♀Sarah Wilkinson

Sarah Wilkinson (about 1854 – about 1916) was a daughter of the Friendsville merchant and county judge William Robert Wilkinson, and, a compiled Illinois marriage index gives, the wife of Thomas H. Penn. She died at her home in Kokomo, Indiana. She was the great-grand-aunt of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), the sister of Robert Thomas Wilkinson (1850–1917), Nancy’s great-grandfather.

Early life

She was born about 1854 in Wabash County, Illinois, the daughter of William Robert Wilkinson (1816–1886) and Sarah Williams (1816–1885). A county history published in 1883 says the couple had eight children, five of them then living. She was six at the census of 1860, when the household at Friendsville included her mother’s father, George Williams, aged 74 and born in Ireland, and eighteen, still at Friendsville, at that of 1870. An index to the 1880 census lists three children in the household at Friendsville, Jennie, George and Sadie, which fits her with her younger sister Jane and brother George.

Marriage and death

A marriage index gives her marriage to Thomas H. Penn on 2 November 1881 at Wabash Precinct, Wabash County, and names the bride’s mother as Sarah Williams. The 1883 county history lists her among her parents’ living children as Penn’s wife. No children are recorded.

The only record of her death is her brother Robert’s obituary in the Mount Carmel Register of 15 September 1917, which says that “Mrs. Thomas Penn” had “passed away one year ago at her home at Kokomo, Ind.” Kokomo is in Howard County.

Notes

Her brother’s obituary

Robert’s obituary counts “Mrs. Thomas Penn” among his five children, but she was his sister: a marriage in 1881 cannot belong to a daughter of a couple married in 1874, and the census of 1900 and his widow’s obituary give four children. The same notice names his sisters Alice and Mary and his brother George as the surviving siblings and leaves Sarah, who had died, out of that list.

Birth year

The census of 1860 gives her age as 6, the marriage index gives 26 in 1881, and the census of 1870 gives 18. The birth year of about 1854 lies between the first two; the 1870 age is the one that stands apart.