It all started a few years ago, when I stumbled upon the marriage announcement for my third great grandfather, Charles Towson, and his wife, Frances Elizabeth Tarr. At this point I didn't know anything about Frances or her family, and I likely wouldn't have if my eyes hadn't scanned over the index, past the Towsons and Townsends and finally up to Tows, Charles.
Source: ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The Baltimore Sun (1837-1988); Aug 28, 1863.
But this story isn't about the Towsons, or not directly. Instead, it's about the search to find the man who married them. You see, Charles's name wasn't the only one misspelled in this marriage announcement– it turns out that there was no Rev. Mr. Colans in Baltimore in 1863. Or ever. Colans, it seemed to me then (and later turned out to be true), had to be a phonetic spelling of the surname Collins. The problem that there was a plethora of Collinses in Baltimore in the 1860s, and without a first name, it would be difficult to find out which one had been a reverend in 1863.
Fortunately for me, Charles was a Civil War soldier and one of his pension records on file at the National Archives gave a clue to the identity of the Rev. Mr. Collins.
In retrospect, I should have known to compare the J in July to the first initial of the reverend's name. At the time, I was doing my best to search down a J.D. Collins. The only Rev. J. Collins was a Joseph S. Collins, 28 W Baltimore. I couldn't find a church associated with 28 W Baltimore. I went into ProQuest and used the historic Baltimore Sun archives and searched for "Rev J. S. Collins" and found one associated with the Light Street Methodist Episcopal Church.
The Light Street ME Church went through many names. It is currently known as Lovely Lane and has a museum and archives. I couldn't be confident that it was the right church, but another record from the National Archives showed that John T. Tarr (Frances Tarr Towson's father) had married his second wife at the East Baltimore Station Methodist Episcopal Church. This isn't the same church, but it is the same denomination, and Lovely Lane's archives contains all the records of closed churches in the Baltimore conference that didn't merge with another church, or that merged with another church that later closed.
Today, my grandmother and I visited the Lovely Lane museum and archives. I will confess that I didn't spend much time looking at the displays. Instead, a nice man whose name I did not catch immediately set to work helping me find the records that I needed. I couldn't pinpoint exactly the church or reverend for the Towsons' marriage, so instead we looked for the record of John T. Tarr's remarriage. I found that fairly quickly, and from there, I asked to see if there was anything about deaths of church members, to see if I could find any hint as to where John's first wife, Griselda, was buried. I had her date of death, but no information on where she was buried, as she does not appear in the family plot in Baltimore Cemetery.
I was brought the membership lists and I turned to 1864, the year of Griselda's death. What would you know, but one of the names on that page was Geo. T. D. Collins, deacon. Over the course of the day, I've found some other information about Rev. Collins, including the names of his children by his first and second marriages, plus where he was buried. The Lovely Lane archives had information on where he was active in the years 1865-1867, 1886, 1888-1895, and 1897-1901, but not anything about where he was from the years of his election to the rank of deacon to the date of the Towson's marriage. In addition, the Lovely Lane records had his election to deacon occurring in 1860, but Baltimore Sun records show that a "George T.D. Collins" was elected deacon in 1878– but this could be George's son, G.T.D. Collins Jr, also a reverend in the Methodist church.
Source: ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The Baltimore Sun (1837-1988); Mar 22, 1902; pg. 6.
At the end of the day, I know a lot more about George T.D. Collins than I ever have before. But I still don't know the critical detail about where he was in 1863. But when, or if, I manage to find that, I hope to be able to find record of the births of Charles and Frances Towson's firstborns, William and James, who were born and died in 1868 with almost no record of their existence.
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