Maybe Dead Men Can Vote Twice; They Can Also be Counted in Censuses

I am working with a group led by my former major professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg on what's called, in fifty-dollar language, a prosopography.  That simply means an attempt to identify and describe all the people in a certain place at a certain time.  The certain place in question here is Colonial Spanish Florida, and the time, or times, in question span from 1565 to 1763, and from 1784 to 1821, called, respectively, the First Spanish Period and the Second Spanish Period.

I am entering some of my data into a template.  These data will become part of this massive project, which will be an online database, searchable by anyone who is interested.

Now, let me say that I've seen people who were counted twice in censuses.  My great-great grandfather Charles Reed was counted twice in the 1860 U.S. Census, and my father was counted twice in the 1930 U.S. Census.  I've seen people whose names were mangled in the censuses.  I've seen male people identified as female people, with a female name substituted for the male name.  That happened to the famous Prohibition agent Eliot Ness, in the 1910 census in which he was identified as Ella, seven-year-old daughter of Peter Ness, when in fact he was, of course, Eliot, Peter's son.  Since the U.S. censuses are kept from public view for 72 years after they are taken, I'm sure Mr. Ness, who died in 1957, never knew of this goof. I've seen people given odd professions.  One man in the 1935 Florida census is identified by profession as a lobster!  The enumerator, of course, meant "lobsterman," but the form did not give him enough room to write the entire word.

However, I have never seen a dead person enumerated in a census post-mortem.  Until now.

I am working on entering some data from the 1793 census of St. Augustine, and there is an entry for a man whose name was Theophilus Hill.  What a great name!  The Spanish rendered it as Teofilo Hill.  When I came across this entry, my reaction was, "Theophilus Hill was alive in 1793?"  I had seen his death record, it is in his file in my file cabinet, along with over 1600 other residents of St. Augustine during the Second Spanish Period, on which I am still gathering names and data.  I remembered vaguely that he had died earlier.  I pulled his file, and there, in the back of the file, is his death record, taken from the St. Augustine parish death records, the original documents.  The information is on a form I have created just for this purpose.  And the date of death?  20 December 1790.

When the census had been taken, Theophilus Hill had been dead for around three years.

Is there a chance that there was another Theophilus Hill in St. Augustine?  No.  He and his wife Teresa Thomas had four daughters and a son named Juan (John), who died at age 9 in 1796.  There was no Theophilus Hill, Jr.  I have not found any other Hill family in St. Augustine.  The data in the 1793 census matches the information I have on the deceased Mr. Hill.  There is no notation in the census, as was customary, that someone else was informing for Mr. Hill on the census.  The 1793 census of St. Augustine is one of the few, if not the only, census on which we know, at least in a small percentage of the entries, who the informant was, prior to the 1940 U.S. Census.  When a householder was absent, the census-taker would obtain the necessary information from someone else, and would record the name, or at least the relationship to the householder, of the individual reporting for him.

I have no idea how a man who had been dead for around three years ended up enumerated in the 1793 St. Augustine census.  Was the grieving widow that much in denial?  Was there some reason someone wanted Mr. Hill recorded in the census -- as a memorial?  Was there another motive?  And since, obviously, Mr. Hill could not have responded to the census-taker himself, why did that official not record who was giving the information?

Or could the death record be in error?  I doubt that.  Theophilus Hill and his family were well known to St. Augustine's people.  One of his four daughters was married to one of the most prominent men in St. Augustine, don Francisco Xavier Sánchez.  Certainly the priest who conducted the burial, Father Thomas Hassett, knew Theophilus Hill, his wife, Teresa Thomas, and his four daughters.  After all, he was the priest who conducted the marriage between Theophilus Hill's daughter and don Francisco.  No, I think the death record is correct.

Which provides us with a dandy mystery.

Another Disambiguation: Three Miguel O'Reillys in St. Augustine!

In 1788, there were three men named Miguel (Michael) O'Reilly in St. Augustine, Spanish Florida.  Their disambiguation was necessary to identify the one who was a witness to the petition of Guillermo (William) Gernon and Isabel (or Elizabeth) MacEnery for permission to marry, filed 17 December 1788.(1)  In his witness statement, the particular Miguel O'Reilly stated that he was 31 years old.  According to the 1793 census, there was a Miguel O'Reilly in St. Augustine who was either married or widowed, with three sons, a businessman or trader (tratante in Spanish).(2)

The most well-known man of the same name was the Irish assistant priest at the Catholic church.  He would have been 36 years old in 1788, the year of the above petition.  He died in 1812.(3)  As a Catholic priest, he was, of course, single.  He can be ruled out.

Another Miguel O'Reilly was a single young man, according to his death certificate, 25 years old at the time of his death, possibly in some sort of industrial accident.  He would have been either 22 or 23 in 1788, too young to be the witness to Gernon's petition.  Nothing else is known of him besides his marital status, his age at death, and his date of death, 28 November 1791.(4)

The third Miguel O'Reilly, the businessman, self-described as above as 31 years old and shown to have children, signed his name to the petition of 1788.  At that time, many men, especially those of importance or substance, added a flourish to their signatures, known as a rubric.  Father Miguel O'Reilly, the priest, had a rubric which was complex, with an ornate flourish at the end.(5)  His handwriting differs significantly from the signature on the petition, and he has already been ruled out.

Miguel O'Reilly the businessman had a rubric which was simple and quick to execute, indicative of one who deals with a considerable amount of paperwork, as seen on his signature on the 1788 petition.  The Miguel O'Reilly who witnessed Guillermo Gernon's petition in 1788 was the businessman O'Reilly.

(1)  Petition of Guillermo Gernon for permission to marry Ysabel Mac-Enery, Matrimonial licenses, Reel 132, Bundle 298R9, #31, East Florida Papers.  (Names are as they are in the document.)
(2) 1793 Census, Reel 148, Bundle 323A, East Florida Papers, f. 135v.
(3)  Michael V. Gannon, The Cross in the Sand (Gainesville:  University Press of Florida, 1965), 116.
(4)  Death certificate of Miguel O'Reilly, Death records, Book 1, 1784-1793, Ecclesiastical Records of the St. Augustine Diocese, Vanderbilt University (online).
(5) For an example of Father Miguel O'Reilly's rubric, see any of the church records, Ecclesiastical Records of the St. Augustine Diocese, Vanderbilt University, (online), between 1784 and 1812.