Who was Ann Muddamin?

picture of Ann Muddamin tombstone

There is a tombstone in the Dayton Cemetery which reads:
ANN MUDDAMIN
DIED
Apr. 17, 1843
AE 75 years

A search in three large on-line genealogical sites, Ancestry, Family Search and Mocavo, found no one with a last name of Muddamin. A search for Muddaman produced some results, mostly from the British Isles. A search for Muddiman produced many results, mostly from the US and Britain. It appears, then, that “Muddamin” may be a misspelling of the more common “Muddiman”. There is no head of household in the 1840 census of La Salle county with a name beginning MUDD, so she is not the wife or sister of a local man. Muddiman might be her married name and she might be in the household of a married daughter. There are no households in the 1840 federal or state censuses for Dayton that contain a female over seventy.

She was unlikely to have been traveling on her own. Was she with someone who came to Dayton after 1840? Perhaps she was with a group that was only passing through and she was buried at the nearest place to where she died. Tracing the families of the early residents may eventually turn up a Muddiman connection, but for the present she remains a mystery.

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