Mary's Misleading Obituary

Printed and online obituaries can be full of wonderful family information. Unfortunately, they often contain errors, also.

Mary Maddox Neff's 1907 obituary is a good example of the types of mistakes that you might see. Taking the information in the obituary as entirely true could lead to bad assumptions and missed records.

Deconstructing the obituary, there were 19 facts.

• Two were incorrect. 
• One was unknown. 
• Five were unknown, but probably true. 
• One other key fact was missing. 

The overall analysis is 80 percent true and probably true. That's not too bad -- unless you were depending on the 20 percent of information that isn't true.

Always take obituaries as clues, rather than absolute truth.

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For anyone researching this family, the analysis and obituary follow.

Fact	Content	Truth
Marriage Date	1851 *	False
Number Children	Four **	False
Child Name	James **	Unknown
Child Name	Christina **	MISSING
Birth County	Pickaway County	Probable
Burial	Acasto, MO	Probable
Church	Member of Methodist Church	Probable
Funeral	M.E. Church in Mt Sterling, IA	Probable
Spouse Birth	1831	Probable
Birth State	Ohio	True
Birth Year	1834	True
Child Location	Ft Madison, IA (Cantril)	True
Child Location	Pueblo, CO (Schafer)	True
Child Name	Absolom	True
Child Name	Mrs George Schafer	True
Child Name	Mrs T N Cantril	True
Name	Mrs Mary Neff	True
Spouse	George Neff	True
Spouse Death	October 6, 1897	True
Survivors	2 children and 2 grandchildren	True

*The Neff marriage was celebrated in Pickaway County, Ohio, on February 1, 1852. Reference book 4-255.
**The 1900 census showed that Mary had 5 children, 2 of whom were living. James was never on the census, but most likely would have been born between 1860 and 1863. Child Christina was the eldest in the census and was entirely omitted in the obituary in both child count and list of names.

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Fort Madison (Iowa) Weekly Democrat, 11 September 1907, Page 2, Column 3