Josephine Allen

AUDITED 5 Aug 2026 (supersedes the note of 4 Aug 2026) - [111] JOSEPHINE ALLEN.Her published obituary was found and read on the page image: Texas Christian Advocate (Dallas), 13 May 1909 p. 14, reprinted 20 May 1909 p. 14. In her own denomination's weekly it gives: maiden name ALLEN; born BALTIMORE, Md., 21 October 1834; married in Washington, Penn., 4 November 1852; removed to Arkansas 1855 and to Decatur, Texas 1895; died 16 April 1909 in the home of her son-in-law E. H. Baumgaertner.APPLIED FROM IT: birth tightened from the bare 'Oct 1834' to 21 Oct 1834, and birthplace from the bare 'Maryland' to Baltimore. The 16 Apr 1909 death already in the tree is confirmed exactly by the obituary.GRADE: STRONG, NOT PROVEN. An obituary is one informant, and here the informant is a grieving family reporting a birth 74 years earlier; 'born in Baltimore' is testimony, not a birth record.THE TWO PRINTINGS DIFFER ON THE HUSBAND'S INITIAL: 13 May 1909 reads 'W. F. Crouch', 20 May 1909 reads 'W. T. Crouch'. Both images read at zoom. The reprint is the correction and it runs toward the tree's William T. Crouch [110].✪ MARRIAGE DATE - RESOLVED 5 Aug 2026, superseding the 4 Aug paragraph that said the field had NOT been changed. Owen ruled: adopt the obituary's 4 November 1852 over the tree's uncited '1853'. The F71 marriage event now reads 4 Nov 1852 and carries citation C7039. The reasoning is not that 1852 is likelier but that a CITED date is checkable and an uncited one is inert.NOT A CONFLICT IF THE RETURN SURFACES: a ceremony on 4 Nov 1852 and a county RETURN recorded in 1853 are compatible - returns were routinely filed weeks or months later, and 4 November sits close enough to year-end for a filing to slip. If a Washington Co., Pa. return ever appears dated 1853 it RECONCILES both values rather than refuting the obituary.⛔ THE NAMED NEXT DOCUMENT IS DEAD - a finished negative, 5 Aug 2026. There is no Washington County, Pennsylvania marriage register for 1852-54. The Pennsylvania State Archives RG-47 series list gives that county one 1852-era vital series, an Index to Birth Records 1852-1853; its marriage series begin 1885. Control: 26 of the 62 counties on the same page DO carry an 1852-55 marriage series, so this is a county-specific loss, not a state-wide absence and not an instrument failure. The one published transcript (E. B. Iams, copied pre-1944) notes "The originals do not seem to be in existance anymore" - and it DOES contain a different Crouch marriage six weeks later at Washington, Pa. (Watson Crouch, 14 Dec 1852), which is the control proving the corpus would have shown ours had it survived. Stop queuing this document.⛔ HER OWN TEXAS DEATH CERTIFICATE CANNOT NAME HER PARENTS EITHER: Wise Co. file 990, retrieved and read - father and mother fields BLANK.⛔ HER MAIDEN NAME IS IN DISPUTE, AND THE NAME FIELD HAS DELIBERATELY NOT BEEN CHANGED. Two Wise County documents give it as WELDON, not Allen: the 1949 Texas death certificate of her daughter Lizzie C. Crouch Baumgaertner ("MOTHER'S MAIDEN NAME - Josephine Weldon - Maryland") and Christian Funeral Home Record of Funeral no. 2593 for the same death. These are very probably ONE 1949 informant chain, not two independent informants - a funeral record and the certificate it fed - so this is one 1949 informant against the 1909 obituary's "nee Allen", not two against one. Both agree on Maryland. A fourth reading fits everything: that Allen was her MIDDLE name and Weldon her surname - her headstone reads "JOSEPHINE A." Owen ruled 5 Aug 2026: record both informants, change nothing.☞ CONSEQUENCE FOR SEARCHING: every future census hunt for her must be run under BOTH surnames. The decisive documents - 1850 Baltimore, 1860 Clark Co. Ark., 1900 Decatur - are all sign-in-walled and are browser tasks.STILL OPEN: she remains parentless.INSTRUMENT NOTE: the county paper could never have answered this - the Portal to Texas History holds zero Decatur News issues for 1902 and zero for 1909. The denominational weekly did. For a Methodist Texan c. 1850s-1920s, search the denominational weekly before the county weekly.