15 September 2012

Hector Watson or Hector Walton?

One has to love newspaper articles that provide insight into our ancestors' lives besides when they were born, married, died, or broke the law.

That's the case with this Trenton, New Jersey, paper item on Hector--Watson or Walton, depending upon which part of the article is correct.

Date: Friday, December 31, 1880  

Paper: Trenton State Gazette (Trenton, NJ)

  obtained on  Genealogybank.com
Bucks County is a reference to Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Hector apparently brought a load of goods to sell--turkeys, chickens, eggs, butter, etc. but had some trouble with his horse that became frightened.

The article refers to him as "Mr. Walton" at the end of the article--apparently a reference to the same Hector.

A search of the 1880 census should determine if there was a Hector Walton in Bucks County. On the surface, one cannot be certain whether the individual in question is Hector Watson or Hector Walton.
Directories for Bucks County may also answer the question of whether there was both a Hector Watson and Hector Walton in the area.

Of course, the Hector I'm looking for should be a farmer or someone with an occupation reasonably tied to the person in the newspaper article. The problem is that on the surface, we cannot assume that the first reference to Hector is automatically the correct one.