John Quigley had two wives, both of which are buried next to him at Middle Spring Presbyterian. Tradition states that the first wife was Eleanor McCune, who died in February of 1854, after which John remarried. The various pieces of information about Eleanor are a bit contradictory though. Several sources state that she was born in 1826, but that birth date doesn’t jive with what is actually on her gravestone, so let’s take a closer look at that stone. The death date is not in question, so I’ve focused on the section that states  her age at death. To me, that figure could be either 33 or 39 but neither of those work if she was supposedly born in 1826, since we know she died in 1854. The figure most likely reads “39th” as the superscript looks more like a “th” than the “rd” that would appear if it were “33rd”.

The records from Middle Spring show that Eleanor McCune married John Quigley on March 30, 1848, so we do know that his wife was a McCune. Now, here’s where it gets fun: Samuel McCune married Eleanor Sharp and had numerous children, 9 of which were baptized at Middle Spring.

Here are the listings for the children and their baptismal dates from Middle Spring:

Margaret  4/9/1811
Bethsheba  4/13/1813
John  4/9/1816
Alexander Sharpe  4/8/1818
Samuel Elder  4/13/1819
Eleanor Jane 4/91/1822
Isabella  4/11/1826
James  4/10/1827
Mary  4/14/1829
Eleanor Jane was their sixth child and was baptized on 4/9/1822 and may have been born in either late 1821 or early 1822, so she could have been the wife of John Quigley if the baptism date is reasonably close AND the date on the stone is actually “33rd”.

Just to confuse matters a bit more, let’s look at the 1820 Census for Samuel. We find him in Southampton with the following breakdown:

Males
0 to 10: 3 - John, Alexander S, and Samuel E
10 to 16: 0
16 to 26: 1 - Samuel (father)
26 to 45: 1 - unknown older male
45+: 0
Females
0 to 10: 2 - Bethsheba and Eleanor (if Eleanor’s baptismal date is wrong)
10 to 16: 1 - Margaret, if the census was done late in the year, she was born 10/7/1811
16 to 26: 1 - Eleanor (mother)
26 to 45: 1 - unknown older female
45+: 1
Unless Samuel and Eleanor had another unknown daughter, there should only have been two daughters on the 1820 census if Eleanor was actually born shortly before her baptismal date in 1822. The fact that there is a third daughter on the census tends to support my belief that her baptismal date is wrong.

The possibility of errors in the baptismal dates is pretty strong, as I am working from the records extracted by McElwain working from Belle Swope’s 1900 book, so the data is twice removed from the original records. As an example, eldest daughter Margaret’s birth date is 10/7/1811, calculated from her gravestone, but her baptismal record shows 4/9/1811, 6 months before she was born.

Adding to the data mix is the census for 1850 showing John Quigley and wife Nelly (a common nickname for Eleanor), in which John is shown as age 35 and Nelly as 33. This would put Nelly’s birth at about 1816, which jives with the gravestone if the figure is “39th”. Though there is a chance that she was actually baptized six years after her birth, I think it’s more likely that the actual date was incorrectly copied from the original records.

If nothing else, this mental exercise shows us the importance of using the most contemporary records possible as the two census records and the gravestone itself are all closer to the dates of the actual events than the extracted baptismal records.