talking about us.”
Mrs. Hulsizer’s often tedious, eye straining work is sometimes made easier by levity.
Feb. 25, 1852 — “Spell MURDER backwards and you have its cause. Spell Red Rum in the same manner, and you see its effect.”
June 17, 1853 — “Somebody says, the first thing that turned his attention to matrimony was the neat and skillful manner in which a pretty girl handled a broom. He may see the time when the manner in which that a broom will be handled will not afford him so much satisfaction.”
Other items between the obits offer historical insight.
Take Timothy Foley’s plea in the Republic for help finding his brother, John, who “left the county of Carrick the parish of Fuer (Ireland), about two years ago for this country.”
Brother Timothy had received a letter from John 12 months before the posting “and since has heard nothing from him.”
The letter said John “was in New Orleans awhile, and boarded with a man by the name of Nolan.” and the notice said “any information of where the said John Foley resides, or if not living, where he died, will be thankfully received.”
The same lonely immigrant experience shows up in the obituary for Miss Matilda Parker, an Irish native born of English parents, who had left “a beautiful slope of the Shannon” in hopes of finding a family member in American also reported to have gone “to the far South.”
“Though called (from this world) amidst strangers, in a strange land, and in the bloom of youth,” the story says, “she died rejoicing in that risen Savior.”
Dr. Brown’s Drug Store of Springfield also printed a notice it hoped would reach the proper ears. To the “scamp” who mistook a devil’s jug of the store’s whale oil “for his own jug of whiskey” and stole it, Dr. Brown’s offered forgiveness.
“We pardon the taking of the oil (a laxative), in consideration of the benefits he received from its lubricating qualities.”
Here are other selections:
Feb. 25, 1853 — “LAMENTABLE CASUALTY – On Sunday evening last a young son of Mr. Nash living opposite the old Brewery, attempted to smoke a pipe in imitation of older persons, when his clothes took fire and burned him so severely that it is doubtful whether he will recover.”
Aug. 29, 1851 — “A young man was killed at Tremont Tuesday by a large saw-log rolling over his head. He was standing behind it while it was being drawn uphill by a team. The chain broke. He attempted to get out of the way, but becoming alarmed and confused ran in the wrong direction.”
Sept. 5, 1851 — “DREADFUL CASUALTY: A fine little son of Mr. John Poffenbarger of Urbana was thrown from a gravel car at the Depot, at that place, and, falling right on the rail, was run over by the car and killed instantly. In this connection we will take this occasion to say to parents here, that the railways are thronged with little urchins, who are in danger of being run over every time the train comes in.”
The Friday morning Oct. 10, 1851, paper reported the death of the kind too often reported, that of another young child from infectious disease.
Emma Judy, “daughter of Bolivar and Rose Ann Judy, aged seven months and four days” had succumbed.
A poem published with the notice captures the mood of so many children’s obituaries of those years:
“As fades the lovely blooming flower,
Frail, smiling solace of an hour.
So soon our transient comforts fly,
And pleasures only bloom to die.”
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