Acronym Allan: Genealogical Ramblings of a California
Boy
Volume I: Benjamin Harrison Lingenfelter and Henrietta
Kennedy Lingenfelter, Revolutionary War to 1865, p. 1 296, this volume completed June 10th 2012, 95th Birthday
of Jean Thompson (Andrews) Colaluca, born Selah,
Washington in 1917 to Hugh Monroe Thompson and
Mary Lucretia Lingenfelter Thompson. (Note this is the
first draft and contains numerous errors, misspellings,
errors in grammar and fact and organization. Expect
many further revisions)
Written by Allan Ralph Andrews, born September 13th
1939, Long Beach California, St. Mary’s Hospital, 4:03
AM, father Ralph B. Andrews, mother, Jean Thompson
Andrews, now remarried as Jean Colaluca.
In an attempt to trace the ancestors of my mother, Jean
Thompson Andrews, born Jean Thompson, of Hugh
Monroe Thompson, father, and Mary Lingenfelter
Thompson, mother, I discovered links to the Pyle family
tree through the parents of Mary Lingenfelter Thompson,
born Mary Lingenfelter to Henrietta Kennedy
Lingenfelter and Benjamin Harrison Lingenfelter. Both
Henrietta and Benjamin came from Missouri and there
were a number of links to their ancestors in Missouri
records. Henrietta was born Henrietta Kennedy to Judge
Samuel T. and Lucretia (Smith) Kennedy. The Missouri
Genealogy Trails website has an extensive biography
section for Andrew County Missouri and the discussion of
Henry Newton Kennedy gives the link to his father
Samuel T. According to this link, Samuel was born on a
farm in Fayette County, Indiana, September 29th 1830 to
a farmer named John Kennedy, born in North Carolina of
a mother with the maiden name of Charity McMichael,
also from North Carolina.
Further links indicate that John Kennedy was born as
John Bennett Kennedy 26 July 1782 in Orange, NC and
died 31 August 1863, buried in the Cain Cemetery in
Nodaway, Missouri. His wife, Charity was born 9 May
1790 in Guilford, North Carolina. John’s father is given as
James Kennedy (died 1808 in Guilford) and his wife is
given the maiden name of Elizabeth Bailelet, born 1752
in North Carolina. Charity McMichael was the daughter
of Archibald McMichael, who died in Guilford 23rd of
September 1818. Her mother’s name was also Charity.
The James Kennedy link appears to connect to a Hugh
Kennedy, born 1725, died 1814 and Catherine Hughes.
This takes the Kennedy linage out of North Carolina and
into Pennsylvania, where James Kennedy appears to
have been born. Apparently Hugh Kennedy was born
1725 in Ireland and died in Mifflin, in Allegheny County,
Pennsylvania. Hugh married a Catherine Hughes in 1746
in Pennsylvania, a daughter of Martin Hughes, born
sometime in 1725 in Maryland and died in Butler County,
Pennsylvania. Hugh Kennedy appears to be the son of
Jane Gray and William Kennedy. William Kennedy was
born in Charlesont Ireland in 1690 and christened 17
September 1692 in Dublin, Ireland. He married Jane Gray
on 3 November 1721 in Dublin. William ended up with
land at the fork of the Youghiogheny and Monongehela
rivers and lived there from 1773 till his death in 1793.
William’s father, given as William T. Kennedy, was born
in Scotland sometime around 1670 and apparently
served with William of Orange in the “Siege of Derry and
Ennis Killen 1689 Battle of the Boyne.” Notes available in
various genealogical references seem to indicate that he
married a woman named Ann and had a large family that
included the William Kennedy that came to America.
One reference available on the web, “Bill Roy’s
Genealogy Page” gives the following information on
Hugh Kennedy, son of William and grandson of William
T.. It claims that he came to America when he was only
17 and was disowned by his Presbyterian father for
becoming a Methodist. This would explain the difficulty
of tracing this line and the tendency for the children to
wander, since religious affiliation was an important
element of settlement at this time. Apparently Hugh
served as a private for the colonial army of Pennsylvania
in the Revolution in 1777 and 1778. It also states that
Jane Gray, mother of Hugh, died 9 September 1781, in
Pittsburgh, PA.
But, Henrietta’s mother was Lucretia Webster Smith.
How do you go about tracing that line? Fortunately
Barbara Leimback did a very good job of researching the
Ezekial W. Smith line and posted it April 2005. According
to this source Lucretia Webster Smith was the daughter
of John Payton Smith, born 5 December 1799 and
Elizabeth Crittendon (1800 -1839). Lucretia Webster was
born 1833 and died 1920. Apparently Ezekial W. Smith,
Sr. was born in Tennessee 28 November 1806, son of
Vincent Smith (1778 – 1857) and Anna Dolin (1775).
Now there is a Bedford Tennessee Deed Book, page 334
12/11/1826 in which William Crittendon lists his heirs
and one is Elizabeth Crittendon, wife of John P. Smith.
Apparently William Crittendon changed the spelling of
his name when he moved from Anson (Montgomery
County) North Carolina where he was born in 1765. His
father is given as William C. Crittenden of Essex County,
Virginia and his mother as Sarah Lee. William C.
Crittenden of Essex County is given as the son of Henry
Crittenden and Frances F. Upshaw, born in Gloucester
County Virginia and died 9 November 1716 in Essex
County Virginia, Henry is listed as the son of Richard
Crittenden and Ann Forrest. Sarah Lee married William
C. Crittenden in Virginia in1761, apparently, and died
November 9th in 1766 in Montgomery, North Carolina.
Among the Children of Henry Crittenden is a son born
about 1708 (also named Henry) who was the father of
John Lee Crittenden, who was the father in turn of John
Jordon Crittenden, Senator from Kentucky, Attorney
General of the US, and Governor of Kentucky. Another
son, Robert Crittenden, served as secretary and governor
of Arkansas when it was a territory. This connection is
probably the source of the family story that the governor
of Missouri, Thomas Crittenden, was a cousin, since he
was a nephew of John Jordon Crittenden, a very distant
cousin of Elizabeth Crittenden Smith mother of Lucretia
Webster.
John Lee Crittenden, father of John Jordon, appears to
have married Judith Harris, daughter of Obedience
Turpin, daughter of Thomas Turpin and Mary Jefferson
(sister of Peter Jefferson and aunt of Thomas Jefferson,
President of US and Gov. of Virginia).
The Sarah Lee connection is also difficult to trace. Robert
Lee gave a will that is in book I, page 14, Anson County
North Carolina in which he gives items to his wife Sarah
Lee and his daughter Sarah Crittenden, the date is 1766.
This may be the Sarah Lee that married William C.
Crittenden, the son of Henry Crittenden and Francis F.
Upshaw and was the mother of William C. Crittenden,
born 1765 in Anson County and father of Elizabeth
Crittenden, wife of John P. Smith, mother of Lucretia
Webster Smith.
Apparently Robert Lee was the son of James Lee who
died in 1732 (his will dated 14 January 1731 in Bertie
Precinct, NC, proved in Edgecombe Precint, NC,
November Court, 1732). Apparently he married a Sarah
(Moore?), perhaps born in 1702 in Nansemond County
Virginia, He was, apparently the son of John Lee of
Liecaster England, born around 1670, and migrated to
Nansemond County, where John is found in a 4/20/1694
land patent that gives him the right to transport 20
persons from England. John had 960 acres on the upper
part of Nansemond County, East side of Somerton Creek,
beginning on a small island on the East Side of the Creek
to the Northeast side of Cyprus Swamp.
These early roots in Virginia, North Carolina, and
Pennsylvania are difficult to trace, particularly when the
mother’s line is what you are after. John Bennett
Kennedy, appears to have married a Charity McMichael
sometime in 1806 in Guilford North Carolina. She
appears to have been born 9 May 1790 in Guilford. The
family appears to have moved to Fayette County Indiana
in 1825 and then moved to Rush County Indiana in 1834,
finally moving to Nodaway County. Charity McMichael
appears to have been the daughter of Archibald
McMichael, who died in Guilford 23 September 1818.
His wife was named Charity but there seems to be no
record of her maiden name.
If the McMichael link is hard to trace, so is the Kennedy.
Elizabeth Bailelet seems to have been born in North
Carolina and to have married James Kennedy in 1772.
The Family Tree Maker listings, from Ancestery.Com, list
the following children: Samuel Kennedy, born 22 of
October 1775 in Orange County and died 30 April 1840 in
Posey, Rush, Indiana. Mary Kennedy, born 29 December
1772, John Bennett, born 26th of July 1780, Jane, born 9
September 1788, Elizabeth, born 1 of July 1785, Nancy,
born 6 September 1782, and Esther, born 16 March
1796. John Bennett married Charity McMichael, born in
Guilford, NC, 9 May 1790 (1788) in Guilford. They had
the following children in Guilford: Margaret, 30 March
1807, Zabiah, 8 Feb. 1809, Nancy, 3 June 1811, James, 26
June 1812, William S., born 18 Feb. 1813, Elizabeth Ann,
2 Feb. 1815, Archibald McMichael, 15 August 1818,
Charity, born 7 March 1826, Sarah Jane, born 10 October
1823, and Samuel Thomas, born 29 September 1830 in
Fayette County, Indiana.
Apparently Samuel Kennedy got a deed in 1808 from the
heirs of James. These appear to have been Jesse Lynch
and his wife Mary Kennedy, Joseph Ross and his wife
Sarah Kennedy, John Kennedy, Betsy Kennedy, Jenney
Kennedy, Nancy Kennedy, and Esther Kennedy. This land
was now in Alamance County.
Joseph Ross appears to have died September 4th 1836 in
Fayette County, Indiana. There are papers that indicate
that Sarah (Kennedy) Ross renounced her rights to
administer the estate in favor of her son Samuel K. Ross.
He seems to have had an interest in a store at Alquina,
Indiana. Sarah appears to have taken a gray mare, a colt,
a bureau, a cupboard, a clock, a black and white cow, a
red pied cow, a trundle bed and bedding as her hundred
dollar share of the estate. She also got a third part of the
remainder which included 20 geese, a breakfast table, 12
sheep, a stew kettle, 8 acres of corn, a side saddle, a tea
kettle, and other things of this type. This Sarah Kennedy
was born to James Kennedy and Elizabeth Bailelet in
Orange, North Carolina, 24 September 1780, and thus is
an older sister of my ancestor John Bennett Kennedy and
an aunt of my great grandmother Henrietta’s father
Samuel. There is speculation on the Donny Hamilton
website that Sarah Ross has some problems that make
her unfit as a guardian for her children. It is indicated
that Joseph D. Ross owned and “platted” much of
Alquina between 1822 and 1825.
John Kennedy’s wife Charity was born in Guilford Co. NC.
9 May 1790 to Charity and Archibald McMichael.
Archibald died 23 September 1818 in Guilford. His son
Thomas (older brother of Charity, wife of John Kennedy)
was born in Guilford in 1778 and died 30 November 1858
in Rush Co. Indiana. He married Nancy Ann Moody, born
28 January 1801 in Guilford, and died 5 August 1848 in
Rush County (buried in Stanley Cemetery, Posey, Indiana.
William (another older brother of Charity) was born 1787
and died 14 September 1848 in Guilford. Thomas and
Nancy Ann Moody had a child named Charity McMichael
who married Jesse Kelam in Guilford 28 January 1830.
The marriage was announced in the Greensboro NC
“Patriot.” William McMichael marred Rhoda E. Pegram,
died 3 January 1852. Both William and Rhoda are buried
in the Methodist Church Cemetery at 6142 Lake Brandt
Road. William McMichael died leaving five tracts of land
including 45 acres of Haw River tract land that had
belonged to his father Archibald. When Archibald’s wife
Charity (senior, several generations of daughters were all
named Charity) died in Guilford in 1829, she left her bible
to William and all of her beds and household furniture to
her oldest daughter Margaret McMurrey (born 1781).
Jesse Lynch married Mary Kennedy 9 January 1792 in
Orange, North Carolina. Jesse was born in 1752 and died
in 1825. He was the son of Thomas Lynch and Hannah
Schroeder. Thomas Lynch was born 1725 and died
March 15, 1781 in Hillsoboro NC. He was the son of
Jonah Jonach Lynch. Hannah Schroder was the daughter
of Johah Ulrich Schroeder. Jesse Lynch’s father-in-law,
James Kennedy, sold him 264 acres on Jordan Creek and
Jesse was a witness for the quit claim deed that gave
Samuel Kennedy land that had been James Kennedy land
in Alamance County, following the death of James
Kennedy (1808?). Mary Kennedy was the oldest of the
daughters of James and Elizabeth, born 28 December in
Orange, North Carolina.
Archibald McMichael Kennedy was a son of John Bennett
Kennedy and Charity McMichael, an older brother of
Samuel Kennedy. He was born in Guilford, North
Carolina 15 August 1818 and died in Rush County,
Indiana, 3 June 1897. He married Henrietta Langston, 10
October 1820 in Union, Indiana. Between 1870 and 1918
(postings in the web indicate this), Archibald and his sons
Emmett and Charles built over 58 covered bridges.
Apparently Archibald took up the trade of carpenter in
Rush County and moved on to Wabash in 1853, where he
started building bridges as a source of extra money. In
1870 he built a two span covered bridge in Rush County
that stood for more than one hundred years. In 1871, so
it is claimed, he and his son built a 150 foot span in Butler
County, Ohio over Seven Mile Creek. In 1883, Archibald
was elected to the Indiana State Senate.
At a certain point keeping track of these relations
becomes confusing. The Stanley Cemetery in Rush
County, Indiana contains a number of Kennedy and
McMichael graves, including Samuel Kennedy (died April
30th 1840, brother of John Bennett Kennedy) and Nancy
McMichael Kennedy, (died Dec. 11th 1862, sister of John
Bennett Kennedy’s wife Charity McMichael Kennedy) and
Nancy Ann Moody McMichael (died September 5th 1838,
wife of Charity’s brother Thomas McMichael).
Apparently the cemetery is the site of a church where
John McMichael lived in a nearby house and served as
the church janitor. John was the son of Thomas
McMichael and Nancy Ann Moody McMichael and he
and his wife Mahala Britton McMichael are buried in the
Stanley Cemetery, here, along with many relatives.
The 1850 census has John Bennett Kennedy, and his wife
Charity, and his son Samuel, and his wife, living in the
same area as Ambrose Cain. John Bennett Kennedy had
a daughter, Sarah Jane Kennedy, born 10 Oct 1823, who
married Charles Leo Cain and had a number of children.
Her daughter Margaret Victoria (age 2 months, 6 days) is
buried in the Cain Cemetery in Nodaway County along
with Sara Jane (age 6 months, 24 days). George M. and
George W., also sons of Sarah Jane and Charles Cain are
buried here. Jesse Cain and Martha, parents of Ambrose
Cain are buried here along with his sister Mourncy Cain.
There is obviously a relationship between the Cains and
the Kennedy family at this point, but it is not clear what
that is or what is going on. The memorial data on
Mariam Lowe Cain indicate that she was the wife of Jesse
Cain and the mother of Mourncy, Nathaniel, Belthelmite,
Griffith, Charles L. (1818 -1894), Lassel, Jesse, Shunamite,
Mary, Bently, and John Cain. If she is the mother of
Charles Leo as well as Ambrose and Charles Leo is the
husband of Sarah Jane, daughter of John Bennett and
Charity Kennedy, sister of Samuel Thomas, it explains
their presence together in the same area and the use of
both Cain and Kennedy of this cemetery. Some of the
Cains would be son-law, daughter-in-law, grandchildren,
etc. of grandfather and grandmother John and Charity
Kennedy.
A history of Northwest Missouri published in 1915 and
presented on a website for Andrew County, Missouri, has
a section devoted to Henry Newton Kennedy, a son of
Samuel T. and Lucretia Webster (Smith) Kennedy born
November 25th 1855 in Nodaway County. According to
this account, Samuel was fourteen when he arrived in
Platte County, Missouri. The area was mainly inhabited
by Indians at the time. When he moved to a farm near
Maryville in Nodaway County in 1850, there were no
families between him and the town and only four
families and a single store in the town itself.
Samuel seems to have been a Methodist, Mason, and an
Odd Fellow Lodge member. Also, Samuel was district
deputy grand master for the Masons in 1873 and 1874.
He was elected chairman of the County Court in 1873.
His son was a successful farmer, according to this
account, but a tornado took away all the buildings and
trees July 13, 1883. In 1901, Henry Newton Kennedy
moved to Andrew County on 320 acres, which at the
time of the article, were graced by “a handsome set of
buildings.” These included the “most up-to-date
machinery and equipment.” His wife is described as a
graduate of “Stanberry State Normal School” and as a
local school teacher in Andrew and Nodaway counties.
This description of the situation of Samuel and his son
Henry (father and brother of my great grandmother
Henrietta (Kennedy) Lingenfelter) illustrates the fate of
my great grandmother’s branch of my lineage. Originally
from Ireland, Scotland, and England via the Guilford area
of North Carolina, arriving in the 1730s and 1740s, they
found that the land nearest the larger rivers had already
been claimed. Political positions and good schools were
reserved for established families. Even if they could read
and write in the old country, after a generation in the
backcountry, their children had largely lost the ability to
sign their own name. It was inevitable that they would
quickly move on to new land in Indiana and Missouri, as
soon as it opened up to settlement. Slowly they
obtained training and schooling for their children and the
land and equipment necessary for success in farming and
local crafts, eventually achieving political and social
positions of importance.
By the time my mother’s generation appeared, as far as
the family members that raised me were concerned,
teaching was a generally accepted occupation for
women. Both my mother and her sister, Jean and
Miriam Thompson, had teaching credentials, my Uncle,
Victor Thompson, had a degree in microbiology from the
University of California, Berkeley, and an MD from USC.
Henrietta (Kennedy) Lingenfelter’s son John Lingenfelter
was an MD gynecologist. It was said that he never lost a
single mother in sixty years of practice at the Poly Clinic
in Seattle, Washington.
My generation has carried this to the absurd. I am a
certified public account, a certified clinical
hypnotherapist. I have been a marriage family and child
counselor intern for the State of California, a licensed
substance abuse counselor and associate counselor for
the State of Arizona. I have State of California Teaching
Credentials in School Psychology, Social Science, Life
Science, Physical Science, Agriculture, and Business, a
Masters in Botany from the University of California, Los
Angeles, a Ph.D. from Pacific Western, and I have
received Teaching Fellowships in History at the University
of Houston, Philosophy at the State University of New
York at Albany, Biology at California State University, Los
Angeles. I started teaching graduate students at UCLA at
the age of twenty two and by the age of twenty four was
Curator of the Herbarium of Medicinal Plants for the
Department of Pharmacology of the School of Medicine.
I have recently retired, at 68, as School Psychologist and
Director of Special Education for the McFarland Unified
Schools in McFarland, California.
The need to achieve all these titles seems to be a natural
outcome of the influence of my mother and
grandmother on my early development. The family’s
experience in the Missouri of 1870, 1880, etc, convinced
some family members that education was the solution to
family social and economic problems. The result was
that both of my grandmother Mary (Lingenfelter)
Thompson’s parents were college graduates and she saw
to it that all her children were college graduates as well.
Another pattern that is interesting is the reaction of the
family to the end of farming. By the end of the 19th
century, family members were leaving the farm and
moving to the city. The move to Seattle by Henrietta and
Benjamin Harrison Lingenfelter was a major affair.
Benjamin was a minister for the Disciples of Christ
(Christian Church). Both Hugh Monroe and Mary
(Lingenfelter) Thompson (Benjamin’s son-law and
daughter) were graduates of Seattle High School, which
seems to have been a good school at that time. But,
Benjamin (the minister) and Henrietta minster’s wife)
served in a lot of Disciples of Christ ministerial
assignments in other places, Tacoma, Helena, Montana,
finally ending up in Torrance, California when it was still a
small city. Hugh and Mary ended up apple ranching in
the town of Selah outside of Yakima, where my mother
Jean Thompson was born. They finally moved to
Torrance and then Long Beach.
Both my parents, Jean (Thompson) Andrews and Ralph
Andrews, were graduates of Long Beach Polytechnic High
School and Long Beach City College. Long Beach was a
major beach resort and naval base, a major port city.
But, my parents could not seem to make up their mind if
they wanted to stay there after I was born. The whole
family, Hugh, Mary, my parents, my mother’s sister
Miriam and her husband moved to West Los Angeles,
around 1942, at the beginning of World War II.
Once the war was over, my parents moved to a house in
the orange groves outside of Ontario, California. It had a
population of only 22,000. My aunt Miriam (Thompson)
Gilbert moved, with her husband Frank, to Encino in San
Fernando Valley and my grandmother and grandfather,
Hugh and Mary bought a hilltop in the valley in Granada
Hills. They never actually moved there, but thought of
raising chickens, per “The Egg and I” by Betty McDonald,
a very popular book and movie of that period. So
suddenly city was out and rural was good. This would be
a constant theme in my family. Relatives were forever
moving away from, or back to the city, away from, or
back to the country. It has also been a constant theme in
my life.
The Egg and I (by Betty McDonald, Lippincott, 1945) was
made into a “sell out” movie of the forties, with spin offs
in a “Kettles” movie series. This book describes chicken
farming in a rural part of the Puget Sound area of the
State of Washington in the period around 1928. My
relatives arrived in Washington State in the economic
depression of the 1890s. The conditions described in the
book are similar to some of my grandmother and
grandfathers experiences in the period from 1910 to
1920 when my grandfather Thompson was attempting to
work as a State of Washington agricultural inspector and
to do run an apple ranch outside of Yakima. Their
failures would send them to Southern California, where
they hoped to make good. My great grandfather had
been a Disciples of Christ preacher in Tacoma, as well as
Seattle. There was no Narrows Bridge across the Puget
Sound, and my grandmother had to row him across so he
could preach on the other side. Some of the families
experiences in these more rural areas seemed to remind
family members of conditions described in the Egg and I.
McDonald says on page 99, that she soon discovered that
embarrassment was not appropriate when personal
matters were discussed in these rural agricultural
mountain areas. To be fertile and give birth was nothing
to be delicate about. She relates that she need to be
used to boiled food and illegitimate children everywhere.
She relates how legitimate and illegitimate got together
for social gatherings without any tensions and the
problems with nursing baby chickens through their
infancy. Her musings might explain much of what
happened in my family, particularly the periods where
they were mountain people in Tennessee and North
Carolina. Who was the child of which parent, who was
adopted, who was legitimate may never be clearly
determined.
Just as my mother finally decided to settle down in North
Torrance, a house a way from a dairy farm, I started
moving and could not seem to stop. Long Beach State
College, University of California Los Angeles, a teaching
position in Western Michigan at Muskegon County
Community College, a position in Johnstown New York at
Fulton Montgomery Community College that saw me
living on Caroga Lake in the Adirondack Mountains.
Hunters took aim at the rental housing where I was
living. I discovered I was sharing my bathroom with large
rats. These events, and others (some not unlike the
experiences of McDonald in “Egg and I,” for Caroga Lake
could be very primitive and rural at times), sent me back
to the city and to Miami, Florida to teach community
college at Miami-Dade South Campus in 1968.
But, like my relatives, I could not make up my mind and
the next year saw me back in Johnstown, but this time
buying my own house in town. That was when I married
a college chemistry professor from Manhattan Island in
New York, with hopes of actually living in the city. We
compromised on downtown Schenectady, New York,
where we purchased a very old house in the old Stockade
Area, the historic part of the city on the Mohawk River.
But that wasn’t enough, so the next year we were off too
London, England. I was doing research at the Royal
Botanic Gardens at Kew, and my wife and I were teaching
science in the Kent County Council schools, till the
religious discrimination, then in practice against nonChristian children, became so extreme that my wife and I
left England in protest.
So that found us living in a trailer park in a swampy area
north of Jacksonville, Florida till I got a job teaching
college in tidewater Virginia, where we lived in an old
farmhouse not far where my ancestors, the Crittenden’s
had lived two hundred years before. But, we could not
make up our minds just where to stay, a few years later
we were living in a the Park Wilshire Hotel on Wilshire
Blvd, and then we were in Houston, Texas, and then
Pasadena, California, then Richmond, Virginia, Portland,
Oregon, and then back to Houston, and then back to
Portland, and then we moved to Costa Mesa, in Orange
County, and then Seattle, while I moved back to Houston,
Texas, to play auditor for the Department of Defense. It
was as if all the social and geographic and rural vs. urban
indecision of my family had curled up in a giant ball and
sprung right in my face.
The solution was a series of 12 step programs for various
types of dependence and codependence that had built
up, as I attempted to escape the pressure of the
continually tightening string. At first I could not slow
down. Soon I was back in Seattle, then in San Jose. In
San Jose, I began training in hypnosis, and took a Masters
degree in Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling,
became a teacher, and then trained as a School
Psychologist. Soon I was back in Long Beach, where I had
been born, and I stayed in the general Southern
California area for the next few years till I took a job in
rural Kern County as a School Psychologist, and I have
been living in Kern County ever since. I retired from
School Psychology in 2008 and spent ten weeks doing
School Psychology in rural Ohio in 2010. Otherwise I
have been working as a graduate student in the
Humanities, emphasis Art, at local colleges, particularly
California State University, Bakersfield. Still working out
the rural against urban dilemma and still trying to
unwind the springs within.
Still dealing with how I had become something so
complex, and so tightly wound that I belonged
everywhere and nowhere, I was spinning so rapidly that I
could not stop. That was the point where I first entered
12 step programs. It seemed nothing could stop me.
And yet, I was the natural product, as you can see above,
of the forces that had created me, moving ever more
rapidly, becoming overeducated, absorbing and
processing more and more information. A piece of it was
genetics. The City of Hope in Los Angeles County has a
medical program in the analysis of the genetics of
alcoholics, addicts, and associated behavior problems.
All seem to involve gene for creativity and intelligence
which generate disaster in the wrong environment. A
gene for an excess of dopamine, the neurotransmitter
that induces cravings, can also induce drive and
ambition. A gene for dysfunction in serotonin, the
neurotransmitter that supports feelings of satisfaction,
can delay fulfillment and, thus, promote further drive
and ambition. Finally a gene that disables GABA, the
neurotransmitter that works as a stop, a brake, will also
prevent the reduction of ambition and drive. Generally,
families that keep moving, do not find a place to stop,
are led by family members with an excess of the kinds of
motivations and neurochemical dissatisfaction described
above. It is not surprising that excesses of such genes
may be found in out of the way rural and mountain
communities like Wales, Scotland, Western Ireland, the
upland areas of North Carolina and Tennessee, areas of
origin for the families described above.
In 12 step they tell you easy does it, keep it simple, first
things first, if it works do not fix it, time takes time, its
wanting what you have not having what you want that
counts, its an attitude of gratitude, of surrender, of
acceptance, that you did not cause, you cannot control,
you cannot cure the addictive problems of others, but
you need to focus on your own problems. Which is what
I have tried to do. But, it is not easy. Gradually, my
family has turned from farming and building bridges to
teaching, being a doctor. My mother left teaching to
become a Speech Pathologist. Now I have become a
School Psychologist. My great grandparents were
preachers, brothers, fathers of preachers. I became a
hypnotist, one step further toward mind control of
others.
One of the things that becomes apparent (in doing
research on these groups of ancestors) is a pattern of
clumping in occupations and religious institutions.
Generally, Quakers associated with Quakers, Methodists
with Methodists, Baptists with Baptists, and were buried
in association with particular churches. Samuel T.
Kennedy is described as Baptist. His son Henry is
described as having no affiliation at all. Henrietta and
Benjamin Harrison Lingenfelter were Disciples of Christ,
Benjamin was a Disciples of Christ Minister, originally his
male lineage came from Quaker ancestors. The
Thompsons had been Methodists, Fredrick Thompson,
older brother of Hugh Monroe, was a Methodist
minister.
Generally, Jews and Christians, Catholics and Protestants,
Methodists and Baptists, and Presbyterians and Quakers,
Episcopalians, Lutherans, Mennonites, even Dutch
Reformed (within the Protestant community), all kept
apart. The Guilford area of North Carolina seems to have
been largely Presbyterian, Quaker, Reformed, Baptist,
and Methodist. The McMichael and Kennedy family
appears to have been either Methodist or nothing much
at all. They did not appear to fit in with the established
families that had large numbers of slaves. Nor, initially,
were they artisans that brought the kinds of skills that
would work in cities. Where they were involved in cities,
it was more for things like politics, judgeships, running a
store, selling land. They did not tend to be the mill
operators, road builders, when they did get involved in
building bridges in Indiana, it seems to have represented
a new skill. They seem to have been more involved with
horses, rather than boats, carts, or railway operations.
So their big entrance into the urban world was when
their men folk became preachers, lawyers, judges,
doctors, when their women became teachers. And
nothing seems to have changed much in that area from
that day to this.
My position as a School Psychologist is sort of a
compromise between my mother’s work as a School
Teacher and a Speech Pathologist, my uncle’s work as a
Doctor, and my great uncles work as a preacher in a
home for unwed mothers (My Great Uncle Fredrick
Thompson of Tacoma, Washington). It is a further
development (and compromise) of a process that had
been working itself through the family history for some
time. I am just another piece of tubing in the system.
My other careers fit in the pattern also. I taught native
plants for ornamental uses at California State Polytechnic
University, Pomona in 1966. I taught Botany at Miami
Dade Junior College South Campus in Miami, Florida, in
1968. When I was working as a teaching assistant and
research assistant for the Department of Botany at the
University of California, Los Angeles, it was still part of
the School of Agriculture. This is not inconsistent with
the farming background of my family and grandfather
Hugh Thompson’s work as a State Agricultural Inspector
when he wasn’t apple farming or working for the local
post office in Selah, Washington.
My grandfather’s twin brother was a dentist. He had a
large garden on property developed by my great
grandfather Thompson in Des Moines, Washington. He
and his friends and family had a good deal of knowledge
of various varieties of fruits and berries. It is not
surprising that my work for the Botany Garden and
Herbarium at UCLA, caused the Department of
Agriculture to offer me the position of curator of the
herbarium of the National Arboretum in Washington in
1964. At that time, Dr. Mathias, the woman I was
working under in my doctoral studies, was considered
one of the world’s leading taxonomic botanists, and the
kinds of things I was studying were a natural
development of the interests of my farming relatives and
ancestors in the living things of the land and garden.
Teaching about them was a natural development of the
new interest of members of my family in State Normal
Schools and teaching institutions. The University of
California, Los Angeles, where my mother obtained her
degree in education, her sister obtained her degree in
nutrition, I obtained my MA in botany, had originally
been a state normal school for Los Angeles.
The woman I was studying under, Dr. Mildred Mathias,
had obtained her PhD in taxonomic botany in Missouri,
at Washington University in Saint Louis, and she herself
represented one of the many Missouri families that had
relocated to Southern California. So everything was
following its natural course. But, the problem for me was
too many natural courses, and too many streams of
energy coming together in too many places and too
many ways at once.
Part of above was caused by geographic and economic
effects. San Pedro, San Diego, Long Beach, were all
international ports. They attracted many different
religions and cultures. My father and mother, Ralph B.
Andrews, Jean (Thompson) Andrews, her parents Hugh
Monroe Thompson and Mary (Lingenfelter) Thompson
were attracted to the writings (and the religious services)
of Ernest Holmes and the Institute of Religious Science
and Science of Mind Magazine (now called “Centers for
Spiritual Living”). Holmes described what he taught as
“New Thought,” a liberal fusion of Christianity with
Hinduism, Buddhism, Platonism, Hebrew Studies,
Daoism, Islam, etc.. God became a pantheistic infinite
cosmic mind that was inclusive of all things, a Hindu
Brahman, Buddhist Buddhamind, Platonist Hen One,
boundless love and truth. It was German Romanticism,
Berkeley, Hegel, Kant, Alfred North Whitehead, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Jung, William James, Norman Vincent
Peale, all wrapped up in shiny paper.
I took to it like a duck to water and I still am stuck in the
same pond: head full of philosophy and science, my
metaphysics not that much different than what I learned
from listening to Ernest Holmes lecture every Sunday
from his Theatre podium in Beverly Hills. It is not
surprising that I taught Comparative Religion at several
colleges (including an upper division class in South Asian
Philosophy at the State University of New York at Albany
in 1969-1970 as a teaching fellow) or that I have spent a
good deal of time in the Thai Buddhist Temple in
Bakersfield and the Tibetan Buddhist Group in
McFarland, California. It is my cup of Buddhist tea.
I believe my grandmother and grandfather Thompson,
both fans of Gandhi would have been in sympathy, I
know Hugh Thompson would have been because we
read Self Realization Fellowship books together, including
“Autobiography of a Yogi.” He used to take me to the
Religious Science Church in Hermosa Beach, which held
its services in the barroom of the old Hermosa Biltmore
Hotel.
