It's Not Him, In Which I Admit my Error

     Remember my last post when I talked about my Irish mining ancestors and not learning much from the tract books?  Scratch both, I was wrong.  Uncle Edward Hore from Ricketstown, County Carlow was indeed a miner, and he was doing his mining in Amador County California; I have his voter registration from that county stating his birthplace of Ireland, his occupation as miner, and that he was naturalized in Cayuga County, New York in 1860.  In the city of Auburn to be precise.  But there was another gentleman named Edward Hore in Amador County.  The 1880 census says the other Edward was born in Massachusetts.  After studying the entry in the tract book for Edward Hore, I began to notice some dates that didn't add up.

     Above is the entry.  The date of sale is August of 1872, the problem here is that Uncle Edward died in January of 1872.  So could it be his son Edward Jr.?  No, he was only six years old at the time.  The Act of 1862 mentioned in the entry refers to the homestead act passed that year.  After residing on a claim for five years the settler could file for a final certificate (the CTF in the document above) and become the legal owner of the claim.  So maybe 1872 was the year the claim was "proved"?  Nope.  In 1870 Uncle Edward and his family were living in San Francisco not on the claim as he would have been required to do.  And the final certificate dated in 1878 is clearly the moment the claim became the property of Edward from Massachusetts.

     I was a bit disappointed to learn I had the wrong Edward, but glad I had found the truth.  At this point I don't believe Uncle Edward ever owned any land in California or elsewhere.  He lived  a difficult life, fleeing the famine in Ireland, losing three children, and enduring the grueling life of a nineteenth century miner with little to show for it, dying of meningitis in a tenement in San Francisco at a relatively young age.

San Francisco Call, Jan. 27, 1872-- In this city, January 26, Edward O'Hore, a native of County Carlow, Ireland, aged 45 years. [Auburn (NY) papers please copy.]  Friends and acquaintances are respectfully invited to attend the funeral, tomorrow (Sunday) at 2 1/2 o'clock p.m. from his late residence, Beale Street, between Folsom and Howard, without further notice.

     This is exactly why all sources need to be searched out and considered.  Without digging into the land records it would have been easy to assume this was Uncle Edward's claim.