Whistling Through the Graveyard
Chapter 4 - Love Is Stronger Than Death
Chapter 5 - Marimon Davis, Gone But Not Forgotten
Marimon Davis is not a household name, and never will be. He does have a cool first name, very unusual, so unusual in fact that I have never run across it again as a given name. He first got my attention when I was doing a bizarre project (like any of my projects aren't bizarre ...). I had plenty of free time on my hands and I had been learning HTML and was putting a lot of pages on our website. I had found my second great grandfather's family in the 1870 census in Posey County, Indiana, and I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be a great idea to translate the census page into an html document and create pages for everyone listed in that census record?".
Well, I did it once. I never did it again, but I did it once. Actually, I take that back. I did partial annotations for four other census pages, three in Posey County and one in Gallatin County Illinois. But I never did another fully annotated census page again, it was just too much trouble.
I was right about one thing. I was related to everyone that appeared on that census page, either by blood or by marriage. My annotated html copy of that page also has notes on four significant errors that were made in the rendering of that census. I know I submitted fixes to some if not all of them on Ancestry.com. At that time the corrections on Ancestry made some sense, back before the number of incorrect fixes posted on the site started vastly outnumbering the actual correct ones.
There were five families listed on that page, two sets of Bartons, then two sets of Downens with a couple of Powells lumped in with the Downens, my Mills family, and Marimon Davis, whose mother Catherine had married William Bradford Barton, one of the patriarchs of Posey County. Marimon's name was the sixth person listed on that census page and one of the earlier people I created a page for. At the time I was working on Marimon's page I didn't realize that his wife, Harriet Moore Davis, was another descendant of David Alexander Mills from Georgia and my second cousin three times removed.
To make a short story even more brief, as I mentioned above, Marimon's mother married into the Barton family, which was extremely well connected at that time in Posey County. In 1875 Marimon married Harriet Moore, and by 1880 they had moved across the Wabash river to Gallatin County, Illinois. They didn't stay there long, however, and by 1885 they were in Kingman County, Kansas. By 1900 they were in Edmond Oklahoma, then moved to Oklahoma City by 1910, and that's where Marimon and Harriet spent the rest of their lives. Marimon died in 1928 and Harriet died in 1952. From an evolutionary standpoint they were quite successful, having had at least 10 children, although some of their children died quite young.
There were Find A Grave pages for Marimon and Harriet, which is one of the reasons I thought they were buried in Oklahoma City. Those pages were created by a gal named Rebecca Hobson. I had attempted to contact her repeatedly about adding information to the memorials in 2010 and never heard back anything. I had complained to the Find A Grave administration about it and instead of just putting through the changes, they gave both the memorials to me. I sometimes feel bad about that now, and I may one day give the memorials back to Rebecca, although I have no idea if she's even alive at this point (the memorials were created in 2001, which means that by Find A Grave standards they are now ancient).
Anyway, by March 2011, when I was working up the pages for all those Posey County people, I controlled those memorials and so when edits or corrections were submitted on them, I was the one receiving the emails. Oddly enough, I still remember the day of the week I was working on the page for Marimon, it was a Saturday. I only know now that it was 5 March 2011 because I embedded that date into the page as a kind of timestamp.
As I was working on the page for Marimon, I got an email correction on his memorial from a Find A Grave contributor named Emily Jordan. She had posted marker photos on Marimon and Harriet's memorials in June 2010, by the way. The email was the text of Marimon's obituary listings from 1928, which read as follows:
THE OKLAHOMAN (Oklahoma City, OK)
8/5/1928 DEATHS AND FUNERALS (Sunday)
"Marimon Davis, 71 years old, died at his home, 304 E. 35th street, south, Saturday morning. Besides his wife, he is survived by two sons, James Davis of San Diego, Calif., and Elmer Davis of Oklahoma City, three daughters, Mrs. Frank Hardin, Mrs. Roy Elder and Mrs. Lloyd Alexander, all of Oklahoma City. Funeral arrangements will be announced by Garrison Funeral home."
THE OKLAHOMAN (Oklahoma City, OK)
8/6/1928 DEATHS AND FUNERALS (Monday)
"Funeral services for Marimon Davis, 71 years old, who died Saturday, will be conducted from Garrison's chapel at 10 o'clock Monday morning by Rev. T.G. Netherton. Burial in Sunny Lane cemetery."
I was absolutely and completely flabbergasted. Marimon Davis died in 1928. I discovered him as a relative in 2010 and the very day I am adding a page for him on my website someone sends me his obituary because I now control his Find A Grave memorial? I mean, WTF, seriously WTF?
I can't find the email now that I sent to Emily Jordan, but I explained the situation to her and asked her what had led her to send me the text of Marimon's obituary on this particular day. Well, I wasn't the only one with an obsessive compulsive project going. Here's what I got back in an email from Emily:
"I'm going through all issues of THE OKLAHOMAN from 1916 through 1929, and extracting all of the obits and death notices and trying to add them to FAG. There are many that I cannot locate, and if the obit didn't specify a cemetery name, I can't add it. Sometimes I go back through the unfound ones and am able to locate a few. I was thinking about creating some "virtual" cemeteries for them, but won't work on that until I finish 1929."
One person in California's bizarre genealogy project collides with another person's project from Oklahoma and you end up with Marimon Davis as the intersection between the two projects, on the same day.
I emailed Peggy Dillard Sauls (a distant relative of mine) in Illinois that weekend and let her know about the improbable coincidence. She emailed me back:
"I think there is a very good explanation for this. Old Marimon just wants his story out there. He is tapping you and Emily. So you better get to work and get it right, or he may be mad. No seriously, that is very weird."
I had a very flip response to Peggy's email:
"That would be a good fantasy story, a person compelled to do genealogy research and publish it because they were being haunted. "
"Your explanation is as good as any. If the dead are going to this much trouble to have their lives documented, maybe they could figure out a better way to communicate with us. All this research is too time consuming!"
In any event, Marimon and his minions among the living haven't troubled me again since I posted those notices on his memorial. I hope he is happy now, or at least at rest. I also incorporated the coincidence into the page I was writing up on him for the census page project. Even now, seven and a half years later, it still ranks as one of the most bizarre things that has ever happened to me while I was researching someone. Another researcher sending me an obituary, a commonplace thing. But the timing ... priceless!
Sources:
Marimon Davis page on mills-sfv.com
Marimon Davis page on Family Search Dot Org
Marimon Davis page on Find A Grave
1870 Robinson Township Census Page 38 on mills-sfv.com
Chapter 6
Chapter 6 - A Letter to Mrs. Zabriskie
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