Obituary Dreamin’

Sometimes obituaries look like the end result of the “telephone game,” either bearing little resemblance to reality or appearing to be a jumbled mess of names. When information passes through several individuals, details can become confused. Facts can be turn into untruths. Something of that type is probably what happened with the obituary of Mary Walker of Hancock County, Illinois.

This undated obituary appears in the clipping collection referred to as the  “Mildred Hooper Collection,” on FamilySearch. It’s only undated and “unsourced” because the database from which this image was made was made generally consists of newspaper clippings that were frequently undated and usually unsourced.

The obituary indicated Mary was the daughter of James and Nancy Newman Rampley Riley. That’s a really interesting state of confusion on someone’s part. Mary’s parents were actually Riley and Nancy (Newman) Rampley.  James may have just been thrown in for good measure or because every Rampley family needed to have a James in it. The error may not just be the compiler’s fault. The typesetter may also have unintentionally added to the confusion. 

My transcription of the obituary will include the text as written. This will be done even though the obituary is incorrect. The word “sic” will be used to indicate the transcription was not done incorrectly and that the error was noted. I’ll even add a note to the end of the transcription. It is not the job of a transcriber to be a copy editor.

I will not use this obituary as a source for Mary’s parents because it is clearly an error. It should be listed in my sources for Mary because it does provide other information about her and failing to list it would suggest that I had never bothered to look for it. And for someone who died in the mid-20th century not locating an obituary or commenting on why one was not located would suggest that the research was incomplete. Given the errors in the names of her parents, it would be reasonable to be skeptically cautious in using other information from this notice (ironically the rest of it is actually correct).

I have a paper copy of this obituary as well from materials I’ve collected over the years. My personal preference would be to cite the paper copy in my collection and not this digital image. That’s simply a personal preference on my part as the paper copy I have is an original copy of the obituary and this digital image is a derivative copy. My personal practice is to cite as close to the original as I have if I have multiple copies of the same item. Digital copies are fine to use and generally authentically are true representations of the original.

Errors always strike my curiosity as I wonder how they came to be. James was not Riley’s middle name, so that does not explain the confusion. The name James did not appear out of thin air. It was the name of Mary’s grandfather, uncle, and cousin–all of whom had the last name Rampley. It could be that Riley sounded like a last name instead of a first name to the compiler or editor.