Find Your Dead

Hutcheson Case Study

Yet another possible date of birth for Oril was apparently reported when he married. This record is indexed in a book, so it is possibly an error itself and would need to be checked on the original if someone were to be spending money on this project.

Hutcheson, O. O., age 38*
Dalton, May, age 24
21 Aug 1916 book #6, p. 99
Married by O. E. Comstock, min
Witnesses: Mary Shibell Brown, Lillee Thomas

Based on this, Oril was born in the year before 21 Aug 1878. I suppose that on the bright side this date falls within the range indicated by the records already discussed.

It should be noted that getting the original certificate will confirm that the indexers read his age correctly but will not provide the names of his parents. In Arizona, it was never required that a marriage license ask for that information. I have been to the office and discussed this with the clerk. The only time parents names may have been included in court records in Arizona was if a party was underage and a parent had to give consent. Unfortunately, sometimes those consents are missing. And in this case it wouldn’t help because the parties were well over the age of majority.

* Floyd R. Negley and Clark Tinney, editors, Arizona Marriages: Pima County, Marriage Book 5-10, Feb 1912 through Dec 1926 (Tucson, Arizona: Arizona State Genealogical Society, 1997), 152, citing Pima County Marriage Records book #6, p. 99.

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Hutcheson Case Study

A quick Google search for Oril led me to an article about his wife and the decision that this research thread would only be a case study. (Why re-research what has already been done?)

This article was edited by the Sharlot Hall Museum Archives department staff and was published in the “Days Past” column of the local newspaper in Prescott, Arizona.

It turns out that Etta Mae Olmstead Dalton Hutcheson was a state legislator who served nine terms in the Arizona House of Representatives after her husband died.* The article says that she married Oril O. Hutcheson, a conductor for the Southern Pacific Railroad, in 1916, the year after her first husband was struck and killed by a train. They had a son, Frank, in 1928. In 1949, both Oril and Etta’s daughter from her first marriage died. She is buried next to Oril in Evergreen Cemetery in Tucson.

Research Plan:

1. Check for gravestone photographs.
2. Check marriage indexes.
3. Check census records for Oril. Since I know Etta’s family, what can I discover about his family?

*Carol Powell, “Days Past: Etta Mae ‘Ma Hutch’ Hutcheson, Arizona Legislator, 1953-1972,” The Daily Courier, 27 Feb 2010, online archives (http://prescottdailycourier.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&subsectionID=1&articleID=78218 : accessed 5 Sep 2010).

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