Daniel Shotts and Mary
Ann Bishop were my children’s third great-grandparents on their father’s side.
On 28 March 1831, Daniel Shotts married Mary Ann Bishop in
Ross County, Ohio.[1]
They had obtained their license on the 19th of March and were married nine days
later by Pleasant Thurman.
 |
| 1831 Ross Co., Ohio Marriage Daniel Shotts & Mary Ann Bishop |
So what can be learned from this record? There were no other
records with Pleasant Thurman listed on the same page. Some of the marriages on
the page did identify if the officiant, perhaps as M.G. (Minister of the
Gospel) or even by identifying the church. So was Pleasant Thurman a minister?
He could also have been a justice of the peace.
Searching in Ross County records on Ancestry.com, I found Pleasant Thurman living in the area in the 1820,
1830, 1840, and 1850 censuses. The 1850 census for Chillicothe, Ross County,
Ohio, gave no occupation. He was sixty-six years old.[2]
In an abstract of death notices from newspapers, specifically from New York Evening Post, I found a death
notice for Rev. Pleasant Thurman, dying at age 73 on 11 Feb 1856.[3]
He was from Chillicothe, Ohio. So he was a minister. Now I want to find which
church was he affiliated with.
In Appleton’s Cyclopaedia
of American Biography, Volume 6, the
biography of statesman, Allen Granbery Thurman, listed his father as Rev.
Pleasant Thurman, a minister of the Methodist Church in Chillicothe, Ohio.[4]
The Shotts and Bishop families lived mostly in Huntington
Township. The Mt. Olive ME church was built at Bishop Hill and was said to be
the first Methodist church built in the township, but I can’t determine when it
was built.[5]
Could the church have been built and this was the place where Mary Ann and
Daniel were married? Or were they married at the Methodist church in
Chillicothe, the county seat of Ross County?
The marriage record itself does not indicate the marriage
location. But what is known, the couple were married by a Methodist minister.
[1] "Ohio
County Marriages 1789-2013", Vol C, p 255, Shotts-Bishop, 1831, database
& digital images, Familysearch.org
(http://familysearch.org : accessed 25 May 2015); citing FHL film 281649.
[2]
1850 U.S. census, Ross County, Ohio, pop. sched., p. 53 (stamped), dwelling
819, family 819, Pleasant Thurman, digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com
: accessed 2 Nov 2016); citing NARA M432, roll 725.
[3] “U.S.,
Newspaper Extractions from the Northeast, 1704-1930,” New York Evening Post, p. 93, 1856, death notice, Rev. Pleasant Thurman,
digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 2 Nov
2016); citing Deaths Taken From The New
York Evening Post from April 23, 1855 to March 17, 1856, Volume 32, copied
and compiled by Gertrude A. Barber, 1942,
American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.
[4] James
Grant Wilson, editor, Appleton’s
Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume 6, p. 108, Allen Granbery Thurman bio, digital
image, Google Books (http://books.google.com : accessed 2 Nov
2016).
[5]
Henry Holcomb Bennett, editor, The County
of Ross, Selwyn A. Brant, Madison, Wisconsin, 1902, p. 344, digital image, Google Books (http://books.google.com : accessed 2 Nov
2016).
Copyright © 2016 by Lisa Suzanne Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.
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