One of the controversies surrounding John Robert is his actual death date. When I first started the family research, I used Ancestry.com. It is a great resource, but the information provided on the public member trees can vary greatly. Every one of the public member trees containing John Robert, showed his death as March 1, 1935. Where they got that date, I'm not sure. My guess is one person wrote the date, and everyone copied it as true.
The date I began to use was the date his widow, Martha, listed on her application for John R.'s pension-May 16, 1873. She should know, right? I felt like sending messages to all of the public tree members rubbing my findings in their "cyberface".
Thank goodness I didn't. About two months ago I was reviewing census records, and guess who appeared on the 1880 census-none other than John Robert. What happened? Did Martha forget when her husband died? Did she lie and all those public tree members were right? Could Martha's "1873" she wrote on the application form actually be other numbers?
Last week at the state archives, I thumbed through many books about Hickman County. One of the books I located contained obituaries from the Hickman Pioneer. I found two references to John Robert's death. None of the previous death dates matched. May 16, 1882 was the date listed in the newspaper. This date supports the 1880 census.
When I reviewed the date written by Martha on the pension application form, I tried very hard to make 1873 into 1882, but I could not. In Martha's defense, John Robert had been dead over twenty years when she filed for his pension, so maybe her memory was a little faulty.
From this point I plan to use May 16, 1882 as his death date. I believe this date holds more validity than the others. Now, the next question is, where is he buried?
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