Sabrina Darnowsky

While I was researching my biography of the nineteenth-century Quaker minister Murray Shipley, I came across a newspaper article that described his wedding:

Married in this city yesterday, at the Quaker Meeting House, on Fifth street; Mr. Henry Shipley of this city, to Miss Hannah D. Taylor of Neport.

Well, the meetinghouse was indeed on Fifth Street, but the groom’s name was Murray, not Henry. Perhaps the reporter knew only that the groom’s last name was Shipley, and he associated that name with Murray’s cousin Henry, a well-known engraver in town. The bride’s name was correct, but she was not from Newport; it was Murray’s family that resided there. (I suspect Neport was a typo on the printer’s part; the reporter surely knew the name of the Kentucky town across the Ohio River from Cincinnati.)

The reporter then mentioned being personally present at the event, and gave a wonderfully detailed description: the drab traditional Quaker clothing contrasting with the brightly colored dresses of some of the young female guests; the men, hats firmly on their heads, sitting on one side of the meetinghouse and the women on the other; the bride and groom seated at the front of the meetinghouse; the bride’s plain white satin dress; the groom’s gold spectacles; the hour of profound silence before the couple rose and recited their vows; the bride’s faltering voice; and the signing of the marriage certificate.

The reporter’s account aligned well with my own understanding of nineteenth-century Quaker wedding practices based on other research, and even the personal details matched what I knew of the couple. I have photos of Murray in his wire-framed glasses, and a letter that Hannah wrote to Murray the day before their wedding, expressing her apprehensions about their upcoming nuptials. So I could certainly believe that her voice faltered as she recited her vows.

And yet there was also some misinformation in the article. If I had discovered this piece before I had done any other research, would I have taken the reporter at his word that Hannah D. Taylor was from Newport and had married Henry Shipley?

When evaluating any historical artifact, you have to consider several factors to determine how trustworthy it might be:

• Who created the information? Ideally, the person writing the record should have first-hand knowledge of the event and be a reliable source. Keep in mind that characteristics such as the individual’s age, background, or bias might influence their perspective.
• Was the information created around the time that the event occurred? The further away from the event that an account was captured, the greater the possibility that the person’s memory has faded.
• Can the information be corroborated by other independent sources? Especially in the case of personal accounts, are there official records that support the individual’s assertions?

With regard to the wedding article, the information was created by a journalist who seemed to have first-hand experience of the event. However, given the period in which he plied his trade, his objective might have been more to entertain his readers than to create a factual record. As a result, verifying details such as the groom’s first name could have been a lower priority.

The article was ostensibly written the day after the wedding, indicating close proximity in time. According to official records, the marriage occurred on May 22, 1851, but the newspaper ran the article on July 2. So what might account for the discrepancy? As it turns out, the article appeared in The Spirit of Democracy, a newspaper published in Woodsfield, Ohio, about 200 miles away from where the wedding occurred. However, the paper indicated that the article originally appeared in the Cincinnati Nonpareil, definitely closer in physical proximity to the event, and suggesting that the article was indeed written closer in time to the event as well.

In terms of corroboration, my photo of the groom and letter from the bride supported some of the reporter’s observations. However, other more reliable records (such as a marriage certificate of Hannah D. Taylor) contradicted other aspects of what the reporter wrote.

In the end, when writing about the wedding for the biography, I did include some of the details that appeared to be reliable first-hand accounts, and corrected those that were contradicted by more reliable evidence.