Finding the Stories Behind the Statistics
Margaret W. Hendrickson
Although I often include genealogy in my list of hobbies, I am not a genealogist. I have attended some lectures and have read a few books, but I have no certificates and certainly no expertise in the study of familial lineages.
My parents lived into their 90’s, and for the 20-some years of their retirement they happily and energetically pursued the history of our two joined families and the people who belonged to our tribe all the way through to the beginning of the 17th century. They travelled extensively to collect information about the family. They even crossed the pond twice to participate in genealogy classes at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. My mother once proudly told one of her sisters (who had decided belatedly that she was going to explore their family history) that “the Clement side of things is done.”
Upon my parents’ deaths I found myself in possession of two four-drawer metal filing cabinets full of names, dates and copies of source documents. I was slow on the uptake. Exposure did not immediately yield interest. But finding a large envelope filled with portraits taken mid-tolate 1800’s and meticulously labeled by my dad piqued my interest, and I finally decided to transfer all the information I had to a digital platform, choosing – for better or for worse – Ancestry. That’s when I discovered that it wasn’t all “done,” not by a long shot.
Treating it like a data entry program I started with the first person in my mom’s handwritten and annotated “tree”. William Clement was maybe born in about 1680 and was maybe married to a woman named Anne. Then there was a list of seven children. Dates were non-existent in many cases. Names started looking the same, and I ended up pushing back from my computer feeling confused and defeated. It occurred to me that “source documentation” wasn’t just some trite phrase that genealogy buffs throw out to sound important.
I re-calibrated and started again, this time focusing on the eight children of Benjamin Clement and Susanna Hill (my mom’s DAR patriot). I had two sources that are not widely available – Family Records from Old Trinity in the Fields Parish Register, Mason, Tennessee (which my mom had transcribed and self-published in 1984, and Letters of the Somervell Taylor and Other Related Families of Tipton County, Tennessee, 1844-1864 (edited and self-published by John W. Marshall, May 2010). And there were those Ancestry hints!
Photo Taken by: Margaret W. Hendrickson
That big envelope of pictures included portraits of three of Benjamin’s and Susanna’s children: Charles A. Clement, the eldest; Adam Dabney Clement, the second son; and a younger sister, Lavinia E. Clement. Adam is my 2X great-grandfather and his picture was labelled Dr. Adam Dabney Clement. Having spent my entire adult life in healthcare, I perked right up. Where did he study? I wondered. Did he go to medical school? Did he apprentice with an established practitioner? There was no Board of Medical Examiners in Tennessee until 1889, and with no established licensing requirements it was possible to become a doctor by simply adding M.D. after your name.
Photo Provided by: Margaret W. Hendrickson
Adam was born on June 10, 1825, in Campbell County, Virginia. He married Martha Ann Sherod on the 6th of May in 1847, in Tipton County, Tennessee. He was young, just shy of 22 years of age. Maybe he didn’t attend medical school. There was nothing on Ancestry – no little green leaves guiding me to information. It was time to play detective.
Adam’s father had deep roots in Virginia, where he had served as the Commonwealth Attorney for Campbell County, Virginia, before moving his family to Tipton County, Tennessee. There was a well-respected medical school at the University of Richmond, and surely the family still had extended family and friends there who would graciously look after a young medical student. This seemed like a good place to begin.
Records disappear and resurface on a regular basis, and previously inaccessible (and thus unknowable) information is often revealed when old records are digitized. Over the past couple of decades many educational institutions have made their alumni records available online. I was delighted to find that the University of Richmond was one of these, but not so pleased when I found no trace of Adam. I turned to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, with one of the oldest medical schools in North America. Again, there was no evidence that Adam had ever been a student there. Not knowing how to continue, I started just playing around on my computer, running searches for key words and phrases. And suddenly I hit pay dirt!
Polk's Medical Register and Directory of North America was first published in Detroit in 1886 and purported to be a listing of all doctors practicing medicine in North America at that time. The original book is at the McGill University Library in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Amazingly, the entire volume has been digitized and is available online. And what a wonderful resource! In addition to containing a comprehensive listing of all physicians in the United States at that time, there are advertisements for medical equipment and supplies, a detailed listing of all existing and extinct medical colleges in the United States and Canada, and lists of hospitals, sanitariums, and asylums. Each state’s laws pertaining to the profession are included. And right there in this superb resource was the answer to my question. Dr. Adam Dabney Clement graduated from the University of Louisville in 1847 and, at the time of publication, was practicing in Mason, Tipton County, Tennessee (population 350).
A narrative was taking shape. I searched my two family-specific reference sources but could not find the precise month and day for either Adam’s graduation or the marriage of Adam and Martha. I did, however, find an item that seemed to intersect with my quest. Under Burials in the Old Trinity church records, I found the following entry:
George J. Clement, A. D. Clement’s, May 14, 1850.
George was a middle child, and 17-years-old in May of 1850 according to the U. S. Federal Census Mortality Schedules 1850 – 1880. How does a 17-year-old kid end up dead at his brother’s house?
I found the answer in a letter from Mary Goodloe Somervell Taylor to her niece Jane Eleanor Taylor at Mrs. Page’s School in Memphis. Dated “Tipton May 25th, 1850,” the part pertinent to this situation reads as follows:
“You have no doubt heard before this of the death of George Clement, at his brother Dabney’s from taking arsenick (sic) when he intended to take lavender. If Lavinia has not heard of it, dont (sic) communicate it to her abruptly; you had better request Mrs. Page to make the communication. Your Aunt Jane’s family are very much distressed. Mr. Steel preached his funeral when he was buried. I spent a day and night with the family, and truly sympathize with them.”
For context, Lavinia was one of George’s (and Adam Dabney’s) younger sisters. She was a boarder at Mrs. Page’s School in Memphis with her cousin Eleanor Taylor.
The following week Mary Goodloe Somervell Taylor wrote to her nephew George A. Taylor in school at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. That letter is dated “Tipton June 8th, 1850.”
“Your Aunt Jane’s family (indeed all of us) have been much grieved by the sudden death of George Clement by accident. He smoked a pipe of strong tobacco, after preparing to go to bed, at his brother Dabney’s; in the room Dabney kept his medicine, the pipe nauseated his stomach, and intending to take some spirits of lavender, to comfort it, he took Fowler’s solution of arsenic; his Brother Dabney had been sent for about dark to see a very sick child several miles off, Dabney’s wife had a baby not quite two weeks old, and he was very nearly dead before his situation was known.”
This is part of my family’s story. On May 14th, one hundred and seventy-five years ago, Dr. Adam Dabney Clement and his young wife, Martha, had two children. Little John Dabney was barely 2 years old, and the infant Francis had been born on April 30th, just 2 weeks earlier. A plot map of Tipton County included in John Marshall’s compilation of family letters shows Mrs. Jane Taylor Clement, mother of Adam and George, lived quite close to Adam and Martha. At seventeen, George would still be living at home with his mother. It is plausible that Adam asked his brother to stay the night so Martha would not be alone with the two babies, as – having been “been sent for about dark to see a very sick child several miles off” – he very likely had every expectation of not being able to return home until the next day.
The Somervell-Taylor letters capture family and community reaction to the tragedy and provide a rare glimpse into the past that makes it real and relevant. This, to me, is the prize. I have discovered that I enjoy the research and the quest for resources beyond birth certificates and census records; I love being able to glimpse the narrative beyond the stark statistics. And I am so lucky! Those pictures and the file cabinets full of documents and notes should keep me busy for a long time!