Hugh Monroe Thompson was the son of the operator of
a livery business in Seattle, Washington. According to my
Grandfather, his father had practically a monopoly on
livery services in Seattle and refused to convert to the
age of the automobile because he thought automobiles
were a fad. At some point the Thompsons had moved to
Oregon and it was here that Hugh’s sister Mary would
meet, and later marry, Alfred Clinton Gilbert. This
marriage was significant because it would bring together
two people, now the stuff of legends, Alfred and Mary
Gilbert, that are the star characters in what is becoming
an important seasonal American dramatic production,
the play, and television movie, “The Man Who Saved
Christmas.”
Alfred had an MD from Yale and was a Olympic gold
medal winner in pole vault. He created one of the largest
most successful toy manufacturing operations in the
United States. It was centered on a factory complex in
New Haven that made electric trains (American Flyer),
chemistry sets (Gilbert brand), fans, food mixers,
mechanical building kits (Erector Sets), magic sets,
microscope sets, etc.. For a while his toy company was a
legend at Christmas time. I, and my Father Ralph B.
Andrews, visited the Gilberts for a week. Thus, I toured
the factory and grounds of the square mile of Gilbert
estates in suburban New Haven in the summer of 1952,
when I was 12. My aunt Miriam (Thompson) Gilbert
married Frank Gilbert, a son of Harold Gilbert of
Portland, Oregon. Harold was a brother of Alfred, which
made Frank his nephew. Frank had studied engineering
at Yale.
When I was two years old, in 1942, my Father went to
work as a Bank Examiner for the Treasury Department
and was sent to the Utah area. My Mother went to work
in the Reiber aircraft plant (later Lear Jet). Frank Gilbert
was an electronic engineer on the staff of the plant and
my grandfather Hugh was working as their purchasing
agent. A job he kept until I was fourteen in 1954. The
plant was on Pico Blvd. (between Santa Monica and West
Los Angeles) and we moved to the Pico Blvd. area in
West Los Angeles to be close to the aircraft facility.
Reiber seems to have been making parts for electronic
equipment in aircraft. But, I am not sure, I was only two
years old. As a result my Mother and Father were living
next door to my grandmother and grandfather
Thompson and only a few blocks away from my aunt and
uncle, Frank and Miriam Gilbert, and only a few miles
away from my grandmother’s sister Lois (Lingenfelter)
Engel. My uncle, Victor Thompson, had a room in the
house, though he actually spent most of his time with the
Air Force in India. My great grandparents, Benjamin
Harrison Lingenfelter and Henrietta (Kennedy)
Lingenfelter were actually living in the same house with
my grandparents. When Henrietta died, I was given her
sick room as my own room.
At an early age I was exposed to technology, science,
business, accounting, federal auditing. It is not surprising
that I have California teaching credentials in agriculture,
business, social science, life science, physical science, and
school psychology, that I am a Certified Public
Accountant (CPA) and retired federal auditor. My father
was a Public Accountant, and when he retired from his
accounting business at the age of 84, he was Vice
President of the Southern California Chapter of the
California Society of Public Accountants. These results
can be traced to experiences described above, and things
that were happening to my family as a result of
happenings in the world at large.
World War II brought the Federal Government and the
Military to Southern California in a major way, as noted
above. My mother’s favorite aunt, Marty (Lingenfelter)
Farman, (another daughter of Henrietta and Benjamin
Harrison and sister of Lois and Mary) married a graduate
of California Institute of Technology. Ivan Farman would
pioneer the application of new ideas in communication
and meteorology to the Air Force, later becoming a
decorated Brig. General of the Air Force on General
McArthur’s Staff in the occupation of Japan.
Lois taught English in Torrance High School, later moving
to the Los Angeles District and Brendo Junior High
School, when she worked as a Counselor. She married
John Engel, a brilliant mathematician and carpenter, who
became the head of set estimating for the 20th Century
Fox movie lot. Lois and John Engel’s son John would
major in Physics at UCLA and their daughter Jane would
go to the University of California at Santa Barbara, later
obtaining a doctorate in English and teaching at the
University of Florida.
I remember watching Frank Gilbert in his West Los
Angeles workshop in the back of his garage. He was
making a telescope and a television set from a radar set
sometime around 1945. I was five and thought this was
were it all was at, this was the aim of human existence,
to make to invent, to create new and better machines.
When Alfred Gilbert, Frank’s toy making uncle, produced
his Atomic Energy set for children, I was one of the first
to get one.
There I was about seven years old, with a Gilbert Cloud
Chamber, Geiger Counter, radioactive Alpha, Beta, and
Gamma ray sources and books explaining how they
worked. The problem was that all this mental stimulus
was too much and when I went to enter public school, I
tested with an IQ over 180 and they refused to admit me
because they did not have the facilities. My mother
educated me at home, and then in 1946, when I turned 7
they allowed me in the public schools, but insisted I start
in the third grade. I can understand the problem, I was
checking books out from the adult section of the public
library at that point, and reading a Paleontology text and
Charles Dicken’s Pickwick Papers (along with the Egg and
I, by Betty McDonald, as discussed above),
As a School Psychologist, I believe we can make too much
over high intelligence in children. My muscle
coordination was no better than that of any other child
my age and my interests were similar to other children. I
had some great ideas, but putting them on paper was a
terrible problem for me, and for any other child my age.
Sharpening pencils and getting pens and scissors to work
is not easy for small hands. My class work from this
period looks acceptable, but was no better than any
other child attempting to do a good job for the teacher.
The real problem was the super stimulus of the times
applied to an environment and a genetic system that had
just emerged from the wilds of colonial North Carolina
and the breaking of the great plains to the plow.
Everything creaked and groaned and shattered. But, we
had just won a war and we were the military, moral,
spiritual, and economic leaders of the Free World and
nothing was supposed to be wrong.
I remember when I first realized that there was
something truly wrong. My Father, a Bank Vice
President, a recognized social and business leader, was
obviously not all there. He had started the breakdown
process that would, years later, cause his hospitalization
for paranoid schizophrenia. The system that existed at
the time, was putting too much pressure on him, and on
my family. We had become a weak point in the social
web and we were unaware of it at the time. My brother,
then about two years old would be the sacrifice to fix
that disabled family system, when he would commit
suicide at the age of 38. I sincerely believe that the key
to what was happening is given by Gregory Bateson in his
book “Steps to an Ecology of Mind (Ballantine Books,
1972).” This book discusses systems and their problems
and breaking points. We really are looking at overloaded
systems (ecological, physiological, social, economic,
political, geographic, geological, psychological,
educational, moral, spiritual) and how they collapse.
But, at the time the collapse was hidden. In 1946 and
1947, my parents were living in Ontario and they were all
over the society page: officers in the service clubs, Lions,
etc., the business men’s club, support groups for the
local YMCA, etc.. In the 1950 period, my Father had a
large entry in Who’s Who in Commerce and Industry, and
appointment to honorary positions in Mexico, etc..
Other relatives were doing well, with the husband of my
grandfather Thompson’s sister Mary in Who’s Who for
his work as a toy company industrialist and a member of
the Olympic and Yale University athletic support groups,
my grandmother Thompson’s sister Marty with a
husband who was a Brig. General variously at NATO and
the Pentagon. Dr. John Lingenfelter, Mary and Marty’s
brother, was at the peak of his career as a successful
gynecologist at the Poly Clinic in Seattle. Everyone
seemed to be moving to better places. My father and
mother were constructing a new home in a better
section of Ontario. My aunt and uncle, Miriam and Frank
Gilbert, were moving to a large new home in the foothills
of the Santa Monica Mountains in Encino. Even my
grandparents where considering building on a hilltop in
Granada Hills.
The boom began with new automobiles. We looked at
new models of Hudson and Packard, Studebaker and
Ford. There was the Kaiser and the Fraiser, and later the
Henry J. Everyone needed new stoves and refrigerators,
vacuum cleaners, toasters, radios, washing machines.
Slowly televisions became more popular. They were
originally American made and broke down constantly.
The number of television stations multiplied and
programs moved from local to national, as the capacity
to transmit signals progressed.
When General Eisenhower published his book, “Crusade
in Europe,” it was a must read. I was devoted to its
maps, as if it was a bible. I traced them on to a huge map
of the World that I owned that showed the major battles
of the War. Indications that things might not be what we
hoped came in slowly. We were upset to discover the
damage generated by the atom bombs dropped in Japan.
When Gandhi was assassinated, it seemed to dominate
the Movietone News, that we watched in the Theaters,
before we could see the latest feature released from the
animators at Disney Studios. The Berlin blockade and the
rise of the Soviet block came as a terrible shock. An then
the radio announcement that North Korean armies had
crossed the frontiers and were invading South Korea,
overwhelming the American units that attempted to
resist them. We were shocked. I followed battles as
children follow the achievements of local football teams.
We were solidly Republican. Hugh and Mary Thompson
had been Democrat, but our house supported Dewey
when he ran against Truman. But, it was not the kind of
Republican you are familiar with today. We were Earl
Warren Republicans and backed Warren totally when
Eisenhower became President and appointed him to the
Supreme Court. We were Lincoln Republicans. In 1952,
before the Supreme Court decisions supporting
desegregation, my Father took me through the South.
He asked me if I understood why blacks had to sit in the
back of the bus and the theater. He showed me the
effects of segregation and explained the discriminatory
results of the Jim Crow Laws. He climaxed this by
drinking from the colored drinking fountain in the State
Capitol in Little Rock, exclaiming “Its only water Son,” as
he did so. It became obvious that my Father supported
Black Rights, Republican or not.
We were a pro-abortion rights Republican family long
before it became fashionable to be so. We were not
Bible thumping Christian Republicans, but strongly pro
Evolution and pro freedom of speech. My third grade
teacher was an outspoken Communist and Marxist and
taught about the Russian Revolution in a positive way in
my third grade class. My parents never had a critical
word to say about this. For them, the progressive
Governor Warren Republicanism of that time, had
nothing to do with denying people their personal
opinions, even at the Elementary School level. It was a
very different world I grew up in, and in so many way
more progressive and enlightened than the world of
today. Yes, there have been some victories, but all seem
to have been at the expense of even more disastrous
retreats.
It is understandable. America was put on a spot and too
much was expected of it. There is only so much you can
do with people that have emerged from the backwoods
of North Carolina and Indiana in only a few generations,
people with children that had forgotten how to sign their
own names. Never in the history of the planet had their
been a land with so much diversity, so much prosperity,
so much hope, and so much failure. Miss Jones, my
Communist Third Grade Teacher insisted on our singing
America the Beautiful rather than the Star Spangled
Banner, for our national anthem. She considered the
Star Spangled Banner too imperialistic.
At the time it made sense. For the first time the country
felt like it was “beautiful,” not just in one place, or
region, but from “sea to shining sea,” one nation in ways
that we had never felt before. We were welcoming Jews
from the death camps and Europe and Japanese recently
released from the camps in which they had been
detained during the War in the Western United States.
For a while, my family banked at the Bank of Tokyo and
we went to Japanese doctors and dentists and used
Japanese lawyers. It was a strange new world.
But the changes came in waves, as they had been coming
from the time of the revolution. First the interior was
opened up to settlement (during the lives of John and
Charity Kennedy) and roads and canals opened up the
backcountry (the day and age of Samuel T and Lucretia
Webster Smith Kennedy). Then the steamboat and the
railroad brought cheaper transport. My great
grandparents (Henrietta and Benjamin Harrison
Lingenfelter) lived in the later part of the age when the
railroad was opening up the West, and my grandparents
(Hugh and Mary Thompson) in the age of electricity,
telephones, and automobiles. My parents times (Jean
and Ralph Andrews) were dominated by the movies,
airplanes, buses, street cars, and radio, the electrification
of rural areas, the triumph of indoor plumbing. My age
(Allan and Steve Andrews) was the age of television, of
nuclear power, of transistors and travel to the Moon.
Each of these periods has seen radical changes, but the
changes are building and multiply at an ever increasing
rate of speed. The problem is that we have become too
accustomed to this craziness. For five thousand years,
prior to the industrial revolution, culture and society
changed at a far slower rate.
One of the hardest things to deal with in my life has been
the clash of the cultures. The old world of Judge Samuel
T. Kennedy was dominated by an ancient bible based
world view that was rooted in the Roman Empire and the
learning of the Jews and Greeks. The world of my uncles
was dominated by a new age ruled by Science. But, my
grandmother and her sisters were interested in Art,
Music, Literature and a culture dominated by classical
values. Religion was influence by the transcendentalists
and the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. These
three pillars, the Bible going back to ancient Jerusalem,
the Arts to the Renaissance and Florence Italy, Science
fresh out of the local Land Grant colleges, were attacked
by new ideas out of war ravaged Europe, the
Existentialism of Sartre and Camus, etc..
Initially, I ignored both the Bible culture and the
Existential challenge, it was the integration of Science
and Humanities that interested me, and that was the
general tone of the instruction that was available, both in
school and in college, at the time. It was only later, in
the 1970s, that the war between the traditional world of
ancient scripture and the modern world of Post-War
philosophy and art would be matters of concern.
Even so, the intersection of Science and Humanities,
forgetting some of the more difficult baggage, proved to
be far more difficult that it seemed. I published a very
flawed volume titled “Love” in 1974. It was the fruit of
my feeble attempts to locate some acceptable common
ground. But, I was not the only one in my family with
these problems. My grandmothers youngest sister, Ruth
(Lingenfelter) Jurich wrote poetry and was a newspaper
journalist in Seattle, Washington in the period just before
and after World War II. Her writing attempted to probe
the humorous aspect of the clash of different cultural
forces. A pioneer in the Woman’s Rights movement and
an Opera singer in the Seattle Opera, much of what she
wrote and did has been forgotten. Forgotten, in part,
because of prejudice against her outspoken point of
view. I visited the Jurich residence in 1948 when I was 8
years old, and again in 1952, 1954, 1956, etc. Ruth
ended up having considerable influence on my
development, including my interest in Poetry and
Philosophy. She was a graduate of the University of
Washington and continued the tradition that was
developing in the family of educating women in the Arts.
This is so different from what happened in earlier periods
of family history. Ruth’s grandmother Lucretia Webster,
lost her mother when she was relatively young.
Lucretia’s mother’s mother and father are mentioned
frequently in the dealings of William Crittenden of North
Carolina. It was the tradition of the family that
grandmother Elizabeth was a first cousin of Governor
Thomas Crittenden of Missouri. A careful look at the
records, as discussed above, seems to show that her
father was a first cousin of a John Crittenden. John
married a granddaughter of Mary Jefferson, the sister of
Peter Jefferson, Father of Thomas Jefferson. It appears
that Thomas Jefferson had correspondence with the
uncles of John Crittenden’s wife. It seems he lived in her
grandfather’s house when he was Governor of Virginia.
John Crittenden’s sons were the territorial secretary and
temporary governor of Arkansas, Robert Crittenden, (the
man that Crittenden County Arkansas is named after)
and the Governor of Kentucky, Senator for Kentucky,
Attorney General of the United States, John Gordon
Crittenden (the man that Crittenden County Kentucky is
named after) Another son was the father of Governor
Crittenden of Missouri.
William Crittenden had a father named William who was
the brother of John Gordon Crittenden’s grandfather
Henry Crittenden (thus making Lucretia’s great
grandfather William the great uncle of John Gordon, the
Kentucky Governor). Finally, her great great grandfather,
Henry was the great grandfather of Gov. John Gordon
and the great great grandfather of Gov. Thomas
Crittenden of Missouri. But, Lucretia would also be
aware of how unimportant women were considered to
be in this whole system. When it came to politics,
women could be ignored because they lacked the right to
vote. Lucretia’s maternal grandmother was considered
to be so unimportant that no one bothered to record her
name.
Now comes a subject I have visited several times before
and will attempt to get right again. The difficulty I am
having with this subject is a difficulty that people had
with the subject in that time. Let us try again. You can
find the problem in the text of the book “The Egg and I.”
But you can also find it in the records of our family
history. It is a problem of the changing status of women
and the lag between rural and urban areas in the
evolution of that status. It is a constant theme in English
Novels of this period. But, back to our family story.
There is an Anson County North Carolina will, dated 6
March 1808, in which a Thomas Presley leaves 125 acres
of land to his wife Sarah Presley and makes his “true and
trusty friend William Crittenden” one of his executors.
Elizabeth Crittenden was born 1 June 1800 in
Montgomery, North Carolina and died 18 Aug. 1839 in
Platte Co. Mo. She would have been 7 years old at the
time the will was written.
In the Deed Bk. BB pg 334, 12/11/1826 Bedford Co, TN
Deed list William Crittendon heirs as: John, wife of John
Wagster, wife of Lorenzo D. Whitmorth, Shelby B.
Crittenden, Mary wife of Robert Thogmorton, and
Elizabeth wife of John P. Smith, William and Joel
Crittenden. In a 2/8/1827—2 deeds where William
Crittenden gives daughters Mary Throgmorton and
Elizabeth Smith, slaves for their lifetime (per
rootsweb.ancestry.com).
Rootsweb describes William C. Crittenden as the son of
Sarah Lee, daughter of Robert Lee. It gives his birth as
1765 in Anson (Montgomery Co.) North Carolina. That
would make him around 35 at the birth of Elizabeth and
43 at the time of the 1808 will and around 71 at the time
of the deeds described above. Other sources list him as
the son of William C. Crittenden born 1716 and died
1790, this William the son of Henry Crittenden, born
1675 and died 19 Nov 1766 and Frances F. Upshaw, born
1680 and died 15 Dec. 1741. According to this source
(wikitree.com), William’s mother Sara Lee was born in
1735 and died 9 Nov. 1766.
William, husband of Sara Lee, had a brother named
Henry who was the father of a Major John Crittenden
born 24 Aug 1742 and died 19 Nov 1800. He was
married twice, first to Anne Obedience Turpin, daughter
of Tomas Turpin, and Mary Jefferson (President Thomas
Jefferson’s aunt). This marriage produced Henry
Crittenden, father of Governor Thomas Crittenden of
Missouri, and then to the 13 year old Judith Harris whose
relationship to Ann Obedience is not clear (daughter,
niece?)
This marriage, to a 13 year old girl, produced Governor
John Jordan Crittenden Governor of Kentucky, Senator
from Kentucky, Attorney General of the United States,
and Robert Crittenden, territorial secretary and governor
of the territory of Arkansas. William, husband of Sara
Lee, would have been the uncle of Major John Crittenden
and the great uncle of Henry and Robert and John
Jordan, which would make John Crittenden a cousin of
William, father of Elizabeth, and a second cousin of
Elizabeth. Now this may or may not revise what I have
said previously, and do not be surprised if I revise it all
again. Truth is no one knows for sure now, and I am not
certain they even knew for sure at the time. But, this has
a certain importance.
Thomas Jefferson was Governor of Virginia and President
of the United States. He lived in the Turpin house when
he was Governor. John Jordan was a very important
figure in the nation, several times Attorney General of
the US. Jefferson corresponded at times with the
brothers of Obedience Turpin, wife of John Crittenden
cousin of Elizabeth, nephew of her father. It explains
why this cousin issue was so important for the children of
Elizabeth, and why it would be important for Lucretia. It
was obvious that it was important because there are
funeral services notices for her in my closet. These were
inherited by me, as the eldest grandson of the eldest
child of Henrietta, daughter of Lucretia. These came
down to me, along with notes about the importance to
her of this Crittenden relationship.
Let us revisit this once more. Suddenly, the son of Henry,
son of John by the mother of his second wife, emerges
from the political shadows as governor of her state
(Missouri) at a point where her husband was in politics.
It makes sense that she would want to figure out what
was happening and what it meant to her family. It is like
some pages from an English novel. You choose your text.
Even Charles Dickens and “Great Expectations” can be
used, or Hardy in “Tess,” “Return of the Native.” Take
your pick.
The Lee issue is another problem in the interpretation of
this family literature. There were two prominent Lee
families that may, or may not, have been related.
William married into one, Robert Lee of North Carolina,
and the grand children of William’s brother Henry
became connected with another. This connection was
generated when John Jordon Crittenden married a
distant relative of Robert. E. Lee, the confederate
general. This issue is brought up on page 4 of the
Wikipedia article on the Lee family. An attempt is made,
in this Wikipedia article, to calculate how many Lees
were generals in the civil war. They mention George B.
Crittenden, who was a general for the CS, and Thomas
Leonidas Crittenden, a general for the US. The article
relates how their mother Sarah O. Lee was a great great
great granddaughter of the original Richard Lee, founder
of the Lee clan of Virginia and Maryland. Of course it
does not mention that they are also great great
grandchildren of Henry Crittenden, the great grandfather
of Elizabeth Crittenden.
What emerges, from the murk of this history, are some
strange ways of treating (using) women, like the thirteen
year old granddaughter of Jefferson’s aunt that married
Maj. Crittenden. His son John Jordan does not seem to
treat women much better, going through a number of
wives in addition to Sarah Lee. You have many problems
here.
What happened to the Sarah Lee that was married to
William Crittenden when he died? There is some
indication that she may have married Thomas Presley.
Elizabeth Crittenden’s grandmother is mentioned in the
Thomas Presley will. But the mother’s name does not
appear here, or does not seem to.
William has a number of children: Jane in 1787, John in
1790, William F. in 1793, Mary B. in 1794, Elizabeth in
1800, Sarah in 1804, Joel in 1805, Shelby B. in 1811. This
seams to mean that the mother was alive and living with
William when the Presley Will was written in 1808.
Apparently this Presley family is the ancestor of a
number of people, including Senator Helms of North
Carolina and President Carter. The older branch of the
family traces down to Elvis Presley. One family tree
indicates that a woman named Culpepper was the
mother of the older Presleys and the Sarah Lee that is
William’s mother is currently Thomas Presley’s wife at
the time of the 1808 will, and is the mother of the four
girls born after 1770. Perhaps date of death for William
sr. is incorrect and is not 1790. If this is the case, than
Thomas Presley may be the stepfather that raised
William jr.
There is a deed from 1761 to William Crittenden
witnessed by Robert Lee, father of Sarah Lee. There are
others from 1767, 1765, 1764, 1762, 1761, 1758, etc. It
is possible that he died before 1770.
Allan Ralph Andrews, Bakersfield, CA May 5th 2012
Apparently the family was forever fighting the Civil War.
It is known that Crittenden’s were on both sides, as
shown above. There appears to have been a need for
the family to suppress its Southern ties once the South
lost and slavery was over. Even though her Father willed
her a slave, Elizabeth named her daughter Lucretia
Webster after a Northern Senator, making it obvious
which side she was taking on these issues. John Gordon
Crittenden, while a Senator from Kentucky, and
Elizabeth’s distant cousin, was working for some
compromise. These issues show up again and again in
the stories of their day and it is difficult for our
generation to understand how significant they were at
the time.
One major reference I use for understanding these times
is “Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853 -1913,” by
Harris Newmark, 4th Ed, edited by Maurice H. and Marco
R. Newmark, published by Zeitlin and Ver Burgge, in
1970. These are the reminiscences of a practicing Jewish
man, born in Loebau, West Prussia, 5th of July, 1834.
Harris Newmark’s brother, J. P. Newmark had arrived in
San Francisco May 6th 1851 and wrote a letter asking
Harris to join him in California. Harris arrived in San
Francisco 16 October 1853. He writes about great
quantities of sand that was blowing into the city and
required constant efforts to remove. He reports there
were no sidewalks and there were many saloons and
gambling houses. There was no stage connection to Los
Angeles at the time, so Newmark was forced to take the
steamer Goliah south. There were no wharves and
passengers got off in small boats according to Newmark
(p. 22).
Newmark was taken from San Pedro to Los Angeles in a
very primitive stage over terrible roads. Newmark
describes thousands of ground squirrels watching as he
passed ranch houses, with strings of beef hanging over
fences to dry. Los Angeles was approached, then, on a
narrow road bordered by vineyards and willow trees. He
notes that the population of Los Angeles of the time
consisted of 3700 mission Indians and 4000 non-Indians
(p. 25) When he arrived, many of them were drunk from
the wine making. Newmark boarded at the Bella Union
Hotel and worked as a clerk for his brother.
In 1853, Governor John Gordon Crittenden (great
grandson of Henry Crittenden, son of John Crittenden
and Judith Harris, who was the granddaughter of Mary
Jefferson, the Judith Harris who married John at the age
of thirteen) was finishing out a term as Attorney General
of the United States. He had been appointed by
President Millard Fillmore in 1850. He had received an
honorary Doctor of Laws from Harvard in 1851. He had
served as acting Secretary of State during the illness of
Daniel Webster. As acting Secretary of State of the
United States, John Gordon Crittenden had issued a
warning to Britain and France not to interfere in the
question of Cuban Independence.
While finishing up his term as Attorney General, he had
married his third wife, February 27, 1853 and was
elected Senator from Kentucky to replace Senator (and
former presidential hopeful) Henry Clay upon his death.
Lucretia Webster Smith, daughter of John Payton Smith
and Elizabeth Crittenden (great granddaughter of the
same Henry Crittenden discussed above), had married
Samuel Thomas Kennedy on the 14th of July 1850. They
had moved to Nodaway County, Missouri on a farm near
Maryville at time when it had only four families and a
store, as discussed above. Seven of the children of James
and Elizabeth Kennedy of Orange County North Carolina
were still alive at this point, including Mary Kennedy,
Sarah Kennedy, John Bennett Kennedy, Elizabeth
Kennedy, Jane Kennedy, Nancy Kennedy, and Esther
Kennedy. It would be ten years before their tombstones
would start to appear in the Cain Cemetery in Nodaway
County.
Hiram Smith, brother of John Payton Smith and uncle of
Lucretia, died on the way back to California in September
of 1852. Her other uncle Ezekiel had died of cholera 28
May 1849. William McMichael, brother of Charity
McMichael had died in Guilford 14 Sept 1848 and his
wife Rhoda had died 3 Jan. 1852 and was buried near
William in Guilford. Elizabeth Crittenden, Lucretia’s
mother had died August 18th 1839 and her father, John
Payton Smith had died August 23rd 1841 when she was 8.
She had brothers and sisters living in Missouri: William
Vinson Smith, born August 25th 1819, Jane Catherine
Smith, born January 17 1828, Mary Ann Smith, born
1823. It is not clear who she lived with before she
married Samuel Kennedy.
Back in North Carolina, the textile industry was booming.
Mills were being set up on the Haw River and Great
Alamance Creek, where James and Elizabeth Kennedy
had owned land. Edwin Holt built the Alamance Cotton
Factory which was manufacturing cotton fabrics on
power looms by 1837.
But, I am focusing at this point on Jean (Thompson)
Andrews, and her mother Mary (Lingenfelter) Thompson,
and her mother Henrietta (Kennedy) Lingenfelter, and
her mother Lucretia Webster (Smith) Kennedy because I
am concerned about my maternal inheritance and its
crash landing into Southern California and Los Angeles in
the years preceding and subsequent to my birth. To look
at this crash landing, I need to look at the force (my
maternal inheritance) and the immovable object (Los
Angeles County and Southern California in 1939).
Strange as it may seem, outside of all sorts of windy
speeches made by distant Crittenden cousins in an
attempt to save the Union, I know very little about the
force and it appears I will have to go elsewhere to
understand it. It seems that I need to search sources like
“The Evolution of Man and Society.” by C. D. Darlington,
for example. At least Newmark gives me some local
detail on the Los Angeles end of the crash landing of my
family (but more on that subject later).
To carry on our narration of the 1850 period, we find
Harris Newmark eating at a restaurant operated by a
French man named La Rue. The restaurant had a dirt
floor with tables covered by dirty tablecloths. According
to Newmark, killings were frequent in Los Angeles at the
time (p. 31), perhaps twenty or thirty a month. He
remembers much alcohol of all kinds and much music,
mainly harp and guitar. Newmark’s brother was dealing
in dry goods and clothing. There were no sidewalks or
graded streets and mud and dust could pile up to several
feet in depth (p. 34). Trash was disposed of in the
street. Light came from candles, and candles in lanterns.
Shall we look at the larger picture? At this point, in the
development of America, there are still large numbers of
Native Americans. The aboriginal population is not
nearly what it once was due to death from disease.
Emigrants are arriving from everywhere without any real
control over entrance to the country. Things are
changing constantly as new technology and new skills
enter the area.
A history of Nodaway County (available on the County
Website) notes that it has a rich soil that is good for
growing corn, winter wheat, oats, barley, rye,
buckwheat, hemp, flax, millet, sorghum and blue grass.
Cattle and hogs are listed as important. According to this
website information, A Thomas Adams built a cabin in a
grove of Burr Oak in 1840 and lived there till 1849. In the
same year a John Mozingo and his two sons built a cabin
and set up a farm. John Trosper built a cabin that was 14
ft by 14 ft and a had a chimney made of notched poles,
mortar, and mud. Trosper planted apple and cherry trees
and left for Kansas in 1860. The Lanham brothers came
in 1841 and William Saunders in 1846. John Jackson
came in 1843 and was treasurer of the County form 1845
to 1849.
The history says that the settlers went to Liberty, Clay
County to obtain anything of importance, like flour. It
took about eight days to go there with an ox team, with
two or three yokes to a wagon. Neighbors might go
together and sleep in the wagon and kill game to eat on
the way. In 1841 there was only one corn cracker in
Andrew County, another mill was built in Andrew County
in 1842 and another in 1843. A fourth mill, on the
Nodaway River was built by Erastus Downling and A.
Terhune. It took two years to build and the irons for it
had to be brought in from St. Louis. Downling was a
blacksmith and forged the iron needed for the mill. In
1851, Terhune sold out to Downling and bought out the
mill of Hiram Lee. Lee had put a log about eighty feet
long across a stream and then had added brush and rock
to make a dam. The mill wheel was a wooden tub wheel
and the mill was able to grind 15 bushels of corn a day,
but it was all washed away by a flood in the spring of
1852. Terhune put up a frame structure to operate a
grist and a saw mill. In the fall of 1852, ice came down
the Nodaway and caused the river to rise and wash out
an eight foot channel around the end of the dam.
Terhune fixed the problem and sold out to Rankin Russell
in 1853.
Similar primitive conditions existed in Los Angeles at this
time. Newmark notes that water was carried in a huge
ditch from the Los Angeles River and that the adobe brick
house were roofed with tar from the La Brea tar pits. As
mentioned above, roads were terrible and there were no
stage connections with San Francisco.
In Guilford County North Carolina, the Fayetteville and
Western Plank Road, brought the world longest road of
its kind into Guilford County. It was 129 miles long and
stretched from Bethania to Fayetteville. The railroad
would not arrive till 1856.
Most of the Kennedys and McMichaels seem to have
been back in Rush County Indiana. The grave of Mahala
McMichael, wife of John McMichael had been placed in
what would become the Stanley Cemetery upon her
death August 20th 1847. Joseph D. Ross had married
Sarah Kennedy, daughter of James P. Kennedy and
Elizabeth, sister of John Bennett Kennedy, aunt of
Samuel T. Kennedy.
The 1850 US Census for Jennings Township, Fayette
County, Indiana, site of the city of Alquina gives the
following (per ancestry,com): Henry J. Ross, age 31,
farmer, born NC; Arvarilla Ross, age 35, born KY;
Greenberry Ross, age 8, born IN; John Madison Ross, Age
5, born IN; Martin K. Ross, Age 1, born IN; Sarah Ross,
Age 62, born NC; Jane Kennedy, age 50, born NC. The
next house has: William D. Ross, age 28 Farmer, NC;
Adaline, Age 25, IN; William M., Age 8, b. IN; James A.,
Age 6, b. IN; Elizabeth, Age 4, born IN; Malinda, Age 2, b.,
IN.
The Hartsell family was living nearby. It was just over the
border from the Jennings township in 1850. Their
descendents have a website which gives information on
the living conditions in Indiana in 1850. Families were
living in two and three room cabins with no schools
nearby. Instead of a sink there is a bowl on a table. You
bathe once a week. There would be no railroad through
this area till 1856. The first railroad came to Chicago in
1851. As the railroad came south, stations were set up
with water tanks and windmills every 10 miles, according
to this website.
As stated above, Samuel T. Kennedy had moved from
Indiana to Missouri and was now living in Maryville,
having just married Lucretia Webster Smith. Living
nearby was Ambrose Cain.
My favorite history of England, is the “Victorian Age,
1815 -1914” by R. J. Evans, Edward Arnold, 1950. It was
my college text when I took “British History in the
Victorian Age” at Long Beach State College (Now
California State University) in 1959. According to this
text, the old Duke of Wellington died September 14th
1852. The general election of 1847 had given strength to
the Whig party. Peel, one of the great leaders of the
British Parliament had died as a result of a fall from a
horse in 1850.
A Great Exhibition had been held in 1851. This was the
source of the “Crystal Palace,” a great building in London,
England made of plate glass (invented in 1848) and
wrought iron. It was a tremendous success, filled with
14,000 exhibitors showing off British industry and
commerce, but it does not seem to have solved the
government’s popularity problem.
Arguments between the Queen and the Prince Consort,
and growing differences between Russell and Palmerston
(both major leaders in the Parliament of their day) had
resulted in the resignation of the government and the
formation of government by Derby, on invitation of the
Queen. A general election, held in July of 1852, resulted
in a Parliament with no clear leadership.
