James Townsend
James Townsend was born 29 October 1885 in Mississippi County, Missouri, and spent his short life there. He worked as a laborer at East Prairie. On 8 May 1914, at 9:30 in the evening, he died of acute meningitis, with typhoid fever of twenty days as a contributing cause. He was twenty-eight. Dr. J. S. Dennis of East Prairie attended him only that final day. He was buried on 10 May, the undertaker Teel Shelby of East Prairie.
His certificate names his parents: John Townsend, and a mother whose maiden name reads Puss Cunningham, a pet form of Priscilla; his memorial renders her Priss. The informant could say where neither parent was born.
The informant signed Clara Townsend, of East Prairie, and the 1910 census agrees: Jim T. Townsend, twenty-five, of James Bayou Township, has a wife named Clara B., twenty-three. The East Prairie memorials instead present James as the first husband of Alice Higgins and the father of Mamie Christine Townsend, born November 1911. If his wife from 1910 to his death was Clara, he was not Alice's husband in 1911, so either Christine's father was another Townsend of the county or the memorial pairing is wrong. Which it is remains unproven.
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Cite: Heirology, "James Townsend (1885-1914)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/james-townsend-1885-1914-82c795.