Helen Richardson - November 24, 1897
Actually, Dragnet’s Joe Friday never said “Just the facts, ma’am.” According to Wikipedia, anyway, the line was actually “All we want are the facts.” Either way, facts are often hard to come by. Everyone has his own version. It’s what makes writing about historical events history difficult.
Even family history, which should be fairly easy to check, is full of discouraging discrepancies. I’ve just been writing about the circumstances of my maternal grandparents’ marriage. My grandmother’s mother was very ill, seemingly at death’s door (although she lingered for five more years), and so the grand church wedding that was to have taken place a few weeks hence was cancelled. The young couple were married at the bedside of the bride’s mother. It was November 24, 1897.
I’ve known that date for a good many years – at least since 1947 when I was eleven and the whole family gathered to celebrate my grandparents’ Golden Wedding Anniversary. We also have their wedding license, framed in a fancy gilded frame that, grand though it is, isn’t nearly as ornate as the certificate, itself. The parchment document is affixed with a foil seal which is embossed “Superior Court Alameda County California” and it is signed by dignitaries of the court, the church, and the two families.
I’ve also ‘always’ known that their wedding took place on Thanksgiving Day. My late and venerable Uncle Willard affirmed that bit of information for posterity in his book Oysterville, Roads to Grandpa’s Village. But I am a fact checker and before I put my own spin on that long-ago wedding, I looked up November 24, 1897 on a perpetual calendar. It was a Wednesday!
Knowing that Congress and Presidents sometimes mess around with traditional holiday dates, I did a little more fact-checking. I found that it was President Lincoln who decreed that Thanksgiving should be on the final Thursday of November 1863 and it has been on Thursday — but sometimes the fourth, sometimes the fifth and not necessarily the last — ever since. Furthermore, in October of 1897, the year of my primary concern, President William McKinley delivered a proclamation designating the twenty-fifth day of November for national thanksgiving and prayer,
I wonder how the Espy Thanksgiving Wedding Myth came about in the first place. Did my grandparents misremember? More importantly, I wonder why Willard didn’t do a little checking of his own before he set that piece of misinformation in stone.
It’s not the first time I’ve caught him out in an error of fact. Unfortunately, when it’s my well-known and respected Uncle Willard’s word versus mine, I don’t expect to be given much credence. Oh well. There is some satisfaction in simply finding out the facts
I’m curious about the different ways things are remembered too. Since the ceremony took place at your great-grandmother’s bedside, I can’t imagine many, if any, other people being present. I wonder if the festivities/celebration with family and friends occurred the following day, on Thanksgiving, and this is why it has been remembered as a Thanksgiving Day wedding? Surely, there would have been displaced guests from the cancelled church wedding – maybe they were all invited to share a Thanksgiving dinner instead?
That thought occurred to me, too, Claudia, and I think that is probably exactly what happened. My grandmother kept a list of the many wedding presents they received and also the letters from friends and relatives who were unable to attend. There are references to other people who actually did attend but, unfortunately, the date is not made clear.
Peering back into even family past makes one feel like Howard Carter looking for Tutankamun’s tomb. As you know, I’m having trouble even finding my grandmother’s birth certificate. Just today I received an email from Powell’s Books in Portland with a book that will hopefully help me peer even farther back into my family history. Were it easy, it might not be as much fun–rather like solving a mystery.
Just yesterday we were talking about how fact checking is, by and large, much easier than it once was. When I worked for the Alameda County Library System in Fremont I was so impressed with the research librarian who would dog questions for patrons, calling other libraries if ours did not have the answer or pointing them in the right direction. And yet, even with computers, the scrap of information we want remains out of reach.
You must start your “fact checking” with the spelling of “Dragnet”, not “drag net”!
You are so right! Thanks so much for noticing!