#52 Weeks - Defective, Dependent & Deliquent - Henry Sargent

Amy Johnson Crow at No Story Too Small has a weekly challenge to write the stories of your ancestors. This is week #33 and the suggested theme is Defective, Dependent & Delinquent. The suggestion is referring to the 1880 special schedule that enumerated the blind, deaf, paupers, homeless children, prisoners, insane, and idiotic.

The 1880 DDD Schedule for Indiana is not online that I could find.  I did look at the 1880 census and found that my 2X great grandfather, Jacob Sargent, was listed with his wife and three youngest children.  Jacob’s 20 year old son, Henry, is shown as having consumption under the health question #15 which asks:

Is the person [on the day of the Enumerator’s visit] sick or temporarily disabled, so as to be unable to attend to ordinary business or duties?

If so, what is the sickness or disability?

This is going to have to be my defective listing. Consumption was the terminology at the time for tuberculosis. Henry died just five years later at the age of 25, in December of 1895. His brother Everett dies in 1889 at the age of 23. Jacob and his wife Nancy Jane had six children, only three married, and all died by age 41.

1880 Census for Jacob Sargent, McCameron Township, Martin Co., Indiana

You might have noticed that there is another disability listed on this page under James Sargent, several lines above Jacob. James is a brother of Jacob and he has “piles”, today known as hemorrhoids.

I decided to see what other disabilities were listed in Jacob's township. Of they 1111 people enumerated, I found the following:

Measles (8 children in two families), disease of heart, cholera (2), neuralgia (2), pleurisy, rheumatism, kidney disease, malaria (2), fever (3), ruptured, scrofula in eyes, gunshot, consumption (2), piles, phthisic (asthma).

In addition there were 4 that were blind, 2 idiotic, 2 insane, and 12 maimed. 

I was drawn in by the gunshot that was listed and I had to see if I could find out more about that.  The name was Joseph Smiley and I found the following newspaper clipping:

The only other info I could find on 24 year old Smiley was that he was married in January that same year to 19 year old Barbara Huff. Joseph Huff from the article must be some relation to her. 

I'm so easily led astray, but I enjoy the search!