MN MN - Solomon Pettibone, 1870

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=sh&GRid=32810024&

Solomon Pettibone

Not much info at all on Solomon Pettibone. He is only mentioned in passing. But the link contains a fascinating victim account of the 1862 Minnesota Sioux Uprising.

That Indian war resulted in many deaths and culminated with the trial of 395 Sioux Indians for the murder of 480 white settlers (including women and children). Death sentences were given to 303 of the Indians and on 26 December 1862, 38 of them were hanged simultaneously on the same gallows in Mankato, Minnesota. President Lincoln commuted the death sentences of the others.

I spent way too much time on this for no good reason today.

The Findagrave story is a shorter version of the book Lavina Day Eastlick wrote, called
Thrilling incidents of the Indian War of 1862 : being a personal narrative of the outrages and horrors witnessed by Mrs. L. Eastlick in Minnesota.

The memorial to Lavina Day references Solomon Pettibone this way :

"In 1870, Lavina [nee Day] married Solomon Pettibone. Three months later, Solomon visited his sister in Ohio for several days. He left her place to return to Minnesota, but was never heard from or seen again. Lavina's daughter was born in August the following summer."

BUT, according to a genealogical history of the Day family published in 1940:

"..[Lavina Day Eastlick Smith] married November 1870 Solomon Pettibone. He deserted her and returned to Ohio before the birth of their child."

Side mystery: while Solomon Pettibone shows up in the 1850 US Census, and his marriage certificate to Lavina in 1870 is available (he was 50 at the time), he seems otherwise absent from the record (newspapers, FamilySearch.) I even checked Canada's Censuses 1871-1901 with alternate spellings to no avail.