This very sophisticated looking fellow is my great grandfather, David Lyman Blacker. He was born in Huntington, Pennsylvania in 1829, the oldest son of Lewis Blacker and Margaret R. (Loury) Blacker.
According to the document below, he married my great grandmother, Ada Cordelia Buchenau, in Doniphan County, Kansas, in 1871. He was 28 years old at the time and she was 18.
Wait – what??? If David was born in 18291, he would have been 42 years old in 1871 – not 28.
Needless to say, the discrepancy between David’s birth date and the marriage record raises a few questions.
- Was he perhaps embarrassed to marry a woman who was 24 years his junior?
- Could the clerk have made an error?
- Did Ada know how old he was?
- Did Ada’s parents know how old he was?
- Is David’s birth date of August 29, 1829 incorrect?2
In any event, assuming David was 42 years old and not 28, and he appeared in person to obtain the license, I can only imagine the clerk may have thought he was stretching the truth just a bit.
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