Timmons Seburn Literal: Death Certificate. (died 1-2-1929)

re-posted from January 2015

When Timmons died, he was buried in Old Selena Cemetery, near his daughter, Lisley.

For years he did not have a tombstone until long after he, and then, Mary Catherine was buried. Sometime in the 60s or 70s, the children and grandchildren of Mary and Timmons got together and had a double stone created and installed for them.

I don’t know where they got the dates for Mary & Tim, but they were not accurate.

Fortunately, we have come across some more information, which allows us to be a little more specific.

The birthdates probably came from the census research of their grandson, William Archie Smith. When the stone was purchased and carved, this was probably all they had to go on. To my knowledge, there is no family bible with their dates in them. Kizzie Comer Littrell had a family bible with family dates in it, but that bible was lost in the flood of 1937. Later, Kizzie attempted to record the dates from memory into a new bible, but examination has proven her memory was inaccurate. (I believe that bible was last in possession of Onene Littrell Curtis.)

At Old Selena Cemetery in 2008

We are now able to shed a little light on the passing of Timmons as we have obtained a copy of his and his brother-in-law James Urban’s death certificate.

There is no ‘informant’ named on the document, but we assume that the information was provided by Mary or one of her children from the specific date. The fact that the children didn’t have a specific date placed on the tombstone leaves me to assume that Mary was the probable informant. Mary doesn’t know Timmons's father's name, but then he was dead long before Mary knew Timmons. He died during the civil war and was buried in a mass grave in Georgia, so there never would have been a grave to visit. All the informant seems to know is Timmons's birthdate, May 27, 1856, and Timmons's mother's maiden name, Mary Cox.

The document shows that Timmons was a farmer and that he had ‘retired’ from farming three years earlier at the age of 69. Apparently, he was in ill health for over a year—the doctor notes in the document that he had been attended the deceased from January of 1928. The last time the doctor saw Timmons was on New Year's Eve. Timmons passed two days later. He was 72 years, 7 months, and 17 days old.

He died of Bronchial pneumonia and Nephritis (inflammation of the kidneys)
see Our Ancestors Diseases

1929 turned out to be a horrendous year for Mary Catherine.

• Her son Pressley Eli Littrell would have a seizure, falling from his buggy and drowning in the muddy road just 3 days after Timmons died.
• Two weeks after Pressley’s death, a grandson of Mary’s would die, Roy L. Smith.
• By the end of the year, her oldest son, James Carroll Littrell, would load his family and move them to Missouri.

Mary Catherine Urban Literal would pass away within about a year of James moving.

see also
see also

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