EMMA DOYLE (1854-1888)

Isn’t weird how you can look at a document what feels like a thousand times and totally miss a huge piece of information?  That happened to me this week as I was looking over the information I have for the Church family.  Two pieces of information totally smacked me over the head. 

Both of these observations come from the 1875 Kansas state census.  John Church, who is Elias’ oldest son, is listed as owning his own property valued at $250.  The other is that there is a female listed after him with the initial E.  This is important because he lives next to his grandparents and their last name is Doyle.  So female E Church is most likely is his wife.  I can’t seem to find any more information on John Church after this census.  I am also looking for a marriage certificate that will help me find who E Church might be.  I am assuming he may have died before the 1880 census but I am still searching for a marriage record, a death record or a grave stone.  New clues are always exciting!

The third piece of information that jumped off of the page at me was some information on Emma Doyle.  Interestingly enough, Emma is John’s aunt but they are almost the same age.  Emma’s mother, Sarah would have been 39 years old when she was born.  Her closest sibling, Edwin is 13 years older than her.  John Church seemed to live with or near his grandparents most of his teenage years from what I can tell from the censuses I have seen. The thing that I noticed on the 1880 Federal census was that Emma was noted as not being able to read or write and also that she was insane.  The 1870 census confirmed that she was insane at age 16.

In doing further research I found out that when someone was marked as insane, the person taking marking the census record had to fill out an additional form that would tell what kind of disabilities the person had.  The form is called the DDD Schedule.   The D’s stand for Defective, Dependent, Delinquent.  So if you have an ancestor that was marked as being insane or idiotic on the 1880 census, you can find more information about them.

I was able to contact my friend at the Kansas State Historical Society and she was able to provide me with the following document:

Isn’t weird how you can look at a document over and over and totally miss a big piece of information?  That happened to me this week as I was looking over the information I have for the Church family.  Two pieces of information totally smacked me over the head. 

The first is that I noticed on the 1875 Kansas state census, John Church, Elias’ oldest son, has his own property valued at 250 and that there is a female listed after him with the initial E.  This is important because he lives next to his grandparents and their last name is Doyle.  So female E Church is most likely is his wife.  I can’t seem to find any more information on John Church after this census.  I am also looking for a marriage certificate that will help me find who E Church might be.  I am assuming he may have died before the 1880 census but I am still searching for a marriage record, a death record or a grave stone.  New clues are always exciting!

The second piece of information that jumped off of the page at me is some information on Emma Doyle.  Interestingly enough, Emma is John’s aunt but they are almost the same age.  Emma’s mother, Sarah would have been 39 years old when she was born.  Her closest sibling, Edwin is 13 years older than her.  John Church seemed to live with or near his grandparents most of his teenage years from what I can tell from the censuses I have seen.  The thing that I noticed on the 1880 Federal census was that Emma was noted as not being able to read or write and also that she was insane.  The 1870 census confirmed that she was insane at age 16.

In doing further research I found out that when someone was marked as insane, the person taking marking the census record had to fill out an additional form that would tell what kind of disabilities the person had.  The form is called the DDD Schedule.   The D’s stand for Defective, Dependent, Delinquent.  So if you have an ancestor that was marked as being insane or idiotic on the 1880 census, you can find more information about them.

I was able to contact my friend at the Kansas State Historical Society and she was able to provide me with the DDD Schedule for Emma Doyle.

On this schedule it tells me the form of disease as being epileptic fits.  It also states that she has an attendant and she has never been hospitalized for her illness.  Interesting that someone with epilepsy would be classified as insane.  This gives me a lot of insight into the family dynamics and the love they had for each other.  Emma was buried in the Lancaster Cemetery next to her parents in 1888.