The Wikipedia has a good write up on Palmerston, his
actual title is Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount
Palmerston. The Wikipedia claims he was in office
almost without break from 1807 till 1865, starting out as
a Tory and ending as a Liberal. He was a graduate of the
Harrow School and the University of Edinburgh and Saint
John’s College at Cambridge. He entered Parliament as
the MP for a pocket borough in 1807. The Wikipedia
claims he was responsible for English foreign policy from
1830 through 1851, putting him on the opposite side
from Attorney General Crittenden when he was playing
Secretary of State. Palmerston supported the
revolutions of 1848 that spread through Europe to the
extent they brought more national self determination,
but he was opposed to the Irish Rebellions and did not
use his influence in support of the starving Irish in the
Great Famine, according to Wikipedia.
Palmerston was Home Secretary in the 1852 to 1855
period and is associated with the Factory Act of 1853
that outlawed labor by the young between 6pm and
6am. He also saw the passage of the Vaccination Act of
1853 into law that made vaccination of children
compulsory. He reduced the period that prisoners could
be held in solitary and reduced maximum sentences for
most offenses (op. cit.).
Another favorite text of mine is Carlton J. H. Hayes, “A
Political and Social History of Modern Europe, Volume II,
revised edition, 1815-1924,” Macmillan, 1931. This text
discusses how Prince Louis Napoleon came up with a
document calling for the dissolution of the French
Assembly. Things were even worse in Ireland, according
to Hayes. Ireland’s wool industry had been ruined by
British legislation. Its Catholic population was
impoverished by land owning Protestants from England.
The diet of these poor was mainly potatoes. Terrible
famines, resulting from diseases of potato plants, had
caused one out of five to die in 1739 and for many to
come to America in the famine of 1846, reducing the
Irish population from eight million in 1845 to six and a
half in 1851 (see op. cit. p.321).
Samuel Kennedy’s ancestors, Hugh Kennedy, and
possibly the McMichaels as well, appear to have arrived
in America, in the year just after the 1739 famine. Now
another famine was driving more Irish to the United
States. When the Irish landlords did not receive their
rents from their starving peasant tenants, they evicted
them. The tenants revolted in 1848 and formed a
Tenant-Right League in 1850. But there was no
immediate improvement in their condition.
This was the period in which Guiseppe Garibaldi was
fighting in support of Italian independence from foreign
domination. In 1849 he had supported Mazzini’s “Roman
Republic.” When that failed, he came to New York and
made enough money as a candle-maker and “trading
skipper” to return to Italy in 1854 and buy the island of
Caprera (op. cit. p. 166). The United States was obviously
a land of fortune for some in this period.
The general liberal tone of the foreign policy of France
and England, at least in comparison with Russia,
Germany, and Austria, had been supported by a
friendship between Aberdeen, who ran the British
Foreign Office from 1841 -1846, and his French counterpart, Guizot (see Evans, p. 127). Great Britain absorbed
New Zealand in 1840 resulting in a dispute over Tahiti,
which the French took in 1843. By 1845, Aberdeen and
Guizot were able to agree on an end to the slave trade in
Africa. But, Palmerston took Aberdeen’s place in 1846.
Aberdeen was responsible for the Ashburton Tready of
1842 and the Orgeon Tready of 1846, which established
the current boundary of Canada and the United States.
Palmerston supported the Swiss and encouraged the
establishment of the current Swiss union. 1848 saw a
series of revolutionary changes in Europe and
Palmerston supported an independent Italy and the
removal of Austrian influence. Palmerston received the
support of Parliament in his activities in spite of the
distrust of the Queen. He ignored her complaints and,
thus, he helped set up the tradition of modern British
foreign policy coming totally from the Prime Minister and
his Foreign Secretary. This process had been in play for
some time, but Palmerston gave it new strength.
When Derby became Prime Minister, he made Lord
Malmesbury Foreign Secretary, he was a friend of Louis
Napoleon, now Emperor of France. The Derby-Disraeli
ministry fell in 1852 and a coalition government was
formed. Aberdeen became Prime Minister. Louis
Napoleon had demanded French rights over holy places
in Palestine. This disturbed the Russian Czar. In July,
1853 a Russian army invaded Moldavia and Wallachia, in
reply a fleet was sent to the Dardanelles to defend
Turkish Constantinople.
The Sultan of Turkey declared war on Russia and
attacked the Russians. On November 30th, Turkish ships
were attacked by Russia and destroyed. British and
French ships were sent into the Black Sea and by March,
1854, there were declarations of war and the Crimean
War had begun. On September 14th 1854, 50 thousand
French and British troops had invaded Russian territory
and defeated Russians some 15 miles north of Sevastopol
on the Black Sea.
The United States was not involved in this war at all. It
was far away from North America and, except for
Canada, which was still a British Colony, had nothing to
do with North Americans.
As to the Kennedy family, several generations removed
from connections to the British Isles, it was all about
survival in the harsh conditions of the newly cultivated
West. A notation on ancestry.com states that George E.
Hamilton, son of James Hamilton and Mary Eyestone,
was born 24 May 1827 in Connersville, Fayette IN and
married Susan Malinda Ross on 26 Nov. 1848 in Fayette,
IN, daughter of Joseph D. Ross and Sarah Kennedy Ross.
The census in Jennings Township of Fayette County
Indiana listed the following in 1850: George Hamilton,
Age 23, born in Indiana; Susan Hamilton, Age 24, born in
Indiana; Thomas T. G. Hamilton, Age 1, born in Indiana.
Data for the next house indicate: Mary Hamilton, Age 42,
born in Ohio; David Hamilton, Age 17, born in Indiana.
At this point in time there was a major problem with
outbreaks of cholera and resulting panic. There was an
outbreak in this period, 1849-1851 with losses of 4,557 in
St. Louis. Cincinnati lost 5,969, taking away 5 to 10% of
the population (Transactions of the American Clinical and
Climatological Association 2008 119: 143 -153, Walter J.
Daly, Md).
Some small towns appear to have been depopulated as a
result and the populace of other were seeking the
appeasement of an angry God. Sanitation was bad and
cesspools were allowed to seep into water sources.
Boston Indiana had 120 people in 1849 and there were
53 deaths in five weeks. The town was abandon. In
Aurora, Indiana, there were 14 deaths on June 14th 1849.
Efforts were made to make the air pure by setting fires
on street corners and firing a canon every 25 minutes.
1600 of the towns 2000 residents fled as a result of 51
deaths in the next three weeks. In Madison, Indiana
there were 163 deaths. Advice was given to avoid fruits
and vegetables, night air, and damp places. Cholera his
Greene County, Indiana in 1851 and killed all of its
doctors. It is not clear what effect this had on
movements of the Kennedy family and their relatives,
but scares like this may have driven them to places
distant from the crowded cities that were full of sewage
generated disease.
There is a grave in the cemetery in Rush County, Indiana
for a John J. Kennedy, died September 16th 1849, age 9
months and 10 days, (son of T. and D. Kennedy). It is not
impossible that he died in the cholera epidemics of 1849.
There are graves in this cemetery of relatives of Kennedy
and McMichael family members that had moved on to
Northwestern Missouri.
The railroad between Madison and Indianapolis stopped
running in because of cholera, at this time it was the only
railroad in Indiana. People travelled by river, but that
was a major source of the problem. A posting on the
web about plague ships (old-merseytimes,co,uk quotes
the Liverpool Mercury for Saturday, July 5th 1913 on this
subject) states that in November of 1853 there were 28
ships taking emigrants from America to Europe with
cholera on all of them resulting in 1,141 deaths. There
were 100 deaths on the Constellation which left
Liverpool with 922 persons, 62 on the Tapscott, 89 on
the Union.
Napoleon, Indiana was a transportation hub with a
number of stage routes, 35 of its 250 people died of
cholera in 1849. Perhaps, Fayette, and Rush counties in
Indiana were full of the fear of this disease. Could that be
what sent the Kennedy and McMichael families to the
fresh water and air of the yet relatively unspoiled and
unsettled land of Platte, Andrew, and Nodaway Counties
in Northern Missouri?
There are Rush County graves for Mary E. McMichael,
born April 25, 1840 died September 15, 1846 (age 6) and
James Kennedy, son of Samuel and Nancy Kennedy, died
November 28th 1840 or 1846, age 31. There is a grave for
William C. Kennedy, son of Samuel and Nancy Kennedy,
died September 4th 1843, age 27. There is also a grave
for Samuel Kennedy, died April 30th 1840, age 64.
Alfred Lord Tennyson was writing his “In Memorium A. H.
H.” in 1849, published in 1850:
XXI
I sing to him that rests below,
And, since the grasses round me wave,
I take the grasses of the grave,
And make them pipes whereon to blow.
The traveler hears me now and then,
And sometimes harshly he will speak:
“This fellow would make weakness weak,
And melt the waxen hearts of men.”
Another answers, “let him be,
He loves to make parade of pain,
That with his piping he may gain,
The praise that comes to constancy.”
A third is wroth: “Is this an hour
For private sorrow’s barren song,
When more and more the people throng
The chairs and thrones of civil power?”
“A time to sicken and to swoon,
When Science reaches forth her arms
To feel from world to world, and charms
Her secret from the latest moon?”
Behold, ye speak an idle thing:
Ye never knew the sacred dust:
I do but sing because I must,
And pipe but as the linnets sing:
And one is glad; her note is gay,
For now her little ones have ranged;
And one is sad: her note is changed,
Because her brood is stolen away.
This was the mood of the times. It was the most quoted
poem of its day. People were more important to each
other when there was no radio, cell phone, television,
computer, telephone, or other device to keep them
company. Sadness and fear, the desire to escape, who
knows what drove them to move on after loosing
children like this. We can only guess.
The settled places, the good land belonged to the
Quakers and the Pilgrims, the members of the Episcopal
and Presbyterian, Unitarian, and Congregational
Churches. These families seem to be mainly Methodist,
Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, even Mormon, but
rarely any of the denominations associated with wealth
and power. Rather than coming from the prosperous
portions of the British Isles, they were largely rural Scott,
Irish, Welsh, members of the Celtic fringe areas. They
kept to the fringe areas once they arrived and filled up
the empty land that no one claimed except the Indians,
and later, the steamboats and railroads. But, often, it
was their good luck to find themselves near a railroad
line, or a river running West, and be the first to claim
access to this new source of communication and power.
Rivers and railroads, steamboats and stage lines, new
roads and even telegraph lines, would change their lives
in ways that could not be foreseen. As these fringe
groups of farmers found each other and began to
intermarry it became difficult to know who was related
to who.
When Samuel Kennedy got his quick claim deed from the
heirs of James Kennedy in 1808, the other heirs were
Jesse Lynch and Mary Kennedy, John Kennedy (husband
of Charity McMichael, Jane Kennedy, Betsy Kennedy,
Nancy Kennedy, Esther Kennedy, Joseph Ross and Sarah
Kennedy. Joseph Ross was involved in promoting the
Alquina area of Jennings Township in Fayette County,
Indiana. The children of Joseph and Sarah Ross were in
the Alquina area at the time of his death in 1836, along
with Jane Kennedy.
These children would be grandchildren of John Bennett
and Charity McMichael Kennedy. Susan Malinda Ross
was a daughter of Joseph D. Ross born 7 April 1825 in
Alquina and she married George E. Hamilton on 26 Nov.
1848 in Fayette County Indiana. They had a son Thomas
Jefferson Greenberry Hamilton and were family #63 in
the 1850 census of Jennings Township of Fayette County.
Family #22 was Henry J. Ross (31), Avarilla Ross (35),
Greenberry Ross (8), John Madison Ross (1), Martin Ross
(1), Sarah Ross (62), and Jane Kennedy (50), Family #23
was William D. Ross (28), Adaline Ross (25), William M.
Ross (8), James A. Ross (6), Elizabeth Ross (4), and
Malinda Ross (2).
All of the children of John Bennett Kennedy and Charity
McMichael Kennedy were born in North Carolina, except
for Samuel Thomas, my grandmother’s grandfather, who
was born in Fayette County, Indiana 29 September 1830.
There is no way to know exactly what was happening,
but soon my ancestors started moving to Posey
Township in Rush County, the County next to Fayette
County, and not far from Indianapolis, the state capitol.
It is at this point the family begins to be associated with
the Cain and Allender Family. Eliza Ann Kennedy (born 2
Feb 1815) married Jacob C. Allender who was born 15
July 1814 in Fleming, Kentucky. They were married 18
Oct 1835. She died 9 March 1836. There is a will of
Nathan Parrish of Rush County, Indiana, dated 26 Feb.
1842 with Thomas McMicheal and George Moore as
witnesses. On the 16th of November 1846, Charity
(Carrie) Kennedy (born 7 August 1819, daughter of
Samuel Kennedy and Nancy McMichael) married Jacob
Six (born 1 March 1819 in Fleming County, Kentucky).
They had a number of children, John W. Six, born 21 Feb.
1849 died 29 March 1849, buried in the Stanley
Cemetery in Posey Township.
On the 12th of September 1850, Mary Ann Six (born 2 Jan
1828) married Nathaniel Kennedy (born 1825 in
Washington, Tennessee, son of Samuel Kennedy and
Nancy McMichael.
As discussed above, my branch of the Kennedy family will
move to Northern Missouri and end up in Maryville in
1850, living near Ambrose Cain from Rush County,
Indiana. Samuel Thomas, son of John Bennett Kennedy
and Charity McMichael, had just married Lucretia
Webster Smith, daughter of Elizabeth Crittenden Smith.
Later, Samuel and Lucretia will have a daughter,
Henrietta, who will marry Benjamin Harrison Lingenfelter
and they and their daughter Mary will move to Seattle,
Washington, where Mary will graduate from Seattle High
and be wed to another Seattle High graduate, Hugh
Monroe Thompson. Their daughter Jean Thompson,
being my mother, marrying Ralph Andrews in Los
Angeles County, and giving birth to me in Long Beach,
California.
On its way West, the family left a series of graves,
McMichael graves in a Methodist Cemetery in Guilford,
North Carolina, McMichael, Kennedy, etc., graves in the
Stanford Cemetery in Rush, County, Indiana, the Kennedy
and Cain Graves in the Cain Cemetery in Nodaway,
County, Missouri.
Standard US history textbooks like Henretta, Brody,
Ware, and Johnson, “America’s History,” (Bedford/Saint
Martin, 2000, V. I, pp 334 -335) describe the period
between 1830 and 1854 as a time of exceptional growth
in personal income. Carpenters began to build houses
with a frames of wooden studs joined by crosspieces at
top and bottom (balloon frames). The four room frame
house began to replace the two room cabin. Sheeting
and fabric was sold in local stores, a product of the mills
multiplying in places like the Haw River in North Carolina.
Stoves, ovens, broilers, grates became available using the
same iron technology that generates the boilers for
locomotives and the rails for railroads. These items were
delivered on the railroads that began to penetrate Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, all the way to St. Louis and beyond in the
period from 1850 to 1860. Up to 1852, the canals carried
twice as much tonnage as the railroads, but railroads
were the major carriers of freight by 1859. But there was
no communication with California and the far West at
this point, except by overland trail or by ship around the
Horn.
Newmark (See Above) describes the Los Angeles of 1853
as being more like a village. Shops were made of adobe
and signs were painted on unbleached cloth nailed to the
outside of the stores. Painted wooden signs did not
appear till 1865. Merchants would close their stores
when they felt like it, or spend hours playing cards. The
first saw mill and lumber yard did not appear in town
until 1861 (op. cit. pp. 80-81). There was little iron
available. The blacksmith in town bought old wagon
parts from outside of town to use in making utensils and
horseshoes. Most people used the old carretas with
solid wooden wheels. The blacksmith attempted to
introduce Eastern style wagons, but had little luck at first.
Carriages were very scarce. Don Abel Sterns had the only
private carriage in Los Angeles, at the time. People used
horses and carretas for all their travel.
Newmark describes the carreta as a massive platform on
wheels sawed from logs. It squeaked and could be heard
from far away. Oxen pulled them with ropes attached to
their horns. Usually, up to fifty howling dogs would
follow the squeaking carts. Long leather ropes were used
to hold on to horse because there were no hitching
posts. Newmark says that General Fremont’s wife had
one of the finest carriages in California that had been
made in the East and shipped around the Horn.
A Mormon colony in San Bernardino was providing Los
Angeles with butter, and eggs, but it took three days to
arrive, the butter melting and the eggs stale.
In 1853, according to Newmark, there was only one
newspaper in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Star. It
published in both Spanish and English. When it was
founded in 1851, Los Angeles had no telegraph lines.
Post from San Francisco might take 50 days or more. The
admission of California into the Union in 1850 was not
known on the Pacific Coast till six weeks later, the news
of the deaths of Clay and Webster in 1852 did not reach
the Coast for a month (op. cit. p. 93). This was progress,
according to Newmark, because the news of the death of
President Harrison took three and a half months to make
it West.
The Los Angeles Post Office contained a soap box where
citizens would help themselves to mail. Many of the
wealthier citizens lived at the Plaza, which was usually
filled with thrown away rubbish. The Church of Our Lady,
the Queen of the Angels, dated from 1822, had no pews
and required participants to knell on the floor or stand
during worship. Newmark says the bell rung at six in the
morning and eight at night marked the limits of the day.
The Corpus Christi festival required the cleaning of the
Plaza and the major families, Del Valles, Olveras, Lugos,
Picos put up altars in front of their homes covered with
silks and satin and expensive jewels. A procession would
move to each altar with children dressed in white
carrying flowers. On Christmas eve, there were plays
presented by young people and the eating of “bunelos,”
which Newmark describes as “native donuts.” Newmark
states that the first “Jewish Cemetery” was established in
Los Angeles in 1854 (op. cit. p. 104). In 1855, the city
built its first public school building.
Newmark points out that there was much more home
treatment in 1853 (op. cit., page 110). Castor oil, ipecac,
black drought, and calomel were used frequently.
Surgery was done at home and there were few
instruments available.
West to the ocean, from the few streets that made up
the city of Los Angeles, according to Newmark, was a
great undeveloped field with swamps full of tules. South
and east of the city, there were large vineyards. All of
the land, to the city limits, belonged to the city, the land
had been surveyed, but no streets were cut, according to
Newmark. The houses that existed were made of adobe
bricks formed of mud and straw and dried for months in
the sun. The walls were several feet thick, but required
protection of roofs and verandas, or they washed away
in the rain. There were patios but no basements and the
floors were often of dirt. Doors were wide and windows
were deep. Wooden shutters were used instead of
curtains. There were wide verandas, but no chimneys or
fireplaces. There were few gardens because of the cost
of water.
Roofs were flat and covered with tar from the tar pits at
the springs on the Hancock Ranch (today’s La Brea Tar
Pits) or imported from places to the North. Enormous
kettles were put up in the streets to melt the pitch and
fires we lit under them. The molten tar was carried up in
buckets and poured on the roofs.
Newmark believed the first brickyard went up around
1855, but recalls a brick kiln built in 1853 and at least one
brick building at that time (op. cit. p. 115). He recalls a
second brick kiln made for a new jail, that replaced an
old adobe jail that had no cells and kept the prisoners
fastened to logs outside.
Irrigation and water came from the zanjas, or open
ditches. There were seven of eight of them in operation
in 1853. They connected with the zanja madre, the
mother ditch that ran through the north side of the city.
The source of the zanja madre was the Los Angeles River
from a point well north of the city. Carriers charged 50
cents a bucket for water from the river. Animals of all
kinds used the river, including pigs, so it was not clean.
The river had no bridge over it and all the young children
bathed their to amuse themselves. The city council
passed a resolution against washing clothes in the zanjas
but the women of the city continued to wash this way.
Water went into five gallon “ollas” that were porous and
kept the contains cool from evaporation. The ollas were
hung off the ground and gourd dipper were often used to
dip water from within.
Small pox epidemics arrived every year. The natives
were afraid of vaccination and sanitation. A smallpox
wagon called the “Black Maria” was in the streets during
the epidemics.
In 1854, an aunt and uncle arrived from New York City,
and they began to give Harris Newmark instruction in
English. Joseph Newmark would organize the Los
Angeles Hebrew Benevolent Society, which, among other
things cared for the Los Angeles Jewish Cemetery.
The money in circulation in Los Angeles came from
France, Spain, Mexco, etc. and it was exchanged based
on size. A Mexican quarter, worth only 14 cents was
accepted in exchange for an American quarter (op. cit., p.
129). Privately stamped coins appear to have been
common, issued by assaying companies. Stealing and
gambling, drinking, and bad language were common in
the city of Newmark’s day. The merchant would keep
some worthless jewelry within easy reach to protect his
more valuable items.
Although the Los Angeles County of Newmark’s time is
very different from the Los Angles that Henrietta
(Kennedy) Lingenfelter would bring up her family in when
she resided in Torrance in the 1920s, there are some
similar points. Los Angeles County was still expanding
when Henrietta arrived, and much of the expansion was
from places outside the state, just as was the case in
Harris Newmark’s day. Also, the advance of medicine
and technology was changing life rapidly, perhaps more
rapidly than in Newwark’s time. Family was still very
important, but it gradually grew less important as new
opportunities opened up at work, at school, in
government, etc., that had nothing to do with local kin.
There was another process that was at work, and was
even further along for Henrietta than it had been for
Newmark. The woman’s rights movement had begun
among the abolitionists (see America’s History, cited
above, p. 392). Angelina and Sarah Grimke had left a
South Carolina plantation to lecture against slavery in the
North. In 1837, clergy members asked the sisters to
cease lecturing to mixed audiences, since it was the duty
of women to obey men. The Grimke sisters began to
maintain the need to free women from “domestic
slavery.”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized a
convention in Seneca Falls in 1848. More conventions
followed in the 1850s. Susan B. Anthony joined the
movement for women’s rights in 1851. Henrietta
(kennedy) Lingenfelter was a college graduate, two of
her daughters, Lois and Ruth, were also college
graduates. Both female children of her oldest daughter,
Mary, graduated from college as well. That Harris
Newmark was learning English from his aunt, is symbolic
of the new role that women would play as leaders in the
field of education.
The 1850s represented a transition from steamboat to
railroad as the major means of transportation in North
America. Places like Los Angeles and Nodaway County
Missouri were still dependent upon steamboats rather
than railroads. As the railroads reached these areas,
there would be a major change in their character. Cabins
and adobe brick structures, like those described above,
would begin to be replaced by brick and balloon frame
structures. Already, vaccination was beginning to bring
smallpox under control, further progress against disease
would have to wait for the improvement of microscope
techniques and development in microbiology, the subject
Henrietta’s grandson Victor Thompson (son of Mary
(Lingenfelter) Thompson) would obtain his B.A. degree in
at the University of California, Berkeley and the subject
that I would teach for the State University of New York at
Fulton Montgomery Community College, after obtaining
a Master’s degree at the University of California, Los
Angeles (Botany, 1963) and doing doctoral work in the
life sciences. I remember being vaccinated for smallpox
as a boy, by my great uncle John Lingenfelter MD,
Henrietta’s only son, the other four children were
daughters.
The fear of disease, of cholera epidemics, drove people
to religion, the Mormon Church, the Church of Christ, the
Disciples of Christ, the Methodist Church in the case of
the Kennedy Family. With the spread of abolitionism and
women’s rights came the spread of the transcendental
philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I have in my hand a
book of Emerson’s Essays that belonged to Benjamin
Harrison Lingfelter, husband of Henrietta, when he
studied at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. On
page 148, Emerson says “I look for the new Teacher that
shall follow so far those shining laws that he shall see
them come full circle; shall see their rounding complete
grace; shall see the world to be the mirror of the soul;
shall see the identity of the law of gravitation with the
purity of the heart; and shall show that the Ought, that
Duty, is one thing with Science, with Beauty, and with
Joy.”
In the first part of the 20th Century, Ernest Holmes
organized the Institute of Religious Science to promote
these ideas of Emerson. This institute was located near
the springs on the Hancock Ranch in Los Angeles, that
Harris Newmark wrote about many years before. Ernest
Holmes was influence by one of the few religious
movements started by a woman, the Christian Science
movement begun by Mary Baker Eddy of Boston, started
in 1866. Ernest Holmes ideas would attract both of my
parents and my mothers parents, including three of
Henrietta Lingenfelter’s daughters: Mary (my
grandmother), Lois (Lingenfelter) Engel, and Ruth
(Lingenfelter) Jurich.
Rather than following their children into Religious
Science, Benjamin and Henrietta remained true to the
Disciples of Christ church, the more liberal denomination
of the Church of Christ movement, but not nearly as
liberal as the ideas of Holmes, which embraced the
theism and pantheism and agnosticism of Buddhist,
Hindu, Jewish, Moslem, and Chinese philosophy and
theology. Holmes was not particular about the details as
long as it was positive and constructive in its tone. In his
book, “What Religious Science Teaches,” he embraces
Emerson, Buddha, Plato, Socrates, Swedenborg,
Whitman, Jesus, The Hermetic Teaching, Talmud, Koran,
Zend-Avesta, Buddhist and Hindu Sacred Writings, New
and Old Testaments, Gnostic Writings, Book of Dao,
Upanishads, Pistis Sophia, Apocrypha, The Book of the
Dead, Bhagavad-Gita, Veda, Mahabharata, and others, as
sources of doctrine and authority. This was the sort of
thing my parents and grandparents were reading and
studying in the early years of my life. Many of the
ministers in the organization were women and women
continue to be very active in the organization to this day.
In my own philosophy, I have tended to follow the path
set out by Holmes and Emerson, fusing philosophy and
science and looking to Chinese and Hindu sources for my
religion, looking to Socrates and Plato as often as I look
to Christianity. It is a long way from the Christianity of
Methodism and Mormonism. That there are members of
the LDS Church among the family is to be expected. The
path the Mormons followed from New York to Utah
passes right through areas where family members
settled, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, etc..
Newmark’s business seems to have brought him in
contact with Mormon organizations and since he seems
to have dealt with most of his commercial contacts in a
respectful friendly way, the results appear to have been
positive. Every month new people appear in Los Angeles,
with which Newmark establishes social and business
relationships, they bring new technology, commercial,
legal, educational connections.
Cooking in Los Angeles in 1853 was largely Mexican,
according to Newmark: tamales, enchiladas, frijoles,
tortillas, pan de huevos, panocha, with the Indians
contributing pinole. Dancing centered on the fandango,
jota, and cachucha. Food in Missouri and Indiana was
largely what was available, corn and wheat flour, chicken
and eggs of all kinds, pork and beef in various forms.
When Joseph D. Ross, husband of Sarah Kennedy, died 4
Sept 1836, there were extensive probate records. Joseph
D. Ross was largely responsible for the development of
Alquina, Indiana, in Jennings Township of Fayette,
County. These records list agricultural property including:
60 head of geese, cows and steers, 12 and 13 head of
sheep, a field of corn, a sugar tub, a lot of wheat, a lot of
rye, a coffee mill, 10 head of hogs, a tea kettle.
Looking at this I remember my grandmother, living, when
I was two, in the same house with her mother, her
mother Henrietta (Kennedy) Lingenfelter dying in the
room that became my bedroom, and I remember lamb
cops and pork chops. I remember corn in various forms,
including hominy. I remember wheat bread and rye
bread and lots of milk and butter.
My main comment on the above is that they must have
eaten a lot more goose in Sarah Kennedy Ross’s kitchen.
I do not recall eating a goose or a goose egg, although we
raised them in my backyard when I was 13 and living in
Compton (just North of Long Beach in Los Angeles
County).
In the period of time we are discussing, 1853, many
family members were living in the vicinity of the Stanley
Cemetery in Posey Township of Rush County, near
Arlington.
An account printed in the extensive family tree for the
descendants of George Allender mentions an item from
Rush County that probably took place about the time
that Henrietta (Kennedy) Lingenfelter was setting up
house for the first time in Torrance, California, a suburb
of Los Angeles. Remember that Thomas McMichael and
George W. Moore were witness to the will of David
Parish, father of Nathan Parish and husband of Selitha
Allender, parents of Henry W. Parish and George
Washington Parish and that Jacob Six had married
Charity Kennedy, daughter of Samuel Kennedy and
Nancy McMichael, and they were the parents of Nancy J.
Six, Thomas J. Six, William M. Six, Samuel K. Six, John W.
Six (the later buried in the Stanley Cemetery referred to
above. Remember also that Mary Ann Six married
Nathaniel Kennedy, son of John S. Kennedy and grandson
of Samuel Kennedy. Jacob C. Allender married Eliza Ann
Kennedy, the daughter of John Kennedy and Charity
McMichael (grandparents of Henrietta (Kennedy)
Lingenfelter.
Donna Tauber, apparently the source for the extensive
Allender family file I am using here has a story place
under a section for Evalena Drennen, with a lineage
going back to Elisabeth Six and Mary Allender, cousins
and in-laws of cousins, relatives of cousins resting in the
Stanley Cemetery mentioned above. According to the
story quoted, “Aunt Zola lived in Arlington and she would
come and bring her son Jim Eddie and Oscie would be
there from Indianapolis, Aunt Thelma from Connersville
and my Gandma and Grandpa Maggie and Homer Enis.”
The story goes on to tell how, “Grandma lived in a cute
little white house in Arlington, coming from Rushville just
past the cemetery and the cannery we would turn the
first street left go about one block and we would be
there.” She describes how, “We always went around to
the back door and everyone would be in the kitchen
eating pie.”
I remember by grandmother Mary, Henrietta’s oldest
daughter making pies in 1943, 1944, 1945, in her house
in West Los Angeles. The War, World War II was the
focus of everyone’s attention, my uncle Victor Thompson
was with the Air Force in India. Henrietta’s daughter
Marty was married to Ivan Farman, an Air Force General,
my mother and her father (Hugh Thompson, along with
his son in law, Frank Gilbert) were working for Rieber
Aircraft just down Pico Blvd. Rationing was on and when
we went to the local Safeway, or the Atlantic and Pacific,
it was difficult to get all the items grandmother needed,
but I remember lots of pies. Grandmother mentioned
her mother’s advice when she made them. She
constantly complained about the crust not being right.
Rhubarb Pie, mentioned in the Allender story above, was
a major item that she baked and I loved it. I would love
to watch and help by licking spoons and eating shortning.
What strikes me about this is what changes and doesn’t
change. On the surface nothing could be more different
from Indiana than this West Los Angeles house with its
white washed stucco walls, Spanish Tiles and patio, and
tile roof. But underneath the stucco was a balloon
frame, not the adobe brick of the Los Angeles of Harris
Newmark’s 1853. There was asphalt on the roof, but in
association with real tiles, much too expensive for all but
the rich in the time of Newmark’s arrival. There was no
sign of any Mexican food in this middle class
neighborhood, bread and milk were delivered daily by
delivery truck and the streets were clean and swept by
street sweeping trucks.
Something unimaginable in the time of Sarah Ross,
Samuel Kennedy, or Harris Newmark in 1853. Life had
been transformed by telephone and radio, television was
on its way, as mentioned above, at this time my uncle
Frank Gilbert, husband of Miriam Gilbert daughter of
Hugh and Mary Thompson, was busy in his garage a few
blocks away, converting an old radar set to a three inch
television. Still, what we ate, had not changed that
much, at least in grandmother’s kitchen, from what had
been cooked and served a hundred years before, or was
been cooked at that very time by other relatives back in
Missouri and Indiana, where the family came from.
Now even this would change, as all things do. I
remember coming to visit my parents in Torrance
sometime in the 1980s. My mother had divorced my
father in 1953 and married Paul Colaluca, originally from
Philadelphia, PA. They took me out to eat at their
favorite restaurant in Redondo Beach, Pancho and
Wongs, a restaurant, since closed, that served both
Mexican and Chinese cuisine. The Southern California
area is the source of many currently popular restaurant
and fast food chains, including those that specialize in
food of this kind.
You can see the beginnings of the process that generated
this in Harris Newmark’s story of his life in California. Los
Angeles is constantly receiving new settlers from all over
North America and the larger world. They come, mainly,
by ship at this point, some from the gold fields.
Newmark notes (op. cit. p. 143) that Bishop and Beale,
received an enormous amount of Kern County land in
1854, Newmark estimates that it was around two or
three hundred thousand acres, for work they did in
surveying the Butterfield Stage route. Newmark believes
that Bishop sold out to operate a streetcar line in San
Jose. Bakersfield, according to Newmark, was part of this
ranch, getting its name from Colonel Baker. Newmark
claims that Baker sold out to Beale and bought the San
Vicente Ranch, that took in the whole Santa Monica area.
It consisted of 30,000 acres on which Baker raised sheep.
Newmark relates that the “Soldier’s Home” is on part of
this land (op. cit., p. 143).
It is interesting to me that my current home in Oildale,
Kern County, is in the suburbs of Bakersfield and may be
on land that belonged to Baker’s original ranch. Where
my grandmother lived in West Los Angeles was close to
the Soldier’s Home, which is now associated with a
military cemetery and Veteran’s Administration Hospital.
It seems odd that my grandmother’s house may have
been on land that was part of, or adjacent to, Baker’s
Santa Monica ranch. It is strange to think that my life has
been a journey from one part of Baker’s property to
another.
I have been fortunate to have had access to both. The
Self Realization fellowship, begun by the author of
“Autobiography of a Yoga,” owns some beautiful
property north of Santa Monica, that I often passed as a
boy and later visited. I have spent many hours collecting
sea weed along the coast north of Santa Monica in what
must have originally been land belong to Baker, or to his
neighbors. Yesterday, I went for a two hour walk in Hart
Park alongside the Kern River, gazing at the mountains
that frame the Kern River drainage.
Newmark discusses how gold fever affected much of
what happened in Southern California. Apparently gold
was found at Havilah, in Kern County, and the word
spread everywhere, by 1855, according to Newmark (op.
cit. pp. 148 -149) the amounts of gold had been greatly
exaggerated and rumors were everywhere. Newmark
says that the find attracted gamblers and “desperadoes”
to the area. As a result there were gunfights and four
men were shot dead in the Plaza, and six wounded, on a
Sunday night in 1855.
Among those arriving was a W. G. Ross, who purchased
the main hotel in Los Angeles (Bella Union), July 22nd
1854, along with a man named Crockett. I have no idea if
this Ross is a relative of the Ross family in Indiana,
apparently Ross and Crockett were bought out by a
Robert S. Hereford on April 7th 1855, and Ross was later
killed in San Francisco by a C. P. Duane (op. cit., p. 150).
Los Angeles was served by schooners and side-wheeler
steam boats with paddles that “churned the water into a
frothing foam.” Sometime in this period a stage line was
put in that went south through San Jose and Santa
Barbara to Los Angeles and San Diego. In 1854, a route
was surveyed to Salt Lake City and started as a pony
express route. Later, this became a wagon route. Bull
fighting and cock fighting were still common in Los
Angeles at this time. Among those reaching Los Angeles
at this time was George Dalton, who came from London,
England and established a vineyard and orchard.
Newmark mentions an earthquake, July 11th 1855, that
left cracks in most buildings in Los Angeles.
This is a world that belonged largely to men. Men were
exploring the seas, using the new forms of transportation
available and the new lands available to see the world.
These opportunities were largely closed to women.
Contraception was only slowly beginning to improve.
Children were subject to many different diseases.
James Oliver Robertson and Janet C. Robertson have
written a book based on the accumulated papers of the
Taintor family of Hampton, Connecticut (All Our
Yesterdays, HarperCollins, 1993). The Taintors were well
off. They, like the Newmarks, were one of the leading
families in their city. The Robertson book, in discussing
the Taintor family in the 1840s and 1850s, points out that
“Caring for sick children was a mother’s absolute duty.” I
remember the devotion with which my grandmother and
my mother cared for me as a child when I was sick.
There were many child killing diseases around, Scarlet
Fever is mentioned as a particularly dangerous disease.
According to the Robertson book, families were
responsible to caring for the old and dying was
something a daughter duty. In the case of the Taintor
household that is the subject of the Robertson book,
Delia and Henry Taintor took care of Henry’s mother for
ten years (see op. cit. p.227). Dr. John Lingenfelter MD,
son of Henrietta took care of his mother’s wife in her
later years in Seattle. I remember visiting their house in
1948 when she was living in her home. His older sister,
my grandmother took care of her mother Henrietta
(Kennedy) Lingenfelter while she died. I remember
visiting her in the room that would later become my
bedroom. When John Engel, husband of Lois
(Lingenfelter) Engel was slowly dying from accumulations
of minor strokes, his wife, daughter of Henrietta, was
working as a guidance counselor and did not have time
to look after her husband. It became my younger
brother, Stephen Charles Andrews, duty to look after
him, when he wasn’t going to High School. Stephen
actually lived with his great aunt and uncle during this
period.
When Mary (Lingenfelter) Thompson died of thyroid
cancer in 1953, her husband Hugh Monroe Thompson,
lived with John and Lois (Lingenfelter) Engel, then, in
1954, he moved in with us and had a room in my
mothers house for a number of years, till finally moving
into his own place (I am trying to recall the date but I
cannot remember). Hugh and I became very close. He
and I drove together, with me driving most of the way,
from Los Angeles to Seattle in 1956 in an old 1947
Plymouth. This was an opportunity for me to visit with a
number of members of the family. My uncle Victor
Thompson, MD, in Weed, California. My grandfather’s
twin brother Victor Thompson in Des Moines and his
older brother Frederick Thompson in Tacoma, my great
uncle Dr. John Lingenfelter, MD, in Seattle, his sister Ruth
(Lingenfelter) Jurich in Federal Way, and their children.
We continued down to Portland, Oregon to visit Mrs.
Harold Gilbert, mother of Frank Gilbert, and sister-in-law
of Alfred Clinton Gilbert, of Gilbert Toys in New Haven.
I am holding Hugh Thompson’s copy of Ernest Holmes
book “The Science of Mind” as I write this. The first
address in the book is 2406 West 171st Torrance,
California, the house my mother purchased in 1954, and
the second address is Hugh Thompson’s retirement
location, 13821 Fresh Meadow Lane, in Seal Beach,
California.
At the time that we are discussing, this area is nothing
but fields and willow swamps grazed upon by cattle. It is
a world where little is known about disease and
medicine. Primitive microscopes have been developed
and vaccination against smallpox has proven so effective
that Napoleon ordered all French citizens to be
vaccinated against smallpox. But other diseases, like
cholera, still have no effective treatment. Cholera strikes
London, England in 1831 and 1832 and again in 1848. In
1849, John Snow, and English obstetrician published a
pamphlet that demonstrated that cholera was associated
with dirty water. In 1853, cholera killed over 5000 in
Hawaii. In 1854, the Italian anatomist Fillipo Pacini found
the bacterium that caused cholera, but his discovery was
not translated into English. When another cholera break
out occurred in London, Dr. Snow was able to trace it to
contamination near a public water source on Broad
Street.
Transportation was developing in this period and it
would spread disease. In 1855, Yellow Fever appeared in
Norfolk, Virginia, apparently brought in by a steamship
that carried the infected mosquitoes from the West
Indies. We have discussed, above, the passage of cholera
down the railroad lines. There was extensive railway
develop in this period, as discussed above. The
Robertson book, mentioned above, relates how Henry
Taintor of Hampton, Connecticut, was investing in
railway stock in 1850. He bought shares of the Erie line
that was 483 miles long when completed in 1851. This
line ran from New York City to Lake Erie. In 1851,
according to the Robertsons, the US had 9000 miles of
railroad (more than all the rest of the world, op. cit. p.
345).
The railroads had not reached California, and because
transportation was so bad to the interior, little was
known about much of the interior of the state.
According to Newmark, there were no fences separating
the great Spanish and Mexican land grant ranchos, the
cattle wandered where they wished to, each ranch
having branded its cattle with its own distinctive brand.
Great rodeos were held. These involved the round up of
all the cattle in an area by the vaqueros (cowboys).
Major celebrations where held at this time, including bull
fights and horse races (Newmark, op. cit. p. 182). The
rodeos were presided over by Judges of the Plains.
Under the old Mexican law, the Judge of the Plains was
the law.
Trade was opened up with Salt Lake following an old
Spanish trail to Sante Fe. The first shipment involved
fifteen wagons pulled by 150 mules. This wagon train
carried thirty tons and left in May and came back in
September (op. cit, p. 187). Banning, who was closely
associated with Newmark and seems to have been active
in all the commercial goings and comings that promoted
the Los Angeles harbor area, where he had heavily
invested, seems to have been a major sponsor of this
new venture. Newmark writes that he brought back
some of the first vehicles with spokes in Southern
California.
By 1856, Los Angeles was opening its second public
school. The owner of the Star, the major Los Angeles
paper, did not feel so positive about the future of the
city, writing “The flush times of the pueblo, the day of
large prices and pocket-books are past.” He wrote that
he saw “only bad liquor, rags, and universal dullness,
when neither pistol-shots nor dying groans” could help
“when earthquakes would hardly turn men in their
beds!” The owner sold the paper June, 1856, to Henry
Hamilton, who had come from Ireland to California in
1848.
In 1853 there were around 80 vineyards in Los Angeles.
William Wolfskill, who came west from Missouri, was a
pioneer in lemons, oranges, and grapes, and began the
California fruit industry. According to Newmark, the local
Native Americans were still living off of acorn meal, but
the 1854 crop was very poor.
Newmark’s entry for 1857 concerns me. At this point, he
discusses the destruction done at Fort Tejon by the great
quake of 1857, and how the men were forced to live in
tents after the destruction of the barracks. But, most
telling is his story of the tsunami that nearly swamped
the Sea Bird as it entered San Francisco Bay.
My mother lived through the great Long Beach
earthquake of the 1930s. The quake was not that strong
as quakes go, but Long Beach was built on beach sand
and alluvium. Many of the buildings, and all of the
schools, were made of brick and fell down. My mother
went to school in tents. The balloon frame house they
were living in was thrown off its foundation. It was the
balloon frame that saved many lives. Balloon frames
respond to major earthquakes much better than two and
three story brick construction. The survivors of this Long
Beach quake were in great fear of a tsunami, but one
never came.
People coming to California from Ireland and New
England looked with contempt on the way of life of the
Native Americans. The Gabrielinos, named by Europeans
for the San Gabriel mission that they were associated
with, had lived a largely nomadic life, gathering acorns in
the mountains and foothills in the Summer and
retreating to the ocean, even to islands like Catalina to
fish and gather shell fish in the Winter. It is probable
that they retreated to mountain areas and stores of
acorns in the hills, when floods, ocean storms,
earthquake generate tsunamis and coastal swamp
disease were a problem. In like manner, when poor
rains, or heavy snows, or fire, made the mountains
undesirable, they took refuge at the sea, even on
Catalina Island.
This way of life made no sense to the Europeans. Who,
generally, had nothing but contempt for everything
about the Native American. Yet, by the time English,
French, and German speaking settlers arrived, the
Spanish may have absorbed some of this wisdom from
their Native American wives. There may be a reason
that Los Angeles was located so far from the coast, San
Diego was located next to available mesas, San Francisco
was located on the bay side of the ocean. The records
are so poor, it is difficult to be sure. But, when I was
younger, I often gazed and the remains of the original
church at San Juan Capistrano, devastated, if I remember
correctly, and I am not checking my history on this, by an
earthquake thirty years earlier than the 1857 quake we
are discussing.
For a while, my nephew, Stephen Roy Andrews, son of
Stephen Charles Andrews, son of Ralph B. Andrews and
Jean (Thompson) Andrews, was living with his mother,
Elaine Smith, in Crescent City, and frequent trips to that
coastal city reminded me often of the toll that tsunami
waves had taken on that city, poorly placed from the
stand point of defense against earthquake generated
ocean waves. (The frequent use in this text of the term
“American Indian, or just “Indian,” does not reflect the
point of view of the author, but is an attempt to show
the mind set of the Europeans of the day, to show the
world from their point of view, in order to better
understand it).
It was one reason why many residence of Western places
like Nodaway County Missouri, were so slow in taking the
available railroad transportation, once it became
available, to go West. At the time of the great San
Francisco quake, the belief that California was in danger
of falling into the ocean was already common, according
to friends of mine who had relatives living there at the
time. The following story was told to me (related by
Ralph Pease of Van Nuys in 1995, before his death) and is
probably true. This relative of my friend was living with
his wife in a San Francisco hotel when the quake hit.
There was a pitcher of water by the bed. The lights went
out and the pitcher of water sailed up in the air and came
down on the bed. At this point the uncle of my friend
cried out to his wife, “Hang on Sally, we are going
under!”
The same Ralph Pease that related the story above,
worked for many years for the Sunkist citrus packing
organization. According to him, some of the agricultural
patterns in the Los Angeles area were due to the fact
that the variety of citrus they were planting had a tree
life of about 50 years. The trees, he claimed, would bear
great quantities of fruit just before they died.
This was a frequent experience of my boyhood. Friends
and associates of my Bank Vice President father, would
buy an orchard that was producing great amounts of
fruit. Then, the orchard, would suddenly start to die.
They would sell to a housing developer and what had
been agricultural land would convert quickly to mass
cheap housing. This was particularly common when I
was a boy, just after the end of World War II. Large
numbers of trees were planted at the time of the railroad
boom, created by the competition of Santa Fe and
Southern Pacific railroads for West Coast business. In
1940, 1950, 1960, they had entered their period of
decline (trees planted in 1890, 1900, 1910). Towns
devoted to citrus were suddenly devoted to housing
development (Ontario, Pomona, Upland in San
Bernardino County, Santa Ana, Orange, Anaheim in
Orange County, Riverside in Riverside County, San
Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County).
An important factor in this is my presence in the middle
of Orange Groves in Ontario, California in 1945, when my
father was Vice President of the First National Bank in
Ontario. A second factor was my program of study for
my doctorate in Botany at the University of California,
Los Angeles, at the point in time when the School of
Agriculture was moving to the University of California,
Davis. By 1962, at the age of 22, I had already passed the
doctoral written exams and was teaching the labs for the
graduate level course in Plant Taxonomy (Dr. Mildred
Mathias, Director of the Botanic Garden was my major
Professor and gave the lectures for the course). I was
able to take courses from agricultural professors that had
not yet relocated, including a memorable course in tissue
culture given by an agricultural professor who was an
authority on citrus.
Later, I would become lecturer in native plants for
ornamental uses for the Ornamental Horticulture
Department of California State Polytechnic University at
Pomona, and then Associate Professor of Botany for
Miami Dade Junior College, South Campus, in Miami,
Florida. There I worked with Dr. Monroe Birdsey,
authority on Cycas (Sago Palm), formerly of the
University of Miami, Department of Botany. He and I
would often travel together to various cites. I remember
when he took me to the Citrus Park in Homestead,
Florida, which at that time (1968) grew a number of
different genera and varieties of citrus.
The University of California, Los Angeles, was doing quite
a bit of research work with citrus at the time I was there.
I was a research associate for the Botanic Garden and for
the Department of Pharmacology at this point. One of
my titles at one point, was curator of the herbarium of
medicinal plants for the department of pharmacology of
the school of medicine. This fancy title was generated
for the purposes of one of the fancy grants that helped
pay my small salary. All of that is long forgotten, it faded
as soon as the grant money that drove it disappeared.
One of my jobs as the teaching assistant in charge of the
labs in plant taxonomy, was to located plants belonging
to various families of plants so that specimens could be
brought into the plant taxonomy room for students to
study and be tested on. The botanic garden at UCLA
already had a number of different kinds of citrus relatives
as specimens in the garden, one of my jobs was to make
sure we could find them and that they were properly
labeled.
I have just located by copy of “The Families of Flowering
Plants,” Vol. I, by J. Hutchinson, 2nd Edition, Oxford, 1959.
This was our guide for the plant taxonomy class and I was
paid to convert the class to the Hutchinson system. Later,
in 1970, when married to Linda (West) Andrews, I would
actually work as a research associate (unpaid) at the
Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, where Hutchinson had
been “Keeper of the Museums of Botany.” Hutchinson’s
treatment of the family (p. 354 of the above) gives a
number of genera, including Ruta, for which the family is
named, most numerous in Africa and Australia. Lemons
are Citrus medica, var. limonum. Oranges are Citrus
aurantium. Limes are Citrus medica, var. acida, all listed
as originating in India. The family is characterized by the
glands in the leaves, the source of the citrus smell and
flavor. It is obvious that I could go on and on with this.
When I was doing this project, I had a doctoral guidance
committee. Two of the members of this committee were
Dr. Mathias, mentioned above, and Dr. Harlan Lewis,
(student of Carl Epling, authority on Salvia (Sage))
authority on the genus Clarkia (Farewell to Spring), Dean
of Life Sciences at UCLA, at then, President of the Society
for the Study of Evolution. I took a graduate class in
“Evolution” from Dr. Lewis in 1962. Our textbook was
Volume I, “The Evolution of Life,” from the “Evolution
After Darwin” series, generated from the University of
Chicago Centennial (of Darwin’s Origin of the Species),
edited by Sol Tax, and printed by the University of
Chicago Press, in 1960. The section on the evolution of
flowering plants was written by Daniel Axelrod, of the
University of California, Los Angeles Department of
Geology. I was one of Dr. Axelrod’s students. I took
Paleobotany from him, and although, I did not agree with
his opposition to continental drift, he is a source of a
continuing interest in geology and paleobotany. It was
Axelrod and Mathias that generated my interest in plant
geography, and how it is affected by geological and
climatic forces. This all relates to citrus and earthquakes
because it is geological forces that created California,
shaped what it is and shaped its climate. I have written
extensively on this elsewhere.
One of the interests of the botany department at UCLA,
particularly the Botany Garden and Herbarium, under the
direction of Dr. Mildred Mathias in the 1960s, was the
distribution of agricultural productivity, what places,
what climates were best for which varieties of plants and
why. I was often asked by Dr. Mathias to help her in
doing research for various projects involving climate and
plant geography.
It was the point of view of Dr. Axelrod, that because of
patterns of the circulation of water and air, the West
sides of continents were more alike. This is something I
have studied extensively and it works like this. I found
that the closest approximation to the climate of Tokyo,
Japan that I could find was in Nashville, Tennessee. In
general, New England is not climatically New England, it
might be more appropriately called “New Korea” and
Texas called “New China.” If there is a “ New Portugal” it
is in coastal Southern California, and “New Spain” in the
interior toward Pasadena. “New Ireland” is in the Pacific
Northwest, and Victoria, British Columbia really does
have elements of a British climate. This is the true “New
England,” if there is one. “New Germany” is probably in
Oregon and “New France” in the Napa Valley of
California. “New Italy” should be somewhere toward the
interior of California, but that becomes “New Turkey”
and “New Afghanistan” the further your go toward Utah.
At some point in Kern County you begin to get climate
approaching the Syrian Desert and the cooler places in
Iraq. As you go north into Canada you approach some
kind of “New Russia,” as you move through “New
Germany” and “New Poland.”
Now you have to understand there are no perfect
climatic equivalents. There is nothing quite like the
northern coast of California, and that is, probably, one
reason why it is the refuge for the last of the redwoods.
But, it is certainly true that if you are looking for a “New
Ireland,” you are much more likely to find it around
Seattle, and “New Norway” and “New Denmark” as well,
then in New England (which has climate more like
northern China and Korea than like Europe). This may
explain why so many people with an Irish origin
eventually found themselves drawn to places like Seattle,
and why skin cancer might kill a farming ancestor like my
grandmother’s grandfather, Judge Samuel Kennedy, who
attempted to survive, with genes for skin adapted to an
Irish climate, in geographic conditions on the northern
plains of Missouri, that were closer to Manchuria and
Mongolia.
It also explains why I have an appointment with a
dermatologist in two days to have the stitches taken out
that result from removal of pieces of my skin that would
have survived in better condition if my ancestors had
remained in Seattle. If these problems affect the dermis
of the human skin, they also expose the epidermis of
plants. The oil glands in the Rutaceae may be
responsible for the secreting of oils that helped the
ancestors of oranges and lemons resist the heat of
subtropical summers and the fungal infections that come
with tropical humidity. The problem for these plants
comes with freezing temperatures. The water in the cells
of the fruit expands and it forms ice crystals, and the
result ruptures the developing cells and spoils the fruit.
Various techniques have been developed to prevent the
freezing, wind machines to move away cool air and
burning of oil in the so called “smuge pots” there were
common in the orange groves of Ontario, California
around 1945. We would wake up on a freezing morning
to find everything black with the residue of the smudge
that had been generated by lighting fires in the night in
these oil filled pots to protect the fruit in the Orange
groves from being spoiled.
It is a shame that Botany is no longer commonly taught,
because if more people were familiar with the science
they might understand more about problems we face
with generating enough food, saving water, and
preventing destruction from global warming. Botany
teaches the central role of the sun in everything that
happens on the earth. This is where plants get their
energy, not from the soil but from the sun.
Citrus requires lots of sunlight and subtropical warmth.
It requires water as well and the trees must be irrigated
regularly. It is one reason why the groves are located
near mountain ranges that can provide the necessary
water, and also because the trees like sandy well drained
soils. These factors were important elements in my
youth, when we were living in the middle of the orange
groves west of Ontario, California. The day of the week
when the irrigation water would flow through the
irrigation systems was a major event. The weekly timing
of events of live in the groves had to be coordinated to
agricultural happenings like smudging and irrigation.
But, Newmark lived in a time before damns and pipes
and irrigation systems, water was delivered through the
zanjas. According to Newmark, the experiments with
citrus had largely failed till a Dr. Halsey started a nursery
for oranges and limes in 1854 (see op. cit., p. 211). This
was sold to William Wolfskill. Newmark claimed that in
1857, there were not more that a 100 orange trees
fruiting in the entire county. When Wolfskill planted
thousands of trees, he created the largest orchard of its
kind in the country, according to Newmark.
It was this same year that Germans living in San Francisco
bought the land near the Santa Ana river that would
become the town of Anaheim (Ana for Santa Ana and
heim for the German word for home). George Hansen
surveyed the land in twenty acre lots. There was a canal
to bring water from the Santa Ana river and a natural
fence of willow trees.
Newmark says the John Butterfield was the organizer of
the American Express Company and began the
Butterfield Stage route which went from San Francisco to
Gilroy and to Visalia, to Fort Tejon and to Los Angeles.
From there, the route ran to San Bernardino, Temecula,
and Yuma, then to El Paso and ended in St. Louis. They
began running in 1858 and reached Los Angeles in
September. B. W. Pyle, a native of Virginia, arrived in
1858 and set up a jewelry and watch business. Phinneas
Banning established his landing north of San Pedro in
1857. He set up the community of Wilmington in 1858.
Newmark notes that Pyle made much money, but
invested in speculations that did not work out,
apparently resulting in his suicide. I have no idea if this
Pyle was related to the Pyle family that was ancestral to
Benjamin Harrison Lingenfelter’s great grandfather, Dr.
Octavious Pyle, of Northwest Missouri?
Looking at the Wikipedia article on Rutaceae, it gives 160
genera for the family. The oil producing glands are called
“pellucid glands.” Pellucid means that they admit light,
are translucent. The Wikipedia article on Citrus suggests
and origin in Myanmar (Burma), India, and Yunnan,
China. Citrus appears to hybridize easily and cultivated
citrus trees may be hybrids of several different species.
Commercial trees are created by grafting on to disease
resistant rootstocks. This article gives the following
cultivated species: Citrus aurantifolia, Key Lime (India);
Citrus maxima, Pomelo, from Malaya; Citrus media,
Citron, from India, Citrus reticulate, Mandarin Orange,
from China; Citrus trifoliata, Trifoliate Orange, from
Korea; Citrus asustralasica, Finger Lime, from Australia;
Citrus australis, Australian Round Lime; Citrus glauca,
Australian Desert Lime, and a few others including Citrus
indica, Indian Wild Orange; Citrus Latipes, from Assam;
Citrus halimii, from Thailand, the various species of
Kumquats (Fortunella) from East and Southeast Asia,
etc.. Significant hybrids include Grapefruit (Mandarin
Orange and Pomelo?), Lemon (Citron and Pomelo?),
Sweet Orange (Pomelo and Mandarin Orange?).
A major source of the cultivation of citrus in Florida,
according a website promoting Merritt Island, was
Douglas Dummit. He moved to the Titusville area from
Tomoka, where he was growing sugarcane and oranges.
He planted wild sour oranges that he had obtained from
Spanish root stock that were adapted to Florida soil and
grafted various sweet orange cuttings on the root stock,
perhaps cuttings obtained from colonists at New Smyrna.
These plantings survived a bad freeze in 1835 and were
transplanted in the Dummitt Grove, now part of Merritt
Island National Wildlife Refuge (adjacent to the Kennedy
Space Center). It is estimated that Douglas was
producing as many as 60,000 oranges a year by 1859.
Improvements in agriculture began slowly and then
picked up speed. The Orange County Farmer’s Museum
has posted a short history of agriculture on its website. It
starts with the use of oxen and horses pulling wooden
plows. This was the state of much of the agriculture
known to the Kennedy and McMichael family in its early
history. Cast iron plows began to appear about the time
that the Kennedy family was moving to Indiana. The
McCormick reaper appeared in 1834 and practical
threshing machines and steel plows in 1837. The 1840s
were a period of increasing use of factory manufactured
farm equipment. Methods for making superphosphate
appeared in 1843, mowing machines in 1844, irrigation in
1847, mixed chemical fertilizers in 1849, self-governing
windmills in 1854, two-horse straddle-row cultivators in
1856, mason jars for home canning in 1858.
Thomas Gaunt was born in Straffordshire , England, April
4th 1830 and came to the United State in 1853. In 1854
he worked at the Smith and Franklin Plant Nursery in
McDonough County, Illinois. In April, 1855, he moved to
Andrews County, Missouri and set up a nursery for Smith
and Franklin. He moved to Nodaway County in 1857. He
set up his own nursery in Nodaway with many kinds of
shade and fruit trees (See nwmissouri.edu). This site
would be donated for the Marysville District Normal
School and its house is the residence for the presidents
of Northwest Missouri State University.
Washington, Missouri is located in Eastern Missouri, at
the other side of the state from Nodaway County, on the
south side of the Missouri River just east of St Louis.
There is a history of the city that is available on line
(washingtonmo.com). The section that deals with the
pre-civil-war period describes a rather sleepy little place.
In the 1839 period, Daniel Hammerstein, the first
shoemaker is living in a log cabin. Godfrey Beyreis, is the
first carpenter and he built a frame house. Washington is
incorporated in 1841. Henry Wellenkamp moved to
Washington in 1843 and described it as a town with
about thirty voters. Outside of a few frame houses, most
were log cabins. The 1840 crank operated ferry had
been replaced by a horse ferry in 1843. Wellenkamp was
shipping a lot of tobacco leaf in hogsheads of 1000
pounds. Most agricultural production was corn and
tobacco. There were a few years of bad corps and bank
failures. The worst disaster was a great flood in 1844.
Trees, fences, fence rails, houses, were lifted up by the
flood waters and carried down the river. Chickens,
geese, hogs, and cows could be seen on the roofs of
floating houses. All of it seemed to pass by at a furious
rate according to the account of Wellenkamp. The
current was too strong for anything to cross. Steamboats
were unable to land. Seven or eight houses floated off
their foundations. After the flood came epidemics of
cholera and fever. Most people were ill and doctors
could do little to help.
According to this history, the German Revolt of 1848
brought many “political refugees” into the area. The
Pacific Railroad was under construction and it brought in
jobs. There was also a great deal of steam boat traffic on
the river in this period. The discovery of gold in
California stimulated a movement West. Apparently
there were 58 large steam boats on the Missouri in 1848,
and seventy “regular packets” by 1858. Steamers arrived
from the West with “gold dust” shipments. It was the
completion of the Hannibal and St. Joseph railroad that
brought a decline in this trade after 1859 (ibid).
Earlier settlers had taken the land along the rivers, so the
Germans settled in the hills, and slowly started moving
into the bottoms as well, all through hard work and
industry. Some of these new settlers were educated and
prosperous and they began to play an important role in
the cultural life of the community. There appears to
have been a building boom after 1850. A brickyard
started making bricks by the millions and two large
hotels were constructed. A city hall was constructed in
1851, which was also used for a school. A Lutheran
Church and a Presbyterian Church organized parochial
schools.
Construction began on the Pacific Railroad in St. Louis in
1851 and reached Washington in 1855. The railroad
replaced a wagon train of three to five wagons that had
been hauling goods to and from St. Louis. For a while
Washington was the terminus of the Missouri Pacific
railroad. Four horse post coaches connected Washington
with Jefferson City, where connections were available to
Springfield, Van Buren and Fort Smith, Arkansas. When
the next section of the railroad was completed, 750
persons boarded a special excursion train of eleven cars,
these included railroad and state officials. But, the train
plunged through a bridge across the Gasconade River,
killing 33 and injuring others.
A ferryboat was sent out. The following description of
the wreck that it found was published in the Jefferson
Examiner of November 3, 1855: “When we reached the
Gasconade bridge we found nothing but the ruins…” The
account continues, “Cars piled upon each other; here a
top; there part of a side; the trucks of some partly
protruding from others upon which they were
precipitated in their mission of death.” “The locomotive
lay end first, bottom up, near the first pier; a little to the
right of it, with the forward part touching the end of the
locomotive…was the baggage car, much smashed and
partly under water.”
This disaster, and others like it, noted above, does not
seem to have stopped the development of the city as a
manufacturing center. In 1853 Henry Krog and Anton
Jasper began the manufacture of farm implements,
including the two horse plows described above. John D.
Roehrig began a cigar factory. The John B. Busch Brewing
Company opened in 1854, and Christopher H. Kahmann
started a pork packing operation in 1857. By 1861, Henry
J. Buhr was manufacturing about 15 wagons and
carriages a year (Ibid).
Disasters like the train wreck described above, affect me,
because my fathers childhood was greatly damaged by a
train wreck on the Colorado and Rio Grande Railroad in
Green River, Utah, when my grandfather, an Engineer on
the Railroad, and a graduate of Ohio State in Columbus,
Ohio, drove his wreck train into the back of a wreck and
was killed. My father was only four. It is not certain that
the frequent sessions of mental illness that affected my
fathers life were not partly caused by the trauma of this
experience, his mother (my grandmother), Alice (Smith)
Andrews seems to have never fully recovered from this
event. I need to add that I visited the site of this disaster
with my father when I was twelve.
It is events like these that puzzle me. I am driven by an
attempt to understand my brother’s suicide (Stephen
Charles Andrews, at the age of 38, leaving a 6 month son
behind (Stephen Roy Andrews). How much was a result
of genetics and how much of environment. There are
some indicators. The suicide of Mr. Pyle in Los Angeles,
perhaps a very distant cousin. Then there is the issue of
Sarah (Kennedy) Ross, the wife of Joseph Ross of Fayette
County, Indiana (see above). She and her daughter Susan
Malinda Ross and her grandson, Thomas Jefferson
Greenberry Ross, appear to have all suffered from some
sort of behavioral and mental problems.
Let us review what we have said above. James Kennedy
and Elizabeth Bailelet have the following children in
Orange, North Carolina: Samuel Kennedy, b. 22 Oct 1775;
Mary, b. 29 Dec. 1772; Sarah, b. 24 Sept. 1780; John
Bennett, b. 26 Jul 1782; Elizabeth, b. 01 Jul 1785; Jane, b.
9 Sept 1788; Nancy, b. 06 Sept 1782; and Esther, b. 16
Mar 1796. Sarah, sister of John Bennett and Jane and
Samuel, etc, marries Joseph Ross and becomes Sarah
Ross. She, is therefore, the aunt of Judge Samuel
Kennedy, and the great aunt of my great grandmother
Henrietta (Lingenfelter) Kennedy. When Joseph Ross
dies in Fayette, County Indiana, 4 Sept 1836, the probate
records indicate that Sarah may not be totally
competent, that, possibly, her sister Jane is looking after
her.
Susan Malinda Ross was born 7 April 1825 in Alquina,
Fayette, Indiana. She married George E. Hamilton, born
24 May 1827, Connersville, Fayette, Indiana. The
marriage date is 26 November 1848 in Fayette, Indiana.
They had the following children: Thomas Jefferson
Greenberry Hamilton, born 12 July 1849; Delores
Cortenes Hamilton, born 12 Oct 1851; Florence Eleanor
Hamilton, born 20 May 1853; William Marshall Hamilton,
born 29 Nov 1855. Susan (Malinda Ross) Hamilton was
admitted to the Central State Hospital in Wabash County
Indiana, 12-11-1857 for hereditary melancholia with
homicidal aspects induced by exposure to cold. She was
not discharged till 6-15-1860. If Sarah Ross is John
Bennett Kennedy’s sister, than Susan Hamilton is his
niece and Thomas Jefferson Greenberry Hamilton is his
great nephew, James Kennedy’s great grandson.
Records indicate that Thomas Jefferson Greenberry was
a member of the LDS church (Mormon). In his
application for a pension, he indicates that his father,
George Hamilton died serving in the Civil War and his
mother died 25 Nov. 1860. The deaths of both parents
left four children under 16 years of age. The claim states
that Thomas Jefferson Greenberry Hamilton “formerly
drank more than was good for him but has not been
drinking so much as of late years…” Elsewhere the
information available on the web from Donny Hamilton
indicates that he was a very tall man with a violent
temper. He died 22 July 1926 in Kress, Swisher, Texas, of
senility.
Just what is happening here is not clear. It is obvious,
however, that this is not the most stable part of a family
that seems to have difficulty staying for long in any one
place, witness graves strung from North Carolina through
Indiana and Missouri and now reaching to Texas, many of
them in abandon cemeteries uncared for by family
members. But, to be fair, this is happening everywhere
in the United States with the development of the
railroads. Even the Taintors of Hampton, Connecticut,
who seem the most stable and conservative of folk,
certainly they appear to have kept records of everything
and remained in one house and one town for a good bit
of time, seem to have drifted off to Englewood, Kansas
and Gate, Oklahoma (Robertson, p. 457).
In 1850, Charity and John Bennett Kennedy were living
next door to Samuel T. and Lucretia Smith Kennedy, who
had just gotten married. Lucretia’s father, once
prominent in the politics of nearby Clinton County, was
now dead, her mother, a Crittenden, distant cousins of
the politically prominent branch of the Crittenden family,
who had married into cousins of the Jefferson’s and Lees
of Virginia, had died also a while before. A Crittenden
had been territorial secretary and temporary governor of
the Arkansas territory, a Crittenden would be governor of
Missouri, a Crittenden had been Attorney General of the
United States more than one time, had been governor of
Kentucky, had taken Henry Clay’s seat in the Senate of
the United States. Lucretia Webster was named after
Clay’s great rival in the Senate, Daniel Webster. All the
trouble was happening on the other side of the Missouri,
not far away in Kansas. It is a family legend that one of
Lucretia’s brothers was the “first white child born in
Kansas.” Her father had lived and worked on the Kansas
side of the river at one time. While Samuel and Lucretia
where raising children on their Nodaway farm, the
country was preparing for Civil War.
John Bennett Kennedy had been born 26 Aug 1782 in
Orange, North Carolina and Charity (McMichael)
Kennedy had been born 9 May 1790 in Guilford, North
Carolina. They had a number of children. Their youngest
children were: Charity, born 7 March 1826 in North
Carolina; Sarah Jane, born 10 Oct 1823, Guilford, North
Carolina; and Samuel Thomas, born 29 Sept 1830 in
Fayette, North Carolina. A middle son, William S., was
born 18 Feb 1813 in Guilford, North Carolina. He married
Mary Birt on 8 Oct 1835, she appears to have followed
him to Nodaway County, because she died 5 May 1858
and is buried at Cain Cemetery along with William (died
12 Oct 1889) and John Bennett (died 31 Aug 1863) and
Charity (McMichael) Kennedy.
According to the notes for John Bennett Kennedy on
Masters Connections website, the family moved to
Fayette County Indiana in 1825, moved on to Rush
County Indiana in 1834 and then to Missouri in 1843.
According to this source, Samuel married Lucretia
Webster Smith, 14 July 1850. They had the following
children: Mary J., 8 Jun 1851; John W, 20 April 1853;
Henry N., 25 Nov 1855; Austin S., 4 July 1858; Alice, 11
Jan 1861; Dora, 7 Feb 1864; Andy W., 14 Sept 1867;
Henrietta, 24 Jan 1870; Arch S., 2 Apr 1873; Belle, 14 Nov
1875.
Charity Kennedy, born 7 Mar 1826, appears to have
married an Allen Andrew about 1824 and to have died 11
Sept 1846. Sarah Jane Kennedy, appears to have married
Charles Leo Cain, as discussed above, and to have had
many children: Napoleon Bonaparte Cain, Mary Ann
Cain, George Washington Cain, Thomas Benton Cain,
Christopher Columbus Cain, Francis Marion Cain,
Solomon Cain, Margaret Victoria Cain, Sarah Jane Cain,
Elzona Cain, and Amanda Cain. Christopher Columbus
Cain was born 1 October 1851, at the time Samuel and
Lucretia were beginning their family. All these Cains
were grandchildren of Charity and John Bennett Kennedy
and nieces and nephews of Samuel Kennedy, those that
survived would be first cousins of Henrietta.
The younger children and grandchildren of Charity and
John Bennett Kennedy were moving to Nodaway County
in the 1850s, these included the Cains, and their
grandparents. Many of these would be buried in the
Cain Cemetery in Nodaway.
On 20 Nov 1858, in Allendale, Worth County, Missouri,
Mary Ellen Pyle, daughter of Cyrus Octavius Pyle and
Sophronia Moore, married John Lingenfelter, born 10
Mar 1832 in Perry County, Illinois. They would have the
following children: Alice, 1860; Lycurgus, 1861; James
Valentine, 1863; Benjamin, 1865; Edward A., 1874; Frank
D., 1876; George, 1878; Charlie, 1880; John H., 1882;
May, 1884. Benjamin would later marry Henrietta
Kennedy, mother of my maternal grandmother Mary
(Lingenfelter) Thompson.
The Pyle family and the Lingenfelter family overlapped,
as did many of the large families of this time. Octavius
Pyle was born May 02, 1819, in Jackson County, Illinois,
and died November 21, 1897 in Allendale, Worth County,
Missouri. He was the son of John Pyle and Mary Wells
and married Sophronia Moore, born August 23, 1823
near Knoxville, Tennessee, died February 10, 1906 in
Mount Ayr, Iowa. They had the following children:
Marcellus, Jan 30th 1841, Perry County; Lycurgus, May 23,
1842, Perry; Octavius Jr. August 29, 1843, Perry; Mary
Ellen, November 6, 1844, died May 19th 1932 in Des
Moines, Iowa; Sarah Ellen, born August 23, 1846, Perry,
died November 2, 1931 in Lansing, Kansas; Synora Pyle,
Dec. 30th 1847, Perry; Cyrus, born Oct 22, 1849, Perry;
John Jr., August 2, 1851, Perry; Eliza, March 2, 1853,
Perry; Lassira Ann, January 27, 1855, Worth County,
Missouri, died Oct. 14th 1931, San Diego, California,
married Leonard M Scott, November 24, 1872, in
Allendale, Worth County; Martha Elizabeth, Dec. 2nd
1856, Worth County; Cortez S., July 16th 1862, Allendale,
Worth County; Anna Laura Pyle, April 26, 1864, Worth
County; George, July 28, 1866, Worth; Thomas, Sept. 19,
1868, Worth. From this we can see that the Pyles left
Perry County Illinois and arrived in Worth County
Missouri by 1855.
Benjamin Harrison Lingenfelter was born 18 Dec 1865 in
Allendale, Missouri and died 2 April 1951 in Torrance,
California. He married Henrietta Kennedy, who was born
24 Jan 1870 in Maryville, Missouri, and died 17 Dec 1941,
in my bedroom (or what would become my bedroom, in
what was then my grand parents house and became my
parents house) on Parnell Avenue off of Pico Blvd. in
West Los Angeles, California. Their children were John
Samuel Lingenfelter, Mary Lucretia Lingenfelter (married
Hugh Monroe Thompson (my maternal grand father),
Martha Lingenfelter (married Brig. Gen. Ivan L. Farman),
Lois Lingenfelter (married John O. Engel (Engeldinger),
two chidren, John and Jane), and Ruth Lingenfelter
(married John A. Jurich).
Octavius (Octavus?) Pyle was the son of John Jack Pyle,
born 13 Aug 1782 in Chatham, NC, and died 5 May 1851
in St. Johns, Illinois. He was the son of John Pyle and
Sarah Brashear. John Jack Pyle married Mary Polly Wells,
born 29 Mar 1792 in Greenfield, SC, and died 22 Jun 1869
in Allendale, Worth, Missouri. Their children were Sarah,
22 Oct 1807, Christian KY; Hiram, 25 Feb 1810, Christian
KY; Rufus, 7 Jun 1815, Christian KY; Cortez, 14 Feb 1818,
Jackson, Illinois; Octavus, 2 May 1819, DuQuoin, Perry,
Illinois, died 21 Nov 1897; Ulysses, 2 Mar 1823, Jackson,
Illinois; Joanna, 1826, Jackson; Hellen, 1828, Perry;
Lassira, 1829, Perry; Ustocium, 1832, Perry.
It is amazing how many children were produced in these
families and how little is known about many of them
today. Wallace K. Ferguson, Professor of History at New
York University and Geffrey Bruun, produced a set of
books titled “A Survey of European Civilization”
(Houghton Mifflin, 1952). Geoffrey Bruun, a visiting
professor at Cornell, appears to have written the second
volume (Since 1660). The Second Edition (1952) carries a
chapter titled “The Role of America.” This chapter
contains material that explains some of what is taking
place in this period. By the end of World War I, power
had shifted toward the United States. The United States
had emerged as the world’s richest and most
economically creative nation (see op. cit, p. 883). My
ancestors were caught up in this process. At first they
were unaware of what had happened. Once they did
become aware, they began to rewrite their history,
leaving the odds and ends that didn’t fit lying in the
basement and attics of house like the Taintor house that
the Robertsons bought in Hampton, Connecticut (see
above). Many critical records for the Andrews (and some
critical Pyle, Thompson, Crittenden, Lingenfelter, etc, as
well) side of my lineage are in stacks in my closet. Since I
have had numerous burglaries and other disasters since
acquiring them, it is uncertain that the information they
contain will ever see the light of day (after all, I am 72,
my eyesight is failing, and I am not getting any younger).
I am sure that is the case with much of the missing
information from the genealogical efforts that can be
found above.
The “Survey,” quoted above, claims that the United
States grew from 3 to 140 million in six generations (op.
cit. p 883). These six generations reach back to my
mother (Jean Thompson Andrews) and her mother (Mary
Lingenfelter Thompson) and my great grandmother
(Henrietta Kennedy Lingenfelter) and her mother
(Lucretia Webster Smith Kennedy) and her mother
(Elizabeth Crittenden Smith), great grand daughter of
Henry Crittenden of Virginia (who was the great grand
father of John Jordan Crittenden (who was the Attorney
General (and acting Secretary of State) of the United
States and great great nephew of President Thomas
Jefferson)). The text talks about the astonishing empire
built up by the United States, a product of ordinary
people like Elizabeth and Henry, who helped farm the
land and clear it, and less ordinary people, like President
Jefferson and acting Secretary of State Crittenden, who
were responsible for the purchase of much of it from
Napoleon, or defense of it from France and Britain (see
the actions of John Jordan Crittenden as acting Secretary
of State, discussed above).
A chapter of the “Survey” discusses the westward
expansion and the massive immigrations from Europe,
including Irish and Scots sent to the US in 1740 by the
potato famine of 1739, Germans from the Palatine and
French Protestants. They will meet, teach, be taught by,
eventually intermarry with the massive immigration of
people from various countries to port cities like Seattle,
San Francisco, the constant arrival of new families from
France, Germany, and the Eastern United States, or in
western port cities like the Los Angeles of Harris
Newmark, discussed above.
Newmark’s story almost more a part of my experience,
since I was born in Long Beach and grew up in the
Southern California. Sometimes it is difficult to make the
ties with the history of my great grand parents in
Missouri, or Indiana (by the time of my birth, something
to forget, or long forgotten). Yet this family history made
me what I am, just as much as the Southern California
environment it attached itself to so vigorously when I
was a boy, and it explains so much of what is not
explained, things that a therapist might otherwise blame
on some chemical disorder of the brain or traumatic
experience of childhood.
According to the Survey, what might have generated
regional isolation, was reversed by the coming of the
railroads. The Survey might also have mentioned the
canals and steamboats and the linkage of the Great Lakes
with the Mississippi-Ohio-Missouri River System and the
Gulf Coast and Gulf of Mexico. It was this system that
allowed the McMichael and Kennedy, the Smith, and
Crittenden, even the Lingenfelters to move West to the
point where they came in contact with the railroads that
would carry them to Seattle and Tacoma and south from
Seattle to Los Angeles.
The Survey tells how 53% of the workers were still in
agricultural in 1870, but only 17% in 1940. This was the
case when I was a boy. My mother had been born on a
farm outside of Yakima, but she was working in a defense
plant on Pico Blvd. in West Los Angeles in 1943. Our
closest contact with agriculture was the victory gardens
we were planting in the backyard on Parnell. I forgot to
harvest mine and it went to seed. Something that I was
very impressed with in 1943. I remember the flowers on
the carrots. There was no hint that I would be assisting
Dr. Mildred Mathias with her study of flowers of this type
twenty years later, as a doctoral student in Botany at
UCLA and a teaching assistant and research assistant in
plant identification. Mildred Mathias was the major
authority on the Umbelliferae, the Carrot Family, at that
time, a study she was doing in collaboration with the
President of the University of California at Santa Barbara.
The Survey notes that a child born in the US in 1800 had
a life expectancy of 35 years and that by 1940, that life
expectancy had increased to 65 years. It mentions food,
medicine, sanitation as important elements in this
improvement. Not to be forgotten are the large
numbers of educated people arriving from France,
Germany, and Scandinavia, and the respect for education
they brought with them. Major changes in medicine and
nursing were be instituted in England as a result of
Florence Nightingale and studies done on the spread of
Cholera, noted above. Research in microbiology in
France and Germany established microbiology as a new
science, a science my uncle Victor Thompson would
obtain his BA in from Berkeley, and a subject I would
teach for the State University of New York. My aunt,
Miriam Thompson Gilbert would obtain her BA from
UCLA in nutrition. She died this year at the age of 98,
keeping her mobility and alertness to the very end.
In 1859, this grand triumph was far from certain. The
nation was moving quickly toward a great conflict and
the state of Kansas, just across the Missouri river, was a
center of the developing conflict.
But before we look to this developing conflict, let us look
to problems within the family itself. The general style of
the family at this time is to look for opportunity and to
move on as soon as the opportunity has passed. In
general, the family is operating as a small unit, what is
necessary to operate a farm, or a series of neighboring
farms. When the family group gets to be too big it
divides and moves on like a bacterium or a protozoan. It
has a tendency to discard and ignore the more
dysfunctional family members, to leave them behind. In
general, the family seems to concentrate on the
youngest members, particularly those who are fertile and
bearing children. This technique will work as long as
there is open land and new opportunities, particularly for
agriculture. It will not work if there is no new land
available, or when agriculture fails, or when reproductive
rates decline.
In the face of these problems, the family has tended to
marry its women off to successful families that appear to
know how to deal with urban conditions. An example is
the marriage of the Lingenfelters to the Thompsons and
Gilberts who appeared, at least at the time to have
mastered some of the problems of obtaining status in
urban environments like Seattle and Portland, Oregon.
The marriage of Jean Thompson to Ralph Andrews, with
a family from an urban situation (Allen Andrews and
Alice Andrews, parents of Ralph Andrews, were originally
from Columbus, Ohio, the state capital) and of Miriam
Thompson to Frank Gilbert, son of Harold Gilbert, of a
family prominent in Portland, Oregon, are possibly
examples of this.
Consider another factor, suppose we have genetic
patterns, learned cultural patterns, transmitted by
example, by oral language, by ritual, by written language,
by law, by mixtures of all of the above, these patterns
would tend to remain stable where they supported the
replication of physiology, culture, family, family life,
regardless of the source and nature of the pattern
complex and its method of replication. It is silly to try to
disentangle the web of mitochondrial and chromosomal
genes and physiological and environmental and social
and cultural influences, the relationships are too complex
in social creatures with many levels of organization, such
as a human. If one of these complex patterns favored
the decline of older adult intelligence to juvenile levels in
all areas except verbal memory, this would facilitate
identification of young children with their grandparents,
and an understanding of the children by the
grandparents, the grandparents possessing these very
same child like mental limitations at this advanced stage
of their own life. It is not surprising that these are the
patterns that are actually found in communities where
aging adults and young children are paired together.
Suppose also there was a pattern of supporting members
of the community to the point at which it was obvious
that they could no longer contribute to the community,
in situations where there were large numbers of
children, it would not be surprising that these less
promising offspring might be allowed to expire, or to just
slip away, disappear. Suppose there were aging factors
that might encourage debilitated elderly to loose their
connections with the family, just get lost somewhere.
These are exactly the patterns that seem to be manifest
when the Crittenden, Kennedy, McMichael, Hamilton,
families are examined. Vital grandparents are usually
found with promising mothers that are producing large
numbers of healthy children, less promising individuals
seem to be pushed to one side. It is not surprising that
we find Charity and John Bennett Kennedy leaving the
Sarah Ross and Thomas Jefferson Greenberry Hamilton
situations in the care of Jane Kennedy, as they move off
to Ross County, Platte County, Missouri, Nodaway
County Missouri and are found living alongside the future
Judge Kennedy and his wife, a daughter of a politically
influential family.
When Mary Lingenfelter Thompson marries her eldest
daughter (now a graduate of the University of California,
Los Angeles with a degree in nutrition) to a Yale
University educated engineer, Frank Gilbert, son of
prominent members of Portland, Oregon society, and
nephew of a prominent toy manufacturer, A. C. Gilbert, it
may be one of the above patterns in operation. The
same may be true when the youngest son of Mary
Thompson, Victor Thompson received his degree in
Microbiology for the University of California, Berkeley.
When young children are produced by daughters of Mary
Thompson, who shows up to live with Mary Thompson?
Who arrives but mother and father Benjamin Harrison
and Henrietta Kennedy Lingenfelter.
Thomas Jefferson Greenberry Hamilton has long ago left
for Texas, where he dies of alcoholism and senility, his
mother having escaped from the Indiana mental
institution and gone no one knows where. By this time
Henrietta and Benjamin have largely forgotten their ties
to other places, just as their grandparents Charity and
John left Indiana and North Carolina behind in favor of
the Missouri frontier. Now I have my explanation for the
speed with which my family forgot and ignored the
alcoholism and suicide of my brother, the growing
senility of my mother, the tendency of relatives to loosen
the ties with my less fruitful side of the family tree. It is
no surprise that the only hints to the broken branches of
the tree lie overturned in forgotten cemeteries and on
abandon headstone long untended.
Pets, little dogs and cats, are extremely good at imitating
the behavior of tiny human children. It is no surprise
that the failure of modern families to generate the huge
number of infants that were normally associated with
fertile mothers before contraception, have been
substituted for by large numbers of cuddly pets that
imitate the helpless dependence of human young. It is
no surprise that so much of our effort in educating our
young are focused on degrees in service occupations like
nursing, education, mental health, that can act as
substitutes for unsatisfied maternal cravings.
England was dealing with the aftermath of the Crimean
War as this point. The first reform of parliament done in
1832 had increased the franchise, but it had largely left
the government in the hands of the old rural aristocracy.
In 1867, a new reform bill provide a million new voters,
almost doubling the number, and forcing a situation
where real democratic processes would emerge. The
Crimean War had caused a rise in the price of wheat,
increasing prosperity for farmers that could ship grain
down the Missouri and Mississippi, or use the expanding
railroad network. Science and engineering began to be
applied to manufacturing and agriculture, and the US
began to copy English models. Henry Bessemer
discovered how to make steel from Iron in 1856 (see
Evans, op. cit. p. 186). England converted her factories to
steam power from 1840 to 1870. Pressed by the needs
of supplying a Civil War, the US would soon imitate the
British example.
Education would also be reformed by the British:
Clarendon Commission report of 1861, Taunton
Commission, 1865, The Endowed Schools Act of 1869
that reorganized British grammar schools (op. cit. p. 198).
Arnold Toynbee has looked at this process in this “Study
of History.” In an abridged version of this “Study” made
in 1946, by D. C. Sommervell, for Oxford University Press,
Toynbee dates the universal education of children in
Britain to “Forester’s Act in 1870. He sees the “Yellow
Press” as an unfortunate and unforeseen negative effect
of universal education. He describes this as “press-lords”
that provide “idle amusement for the half-educated.” He
sees the use of the press by Hilter, and its carry over in
films and radio, is a further development in this process.
Members of the family would be drawn into this new
world, culminating with two daughters of Mary
(Lingenfelter) Thompson with teaching credentials and
teaching credentials earned by the numerous great grand
children of Henrietta (Kennedy) Lingenfelter, of which I
am one. Henrietta’s youngest daughter, Ruth
(Lingenfelter) Jurich would write the “Prudence Penny”
columns that appeared in Pacific Northwest Newspapers
during the early years of World War II. My father, Ralph
B. Andrews, owned and published a local paper in his
district of Long Beach during the 1970s. Ruth Jurich
would write the church news for the Federal Way Times
in the Seattle, Washington area during the same period.
It was partly in reaction to the overemphasis of “Yellow
Journalism,” that my friends, at Torrance, High School, El
Camino College, and Long Beach State College, supported
Rodney Harwell of Torrance, California in his sponsorship
of the “Royalist” and the “Augustan Society,” which we
saw, at least I did, as a college prank, a spoof on the
people’s press (and royal pretensions as well). When
Rodney began to make serious money by using it to
support German Catholic genealogy, I supported the idea
as a legitimate way to investigate areas of family history
that might otherwise have been ignored. But I could
never take it seriously the way he did. Rodney seemed
mildly amused about these activities. I never recall him
claiming any lineage himself. Sometimes it seemed that
he enjoyed the pomp for its own sake. His attitudes are
significant here, because he shared some of the same
geographical connections. His family had come to
Torrance, California from Nebraska, just across the river
from Missouri and Iowa.
This brings up another issue. Toynbee was concerned
with how civilizations go stale, loose their creativity. One
example is the pitfall of believing yourself to be “a
chosen people” as in the Jewish belief of being chosen by
God, the Athenian belief that they were “the Education
of Hellas.” These processes were at work in the United
States at the time we speak. If you were to attend some
of the camp meetings that the Kennedy family might
have attended, many of the preachers appeared to
believed in the destiny of Christian people, their need to
carry their missionary message to the world. An example
of this notion of special destiny has always been attached
to the so called “Mormon” LDS Church. There was a
special energy attached to this organization at the time,
and it caught up members of the Kennedy family, of
which Thomas Jefferson Greenberry Hamilton, see
above, is an example.
Land was opening up as the Native Americans moved
west. The Omaha had lived along the Wabash and Ohio
Rivers in 1670s (see Wikipedia, and Native American
tribes in Nebraska), but started moving into Nebraska.
The Osage, Kansa, and Quapec moved west also. Tribes
were being forced to move on to reservation land. Later,
tribes would be encouraged to move to Oklahoma in
order to free land in Nebraska for settlement.
Jackson County Missouri has attempted to recreate at
typical Northwest Missouri settlement of this period.
The year they chose to focus on was 1855 (see the web
site for Jackson County Missouri Town 1855). The site
says that 1855 was chosen because it was before the
fighting on the Kansas and Missouri border began to
disrupt the area. According to this source, a typical
western Missouri village might have a tavern, school
house, church, and store. The Ross family owned the
store in Jennings township in Fayette County, Indiana in
the early years of the century concerned. It was a world
without running water, cars, television, radio,
microwave. But, by 1855, people were proud of the
telegraph and the sewing machine, the steamboat and
the railroad.
Goods were often bartered. The whole family would
work hard in the summer to make sure the harvest was
good. The girls worked in the garden and cooked,
cleaned, did sewing and milking. School was held in a
one room school house and lasted all winter, from
October to April. It was held on every day but Sunday.
Towns had travelling preachers, Baptists on one Sunday
and Methodists on another (op. cit.).
Ambrose Cain had come with the Cain family from Rush
County in Indiana. He had married Sarah Amanda
Fulkerson. Mary Ellen Cain was born near Maryville in
Nodaway County, Missouri, July 2, 1849. According to
the account posted on the web (see Lorene H. Reid,
familytree maker geneology), She was the first child born
to Ambrose and Sarah. She lived in Missouri till she was
10. In the spring of 1859, the family left for Texas in a
covered wagon. They moved to Collin County, Texas,
were there a short time and moved on to Wise County,
south of Decatur, Texas. They lived there a year and
moved to Parker County, a mile from Goshen, Texas.
Ambrose taught school at Goshen, as he had done
earlier, according to report, in Rush County, Indiana.
Later, he taught at Springtown, Texas, five miles from
Goshen. He rode there on horseback. The school was so
full that Mary Ellen had to help him. Toward the end of
the Civil War, the family moved to Springtown, where
Ambrose operated a carding machine, weaving and
spinning wool in rolls. At the end of the war, he sold his
land in Missouri and moved to Washington County,
Arkansas. There is no record of why Ambrose moved, or
why he left the Missouri Cains behind, anymore than
there is any indication why they had all left Rush County
Indiana in the first place.
There was lots of trouble in the area, or at least in Kansas
nearby. According to Wikipedia (See Kansas Nebraska
Act), the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 made Kansas and
Nebraska into territories. Settlers were allowed to
decide between slavery and no slavery, which set aside
the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which had closed
Kansas to slavery. This whole idea was the product of
the Democratic Senator from Illinois, Stephen Douglas.
The Republic Party was organized in opposition to the
result. Railroads wanted to extend there lines into this
area and they were behind much of the effort to settle it.
Soon pro-slavery settlers moved into Kansas from
Missouri. Abolitionist settlers moved in as well.
Territorial governors tried to keep peace. The territorial
capital of Kansas at Lecompton was a scene of so much
agitation, that the Free-Staters set up an unofficial
capital at Topeka (see op. cit p. 8). It was during this
period that John Brown and his sons murdered five proslavery settlers.
According to Alexander Adams account of the “Great
Naturalists,” the book titled “Eternal Quest” (Putnam,
1969), June 18, 1858 was the day when Charles Darwin
opened a letter from Alfred Wallace that indicated that
Wallace had independently developed some of the ideas
that Darwin had worked out in the book he was planning.
Darwin sent the letter to his friend Charles Lyell, the
great authority on geology at that time. Charles Wallace
was a young Englishman who had dabbled in a numbers
of trades, surveying, watch making. He visited Paris in
1847 and took an interest in the plant collections in the
Jardin des Plantes. When he returned to London, he
visited the insect room at the British Museum and
decided he wanted to travel and sell specimens to pay
for his travels (op. cit. p. 342). He became a partner with
Henry Walter Bates, who taught him about entomology
(the study of insects) and introduced him to a book on
evolution, “Vestiges of Creation, which was published in
1844.
In 1844, Wallace and Bates went on an insect collecting
trip to Brazil in 1848. Wallace’s younger brother Herbert
joined them in Brazil in 1849. After parting with Bates,
and then from his brother Herbert, Wallace started up
the river Negro on August 31, 1850. In January, 1851, he
passed into Venezuela. Further travels, after returning to
London, brought him to Singapore in 1854. On
November 1st 1854, he reached the island of Borneo (op.
cit., p. 356). By 1856, he had reached the island of Bali,
from here he travelled to Macassar and the Kai Islands.
Locating at Ternate, he made trips through the Molucca
Islands all the way to New Guinea. In 1857, he was
pondering the question of the origin of species and
thinking of writing on evolution.
Like Darwin, he thought about what Malthus had written
on what happened to populations as they grew. Could
this be the key to the origin of variations in living things,
like Darwin, he began to believe it was true. It was here
in a thatched house sick from fever that he
independently developed the Darwinian notion of the
“survival of the fittest” (op. cit., p. 368).
Charles Darwin published his book “Origin of the
Species,” in 1859. By January of 1860 it had sold out and
a second edition was being printed (op. cit., p. 385). The
major Botanists of the day, Hooker, and Zoologists,
Huxley supported Darwin, the most important British
geologist, Lyell, took Darwin’s side in the 10th edition of
his “Principles of Geology.” The great Swiss geologist and
zoologist, Louis Agassiz, now associated with Harvard
University in Boston, remained the most prominent
opponent of Darwin’s theories.
The Darwinian Centennial publication that was used as
my textbook for my graduate class in evolution at the
University of California, Los Angeles, was published only
a hundred years later. But, in that hundred years Darwin
inspired biology had spread in many directions. The
Darwin Centennial volume included chapters on the
origin of life from inorganic chemistry, on virus particles,
on the laws of evolution, and the history of life.
Botanists wrote about genetic systems and the fossils of
flowering plants. Complex mathematics was used to
describe genetic relationships, and the new science of
population genetics was described in detail. There were
even discussions of microbiology, behavior, and the new
science of ecology. By 1959, the discoveries of Darwin
and Wallace, a hundred years earlier, had come of age.
After studying these principle of Darwinian science, I
would later pass the biological record examination in
biology with a perfect score and obtain a teaching
credential in life science with the State of California. Else
where in my writings I compare modern ideas of Darwin
with the mythical weather cycle of the Chinese made
immortal in the magical polarities of yin and yang in the I
Ching, or Yi Ching. Elsewhere I visualize a Heaven Trigram
of genetic mutations being subject to competition,
extinction and natural selection in Flame Trigram to
eliminate dangerous maladaptive genetic expression in
Thunder Trigram purifying the gene pool of the
population of organism in the Lake Trigram resulting in
adaptive peaks and ideally adapted genetic systems in
Wind Trigram maintained by feed back and homeostasis
and replication in the systems of Water Pit Abysm
Trigram resulting in adaptive phenotypes in Earth
Trigram checked and supported by input from systems
products in Earth trigram through species systems
maintained by speciation and genetic isolation in
Mountain Trigram. Thus, the old daughter yin of genetic
fixation and replication is opposed to the old son yang of
genetic change and evolution, the middle daughter yin of
genetic system fragmentation and gene segregation is
opposed to the middle son yang of genetic system
integration, and finally the youngest daughter yin of
sexual reproduction and genetic recombination and gene
pool association is opposed to the youngest son yang of
genetic isolation and species formation.
In personality disorders, this would be the compulsive vs.
the antisocial, the narcissistic vs. the avoidant, the
dependent vs. the schizoid. These structural polarities
are part of a larger system of polarities that build level
upon level to unite particles into atoms and atoms into
molecules and molecules into macromolecules, and
macromolecules into simple cells and simple cells into
complex cells, and complex cells into tissues, and tissues
into organs, etc, etc..
This complex vision of the world is far from the simple
vision of the camp meetings in the villages of Missouri
and Indiana at this point just before the Civil War, when
the focus was on scripture and an understanding of the
Bible. Thus, in many ways, my outlook on the world is a
far from that of my grandparents as their outlook was
from their Druid worshiping ancestors. Even then, I am
having trouble, as discussed above, and elsewhere in my
writings, with integrating this point of view with my
larger world vision. Because, as I express above and
elsewhere, I do not believe humans progress in all things,
or that all changes in doctrine and philosophy represent
progress. My ancestors were faced with the challenge of
responding to change in their environment. I am faced
with the challenge of responding to the acceleration of
these changes and the questing of the desirability of
these changes, at what every level they occur.
When it comes to works like J. Hutchinson’s “The
Families of Flowering Plants,” there is no problem. His
ideas of classifying angiosperms follow logically with the
understanding he obtain in his time (1926, revised in
1959) of progression of forms in flowering plants. It is
like understanding Mozart’s musical forms in comparison
with those of Wagner. Once you examine the leaves and
flowers he is looking at and understand how he saw
them and his assumptions, the rest follows like a piece of
Baroque harmony.
But, even this is a long way from villages in Northwestern
Missouri. The plant museum (herbarium) and botany
garden at University of California, Los Angeles represent
a collection built up over many years by many collectors.
When I visited the collections at Harvard and the Royal
Botanic Gardens at Kew outside of London, I was
examining sheets of specimens of Elatine and Bergia
(genera of the Elatinaceae, subject of my botanic studies)
collected over hundred of years by hundreds of
collectors. These kinds of collections are only found in a
few places on the planet. In California, in 1962, this
meant UCLA and the University of California, Berkeley,
and perhaps Stanford.
C.D. Darlington, an English geneticist, attempted to
analyze history from a Darwinian point of view in “The
Evolution of Man and Society,” which he published in
1969 (Simon and Schuster). Darlington notes that an
“imaginative craftsman demands the company of kindred
spirits.” He goes on further to state how “slowly has new
immigration, partly Jewish, further hybridization, and
further assortment softened in some places the
American resentment against speculative thought (op.
cit., p. 611). He goes on to describe how universities
become associated with a group he calls an
“Establishment.” Both I and my brother, my
grandmother’s youngest sister, became involved in
various ways with the social movement Darlington is
attempting to discuss. The failed elements of the
educated upper middle class it encouraged began to
surface in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the 1950s and
1960s in various forms of protest and social reaction, the
“beat generation,” and the “hippies.”
In Harris Newmark you find the discussion of the slow
emergence of these new urban elites in places like Los
Angeles there we once nothing more that villages.
But, technically we are still in the 1850s, by 1859 Charles
Darwin is finally publishing his “Origin of Species”
biological classic. But, where the Pyle, Lingenfelter,
Smith, Crittenden, Kennedy, and McMichael descendents
are collecting in Northwestern Missouri, there is nothing
but conflict coming across the Missouri River frontier
with Kansas territory.
Eli Thayer organized something called the “New England
Emigrant Aid Company.” It started sending settlers to
Kansas and had moved some 1,200 from New England to
Kansas by 1855 (see Bleeding Kansas, www.pbs.org). An
abolitionist minister named Henry Ward Beecher was
giving out rifles that came to be known as “Breecher’s
Bibles.” Armed men from Missouri moved into Kansas in
1854 to vote for proslavery candidates. Armed men from
Missouri came across the state line for another election
on March 30, 1855 in which there were 2,905 registered
voters, 6,307 ballots, and 791 votes against slavery.
The resulting legislature passed laws that copied the
Missouri slave laws, laws that had severe penalties for
speech against slavery. The anti-slavery votes
established their own legislature at Topeka. Free State
voters cast 1,287 votes, to 453, to outlaw all blacks from
Kansas, slave or free. Continued violence brought
kidnappings and killings. On May 21, 1856, proslavery
men burned the Free State Hotel in Lawrence and
pillaged homes and stores. The abolitionist John Brown
lead an attack on Pottowatamie Creek. John and his sons
are said to have “hacked” five proslavery men to death
(op. cit, p. 3).
Senator Charles Sumner made an impassioned speech
against what was happening in Kansas. Congressman
Preston Brooks beat Sumner “senseless” at his desk with
a cane. A new governor arrived to “restore order.”
Violence declined, but there were more attempts to draft
proslavery and free state constitutions, including one at
Wyandotte in July 1859 (op. cit. p. 4). It was only in
1861, after Confederate secession, that Kansas was
admitted as a state.
But, the United States was drifting toward civil war.
Senator John J. Crittenden, great grandson of Henry
Crittenden, distant cousin of Lucretia Webster Smith
Kennedy, and of the Jeffersons and Lees of Virginia,
(representative of the closest thing to an “Establishment”
that existed in the Ohio River and Mississippi River area
at the time), holding the Senate seat formerly held by
Henry Clay, introduced the “Crittenden Compromise” in
the Senate on December 18, 1960 in an attempt to save
the Union. It was opposed by the Republican Party and
the newly elected President Abraham Lincoln. So the
country continued to drift toward war. Thomas Jefferson
Greenberry Hamilton’s father would die in that war and
his mother would become “homicidally melancholy” and
be assigned to an institution for the insane, leaving him
to be brought up his uncles.
Ambrose Cain has come up in this story on various
occasions. His family married into the Kennedy family
and was living close by. A different look at what is going
on a this time can be gotten by examining it from the
standpoint of the Fulkerson family, a family not related
to our as far as I can tell, but one, like many, that crossed
passed. The Fulkerson and Cain story that is posted on
the web (Fulkerson.org) tells the story of Sarah, who was
born 2nd of July 1825 in Jefferson city, Missouri. Sarah
Fulkerson was the second of 10 children growing up with
many aunts, uncles, and cousins, just as was the case
with the Lee, Ross, Cain, Kennedy, McMichael, Smith,
Crittenden, Lingenfelter, and Pyle families, as noted
above.
Her family moved to Nodaway County, Missouri in 1845
and she married Ambrose Cain 30 Oct 1845. His parents
were Jesse Cain and Merriam Lowe, both born in
England, as discussed above. Sarah and Ambrose moved
to Maryville, as did the family of Samuel Kennedy. They
remained in Maryville when Sarah’s parents and
brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins went West on the
Oregon Trail in 1847 (op. cit, p. 2). You will note that
Lucretia Webster Smith Kennedy lost contact with a
number of her father’s relatives when they took the trail
west to Potter’s Valley, California. Apparently, Sarah’s
mother, brother, and uncle died on their journey west.
In 1858 Sarah and Ambrose moved south to Springfield,
and in 1859 they took a covered wagon south to Texas.
The Oregon and California Trails Association web
positings indicate the following: maybe as many as 500
thousand followed the trails west. Between 1812 and
1848, 5000 went to Salt Lake, 10,000 to Oregon, and
2,000 to California. As many as 40,000 may have taken
the trail in 1849. Maybe as many as 65,000 took the trail
in 1850, with 5000 possible deaths from cholera. These
travelers were mostly going west to California to obtain
gold. Less than 10,000 went west in 1851, but the
numbers climbed to 70,000 in 1852, decreased to 35,000
in 1853, declined further to 20,000 in 1854, most of the
7000 going west in 1855 went to Utah. 1856 saw 12,000,
mostly to California, 1857 less than 6000, mostly to
California, 1858 saw a possible 7,500 travelling west, but
the numbers were up to 80,000 in 1859 because of men
travelling west in search of Colorado gold. There were
around 20,000 in 1860, less than 10,000 in 1861, 20,000
in 1862 and 1863, and 40,000 in 1864, mainly to
Montana. It seems to have taken around 121 days to get
to California and 140 to get to Oregon.
This was also a period of movement and conflict for the
LDS (Mormon) Church. Richard E. Bennett has written
material on the Mormon Exodus (see “We Had
Everything to Procure from Missouri”: The Missouri
Lifeline to the Mormon Exodus 1846 – 1850). According
to this account, the Mormons had been forced from
Nauvoo, Illinois. Under the direction of Brigham Young,
they began to move westward toward the Rocky
Mountains. Bad weather caused the Mormon wagons to
sink to their axles in the mud of Iowa. They made it to
Council Bluffs in mid-June, too late to cross the
mountains that summer. However, the Army asked the
Mormons to volunteer for a Mormon Battalion to march
with Kearney to California. This gave them permission to
settle on Indian lands near Omaha. Thousands took
shelter on the plains of Nebraska, Iowa, and down the
Missouri River to St. Louis. With little food and clothing,
many became sick and died. A Missouri delegation led
by a Colonel Thomas Jennings intercepted Brigham
Young and forced him to agree not to travel into
Missouri. The Mormons were forced to come south into
Missouri anyway in search of seed and supplies. They
traded feather beds and china, glassware and cutlery for
corn and beans. Some went south on the Missouri and
found work in St. Joseph. Bishop Newel Whitney took a
steamboat to St. Louis in the fall and bought supplies.
Another site, on Kansas History, has an account titled
“The Mormon Trail (Road) in Kansas Territory,” by Morris
W. Werner. This discussion of the movement of
European converts to Salt Lake City includes material
from diaries such as the following: John Johnson Daves,
in 1854, is a Mormon convert out of Liverpool, England.
He notes deaths from cholera on the steamboats in the
Missouri River. He notes leaving Westport in a train of
50 wagons. J. A. Butler in 1856, left Westport and
travelled down the Sante Fe Trail in a party of 32. Says
that they missed the Oregon Trail and went down the Ft.
Riley road to the “old California Road.”
Another account, “Eastern Ends of the Trail West, by
Stanley B. Kimball tells how the Union Pacific Railroad
started to come west from Omaha, Nebraska, 10 July
1865. The railhead had reached North Platte, Nebraska
by 1867 and Laramie City, Wyoming by 1868. Prior to
the railroad, there were various departure points:
Council Bluffs, Iowa, 1849 – 1852, Florence, Nebraska
1856 – 1863, Wyoming, Nebraska 1864 – 1866.
The Oregon Trail is described as having two branches and
a number of feeders. One of the feeders was The
Mormon Grove Trail, part of the Fort Leavenworth
Military Road.
The Wikipedia has a description of the Beehive House. It
was constructed in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1854 and was
one of the two residences of Brigham Young. Young was
a polygamist and the House had to accommodate him
and his wives and children. It was the executive mansion
for the Territory from 1852 to 1855. Young received
important guests here at this time.
In the meantime, according to Harris Newmark (op. cit. p.
241), Andres Pico had submitted a bill to the state
legislature of California calling for the separation of the
State into two states. This bill passed both houses and
was signed by the Governor, but it was rejected in
Washington D.C.. Newmark points out that snow in the
Rocky Mountains closed off Utah in the winter at this
time. Newmark reports that a number of wagons were
carrying goods between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles
and that they arrived almost daily.
The Bella Union added a second story in 1859, and a
steam whistle to announce the arrival of dinner. In May
of 1859 deliberations began on the possibility of
constructing a road to Santa Barbara. A Quartetmaster
Department was established for the army in Willmington.
An Ice House was functioning in 1859 that stored ice
from nearby mountain lakes. The ice was cut in cubes
weighing around 100 pounds and brought down the
canyons by trains of thirty to forty mules. Silver dollars
were being minted in San Francisco in 1859 and they
began to appear in Los Angeles.
San Francisco and Los Angeles were beginning to grow
into real cities. Even Salt Lake City had its buildings.
However, to my knowledge, all the Kennedy,
Lingenfelter, Pyle, Smith, McMichael, Crittenden,
Andrews, and Thompson grandmothers and grandfathers
of my own lineage remained safely east of the Rocky
Mountains, and with a few exceptions, east of the
Missouri River as well.
What you do not know you do not know. At a certain
point information fades in the mists of time. The
material available on the web on Ezekial W. Smith of
Tennessee, referred to above (Barbara Leimback) relates
how the settlers of Tennessee came to the Watauga
Valley area in 1768 (op. cit. p. 1). The Smith line in
question lived in Bedford County, formed from
Rutherford County in 1807, which was formed from
Davidson County in 1803, Davidson was organized in
1787. The Bedford County courthouse was destroyed
three times, fires and a tornado, so there are no decent
records for Vincent Smith (1778 -1857) and his wife Ann
Dolin. They had 10, or more children, including John
Payton Smith, father of Lucretia Webster Smith Kennedy
and grandfather of Henrietta Kennedy Lingenfelter. John
Payton was born 5 Dec. 1799, his brother Ezekiel was
born 1804 and his brother Hiram was born 5 Dec. 1799.
John Payton Smith, as discussed above, is said to have
worked for the US government and to have been a
County judge (op. cit., p. 3). John’s brother Hiram went
to California in 1846 with a party from Buchanan County
and Andrew County, Missouri. He returned to Andrew
County, Missouri in 1852 and died on his trip back to
California. Ezekiel, and his wife and children came to
Missouri and were in Buchanan County by 1833 (Ibid).
Ezekiel was sheriff of Andrew County in 1841 and died of
cholera in 1849. His wife Sarah left St. Joseph for
California in April 1857. They were on the trail for 192
days and arrived in California in October of 1857.
Apparently she had owned seven slaves, according to the
census of 1850. Sarah and her married children had
arrived in Sonoma County, California by June of 1858.
She is buried in the Cemetery in Potter Valley, having
died at Pomo in Medicino County, California 24 July
1874. Lucretia Webster Smith orphaned niece of
Eziekiel, married Samuel Thomas Kennedy 14 July 1850 in
Nodaway, County, Missouri, where she remained till she
died.
On July 14th 1900, Judge Samuel Thomas Kennedy, and
his wife, Lucretia Webster Smith Kennedy (daughter of
John Payton, niece of Eziekiel, per the above), celebrated
a golden wedding anniversary at the home of their son-
in-law on the west side of Maryville. Sixteen of their
twenty-three grandchildren were present. But, that is
getting well ahead of my story, for my grandmother,
Mary Lingenfelter Thompson was one of the
grandchildren who was not present (at least to my
knowledge). To get to that spot in our story we will need
to fight a very difficult and nasty civil war and build some
transcontinental railroads (on which my portion of this
linage came west).
America’s History, Volume 1, Henretta, Brody, Ware, and
Johnson (Bedford/St Martins, 4th ed, 2000, as cited
above), gives and interesting summary of the events.
Chapter 14, “Two Societies at War, 1861 -1865” divides
the process into: secession and military stalemate,
choosing sides, setting war aims, mobilizing armies,
mobilizing resources, turning point of 1863,
emancipation, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, strategy, Grant in
Virginia, Election of 1864, Sherman’s March.
Once Lincoln was elected, secessionism spread through
the South. Political leaders were in a race to do
something before Lincoln’s inauguration in March of
1861 (op. cit., p. 442). South Carolina voted for
succession on December 20th. Senator John J. Crittenden
of Kentucky proposed a compromise, as discussed above.
In his inaugural address on March 4, 1861, Lincoln called
secession “illegal.” He announced that he would hold and
occupy federal property in the seceded states. The
confederate government decided to take Fort Sumter
with force. The fort surrendered on April 14th and
Lincoln called 75,000 state militia members into federal
service. When Virginia left the Union, Lincoln acted to
take West Virginia by force and secure Maryland. The
German Americans in Missouri were mobilized to save
the state for the Union. German American militia
defeated the confederates, now led by Governor
Clairborne Jackson. Fighting back raids by Jesse and
Frank James and William Quantrill, the Union retained
control of the state throughout the war (op. cit., p. 445).
But in 1859, the war had not yet begun. In Los Angeles,
Banning, the promoter of Wilmington, California as an
alternative to San Pedro for port facilities, had invited 50
or 60 prominent members of Los Angeles society on a
trip to Catalina Island, this according to an account of our
historian, Harris Newmark (op. cit., p. 250). This party
took decorated stages for was now called “New San
Pedro.” They boarded Banning’s steamer “Comet,” and
were transferred to the United States Coast Survey Ship
“Active.” Newmark describes the ship captain and his
officers as “resplendent in their naval uniforms.” It took
only two hours to reach Catalina and the merrymakers
were soon strolling on the beach. By 10 in the evening,
they were back in Los Angeles. Newmark was apparently
impressed by the efficiency with which this was achieved
in the primitive Los Angeles of 1859, a city without
electricity, water pipes, sewers, supplies of natural gas,
etc.. Newmark points out that people were rolling their
own cigarettes, smoking clay pipes that came packed in
barrels, and cigars were common. The females in the
local population all smoked, but the newly arriving upper
class women did not. However, chewing tobacco was
used by most men.
1859 was a year of financial depression in Los Angeles,
according to Newmark (op. cit., p. 256), even though he
recalls 31 brick buildings being erected in the city.
Apparently the hard times continued into 1860, with
many of the smaller businesses shutting down. The
District Judge, Benjamin Hayes, demanded new quarters
for the court. According to Newmark, rains brought
water pouring through the ceiling and down the walls of
the courtroom and on to the Judge’s desk. The weather
had been bad in Los Angeles in 1859, following a heat
wave in October. December brought floods resulting
from heavy rains. The Los Angeles River shifted its bed a
quarter of a mile and the front of the old Plaza Church
collapsed. The Butterfield stage was not successful.
Each new arrival seemed to bring tales of ambushing and
murders on its route. It was loosing far more money
than it brought in and petitions were circulating for
government intervention (op. cit, p. 259).
Newmark relates how Maurice Kremer was the new
County Treasurer and was representing the Wells, Fargo
company from his store, where all the County funds were
kept. Since Newmark had his office nearby, he often had
to watch over the County money which was kept in an
old safe. At this point, the County had no bank and
Wells, Fargo charged high rates to transport the money
to Sacramento.
Newmark notes that both Spanish and English were still
common in Los Angeles, and sermons at the Catholic
Church were still given in both languages (Newmark, op.
cit., p.262). Newmark points out that the opening of the
Pony Express in 1860 allowed messages to get to San
Francisco from St. Louis in only 8 and a half days. The
year 1860 saw the first sewer in Los Angeles, a small
square pipe made of wood burst. This device connected
the main hotel “Bella Union” with the zanja, supplying
water to the city as well as drainage. Newmark relates
that many of the unskilled English speaking residents
were unable to compete with the Spanish speaking
population for work on the ranchos, and quite a few
were leaving town for Texas to obtain work there.
Transportation was improving. The month long trip east
on the stage had been cut down to 18 or 19 days and
bright pained upholstered coaches replaced the wagons
used to travel north. In 1860, the population of Los
Angeles had grown from 1,610 to 4,399. Newmark notes
that the presidential vote in Los Angeles was 267 for
Breckenridge, 263 for Douglas, and only 179 for Lincoln.
June of 1860 is the date that Newmark gives for the
beginnings of a telegraph line to connect Los Angeles
with the world (op. cit., p. 283). Banning (the man who
developed Wilmington as a rival port to San Pedro)
organized fifty teams to haul telegraph poles. October
9th 1860 at 10:45 AM, the first telegraph message arrived
in San Francisco from Los Angeles. One account that
Newmark gives may explain why so many of my relatives
remained in Nodaway County, Missouri, even though
their parents and grand parents had travelled their over
aboriginal trails, from North Carolina, Tennessee, and
Indiana.
According to Newmark (op. cit. p. 285), Leonard John
Rose and his family arrived from Illinois on the
Butterfield Stage on a journey that had taken 2 years to
complete. Rose, and his associated, had tried to reach
California on a 35th parallel route surveyed by Lieutenant
Beale. They were forced to let down their wagons by
ropes on the sides of mountains. They were attacked by
the Mojave Indians and were not able proceed till 17
Indians were killed and 9 dead and wounded in their own
party. Apparently Rose made a retreat to Albuquerque,
where he managed a hotel and earned enough money to
continue on to Los Angeles.
The news of the approaching war caused many
confederate sympathizers to support the South. Phineas
Banning, hero of the exploits described above, was a
devoted Republican and abolitionist. He lead a grand
demonstration for the Union and a procession around
the Plaza May 25th 1861. Newmark says the Lincoln
administration was suspicious of the Southern sympathy
in Los Angeles and kept Union troops at Port Ballona
(Playa Del Rey) and at Camp Drum in Willmington.
Supplies for Union troops that moved through
Willmington, were a major source of revenue for the
area. Newmark describes wagon trains leaving for Utah,
Yuma, Tucson, and New Mexico.
A formal oath of allegiance to the Union was required of
school teachers in Los Angeles at this time. The result
was attendance at schools dropped off, with only 350
children in the public schools, an equal number in private
schools, and another third not in school at all (op. cit. p.
308).
The California of 1859 was not a totally attractive place.
Business was not very good in Southern California. Much
of the gold and silver had played out, or had been
claimed already. The next rush would be to Colorado
and Montana. The Pyles, Lingenfelters, Kennedy folks
seemed content to stay east of the Missouri. It was the
family of Lucretia Webster Smith Kennedy that seemed
to be on the move, her Smith relations were moving
west.
Elizabeth Crittenden (Mother of Lucretia), died in Platte
County, Missouri on August 18, 1839 (100 years before I
was born) and John Payton Smith died in Platte County,
August 23, 1841. William Vinson Smith, eldest son of the
Smiths, married Jane Lockhart Holt on February 7th 1839
in Clinton County, Missouri, just months before his
mother’s death. Sarah Ann Smith, the eldest daughter
married Dennis Chance, February 10, 1938, just a year
before, in Buchanan County, Missouri. Mary Ann Smith,
married John M. Jones, July 27th 1842, less than a year
after her father’s death, this also in Buchanan County,
Missouri. Jane Catharine Smith married Green W.
Webster, February 26th 1844, in Andrew County,
Missouri.
Most of these children died in California. James Cowell
Smith died April 12, 1900 in Stockton, San Joaquin
County, California; Jane Catharine Smith, died December
11th 1911 in Oakland, California; Hiram Shelby Smith,
died February 27th 1874 in Vacaville, California; Gustavus
Pierpont Smith, died November 11th in San Juaquin
County, California; America Elizabeth Smith, died June 5th
1907 in San Joaquin County, California. However,
William Vinson Smith, died January 24, 1892 in Skidmore,
Nodaway, County, Missouri, and Lucretia Webster Smith,
died December 30th 1920, in Nodaway, County. By the
time of Lucretia and Samuel fiftieth wedding anniversary,
noted above, most of Lucretia’s Smith relatives were in
California.
As we have already discussed above, John Payton Smith
had a brother, Ezekiel W. Smith, who became sheriff of
Andrew County, Missouri, March 1841. As discussed
above, he died of cholera in Andrew County, 28 May
1849. His wife Sarah remained in Andrew County with 10
children till April 1857, when she left for California by
wagon train. All her living children, John Payton, Hiram
Walker, Elizabeth, William Jasper, Susan Eveline, Susan
C., Martha Jane, Eleanor, Ezekiel William, ended up in
Northern California, appear to have followed her to
California.
When Ezekiel became sheriff of Andrew County, it
appears to have been a very rural location. The “County
History” that is posted on line (History-Andrew County,
Missouri Genealogy Trails) describes land that was a third
gently rolling prairie, and the rest forest, with a thick
loam soil. There was enough water power in streams
and rivers to support mills. Apparently there was an
abundance of limestone. The soil appears to have been
good for corn, wheat, and apples and to have supported
considerable numbers of cattle, hogs, sheep, horses, and
mules. Joseph Walker, from Kentucky, built a log cabin in
the county in 1836 and built a mill and a distillery. In the
period when Ezekiel was sheriff, there were still bear and
herds of deer, along with large numbers of wild turkeys,
grouse, ducks, and cranes (op. cit., p. 3). The history of
the County cited above claims that the water power
available in the rivers and the abundant game attracted
families from Kentucky and Tennessee in 1844, and these
families chose timber lands and mill sites for their
settlements. Joseph Walker set up a horse mill on
Hackberry Ridge, near Savannah, and Abram Dillon built
a log based water mill on Dillon Creek. The first steam
mill was constructed in 1848 (Ibid).
Methodist preachers came to private houses. Services
were conducted in the courthouse in Savannah. A
Methodist Episcopal Church was organized there in 1848.
Presbyterian organizations appeared in 1841 and began
services in the courthouse until they built a brick church
in 1848. A school appeared in a cabin near Savannah in
1840. Several other schools operated nearby in 1841.
The conflict between North and South over slavery began
to stir up trouble in the County. A Methodist preacher
upset pro-slavery elements in Rochester in 1856 and he
was tarred and feathered. When someone tried to
protect the preacher, he was shot and killed by the mob.
A fight took place between Samuel Simmons and William
Hardesty in Rochester in the same year, in which Samuel
Simmons, the pro-slavery man, was killed. In 1861, both
sides had their separate meetings on the same day in
Savannah. The Union flag went up a flag pole in the
square and a “Palmetto” flag flew from the courthouse
cupola. A pro-slavery man named Thompson was shot.
The leaders of the Union meeting, Willard P. Hall and
former Governor R. M. Stewart, had to flee from a town
mob. Sometime later, a detachment of Union troops
came to town and took the press of the local pro-slavery
paper, “Northwest Democrat.” A company of Southern
supporters from Camp Highly took type from the “Plain
dealer,” a Union paper, a few days later.
Camp Highly was used as a meeting place for Southern
sympathizers to enter the “State Guards,” and another
camp was set up in Gentry County by Colonel Craynor for
the Union (op. cit., p. 5). The Union received support
from Iowa. They attacked the Confederates, who were
led by Colonel J. P. Saunders and Colonel Jefferson
Barton. The Confederates left the County and joined the
army commanded by General Sterling Price. Now the
Southern party was at the mercy of mobs that formed
and ruffians that warned families to leave. Many families
affiliated with the South were forced to leave (ibid).
Since Ezekiel Smith, and his wife, had owned seven
slaves, it is very possible that these are the very forces
which sent his wife and children west to California in
1857. The Smith family was originally from Tennessee
and the Crittendens were from North Carolina and
Virginia (where some of them had intermarried with the
Jeffersons and the Lees), soon the children and grand
children of John Payton Smith and Elizabeth Crittenden
were moving west as well, leaving Lucretia Webster
Smith Kennedy behind in Maryville.
A work titled “Colusa County Biographies” transcribed by
Gerald Laquinta, was generated in 1901 by the Chicago
Standard Genealogical Publishing Company. It is
available on the web (freepages.genealogy. rootsweb). It
has a biography of James H. Sherer, who was sheriff of
Colusa County, California at the time the biography was
written. The subject of the biography, James Hamilton
Sherer, was born in Andrew County, Missouri, November
6th 1856, the son of Joseph Sherer (now relocated to
Arbuckle, California). The Sherers moved from Ohio to
Missouri in 1848. Joseph Sherer married a daughter of
Ezekiel and Sarah (Walker) Smith July 5th 1855. This
account of Ezekiel states that he was elected sheriff of
Andrew County twice and was a candidate for state
assembly when he died. This biography gives the birth
date for Mrs. Sherer as January 7th 1835, and gives the
place as Clinton County, Missouri. The Mrs. Sherer
referred to must be Susan Eveline, listed elsewhere as
born January 7th 1835 in Savannah, Buchanan, Missouri.
The biography states that James H. Sherer was only a
year old when his parents came to California and settled
near Arbuckle. Later he would attend Pierce Christian
College and the business college of San Francisco,
returning to Colusa County to raise stock and farm. He is
described as a Democrat and a Mason.
The period of time we are looking at is an interesting
period in the development of human thought. Take
science for example. Chemistry as we know it is still in its
infancy. F. J. Moore of MIT wrote a History of Chemistry
in 1918 that was revised by William T. Hall in 1931.
The science of Chemistry is based on the ideas of the
French Chemist Lavoisier and his textbook published in
French in 1789. But, it was John Dalton, born around
September 6th 1766 in the Village of Eaglefield,
Cumberland, England, who applied the ancient atomic
philosophy of Democritus to Chemistry (op. cit., pp. 72 73). He was the son of an impoverished weaver in the
Quaker faith. Because of his poverty, he was only able to
work with the most primitive apparatus. He started by
the study of his own color blindness. He also kept a
careful record of the weather. He was inspired by the
writings of Newton and the discoveries of Priestly to
question what kind of substances made up the
atmosphere and might be causing various events in
meteorology (the weather).
The idea that one gas might be in solution in another
caused him to experiment with a notion he got from
Newton of repulsive particles, or atoms. He developed
the hypothesis that these particles might be the same in
a mixed state as in an unmixed state. In 1805, he
realized that the size of the various atoms must be
different. Now he needed to find out the different sizes
and weights of these atoms. What Dalton had
discovered is that elements combine in proportions, by
weight, in multiples of particular units.
A series of related discoveries was made at this time. In
1805, Louis Gay-Lussac and Alexander Humboldt
discovered that oxygen and hydrogen always combine
together in a ration of two parts hydrogen to one part
oxygen. In 1808, the ratio by which oxygen and nitrogen
combine to form nitrous oxide, or to form nitric oxide,
nitrogen peroxide was discovered and how ammonia is
made of one volume of nitrogen and three of hydrogen.
In 1811 an Italian physics professor, Amedeo Avagadro of
Turin, suggested that the particles Dalton was
considering were themselves compound. He
distinguished between compound molecules and
elementary molecules (what we now call atoms). In
1814, William Hyde Wollaston studied the formation of
salts and confirmed the law of multiple proportions.
William Prout, and English physician, published a paper
in 1815 that discussed the way that atomic weights were
close to whole numbers and speculated that hydrogen
was the key to this system.
It was Humphry Davy who would work out some of these
relationships in a laboratory in Bristol, where he began
work in 1798, and then at the Royal Institute in 1801.
Using the most powerful battery ever made up to this
time, Davy managed to isolate the elements Potassium
and Sodium. Soon he was able to isolate Barium,
Strontium, Calcium, and Magnesium. Davy began to
realize that electrical charge was the source of the
combining power of substances. Michael Faraday began
to work with Davy as an assistant in 1813. Faraday is the
source of terms like “electrode” and “electrolyte” and
“electrolysis.” He laid the foundations for the
electrochemistry of solutions.
Jons Jakob Berzelius studied medicine in Upsala, Sweden.
Later he travelled to Stockholm and the college of
medicine. He began to publish works on chemical
compounds from 1810 to 1818, in which he attempted to
determine the combining weights with great accuracy.
This work was the foundation of the branch of chemistry
known as “Quantitative Analysis.” Berzelius was
influenced by Lavoisier and his emphasis on the action of
acids and bases to form salts.
More discoveries followed: Friedrich Wohler studied
medicine in Germany and went to Stockholm to work
with Berzelius. He discovered aluminum in 1827. Justus
Liebig set up a laboratory in Giessen, in Germany, that
brought chemistry students from all over the world. In
1831, he began editing a prestigious German Chemistry
publication, “Annalen der Chemie and Pharmacie.” Jean
Baptiste Andre Dumas was teaching chemistry at the
Sorbonne in Paris. He wrote a French text “Traite de
Chimie” in 8 volumes, which was published 1828 -1848,
and was translated into German (op. cit., p. 133).
In 1828, Wohler mixed potassium cyanate with
ammonium sulfate and obtained urea. For the first time,
an organic substance had been made from inorganic
substances. In 1832, Liebig and Wohler published a
study of the oil of bitter almonds and the “benzoyl”
radical. In 1839, Liebig named the “acetyl” radical. In
1839, Dumas developed a theory of “types.” According to
this view, compounds are based on chemical types in
which the number of atoms and their placement are
more important than the nature of the atoms
themselves.
In 1834, Faraday was involved in work that was published
in “Experimental Researches in Electricity” between 1844
and 1847. Faraday showed that chemical affinity is
based on electricity. This work introduced the word
“ion” for an electrically charged atom. In 1848, Wurtz
discovered the primary aliphatic amines. In 1850,
Williamson began work on the ethers. In 1854, Berthelot
showed that glycerol had the same relationship to
alcohol that phosphoric acid had to nitric.
These discoveries only led to more confusion in
chemistry. A convention was held in hope of bringing
some order. It was held at Karlsuhe in September of
1860, the French chemist Dumas presided. The
conference was impressed by a publication by Stanislao
Cannizzaro, a professor in Genoa, that used the ideas of
Avogadro as the foundation of a chemical system. This
conference, and the Avogadro based notions it
supported, is considered the foundation of modern
chemistry.
The great work in chemistry was being done in Sweden,
Germany, France, Italy, and England. The great work in
biology was being done in England, France, and
Germany. The United States was far away from the
centers of the scientific establishment, yet a hundred
years later, a Darwinian centennial would be held in
Chicago. It would generate a book that would be used as
a textbook for a graduate class in evolution given a the
University of California, Los Angeles by the President of
the Society for Evolution, and in attendance, as a
doctoral student, with the President of the Society for
the Study of Evolution on his doctoral guidance
committee, would be a great great grandson of Lucretia
Webster Smith Kennedy. This same great great grandson
would teach about Wohler and Berzelius in his classes in
Physiological Chemistry for the State University of New
York. What changes in the history of the family, and the
republic to which it belonged, and in the tiny Spanish
speaking village of Los Angeles, even in a hundred years,
to cause such an extraordinary result?
Several years after taking evolution, I would take
paleobotany from one of the authorities in the volume in
question, as discussed previously in this account. Daniel
Axelrod wrote the section on “The Evolution of Flowering
Plants” (Sol Tax, op. cit., p. 227). In this article, he
discusses how Gray, Hooker, and Darwin were concerned
with the origin of the great forests of North America and
Asia.
In his bibliography, he cites works by the American
botanist Asa Gray, published in 1846 and 1859. But the
fundamental work in both Botany (the study of
plants)and Geology was still being done in Britain,
France, and Germany at the time Darwin published his
Origin in 1859. As Alexander B. Adams points out in his
book “Eternal Quest,” (cited earlier in the discussion
above), geology, botany, biology, and paleontology had
discovered the world of nature (the realm studied by the
naturalists) through the efforts of Carl Linneaus (the
Swedish plant taxonomist, 1707 -1778), George Louis
Buffon (French, worked at the Jardin du Roi in Paris, 1707
-1788), Jean Lamark (French, also at the Jardin du Roi,
1744 -1829), Georges Cuvier (French, also at the Jardin
du Roi, 1769 – 1832), Alexander von Humbolt (German,
1769 – 1859, his “Cosmos” published in volumes, starting
in 1845, attempted to summarize all he knew about
geology, geography, botany, etc.), Charles Lyell, (English,
friend of Darwin, great English authority on geology,
1797 -1875), Louis Agassiz (Swiss, zoologist, geologist,
now at Harvard, resistant to Darwin’s new ideas, 1807 –
1873).
The Botany program that I was in at UCLA in the 1960, as
discussed above, was largely the product of the work of
Carl Linnaeus of Sweden, the source of the science of
taxonomy, of plant classification. Students of Linnaeus
had worked at the Berlin Museum and their students had
come to the colleges and universities of Missouri during
the great period of migration of the liberal supporters of
the revolutions of 1848, upon their failure to delivery the
hoped for liberal fruits. Many members of the German
liberal elite came to Missouri in this great exodus, as
discussed above. My own taxonomic training, under Dr.
Mildred Mathias and Carl Epling and Harlan Lewis, was a
product of studies inspired by this migration, and the
associated influence of German science on American
thought.
This was all far in the future when Lucretia Webster
Smith was born in 1833, and when her mother died in
1839 (was she around 6 years old?) and her father
remarried in 1840 and died soon after, leaving her an
orphan. Her uncle Ezekiel was sheriff of Andrew County,
but he died in 1849. Her uncle Hiram had left for
California in 1846 and did not return till after her
marriage to Samuel Kennedy 14 July 1850. When he did
return in 1851 and 1852, he did not stay long and died
somewhere on the way back to California. Lucretia had
cousins who followed Hiram west and married in
California, Ann, who married William Scott 6 June 1847
and later Alexander McDonald 7 April 1850 in Sonoma,
California. Artemsia married Thomas H. Pyatt, 2
December 1851, and Elisa, who married Tennessee
Carter Bishop 2 May 1855 in California. As mentioned
above, her uncle’s wife Sarah Walker Smith, left for
California April, 1857 with her children and relatives.
Her brother Gustavus Pierpont Smith, born March 4th
1836, when her father was working as the government
blacksmith on the Kickapoo Indian Reservation in Kansas,
married Mary Ann B. Riley on November 11th 1858 in
Nodaway County, Missouri. But, even he would leave
Missouri for California, and is buried there in a rural
cemetery in San Joaquin County.
The movement west would pick up energy at this time.
But, not to California, which was suffering economic bad
times, as noted by Harris Newmark above.
On May 6th 1859, John Gregory, from Gordon County,
Georgia, found an outcrop of gold in what became
known as “Gregory Gulch” in a high point of the Colorado
Rocky Mountains, forty miles west of Denver. The
account of this find, and other exploits in the mountains
associated with it, is described very well in Marshall
Sprague’s great book “The Great Gates,” (Little, Brown,
and Company, 1964, see p. 171). The enthusiasm
generated by this find turned the focus of attention on
Colorado. The men that had come west in search of
California gold, and had lost out because the gold was
already taken, land already staked out, or claimed, or
because what look like a huge find turned out to be
much less, now had something to talk about. Colorado
became a magnet that attracted all the loose iron fillings,
and there were many in the West at this time, as
described by Harris Newmark’s accounts of life on the
streets of Los Angeles in the 1850s.
I have driven, taken the bus, flown over, gone by railroad
through the territory that lies between Missouri and Los
Angeles. In 1952, crossing through Missouri by car with
my father, Ralph B. Andrews, we stopped for breakfast at
a Missouri farm house in territory that would have been
very familiar to Lucretia Webster and her brothers and
sisters. The small restaurant operated on a family farm
took what seemed hours to prepare the food. I and my
father waited patiently while the chief went out to the
hen house to search for eggs. I remember another trip
by bus, accompanied by a young Frenchman studying at
the Pasteur Institute in Paris (I was teaching microbiology
for the State University of New York and still doing
graduate work in life science at UCLA in my summers),
but this trip was in winter and the grey skies and snow
covered plains seemed to flow like an endless carpet of
cold white and faded blue.
Trips to the Rocky Mountains were common things in the
early part of the 19th Century as a result of the fur trade
and wagon loads of freight for the Spanish speaking
population of Sante Fe, part of Spain till the Mexican
Revolution, and not open to trade with the United States,
but open to trade once the revolution was over. There
were few passes over the Rocky Mountains, in Canada
and the United States, that weren’t explored by some
company of trappers, or adventurers. But, when Captain
Louis Eulalie de Bonneville took twenty wagons through
South Pass July 24, 1832, it was written up in a biography
of Bonneville by the famous author Washington Irving,
published 1837. It created a new interest in the West.
Senator Thomas Hart Benton used this interest to create
a special branch of the Army called the “Corps of
Topographical Engineers,” headed by Senator Benton’s
son-in-law, Lieutenant John Charles Fremont. Fremont’s
first expedition left St. Louis, in 1842, to make maps of
the Oregon Trail all the way to South Pass (op. cit., pp.
128 -132). In May of 1843, Fremont set out for what is
now Denver and went on to Pueblo, Colorado. The
expedition went on to South Pass and the Columbia
River. It continued into Nevada and used the Carson Pass
to enter California February 20, 1844. Fremont returned
to the Rocky Mountains and explored them till he found
the sources of the South Platte River and the Arkansas
River. By August 6, 1844, the expedition was back in St.
Louis (op. cit. p.139). In August of 1845, he took at least
sixty armed men west over the Rockies to support the
conquest of California. General Stephen Watts Kearny
let the Army of the West, as it crossed the Arkansas,
August 2, 1846 in the conquest of New Mexico (op. cit.,
p. 140). They marched into Santa Fe, August 16, 1846
and raised the US flag (op. cit., p. 142).
On June 15th 1846, Britain accepted the 49th parallel as
the southern edge of British North America. Captain
Howard Stansbury was a civil engineer from New York
with the United States Corps of Topographical Engineers.
He left Fort Leavenworth on May 31, 1849 and returned
November 6, 1850, having discovered a way of saving a
hundred miles by using his Bridger Pass route to Salt Lake
City (op. cit., p. 146). This discovery stimulated pressure
for a transcontinental railroad. In March of 1853,
Congress authorized four surveys of possible routes by
the Topographical Engineers. In 1853, outside of interest
on the part of trappers, the Rockies were seen largely as
a barrier that needed to be passed to reach the gold
deposits of California.
The news of a gold strike in the Colorado Rockies
changed that in an instant, and soon the area was
swarming with gold prospectors from Omaha, from Fort
Leavenworth, form California, from Salt Lake City.
George Jackson found placer gold on Chicago Creek,
Placer gold was found in the sands of Tarryall Creek in
July of 1859. More placer gold was found on the
Arkansas in California Gulch.
Thousands of miners came up the Arkansas River. Gold
was found in Arkansas River branches. Cities grew up
around gold prospecting. Blue River camp was renamed
Breckinridge and then renamed Breckenridge. Wagons
began going across Breckenridge Pass in August of 1860.
The gold rush area ended east of the Continental Divide
in the headwaters of Boulder Creek and Clear Creek (op.
cit., p. 183).
By 1861, there was bad news. The easy gold at Tarryall,
Georgia Gulch, and Central City had been taken. In
March of 1862, General Henry H. Sibley led Texans to
capture Sante Fe for the South (op. cit., p. 188). The
Governor of Colorado, William Gilpin organized the con
men and pimps and other gold camp types into a 1342
man Union army, financed with personal drafts on the
United States Treasury. This army came across Raton
Pass on March 8th 1862 and met the Confederate troops
near Pecos Village. A Methodist minister led an attack on
the Confederate supply train of seventy three wagons,
and destroyed it. General Sibley was forced to return to
Texas, leaving Sante Fe in the hands of the Union (op.
cit., p. 191).
Native Americans began to organize to save the hunting
grounds that could be saved: Sioux and Cheyennes,
Snakes, Nez Perce. Lieutenant John Mullan was putting
on pressure by the construction of a 633 mile military
road from the fort at Walla Walla to Fort Benton. By the
end of 1859, this road was starting up the Bitterroot
Range into Montana (op. cit., p. 196).
“Inventing America,” by Pauline Maier, Merritt Roe
Smith, Alexander Keyssar, and Daniel J. Kevles, W. W.
Norton, 2003, is another US History survey text. The first
volume extends its reach to 1877. On page 528, it begins
to discuss the effect the domination of Congress by the
Republicans would have on the future of the Republic.
May 20th 1862 is a date associated with the Homestead
Act that gave settlers 160 acres of land if they stayed on
the land for 5 years and made improvements. The Pacific
Railway Act of July 1st 1862 authorized the building of the
transcontinental railroad. July 2, 1862, Lincoln signed the
Morrill Act provided public land for the states to use in
establishing agricultural and mechanical arts colleges, the
Land Grant Colleges. This act resulted in the founding of
69 public colleges and universities, including Ohio State
University, where my grandfather Allen Andrews went to
school and the University of California, where my uncle
Victor Thompson received his BA in microbiology, my
aunt Miriam Thompson received her BA in nutrition, my
mother Jean Thompson received her BA in education,
and I received my MA in botany (Ibid). These acts
transformed the country for my family. They came west
on the railroad network that grew out of the skeleton
provided by the completion of the transcontinental
railroad in 1869 (financed in part by the sale of public
lands and further financed by land development projects
supported by the Homestead Act). Once they arrived,
the expanding university and college system, stimulated
by the core of land grant institutions, transformed their
cultural and professional lives. In my father’s family, this
generated a long period of loyalty to Lincoln, and to his
Republican Party and the educational, military, and
economic system it created.
In the meantime, Missouri was not a secure location as
the Civil War began. There were some interesting
players in the resulting Drama. One of these players was
John C. Fremont who appears on the stage in California
and Missouri as well. Wikipedia describes Fremont as a
military officer, explorer, first candidate of the
Republican Party for President, and one of the first two
US Senators elected from California. Fremont was born
to a upper class mother from Virginia and Charles
Fremon, a French Royalist who was tutoring the wife of a
wealthy Virginian named Major John Pryor. John C.
Fremont was the son of that illegal union (op. cit.).
Fremont married Jessie Benton in 1841. Jesse Benton
was the daughter of Senator Thomas Hart Benton of
Missouri, leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate
for thirty years an a champion of expansion (John C.
Fremont, Wikipedia, p. 2). Benton used his power in the
Senate to obtain money for surveys for the Oregon Trail,
Oregon Territory, and the Great Basin: 1842, 1844, and
1845. He used his influence to make his son-law the
leader of each one.
Fremont met Kit Carson in Missouri on a steamboat in
1842 and enlisted him as his guide. It was Fremont’s
reports that inspired the Mormons to move to settle
Utah. From 1842 to 1846, Fremont and Carson would
explore the Oregon Trail, the Sierra Nevada, and the
Great Basin area. He discovered Lake Tahoe and mapped
Mt. St. Helens. When Congress published Fremont’s
work, it would aid the thousands of immigrants going to
Oregon and California in the period from 1845 to 1849
(Ibid). This probably should include members of the
family of Lucretia Webster Smith, as discussed above.
The exploits of Fremont are hard to keep up with.
Wikipedia has him meeting with President Polk May 15,
1845, gathering more than 50 men in St. Louis on an
expedition to the source of the Arkansas River, but
instead he proceeds to Sutter’s Fort in California, and
arrives December 10th 1845. There, he seems to have
gone to Monterrey for a conversation with the American
consul and the Mexican military leader Jose Castro (op.
cit., p. 4). Apparently Fremont was attempting to stir up
support among American settlers. When it nearly came
to a fight with General Castro, Fremont left for Klamath
Lake and ended up in a fight with Native Americans that
resulted in the destruction of a native village on May 10th
1846. When the USS Congress arrived, Fremont was
appointed lieutenant colonel of a group of 428 men that
included supporters of the Bear Flag Republic and the
survey crew members that he had brought with him from
Missouri.
Fremont’s actions as commander may have ruined his
future political career, for he, apparently, directed Kit
Carson to murder Don Jose R. Berreyesa, the father of
the Alcalde (Mayor) of Sonoma, and the twin sons of Don
Francisco de Haro, former Alcalde of Yerba Buena
(renamed San Francisco)(see above references). Soon
after, Fremont led a group of 300 men over San Marcos
Pass in a rainstorm to capture Santa Barbara. Days later
he came south and signed a tready with Andres Pico on
January 13, 1847 that ended the war in that region.
Fremont was appointed military governor of California
on January 16, 1847 by Commodore Stockton. General
Stephen Watts Kearny had orders from President Polk to
assume the governorship, but Fremont refused to resign
and was arrested August 22, 1847.
He made various attempts to salvage his reputation
including a failed privately funded expedition in 1848 to
survey a route for a 38th parallel transcontinental
railroad. He served only a few months as Senator for
California, failed in this Presidential campaign as
candidate for the Republican Party in 1856.
He was appointed a major general in the Civil War and
commander of the Army’s Department of the West in
1861. Fremont ordered Gen. Nathaniel Lyon to bring
Missouri into the Union. General Lyon managed to push
Governor Claiborne Jackson out of the state and
establish a pro-Union state government. Lyon was killed
in the Battle of Wilson’s Creek and Fremont imposed
martial law on the state. He took the property of the
Confederates and freed the slaves. When this brought
him into conflict with President Lincoln, Lincoln was
forced to relieve Fremont of command on November 2,
1861. March 1862, he was placed in command of the
Mountain Department of Virginia, Tennessee, and
Kentucky, but Confederate General Stonewall Jackson
managed to avoid capture and a new Army of Virginia
was organized by the Union, at which point Fremont
resigned and retired to New York (op. cit.).
Another personality that was influential in Missouri in
this period was Claiborne Fox Jackson. Jackson was a
leader of the pro-Slavery Democrats in Missouri and
attempted to defeat the pro-Union Senator Thomas Hart
Benton, father-in-law of Fremont. Jackson became
governor of Missouri January 2nd, 1861 (see the
Wikipedia article on Claiborne Fox Jackson).
Missouri created a special state convention to deal with
the secession issue. This convention voted 98 to 1
against secession. Jackson decided to maintain the policy
of the former governor Robert M. Steward, to make
Missouri and armed neutral power refusing to support
either side. However, Jackson was in secret
communication with the Confederate President and
made plans to take Missouri out of the Union with a
military coup (op. cit., p. 1).
A critical point in this planning was the US Arsenal in St.
Louis which Jackson wanted to capture. When Lincoln
called on the governors of the states to provide militia
for the Federal Government, Jackson refused the
request. Captain Nathaniel Lyon was in charge of the
Arsenal and orders came on April 26th 1861 to begin to
move weapons across the Mississippi to Illinois. Jackson
ordered the Missouri militia to St. Louis. Artillery taken
from the US Arsenal in Baton Rouge was secretly shipped
by steamboat up the Mississippi to this assembly site,
now known as Camp Jackson. On May 10, 1861, Lyon
took “Home Guards,” assembled from German
immigrants in St. Louis and took the militia men prisoner.
Jackson appointed Sterling Price as Major General in
charge of the Missouri Guard and ordered him to direct
them to resist federal invasion. General William S.
Harney, in charge of Missouri federal forces, met with
Price on May 12th and agreed to a truce, not knowing
that Jackson was negotiating with the Confederates in
support of a Confederate invasion of the state. Harney
was removed May 30th and replaced with Lyon. Lyon
took command of Jefferson City, as the Confederate
forces fled to Boonville. The Boonville forces were
defeated by Lyon on June 17th and pushed Jackson and
Price to the southwest part of the state (op. cit. p. 3).
The Missouri Convention assembled again July 22, 1861
and voted against joining the South. On July 27th they
removed Jackson and replaced him with Hamilton
Gamble on July 28th as a Provisional Governor. On
October 28th, the Confederates met in Neosho, Missouri
and voted for secession, so the Confederacy recognized
Missouri as its twelfth state, with Jackson as Governor
(Ibid).
Sterling Price had organized the Second Regiment of
Missouri Mounted Volunteer Cavalry, and was appointed
colonel in charge August 12, 1846 (see the Wikipedia
article on Sterling Price). He and Alexander Doniphan
marched to Santa Fe and he took charge of the Territory
of New Mexico when General Kearny left for California.
Price was Governor of New Mexico when he put down
the Taos Revolt (made up of Native Americans and
Mexicans) in January of 1847 (op. cit.).
Price was appointed military governor of Chihuahua and
led 300 men in the Battle of Santa Cruz de Rosales on
March 16th 1848. This battle took place after the Treaty
of Guadalupe Hidalgo had been ratified by Congress, and
his actions were reprimanded by the Secretary of War
(op. cit.).
He used slaves to grow tobacco. He was elected
Governor of Missouri and served from 1853 to 1857, a
period that saw the founding of Washington University in
St. Louis and the restructuring of the public school
system. At first he was opposed to secession, but took
command of the Missouri State Guard in May of 1861.
He defeated a Union force at Lexington and again at the
Battle of Wilson’s Creek. However, he was unable to
form a united force with Brigadier General Benjamin
McCulloch. When Major General Earl Van Dorn was
appointed overall commander, Price was commissioned
a CSA major general on March 6th 1862 (op. cit.).
A series of set backs found him fighting with General P.
G. T. Beauregard in Mississippi and travelling to
Richmond to visit Jefferson Davis, who questioned his
loyalty of the South. Price finally managed to get
permission to invade Missouri in the fall of 1864 and he
captured the Union held Fort Davidson. He moved
toward Kansas City and Fort Leavenworth, Kansas,
cutting a path of destruction across the state. He
defeated the federal forces at Glasgow, at Lexington, at
Little Blue River, at Independence, Missouri. A series of
defeats in Kansas pushed him south into Texas and at the
wars end he led his army into Mexico in hopes of joining
with the Emperor Maximilian (op. cit.).
Gangs like the James-Younger gang carried on guerrilla
activities in Missouri during the Civil War and some, like
Jesse James continued on afterward as gang leaders and
bank robbers. William Quantrill went to Texas in 1861
and met Joel B. Mayes, a war chief of the Cherokee in
Texas. Quantrill, Mayes, and members of the Cherokee
Nations supported General Price in the Battle of Wilson’s
Creek and Lexington. William developed his own band of
Confederate guerrillas operating out of Blue Springs,
Missouri. In 1862, the James brothers and Younger
brothers would join his group. On August 21, 1863,
Quantrill attacked Lawrence, Kansas with 450 guerrillas.
He robbed the town’s bank and burned most of the
buildings, and killed 183 men and boys, some in
execution style killings. In retaliation, the Union army
depopulated three and a half counties along the Kansas
border forcing the citizens to abandon their homes.
Union troops burned the buildings and torched the fields
and shot the livestock. Quantrill went south to Texas
where his group broke up into smaller companies (see
Wikipedia articles on William Quantrill and Jesse James).
This was the period of time when Mary Ellen Pyle (born 6
Nov 1844 in Perry, Illinois) and John Lingenfelter (born 10
March 1832) were having a number of children: Alice,
born 1860 in Denver, Missouri; Lycurgus, born 11
November 1861, Denver; James Valentine, born 8 Dec
1863, Denver; Benjamin, born 18 Dec 1865, Denver; John
Herman,1868, Denver; George, 1870, Denver; Charley,
1871, Denver; Edward A., 5 Feb. 1874, Denver; Frank D.,
4 Sept. 1876, Denver; May, 1878, Denver.
The Lingenfelter line is very difficult to trace. In contrast
there is a good deal of material tracing Mary Ellen Pyle to
Illinois and before that to North Carolina. Mary Ellen
Pyle was born 6 Nov. 1844 in Perry, Illinois to Octavus
Pyle and Sophronia Moore. Sophronia Moore was born
23 Aug 1823 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Octavius Pyle was
born 2 May 1819 in DuQuoin, Perry, Illinois to John Jack
Pyle and Mary Polly Wells.
Sophrina Moore and Octavius Pyle has the following
children: Marcellus, born 30 Jan 1841, Perry, Illinois;
Octavius, 29 Aug 1843, Perry; Mary Ellen, 6 Nov 1844,
Perry; Sarah, 23 Aug 1846, Perry; Synora, 30 Dec 1847,
Duquin, Perry; Cyrus Butler, 2 Aug 1851; Eliza, 2 Mar
1853, Perry; John, 22 Oct 1854, Perry; Lassira Ann, 27
Nov 1855, Allendale, Worth, Missouri; Martha Elizabeth,
2 Dec 1856, Worth, Missouri; Walter Hamilton, 18 Aug
1858, Worth; Samuel, 17 Jan 1860, Allendale, Worth;
Cortez S. Pyle, 16 Jul 1862, Allendale, Worth; Anna Laura,
26 April 1864, Missouri; George, born 28 Jul 1868 in
Missouri; Thomas, 18 Sept 1868, Allendale, Worth; Curtis
Lycurgus, 23 May 1842, Perry, Illinois.
Mary Polly Wells was born 10 Nov 1806 in Christian
County, Kentucky, daughter of Lewis Wells and Elizabeth
Bates. Elizabeth was born 29 March 1792 in Greenville
County, South Carolina. John Jack Pyle was born 13 Aug
1782 in Chatham County, North Carolina. The children of
John Jack Pyle and Mary Polly Wells are: Sarah, 22 Oct
1807, Christian County, near Hopkinsville, Kentucky;
Hiram, 25 Feb 1810, Kentucky; Rufus, 9 June 1815,
Kentucky; Cortez, 14 Feb 1818, Kentucky; Octavius, 2
May 1819, DuQuoin, Perry County, Illinois; Ulyssess, 2
March 1823, Jackson County, Illinois; Joanna, 1826,
Jackson; Helen, 1828, Perry; Lassira, 1829, Perry;
Ustocium, 1832.
John Jack Pyle was the son of John Pyle, Jr. and Sarah
Brashear. Sarah Brashear was born 12 June 1744 in
Chatham County, North Carolina, daughter of Thomas
Brashier and Sarah Constance. She married John Jack 17
May 1770 in Chatham, North Carolina and they had the
following children: William, 1773, Chatham County;
Jane; John, born 1770; Abner, born 14 Dec. 1778,
Chatham; Betty, 1780; John Jack, 13 August 1782,
Chatham; Susana, 1786.
John Pyle Jr. was born 1746 in Chester, Pennsylvania. His
father was John Pyle, born 8 April 1723 in Kennett
Square, Chester, Pennsylvania and his mother was Sarah
Baldwin, born 1720 (married June 1744 in Welmington,
New Castle, Delaware. Besides John Jr., Nicholas Pyle
was born 1748 in Hopkinsville, Christian, Kentucky, Sarah
Pyle, born 10 Nov 1750 in Hartford, Maryland. Samuel
Pyle, father of John Pyle, Sr. was born 21 February 1701
in Concord, Chester, Pennsylvania. Samuel Pyle married
Sarah Pringle, born in England. He was the son of
Nicholas Pyle, born 26 April 1697 in Bethel, Chester,
Pennsylvania. Nicholas Pyle married Sarah Worrilow. He
was the son of Nicholas Pyle Sr., born 12 Aug 1666 in
Bishops Cannings, Wiltshire, England and Abigail Bushell,
born 1668 in Brinkworte, Wiltshire, England. They were
married September 1688 in Chester County,
Pennsylvania.
According to a web posting (Pyles Hacking Match),
Doctor John Pyle was born April 8th 1723 to the grandson
of Nicholas Pyle, who apparently came with William Penn
to Pennsylvania. There was a practice among the better
classes to send your first born back to England for
instruction. Samuel sent John to a medical school in the
Oxford area sometime around 1744. He married Sarah
Baldwin, who was the daughter of John and Hannah
Baldwin from the Oxford area of England. The marriage
took place in Wilmington, Delaware. John and Sarah had
eleven children. The first child, John Jr. was also given
medical training. When the family moved to Chatham
County in North Carolina in 1767, he worked as an
assistant in his father’s medical practice. The Pyle family
were devout Quakers and loyal to the Crown. When King
George gave the Governor of North Carolina the power
to grant commissions to the leading citizens, John Pyle Sr.
was commissioned as a Colonel and began recruiting for
the King. Lieutenant Henry Light Horse Lee attacked the
Royal troops under Colonel Pyle at Haw River. Pyle was
badly wounded and survived by hiding in a pond (op. cit.,
p. 2).
Apparently Pyle went to work for General Cornwallis, and
approaching George Washington at a social affair in
Pennsylvania, agreed to spy on Cornwallis for the
Revolution. He memorized the battle plans at British
Army headquarters and transmitted them to
Washington. When Cornwallis was defeated at
Yorktown, it was blamed on Colonel Pyle and King
George offered a 5000 pound reward for his capture.
Pyle and his son surrendered to Washington’s Army in
1781, and offered their services as doctors for the
wounded troops (op. cit. p. 2).
A web posting for the Schwartz family reunion of Elkville
in 1888 brings the story forward to my branch of the
family, centered on Perry County, Illinois. According to
this posting, Lewis Wells and Elizabeth (Bates) Wells
were the parents of Mary (Polly) Wells, who married
John (Jack) Pyle, son of John Pyle, Jr., as discussed above.
About the time of the Revolution, Elizabeth Bates was
stolen by the local Native Americans, she was only 12.
Her parents were raising a crop in a clear spot in the
wilderness when they were attacked. They heard a war
cry and the women and children were taken prisoners
and the men were killed. The family kept as prisoners for
around a year till there was a prisoner exchange between
the Natives and the Settlers (op. cit., p. 2).
This same site speculates that Lewis Wells Sr, may have
been born in Yorkshire, England. He seems to have
joined the revolutionary army and soon afterward
married Elizabeth Bates (ibid). According to this story,
around 1803, a band of settlers out of North Carolina
came west to Hopkinsville, Kentucky and stayed there
because of Native American disturbances in Illinois.
According to local tradition, Lewis Wells, Lewis McElvain,
Thomas Taylor, and three Pyle brothers came west in
1803 to Jackson County to check on the situation and
took some of the land. They returned to Kentucky and
stayed till 1812, when the group returned with their
families in order to live on “free soil” free from slavery
(op. cit., p. 2).
Family records indicate that a large group of Wells, Pyles,
Taylors, Schwarz, etc., lived in a fort four miles east of
Carbondale, out on Crab Orchard Creek. Soon the Wells
and Taylors moved to Perry County. Sally, daughter of
Mary and John Pyle, married Ed Schwartz and then
George Schwartz. Sally and George had a daughter
Isabella, who married Joseph Kimmel. They both died
young and their son Edward was raised by his
grandmother Sally Pyle Schwartz. When Edward got
older, he moved to Du Quoin and met Alifair Onstott,
who was the daughter of Elihu and Barbara Ann Wells
Onstott. They were the parents of Will, Howard, Fred,
Maurice, and Ruth Kimmel (op. cit, p. 3).
Among these Pyles was Octavius, father of Mary Ellen
Pyle, grandfather of Benjamin Harrison Lingenfelter,
great grandfather of Mary Lucretia (Lingenfelter)
Thompson, who was my grandmother, as discussed
above.
This story brings several strands of this tale together.
When the Colonel John Pyle Sr, and Captain John Pyle
Jr., fought the revolutionaries under Henry Lee on Haw
Creek, he may have passed over, or by, land that
belonged to James Kennedy and later to John Bennett
Kennedy. The pond he hid out in could have been
Kennedy land. The Lee family would marry into the
Crittenden family when John Jordon Crittenden, whose
father was fighting for the other side, married Sarah Lee.
The son of the Quaker Tory Captain, and grandson of the
Quaker Tory Colonel, would marry the daughter of a
revolutionary private, originally from England. There is
evidence that the force that Colonel Pyle led was drunk
on whiskey. This back woods area of North Carolina was
a site for the manufacture of stills. But, it is clear that
this branch of the family lineage was against slavery. The
Crittenden and Lee, the Kennedy and Smith ancestors of
Henrietta Kennedy Lingenfelter had owned slaves. There
is no evidence that the Lingenfelters and Pyles ever did.
This and other differences, the Lingenfelters appear to
have been Republican and the Kennedy and Smith
families appear to have been Democrat. Long after the
Civil War was over the conflict appears to have played
out in the Lingenfelter home. It was the saying among
Ruth and Lois and Mary Lingenfelter when I was a child,
growing up in the household with Benjamin Harrison
Lingenfelter and Henrietta Kennedy Lingenfelter, “Church
on Sunday, Hell on Monday.”
In 1861, Samuel Pyle was only a year old in January and
Cortez S. was born later in the year to John Lingenfelter
and Mary Ellen Pyle, both originally out of the Perry
County Illinois homeland of the Schwartz and Kimmel
family. According to Newmark, in Los Angeles, Whaling
was doing very well out of San Pedro, with many vessels
fitted out. Captain William Clark had whaling ship named
“Ocean” that brought in as many as 500 barrels of whale
oil in a five week run. The Winter of 1861-1862 brought
terrible flooding to Los Angeles. Livestock sought refuge
in the hills. Water was four feet deep in Anaheim and
people took to the roofs of their houses. Many of the
business in Los Angeles were flooded out (Newmark, op.
cit. pp. 308 -309).
Around 1858, Newmark notes the appearance of French
from the Basque area. Large flocks of sheep began to be
grazed. 1862 was the beginning of a long drought. There
was much Confederate sympathy in the areas, so the
Union deployed federal troops who were paid in
depreciated currency. Government supplies were carried
in two hundred wagons pulled by 1200 mules brought in
from San Francisco. In 1863, the anti Union feeling was
so strong that the 4th of July was not celebrated. There
were celebrations at Fort Latham and troops were sent in
from Fort Drum to protect Union men in the city. A small
pox epidemic moved through the city at this time. The
drought continued to grow worse with many ranchos up
for sale or in distress. In 1865, a terrible windstorm
unroofed many houses and blew down orchards (op.
cit.).
By this period the descendents of Colonel Dr. John Pyle,
Sr. of North Carolina had begun to leave Perry County,
Illinois. Some stayed behind. The old town of Du Quoin
had moved. The entire area had changed since the Pyles
had located here from North Carolina by means of
Christian County, Kentucky. According to the website
information for the City of Du Quoin, Jean Baptiste Du
Quoin was the child of a French father and a Tamoroa
tribe Native American mother. He became chief of his
tribe in 1767. Chief Pontiac was murdered in 1767 and
the Illinois Confederacy of the Kashaskias, Michigans,
Peorias, Cahokias, and Tamoroas was disbanded, while
the Michigans were driven into Starved Rock State Park
to die from starvation. Apparently this Confederacy was
organized to fight the Iroquois, led by the British under
Sir William Johnson out of Johnstown, New York. It
seems that the Michigan had murdered Chief Ponitac. I
visited Starved Rock State Park in 1952, at the age of 12
with my father Ralph B. Andrews, on a long trip from Los
Angeles, California. This was the same trip that took us
to a the little restaurant in Indendence, Missouri, and
Temple Square in Salt Lake City, see above.
There was a great battle between this new
Confederation and the Shawnees east of the Big Muddy,
and the Kaskaskias were the major survivors. Du Quoin
died in 1811. The old town of Du Quoin is the site of the
winter camp of the Kaskaskias. Kaskaskia is the place
where Du Quoin is buried. Jarrold Jackson was the first
settler of the area, according to the above, and operated
at toll bridge over the Little Muddy River. When the
railroad passed to the west of the old city, the original
settlers began moving to the area of the local railroad
station and this became the new Du Quoin. In 1853, a
new town was laid out around the railroad. In 1855, a
shaft mine was sunk and experiments were made with
coal as a fuel (op. cit.).
By this time many of the Pyles had already moved west
ignoring the growing cities around them. The web site
for Waterloo, Illinois describes Bellefontaine as the
earliest settlement in the area. The name of the site
came from the French and was applied to a spring south
of Waterloo. Illinois was a county of Virginia and the
settlers sought protection from the state. By 1836 there
were not more than twenty buildings in the city (op. cit.,
p. 6). Around 1840, the German population of the city
began to grow significantly. But, the Pyles were largely
rural farmers at this point and none of them seemed
interested in what Waterloo had to offer.
The ancestry.com posting for the Pyles include
quotations form the “History of Dade County and Her
People.” William Pyle, born 1800 in Christian Co. Ky, had
moved from Pinkneyville, Illinois to Dade County,
Missouri. He brought his entire family with him, wife,
sons and daughters. This history states that he was a
minister in the Christian (Disciples of Christ) Church. He
spent his time preaching, farming, reading history, and
for a while ran a mill. Pyle has originally lived in the
Tamaroa Township of Perry County and was one of its
first Disciples of Christ preachers. This history also notes
that Dr. Octavius Pyle had led a wagon train out to
Worth, County, Missouri.
The history goes on to note that William Kellett Pyle, son
of William, had entered the Home Guards during the Civil
War and became a second lieutenant in the Missouri
Cavalry, after the war served as prosecuting attorney for
the county, probate judge, and served two terms in the
state legislature.
Carter Scroggins Pyle teaches in a three month
subscription school with 26 students in a log building
with no floor or stove. It will be a while yet before
Benjamin Harrison Lingenfelter (born in 1865) and
Henrietta (Kennedy) Lingenfelter (born in 1870) will both
acquire a college a college education.
When the news of Lincoln’s assassination reached Los
Angeles there was shock. At first the Confederates
rejoiced, but cooler heads prevailed. The telegraph was
working and the Governor notified the city that the
funeral would be held in Washington on the 19th at noon.
On the 19th of the month, in Los Angeles, all businesses
closed. Soldiers and civilians assembled, including
mounted cavalry, the Mayor and City Council,
representatives of the various lodges: the Hebrew
Congregation, the Teutonia, the French Benevolent,
Junta Patriotica societies, etc., and they marched through
the center of the city (Newmark, op. cit., p. 338).
Compton was founded at this time as a Methodist “dry”
city. In May of 1865, Major General McDowell, made a
visit to Los Angeles on the government steamer
“Saginaw.” The mayor of Los Angeles in 1865 was Jose
Mascarel and was French and unable to speak English,
although he could speak Spanish. It was feared that this
might embarrass the city, but McDowell had received his
education in France and was able to communicate in
Mascarel’s native tongue. Newmark notes that as many
students were in private academies as in public school
and 3 out of 5 students did not attend at all. By 1900,
this number had fallen to 1 in 3 (op. cit., p. 341). At this
point, in 1865, Newmark, in partnership with Banning in
Wilmington, seems to have had most of the business
with Salt Lake City and were in close communication with
Brigham Young and offering the LDS Church credit when
needed (p. 345). It was about this time that Phineas
Banning organized an oil company to process local oil
and refine it, while wells were sunk in various places (op.
cit. p. 347). A local gas company was also organized at
this time to supply gas lighting for crossings on Main
Street and in the Mayor’s Office. An attempt was made
to supply water to the city, but the pipes were made of
logs and they leaked constantly. Newmark notes that
the close of the war allowed business to return to normal
as many of the troops returned to civilian life. My
records indicate that, in Missouri, Benjamin Harrison
Lingenfelter was born to John Lingenfelter and Mary
Ellen Pyle Lingenfelter, at the close of the Civil War, in
December of 1865.
We have discussed, above, how John and Mary Pyle had
a daughter Sally who married Ed Schwartz and then
George Schwartz. Gayle M. Putt has annotated and
posted in Genealogy Trails for Jackson County, Illinois, an
“Analysis of Characters in the Diary of Hiram Schwartz.”
The diary entries she uses cover the period we are
examining above, from January 1865 to December of
1866. February 7th 1865, the entry is “Josiah’s Baby died.
I am not as sure of the relationship as I should be, but
Josiah may be a second cousin of my great grandfather
Benjamin Harrison Lingenfelter, who will be born in
December of this same year to Mary Ellen Pyle
Lingenfelter.
Monday, March 6th 1865, the notations are “Plowed a
little for cotton,” and “Chris came from the army.” The
War is starting to wind down and some troops are
coming back. The disruption of Southern agriculture has
caused the price of cotton to go up and it is being grown
everywhere that they can grow it, including Los Angeles.
The annotation on the April 10th entry notes that Edward
Kimmel was orphaned at 4 years and had to live with a
grandmother, “Sarah Pyle.” We have noted that cholera
and other diseases have kept the lifespan low. The
Crittenden and Smith families experience more than
their share of deaths of this kind, and Lucretia Webster
Smith is an orphan in 1850 when she marries Samuel
Kennedy, who will be the father of Henrietta Kennedy
when she is born in 1870, the future wife of Benjamin
Harrison Lingenfelter, noted above.
An entry for Monday April 17th involves an S. Pyle and it
is not certain which Pyle that might be. There is a
discussion in the commentary that most of the Pyles
seem to have left for Missouri after 1852. An entry for
Tuesday, May 30th, 1865 reads “James Shinglitose and
Catherine Thouse were joined together in holy wedlock.”
The comments speculate that this might be James
Singleton, a farm hand for Philip Kimmel and someone in
the House family. The web has an entry for Archibald
Monroe House, who came from North Carolina with
Mary Jane House in connection with the land that Dr.
Octavius Pyle was opening up for settlement in Worth
County. Three House children appear to have been in
the wagon train with Dr. Pyle: Julia Ann House, born in
Perry County, Illinois, 20 Dec 1848, died Jan, 1943,
Worth, Missouri, William M. House, born 21 August
1851, Perry County, Illinois, died July 1936, Allendale,
Missoui, Louise Jane House, born 2 December, 1853,
Perry County, Illinois, died 3 August, 1934, Allendale,
Missouri. Archibald Monroe House was born in Rowan,
North Carolina 10 March 1826 to Jabob House, born 1
August, 1795 in North Carolina, died 7 Oct 1875, in Du
Quin, Perry County, Illinois and Elizabeth Freeze, born
1799 in the Salisbury District of Rowan, North Carolina
and died 6 July 1852 in Du Quin, Perry County, Illinois.
He married Mary Jane Carmer, who was born 26 April,
1832, in Nashville, Davidson, Tennessee. Archibald died
in Allendale, 18 July 1905 and Mary died in Allendale, 21
Jan. 1906.
Hiram’s nephew, William Allen Schwartz, dies August 6th
1865. More men come home from the war on August
10th 1865, apparently including Ephraim Pyle, son of
Hiram and Catherine Dry Pyle. Comments on the entries
for August 14th mention that Hiram’s grandmother was
Mary Wells Pyle. Her sister Martha married William
Williams in Greenville County, South Carolina, and then
followed the rest of the family west into Kentucky and
Illinois.
The entry for Thursday, September 14th 1865
Says “Went to Du Quoin after Uncle Hiram’s seed sower,
sowed about 2 ½ acres Timothy Seed.” The commentary
tells us that Uncle Hiram is his mother’s brother, Dr.
Hiram, Pyle. The commentary says that Hiram was an
MD with a “limited practice” and practiced as a spiritual
medium with séances, in addition to farming. Postings
on the web from the Illinois State Medical Society
“History of Medical Practice in Illinois,” state that Dr.
John Pyle Jr. had limited his practice to the immediate
family and Dr. Octavius Pyle had left in 1854 for Grant
City, Worth County, Missouri. According to this account,
Hiram came with him and then returned to Du Quoin to
mingle medicine with farming until he died in 1875. This
source claims that Hiram was assisted by one of his
daughters named Mrs. Lucinda Gill. This source notes
that one of William Pyle’s daughters married Dr. Joseph
Brayshaw, and Englishman who settled in Du Quoin
around 1840. This source goes on to note that Frank
Jordon led a small band of associates to build a log fort in
Hamilton County in 1810. Residing there was a Dr. John
Dunlap who practiced native medicine as a result of his
adoption by one of the local tribes through force. He
learned the art of local herbal medicine from this source
and practiced using herbs from the local woods from a
long time.
There was significant belief in witchcraft in many areas of
South Illinois at this time. It was believed that the
witches had superhuman powers including the ability to
generate disease in both cattle through “the shooting of
a ball of hair” (op. cit., “PIONEERS OF THE SOUTHERN
SECTION 337). This source continues, explaining how
diseases were cured in animals and humans by some
form of drawing in of blood and writing names in blood
and presentations of cards containing this blood writing
to the Devil. Apparently, this generated large numbers
of obsessed people in the period form 1818 to 1835. The
text cited claims that organizations developed composed
of these “vampires,” with a man named Charles Lee, of
Hamilton County, as their head. Witches under his
influence created problems that necessitated special
treatment by Charles Lee. Eva Locker, on Davis Prairie in
Hamilton County appears to have been one of his
assistants. She generated “fits” in the young in order to
cure them. Local wizards would lead a cow into a mud
hole and take off its tail. Nine pins and a hot poker
would be place through the tail and burned to create
incense to draw out witches.
If locals had believed in witchcraft and used herbal
medicine, this does not seem to be the practice by 1865.
In the commentary for September 23, 1865, Hiram has
mentioned an attack of “Ange,” and he goes in July of
1866 to a Dr. Seeley in Kenosha, Wisconsin for
treatment. This shows, in part, the influence of the
railroads, for patients can now go and get services by
railroad that would have taken months to obtain in an ox
cart just ten years before. The entry for November 12th
1865 reads “Mother took sick with chills.” The
comments explain that this would be Sarah Pyle
Schwartz, born 1807 in Christian County, married Edward
Swartz Sr., 9 Dec. 1824 and was a daughter of John (Jack)
Pyle and Mary (Polly Wells) Pyle, and that Jack was the
grandson of the Colonel Dr. John Pyle Sr. who may have
been the mastermind behind the surrender of the British
at Yorktown. Mary (Polly) Wells, the daughter of Lewis
and Elizabeth Bates Wells, born in Greenville County,
South Carolina. If Dr. Octavious Pyle is the grandfather of
my great grandfather, born to Mary Ellen Pyle
Lingenfelter in Worth County, Missouri in December of
1865, so Jack Pyle would be his great grandfather, the
exact relationship of all parties to this author, son of Jean
Thompson Andrews, grandson of Mary Lucretia
Lingenfelter Thompson, etc., can be calculated by the
reader if they choose to do so.
There is an entry for January 24th 1866, “wrote to
Grandmother.” The commentary believes that this is
Polly Pyle. Her husband Jack died in 1851. She went
west with Octavius in 1853 and was living with him in
Worth County, where she died in Allendale, 22 June
1869.
Arthur Paul Moser has compiled “A Directory of Towns,
Villages, and Hamlets Past and Present of Worth County,
Missouri, that is posted on the web. If you look at the
births recorded for Pyles and Lingenfelters in Worth
County they give various locations. Alice Lingenfelter
was born to Mary Ellen Pyle and John Lingenfelter in
1860 in Denver, Missouri. Lycurgus Lingenfelter was
born 11 November 1861 in Denver, Missouri. James
Valentine Lingenfelter was born 8 December 1863 in
Denver, Missouri. John Herman Lingenfelter was born
1868 in Denver, Missouri. Benjamin Harrison
Lingenfelter was born 18 December 1865 in Denver,
Missouri. John Lingenfelter died 10 July 1884 in Denver,
Missouri. Charley Lingenfelter was born and died in 1870
in Denver, Missouri.
According to the guide, cited above, Denver is the second
largest settlement in the County. It is located on the East
Fork of the Grand River and was laid out by William
McNight in 1849 around a small park. The land had
belonged to William Swaim, who had built a small cabin
on the site. The place seems to have been called
“Fairview”till 1871. Its post office was called “Grant’s
Hill,” till it was changed to Denver around 1882.
Apparently it had a flour mill, woolen factory, even a
brick factory and weekly paper at one time. According to
Wikipedia, its population, in the 2000 census was 40
people in 20 families, all of them white and all of them
living below the poverty level.
Worth County seems to be full of these ghost towns.
Worth is a post office twelve miles west of Grant City
that was discontinued around 1882 (op. cit., p.&).
Winemiller’s Mills once had a store and a post office, but
no longer. West Point was the dream of Carter West and
had a plat filed in June 27th 1856, it is no more. Tarleton
City was a rival of Smithton that consisted of the house
of Cornelius Brown. It is all that ever came of Tarleton
City. Smithton was the creation of Eli Smith in 1857,
apparently the county once had its offices in the building
he created and was the seat of Worth County, but it
exists no more. Sheridan once had two churches, a
school, flour mill, creamery, bank, and a newspaper, and
a population of 500 in 1899 (op. cit., p. 6). There are still
around 195 people in Sheridan and it remains a
functioning town. Rose Hill and Prohibition City are both
discontinued post offices. Marietta’s first postmaster
was Caleb Canady, who operated the store. The post
office was discontinued at the time of the civil war (op.
cit., p. 5). Oxford was called West Point when it was laid
out. There is nothing there today. Hudson City, Iona,
Honey Grove, and Friend are among the discontinued
post offices in Worth County. Isadora was one of the
oldest towns in Worth County. Elijah Vaden put up a
cabin here in 1834 and sold it to Rinaldo Brown in 1862,
who built a mill here in 1863. Grant City is currently the
county seat and has a population around 900. Allendale
only has a population of around 50 at this time.
Bill Gladstone and Pansy Rinehart wrote a report for the
Worth County Reporter, April 1989, on the Allendale
School. According to this article, the land around
Allendale had been set out in 1855 by William Allen, who
sold much of his land to Dr. Octavius Pyle. Dr. Pyle
donated land for a school house to the township in 1857,
land ten rods by ten rods. He also donated the site for
the Eureka School. There is a story that one of the Pyles
taught in the original school, which was a log cabin on
the established cemetery. The article describes a
destructive tornado that came through the area April
29th 1947.
It is strange to read about Missouri and California in the
same stages of their development. In 1852, when
Newmark arrived in Los Angeles, and in 1853, when Dr.
Octavius Pyle arrived in Denver, or Fairview, or Allendale,
where ever he actually located at this time, Worth
County probably looked far more promising than Los
Angeles County, which was mainly mountainous desert
with very poor sources of water and no decent schools or
rule of law. Doctor Cyrus Octavius Pyle died 21 Nov.
1897 in Allendale. His daughter Mary Ellen Pyle
Lingenfelter would not die until 19 May 1932, in Des
Moines, Iowa. His grandson Benjamin Harrison
Lingenfelter, my great grandfather, was in his early
thirties when he died. By the time of his death, many of
the Pyles and Lingenfelters were in the process of moving
elsewhere, Montana, Washington, Oregon, California.
Worth County, Missouri, land of his dreams, was turning
into a land of ghosts, a set of targets for the tornados
that play out their destructive furry on the fertile land.
At the time of the Civil War, the price of agricultural
commodities was rising. The future for agriculture lookrd
promising. No one saw that the railroads, and then the
truck lines would change everything. Giant container
ships could carry agricultural goods all over the world.
Not only was Missouri opening up, but Canada and
Australia as well. The future of agriculture, for
everything but the giant factory farm, was passing.
But the country was having difficulty recovering from the
war. “Inventing America,” cited above, discussed how
southern agriculture failed to grow. The railroads failed
to grow in the South as well. Between 1865 and 1879
there were only 7000 miles of new railroad track in the
South and 45,000 miles in the North. In 1873, an
economic depression would compound the problem for
everyone (op. cit., p. 552). However, the North, Illinois,
California, Montana, were far better off in this new
picture than the river valleys of Virginia, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky that the Pyles
and Wells had left behind in the long journey out of the
back country of North and South Carolina. Their decision
to live on “free soil” had worked out well, all things
considered.
These changes were everywhere in the English speaking
world at this point. R. J. Evans, in his work “The Victorian
Age,” cited above, describes these changes as they were
taking place in England. Evans believes that the period
between 1860 and 1870 was the great divide. The
census of 1871 gave a population of 23 million for
England and Wales, 3 million in Scotland, and more than
5 million in Ireland. Improvements in cow sheds and
barns, new farm machines, railroads bringing seed and
fertilizer were transforming agriculture. When Henry
Bessemer discovered a way of making steel in quantity, it
began to replace iron as iron had replaced wood. Boots
and shoes were handmade in 1840 and machine made in
1870. British exports of these products double in this
period.
Skilled labor was now doing well, but not unskilled labor.
New classes began to emerge. The British Medical
Association was founded in 1854. As the middle classes
rose to power, the old aristocracy lost power. A cult of
game and sport began to emerge to amuse these new
classes. Excursion trains began to appear. Tours to
Europe were arranged. So also with choral societies and
musical festivals.
Evans quotes the following speech by one of the laboring
men of the time “Wurken on the land is lovely work…and
in mi time I wurked furteen and fifteen hours a day; but
that was afuur the machines come about.” He continues,
“We sowed by hand, ripped by hand, and threshed wit h
thraiul.” He continues, “It was lovely wurk.” There were
those in the party that came out to Denver, Missouri
with Dr. Pyle that might have understood what the
British laborer was saying. Part of the problem was that
the railroads made new kinds of agriculture possible, that
increased the product, which meant lower prices.
Suddenly the farmer was working harder and farming
more land and producing more for less pay, working
harder and enjoying it less, for it was no longer lovely
work (op. cit., pp. 182 -192). There was no escape from
this new situation, even the rich soil of Worth County
would not be adequate to overcome these new problems
for farmers, for which the abandon towns and villages of
the County are a ghostly testament. The dream of
Thomas Jefferson, the great hope of the Louisiana
Purchase, of the Crittenden family, of Henry Clay, finally
died upon the great plains and the rivers flowing east
and south out of the great mountains to the west. The
family farm, the very practice of agriculture was failing
the challenge, could not provide what it had promised.
In the meantime the mines became the answer, coal
mines, iron mines, gold mines, silver mines. England
organized a Royal School of Mines in 1851, in this same
year, John Vaughan discovered deposits of ironstone in
North Yorkshire. In England, a Saturday half-holiday,
cheap rail travel, gas lighting brought public parks,
libraries, museums, clubs, societies, the growth of the
Freemasons, etc.. Also came taverns, circuses, musichalls, and fairs (op. cit., p. 191-194).
England had no system of national education. In 1815,
two societies provided education for the poor. A British
and Foreign Schools Society provided education for nonAnglicans and the National Society provided education
for members of the Church of England, but a national
system of secondary education in England did not
emerge until the Education Act of 1902 (op. cit., p 199).
In some areas Britain was a head of the United States
and in some areas it was behind, some regions of the
United States were ahead of others in various of the
changes described above. But, everywhere in the English
speaking world, machines, steel, education,
manufacturing, women’s rights, city life, rapid
transportation, were triumphing over the older simpler
ways rooted in wood rather than steel, ox carts rather
than railroads, farming rather than manufacturing, rural
families rather than urban society, horses rather than
steam engines, water power rather than gas and steam.
Considering some of the improvements taking place in
Los Angeles at this time, Newmark notes that the first gas
lighting in Los Angeles was not very ornamental, with the
pipes running along the surface of walls and ceilings. In
other events taking place in Los Angeles in 1866, the war
being over, the military abandon Drum Barracks, which
had been a major source of money for the city.
Newmark, whose biography is our major source for our
narrative of these events, took a trip to New York in
1867, and had to go by way of Panama. He stopped at
Acapulco during Maximilian’s revolution, and was told to
avoid the Fort. They were forced to retreat from Panama
quickly because of an out break of yellow fever. He left
January 29th 1867, by steamer and arrived in New York
on March 6th. Newmark sailed for Havre on May 16th and
was able to see the Paris Exposition in a large building on
the Champ de Mars. Although, very impressed by the
exhibition and the city, he was disappointed that there
were very few American exhibitors. In the meantime, H.
W. Stoll, a German, had started the Los Angeles Soda
Water Works, according to Newmark. Los Angeles began
to investing in water pipe at this time. The wooden pipes
laid down by the firm, associated with the city mayor,
failed so badly that it apparently motivated Mayor
Marchessault’s suicide in the City Council room
(Newmark, op. cit, p. 366).
1848 had been a time of revolutions all across Europe.
The 1980 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica has a
good survey of the History of Austria at this time
(Volume 2, p. 464). March 1848 brought revolution to
Austria in response to news about the success of the
revolution in France. Crowds of students in Vienna called
for liberal conditions in government. At first there were
changes in this direction, and then, as happened almost
everywhere in Europe, conservative forces gained
control. In the period from 1849 to 1860 there was
progress in the area of emancipation of the peasants, but
this progress came at the expense of freedom of the
press and brought a period of repression by the police.
The church was given additional control over social and
educational policies. Napolean the III, now emperor of
the French, needed to distract attention from his heavy
handed policies and began to support Italian
independence at the expense of Austria (op. cit. p. 466).
The Austrians were defeated in the Battle of Magenta
and had to evacuate Milan. June 24, 1859 saw the
defeat of Austria in the Battle of Solferino. According to
the Peace of Zurich, Austria gave Lombardy to Napoleon
III who gave it to Piedmont-Sardinia. A series of events
led to a war for control of Germany, the so called “Seven
Weeks War” that began on June 16th 1866. When
Austria lost, it was forced to hand Venice over to Italy
and to sacrifice its authority over what was to become
the empire of Prussia in Germany.
Carton J. H. Hayes, “A Political and Social History of
Modern Europe”, Volume II, revised edition, cited above,
relates the following on page 181: William I became king
of Prussia in 1861. He was very religious and
conservative. He wanted a military monarchy based on
an authoritarian king who was the agent of God. Otto
von Bismark was one of the creators of the Conservative
Party dedicated to the king, the army, and the Lutheran
Church. In the autumn of 1862, King William called him
to Berlin to control the all too liberal German Parliament.
Prussia used the war with Austria as an excuse to annex
Schleswig and Holstein, Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau,
Frankfort, and force the lesser states to join her in the
North German Confederation with a constitution,
adopted in 1867, that was a product of Bismark. It
vested executive power in the Prussian King supported
by a Bundesrat of the representatives of the princes of
the states and a Reichstag elected by universal male
suffrage. Foreign affairs and military affairs were under
the King (op. cit., p. 191).
It is no surprise that during this period the majority of the
foreign born in the United States came from Germany
and Ireland, with Canada and Great Britain in third and
fourth place. Later in the 1920s, the percentage of
Italians, Russians, and Polish would rise as Germany
became more prosperous and social and economic
unrest moved east and south in Europe. It appears that
the German and Irish that the Pyle family intermarried
with had been in the country a considerable amount of
time. The Kennedy branch of my lineage, and the
Lingenfelter as well, appear to have been in the US for
more than two generations, it both cases coming to this
country around 1740 or earlier, though it is much harder
to prove in respect to the Lingenfelter line, that suddenly
appears in Perry County, Illinois as if from nowhere.
In respect to the Taintor family of Hampton, Connecticut
(see the discussion of James Oliver Robertson and Janet
C. Robertson in “All Our Yesterdays,” cited above), Henry
Taintor was doing quite well, having been elected
Treasurer of the State of Connecticut (op. cit, p. 348).
Among other things, he was responsible for the state’s
investments. Railroads were expanding and the federal
and state governments were investing in this expansion.
One of the corporations that Henry bought shares in was
the Chicago and Alton Railroad (Robertson, op. cit., p.
349). Henry was involved in what we would call “insider
trading,” something not yet illegal in those early days in
the development of a national economy. He purchased
shares from personal funds of the New York and New
Haven Railroad. He sold some of the shares he
purchased and bought shares in the Cleveland and
Toledo Railroad. For the next 22 years he would buy and
sell shares for himself and others from Hampton,
Connecticut, including members of his family. As his
investments grew, so did his depression and his anger at
rivals like a traitor cousin to which he lost the election for
State Treasurer.
The Taintor children began moving away from the town
the grew up in. In 1863, George was 17 and had started
teaching school. He did not like it and found a position
working in a store in Hartford. Henry left Yale to be a
soldier in the war and afterward found work in a store in
Boston. Soon he was working as an assistant to his
father, the State Treasurer. Willie went to Brooklyn to go
to school, when 15, he went to Hartford High School and
by the time he was 18, he was working in Williamsburg,
New York. There are indications that Willie may have
been an alcoholic (op. cit.).
The education of a far more famous family is discussed in
Leon Edel’s “Henry James, A Life,” and abridgement of
his multivolume biography, published by Harper, 1985.
On page 48 of this abridgement, Edel discusses the James
travels. In 1855 they pursued “Swiss schooling” and
ended up in London and Paris. In 1859, they were in
Geneva. William was studying at the Academy and Henry
was in a preparatory school for engineers. Henry,
apparently, was sent there because he was reading too
many novels. Apparently, he cut back everything but
language instruction. He was impressed with the old
streets and houses. There was little social life for him.
Henry is reading Livy and Virgil. In the Spring, Henry and
William went on a week tour of the Swiss mountains.
After a period in Bonn, William persuaded his father to
return to the United States and they settled down in a
rented house in Newport. William and Henry proceeded
to study art under William Morris Hunt. Here Henry was
exposed to a young artist named James La Farge, who
encouraged him to write and introduced him to authors
he had not read like Balzac (op. cit. p. 54).
William entered Harvard to study science in September
of 1861. His brothers Wilky and Bob volunteered for the
Union Army. Wilky was injured at Gettysburg, but
recovered and returned to war in 1864. After the war,
Wilky and Bob attemped to run a plantation in Florida,
and failed. Both were unhappy, Wilky died young, and
Bob survived as an alcoholic (op. cit., p. 63).
In September of 1862, Henry James entered Harvard Law
School. Here, Henry played the observer, went on long
walks. His father moved to Boston, and family life
resumed. Soon Henry began to find himself in writing
fiction. 1865, is given as the year of his emergence as a
writer. By March of 1866, William James is returning
from Brazil and resuming medical studies as an intern in
the Massachusetts General Hospital, Henry was not
writing much because of a bad back (op. cit., p.79).
What this material demonstrates is the extent to which
human achievement is a product of social station and
opportunity. The more famous exploits of the Pyle
family were supported by an English education, in the
case of John Pyle, Senior. Even if a Pyle had the capacity
to be a William James or a Henry James, there was no
opportunity. Denver, Missouri was not Boston. Yet,
even those exposed to Boston or Hartford could go
astray. The final end for the younger James boys was not
too unlike the fate of Thomas Jefferson Greenberry
Hamilton, described above. However, it was the fate of
the less educated Hiram Schwartz to write simple one
line notes in his diary. Not the complex literary
masterpieces generated by the well trained and
developed writing of Henry James.
To my knowledge, the most talented literary expressions
my branch of the Pyle and Kennedy and Crittenden
lineages are the works of Ruth Lingenfelter Jurich, few of
which have survived the turmoil and censorship of the
period before and after World War II. If I google her
name, search the web, I come up with nothing in
response. I can turn up the work I wrote in 1974, “Love,”
but it is not a great literary production, it is not Henry
James. I have never had the educational opportunity,
been able to make the study of language and literature.
To be a Henry James you must come from a family like
his and devote your life to your mission as a great man of
letters.
Now if you wish, you can blame all this on the railroad.
My father’s family was a railroad family. My grandfather,
Allen Andrews, died, in a train wreck, when his wreck
train ran into a wreck in Green River, Utah, as discussed
above. The first time I saw his brother, Charles Andrews,
was when he and his wife came west on the railroad,
using a railroad pass he obtained for his service on the
Pennsylvania Railroad. Alice Smith, my grandmother,
told how her father worked for the electric railroad in
Columbus, Ohio. It was the railroad that brought my
branch of the Kennedy, Lingenfelter, Pyle, Smith lineages
west, when Henrietta Kennedy Lingenfelter and
Benjamin Harrison Lingenfelter (son of John Lingenfelter
and Mary Ellen Pyle Lingenfelter) took their daughter to
the newly organized State of Washington.
The 1943 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica has a
special section on American railroads. According to this
source, there were less than 3,000 miles of railroad in the
United States in 1840, less than 9,000 in 1850, just over
30,000 in 1860, just under 54,000 in 1870, just under
95,000 in 1880, 164,000 in 1890. In the 1840s railway
lineage tripled, and tripled again in 1850s. Boston and
Albany were connected in 1842, New York and Boston in
1849, the Ohio River was connected with Lake Erie in
1848, Chicago was reached in 1852 and the Mississippi in
1854. The junction of the Mississippi and the Ohio was
reached in 1856. The Central Pacific was working east in
1864 and the Union Pacific began working west, the year
Benjamin Harrison Lingenfelter was born, 1865.
The Lingenfelter family came over from Germany.
Material posted on the web for “Descendants of Anstatt
Lingfelter” written by Robert Downs in 1988 give the
following information: Most Lingenfelters are found in
“Landau, Ober-Lustadt, Billigheim, Nussdorf, Steinweiler,
Edenkoben, Rodt, etc.” on the left bank of the Rhine.
The Pyle family is easier to trace, as discussed above.
Benjamin Harrisons mother was Mary Ellen Pyle
daughter of Dr Octavius, son of Jack Pyle, son of Captain
John Pyle, Junior, son of Colonel Dr. John Pyle, Senior,
etc., as discussed above. According to the Pyle Archives,
a posting by Ron Pyle, 25, Sept, 1999, the story of the
Pyle family starts in Bishop’s Canning in Wiltshire,
England. Bishop’s Canning is a parish in the Marlborough
Downs. The Village is next to a canal. A road from
Swindin to Deviez lies just north of the village. Another
road, a right angles to the first, runs from Calne to the
village. Part of this is Harepath Way, referring to its use
by a Saxon Army (Wiltshire Council posting, p. 3).
The name Cannings may be from Caneganmersc. When
the Danes burned Northampton in 1010, they marched
as far as Caneganmersc. The village may have been the
major settlement in the bishop’s parish. The manor of
Bishop’s Canning appears in the Doomsday book as
having enough land for 45 plough teams and a
population of around 600. The manor belonged to the
Bishop of Salisbury from 1086 (ibid).
There is a church in Bishop’s Canning, the Church of St.
Mary the Virgin, built in the 12th Century. The parish lies
within a belt of green sand, with areas of chalk marl, and
thus grain farming and sheep grazing were done in the
old medieval open field system. The area was the site of
a battle of July 1643 when Sir Ralph Hopton’s Royalist
force took out Sir William Waller at the battle of
Roundway Down (op. cit, p.4).
Devizes is the nearest market town. It developed around
an 11th Century Norman Castle, built by Osmund, Bishop
of Salisbury in 1080. Robert Curthose, eldest son of
William the Conqueror was imprisoned here. The town
grew up around the castle and provided craftsmen for
the castle. The chief products sold in the local market
were wheat, wool, yarn, cheese, bacon, and butter.
Devizes was under Royalist control till 1645, when Oliver
Cromwell attacked it. The castle was destroyed on the
orders of Parliament and little remains of it (Deviez,
Wikipedia).
The original John Pyle married Mary Withers in 1620.
They had five children. When John died in April of 1652,
he was buried in the cemetery at Bishops Canning. Mary
was buried with her husband. Nicholas, their third son, is
the father of the three Pyles who came to Pennsylvania.
Nicholas was born in 1625 and married Edith Musprat in
1656. There were ten children. Two of the seven sons,
Robert and Nicholas followed William Penn to
Pennsylvania in 1682. One brother (Ralph) remained
loyal to the Church of England and stayed behind.
Nicholas was tailor, all of his children were baptized in
the local church at Bishops Canning (Ron Pyle, op. cit.).
Permission for Robert Pyle, brother of my ancestor, and
Ann Stovey to web was issued in Devizes. But, William
Stovey of Hilperton Marsh was thrown in prison for a
year for not paying tithes to the Church of England.
When he was released, they took 43 sheep from him as a
fine for private preaching. William Penn was preparing
his move to America. The two Pyle brothers, Robert and
Nicholas decided to go with him. When the King granted
the charter, the land sales began and Robert bought
Bethel Township property before the voyage (ibid).
Nicholas bought 150 acres in Bethel. He built a home
and married Abigail Bushnell, November 1688. He had 7
children: Mary, Edith, Nicholas, Samuel, James, Joseph,
and Sarah. Abigail died in 1713 and he married Ann
Webb in 1713. Robert and Nicholas belonged to the
Concord meeting and are buried in its cemetery (ibid).
Ron Pyle goes on to relate how Nicholas obtained
considerable wealth and was a partner in the Concord
Mills, which manufactured products based on corn.
Nicholas sold out in Bethel and moved to Concord and
died their in 1717. He built a brick house in Concord
which survived till 1885. Not only was he justice of the
peace, but he was a member of the Assembly 1700 to
1714. Ralph Pyle came to Pennsylvania, two years after
Robert and Nicholas, on one of the 23 ships of William
Penn (op. cit., p. 2). He was a member of the Assembly,
and Chief Burgess in 1741 (ibid).
Posting on the Web for “Ancestors of Mary Theresa
Dawson” gives some of the Pyle connections to England.
Nicholas Pyle, was born 12 Aug 1666 in Bishops Canning
Wiltshire England, died 1716in Concord Pennsylvania,
married Abigail Bushell 9 Nov 1688, Ann Webb 13 Dec
1713 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was the son of
Nicholas Pyle, born 13 March 1623 in Bishops Canning,
died 26 Aug 1691 in Bishops Canning, the son of John
Pyle and Mary Withers. Nicholas (the elder) married
Edith Muspratt 22 Sept 1656 in Bishops Canning. Edith
Muspratt was born 1640 in Urchfont, Wiltshire and died
1676 in Bishops Canning. She was the daughter of
Thomas Muspratt and Edith Byffen.
John Pyle, born 1605 in Bishops Canning, died April 1651
in Bishops Canning. He was the son of John Pyle and
Elizabeth. He married Mary Withers, born 1604 in
Bishops Canning, died 17 Oct 1666 in Bishops Canning,
she was the daughter of Thomas Withers.
Thomas Muspratt was born 1609 in Urchfont, Wiltshire,
died 13 Oct. 1639 in Urchfont. He was the son of John
Muspratt and Edith Gigging. He married Edith Byffen 13
Oct. 1639. John Pyle was born 1564 in Stanton,
Wiltshire. He married Elizabeth 1584 in Overton,
Wiltshire. Elizabeth was born 1564 in Overton, Wiltshire.
Thomas Withers was born 1578 in Bishops Canning, He
was the son of Thomas Withers and Joane Nash. John
Muspratt was born 1570 in Urchfont, Wiltshire. He was
the son of Thomas Muspratt and Margaret Myles. He
married Edith Gidding 21 Nov 1599 in Urchfont. Edith
Gidding was born 1 June 1575 in Urchfont, Wiltshire. She
was the daughter of Edward Geyddings and Mary Willis.
Nicholas Byffen was born 10 Aug 1589 in Urchfont,
Wiltshire. He was the son of Nicholas Byffen and Edith
Myles. He married Joan Web 29 June 1610 in Urchfont.
Edith Byffen was born to Nichols Byffen and Joan Web,
25 Oct 1611 in Urchfont, and died 10 Jun 1676 in
Urchfont. She married Thomas Muspratt 13 Oct 1639.
Thomas Withers was born 1545 in Bishops Canning, died
22 April 1624. He was the son of William Withers. He
married Joane Nash who died 20 Feb 1629 in Bishops
Canning. She was the daughter of William Nash and
Margery Sloper. Thomas Muspratt was born 1540 in
Urchfont. He married Margret Myles 17 Dec 1568 in
Urchfont. Edward Geyddins was born 1554 in Urchfont,
and died 25 March 1595 in Urchfont. He was the son of
John Gidding and Liskyn. He married Mary Willis 13 Sept
1579 in Urchfont. Mary Willis was born 1555 in
Urchfont. Nicholas Byffen was born 1570 in Urchfont.
He married Edith Myles 21 Nov 1593 in Urchfont.
William Withers was born in Bishops Canning. William
Nash was born 1575 in Bishops Canning. He was the son
of John Nash. He married Margery Sloper. Margery
Sloper died 24 Aug 1579 in Bishops Canning. She was the
daughter of Ralph Sloper. John Gidding was born 1530 in
Urchfont and died 26 Feb 1584 in Urchfont. He married
Liskyn in 1553 in Urchfont. Liskyn was born 1534 in
Urchfont. John Nash was born 1502 in Martley,
Worcestershire, England. Ralph Sloper was born in
Potterne, Wiltshire.
A posting for Tollman-Hampton Middlesex UK:
Information about Edward Geyddings gives the following:
Edward Geyddings was the son of John Geyddeings and
Leyssehn and was born around 1558 (1550) in Urchfont.
He married Mary Willis on 13 Sept 1579 in Urchfont. He
was buried 25 March 1595, St Michael, Urchfont. The
children of Edward Geyddings and Mary Wills were: Edith
(1580?), John (1582?), Liskyn (1584?), Edward (1587?),
An (1589?), Thomas (1591), Marye (1594) all in Urchfont,
Wiltshire, England. A PRF Pedigree View Page gives
Edward Geyddings birth as around 1554 and Mary Willis
as 1556. Edith, child of Edward and Mary, marries John
Musparatt (born 1575?) 21 Nov 1597 in Urchfont, he is
buried 12 Sept 1640. They have a son, