We Will Call It … The Mystery of the 19th Century Marriage Certificate

Workers at the Hope Chest Thrift Store in Bolivia, N.C., made a fun discovery several weeks ago, and managed to solve a nearly unsolvable puzzle. Hope Harbor Executive Director Karmen Smith was looking at an old picture that had been donated of a little girl with a black dog and discovered that beneath the painting was a hidden piece of paper. It was a Marriage Certificate of a New Jersey couple. The names were very faded, but the first name was possibly William. The second name seemed too faded but might have been Katey. The date was April 11, 1875. Finding the family seemed impossible — until it wasn’t! 

 Thanks to social media, some genealogical research and Facebook sharing, the certificate is now in the hands of the couple’s great-granddaughter. Connie Knox, a local Genealogist spent a weekend of research looking through Ancestry.com posts. Hundreds of miles away, Irene Cornish of New York Mills, New York, decided to log into Ancestry.com on a whim. As it turned out, Knox was able to determine that Cornish was the great-granddaughter of the New Jersey couple. She told the outlet she only knows her great-grandmother, Katherine “Katey” Havey moved to America around the end of the Irish Potato Famine and went on to work as a servant in a Bordentown, New Jersey hotel until earning her citizenship, while her great-grandfather—William DeWorth—built and rented carnival rides, acts, and equipment for a living. 

 The marriage certificate is now in the hands of a family member … as improbable as that may have seemed in the beginning. 

Photo:  Hope Harbor Executive Director Karmen Smith