Delia A. Miner Cobb Bird Hooker stretches the truth

This is the story of a death notice about a person who wasn't actually dead and how Delia Miner Cobb Bird Hooker used it to help her qualify for a Civil War widow's pension.

The first time I ran across the 1866 death notice for Byron Bird in a California newspaper, I assumed there must have been two men by the same name living in California at that time, or that the notice might have had something to do with Bryon's wife, Delia. (Spoiler alert: it did have something to with Delia, but not in the way I imagined.)

When I first read the notice, I already had ample evidence that "my" Byron Bird lived well beyond 1866. (The 1900 US Census, for example.) At the same time, I could find no record of Byron's wife Delia after the mid-1860s. It thought it was possible that the newspaper was announcing the death of Mrs. Byron B. Bird. Several pieces of evidence seemed to point to that conclusion:

• Byron is shown as a widower in the 1900 census.
• Delia was born in New York and would have been about 34 years old in 1866. 
• Byron had siblings in the Chicago area; it would make sense for a California paper to note: "Chicago papers please copy."

Daily Alta California, Vol. 19, #6345, 30 July 1867.
California Digital Newspaper Collection, web.

However, sometime after that, I discovered two newspaper mentions of Delia that indicate she divorced Byron and very shortly after, became Mrs. Ambrose Hooker. (I would likely never have discovered these facts without digitized newspapers.) Ambrose was a well-known soldier who served in several US conflicts, so there were abundant mentions of him in newspapers and even in several books. After Ambrose died in early 1883, Delia applied for a widow's pension. As part of that application, she provided details of her marriage to Ambrose, as well as information about the status of prior spouses (one of them, at least): Byron B. Bird, brother of my g-g-grandfather Edwin R. Bird.

In her affidavit, Delia swore that Byron died of a fever in a mining camp in 1866. As evidence of this claim, she attached a newspaper death notice - the exact notice I had found. In her affidavit, she stated that "she knows no person now living who was present at the death of her said first husband Byron Bird."

Parts of her deposition were accurate. But there are several problems with her statement. Byron was her second husband. Edwin H. Cobb, her first husband, is not mentioned in the narrative at all. Both former spouses were alive in 1883. She divorced her first husband just before she married Byron, then divorced Byron to marry Ambrose.

The closing comments of her deposition sum up the situation somewhat ironically:

Page 2 of Affidavit, Civil War Widow's 

Pension Application

"The deponent further states that she believes that any further search or inquiry for proof of the death of her first husband, the said Byron Bird, would be useless."

Which is absolutely true, since proof of death is very hard to come by for living people.

Several questions remain unanswered. Did Delia report Byron's death to the newspaper in 1866? If so, why? If they were estranged and she thought he was dead, I doubt she would have gone to the effort of divorcing him.

Delia prevailed in her petition and was granted a pension of $20/month, which was raised to $30/month in 1906. She died in 1911 and is buried in Oswego County, New York. Edwin Cobb died in 1885 and is buried in Auburn. Byron B. Bird died in San Francisco in 1910. 

I first shared parts of this story for a competition sponsored by the AncestryInsider in 2016. 

Sources:

Affidavit of Delia A. Hooker, 24 April 1883, State of Nebraska, Holt County, 3 pages; in Widow’s Application no. 302,112; Soldier’s Certificate No. 201,692, Ambrose E. Hooker, Captain, Unassigned Company, Regiment 9, Cavalry; Pension applications for service in the US Army between 1861 and 1900, grouped according to the units in which the veterans served; Civil War and Later Pension Files; Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Record Group 15; National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

“Court Proceedings,” Daily Alta California, Volume 19, Number 6345, 30 July 1867. California Digital Newspaper Collection, Center for Bibliographic Studies and Research, University of California, Riverside, http://cdnc.ucr.edu, Accessed 22 October 2012.

"Report of the Committee on the Judiciary on the bill for the Relief of Edwin H. Cobb." Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York, Volume 1, New York (State). Legislature. Assembly 1852. Google Books. Web.