"He's been on her again. She's big. I may be a paralyzed invalid, but I can still see, I still hear. Keep it down in there. I'm talking to you, Henry."
In his last interview in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, February, 1903, Henry says that his wife was a Lima girl. He was 22 when he married.From the unwritten and unpublished diaries of Jerusha Backus Osborne, 1818-1889.
It's worth a mention that if the reporter captured his tone correctly, Henry was "delighted" to talk about the past. Sounds like he's eating well, looking at the bright side of being in the Livingston County NY poor house. His memory serves him well. Well, semi-well. On a roll, he shares that he and his wife, a Lima girl, had nine children, of whom seven are still alive.
He doesn't mention, or maybe he forgot, that he didn't have all those children with his wife.
So let's imagine that Henry's out in the potato field and we are here at the house, answering questions being put by the census taker in 1870. He's writing all this down. He doesn't understand the relationships. Appears to be that Henry Osborne is the head of the household, check, his mother, check; then we have a wife, Jerusha, and three daughters, okay. Who's this Catharine Whaley, age 21? Same age as the eldest daughter, Jennie. Jennie is a domestic servant, Catharine has "no occupation." Who's this little Willie Whaley, 24 months?
In the 1880 census, it says that Willie Whaley is now Willie Osborn and look, he has a couple more brothers. Why that's Henry's surname. My God, that's your surname, Jerusha! Did you give birth and didn't know it? You are by now, according to the 1880 census taker, a confirmed invalid, paralysis. And well past childbearing years. But still Henry's wife.
Who are those guys?
Wormhole: click and see where Jerusha wound up in 1889, and Henry died in 1902. It's now a charming bed and breakfast. Livingston County Almshouse