Wilbur Stiles was born 16 March 1827 in Brookfield, Orange County, Vermont. He married Mary Jane Wakefield on 15 June 1850. By 1863, he had moved to Michigan – specifically to Albee Township in Saginaw County. Just a year later, he enlisted in the 29th Michigan Infantry and served for 1 year. In 1864, his mother-in-law bought land in Iosco County building the Sand Lake house. The 1870 census shows that Wilbur’s family was living in that area. Wilbur was listed in the mortality schedule of the 1870 census. because on May 21, 1870, he committed suicide by swallowing some poison. He left his wife and 4 children (1 girl and 3 boys – 2 other boys had died before 1870) behind.

Those are the facts of his life that have been discovered in various records. It will be noted that those records do conflict on his middle name – it was either Irish or Fisk. Most commonly it was just referenced as the letter F. I tend to believe it was Fisk as one of his children was named Wilbur Fisk. Where the Fisk name comes from, I have yet to completely discover – although it may have come from a neighbor that he had in Vermont.

For that matter, the records conflict on his first name – it’s either Wilbur or William in the records. However, his birth record and every record that I can find where he gave the information personally show his name as Wilbur. The instances where his first name is listed as William can simply be explained by a clerical error of the person doing the reporting (not Wilbur) after the fact and not remembering his first name properly (after all, William is much more common than Wilbur).

So, how can I be sure that the William Stiles in a certain record is really Wilbur Stiles? It’s because of some of the little details that also appear. For example, on May 31, 1870 the Jackson Citizen newspaper had the following blurb:

Here, it clearly states that it was William Stiles who committed suicide. How do I know that this William is in reality Wilbur? Well, it gives the location of where William was living – near Sand Lake, 10 miles west of Tawas City. That just so happens to line up perfectly with the land that his mother-in-law bought in 1864 and the 1870 census where his family is found. Also, the 1870 mortality schedule only has Wilber listed as dying of suicide.

Also in the Michigan Death records for Iosco County there is this entry:

So, I think I can safely say that the William in the newspaper article who committed suicide on May 21, 1870 near Sand Lake is in reality Wilbur Stiles.  Additionally, the only William Stiles living in that area at the time was Wilbur’s son, William who was born about 1868. The 2 year old is obviously not the William in the newspaper article as it states that the William who committed suicide lived unhappily with his wife. I have a theory about the “unhappily living” part, but that will be a different blog post.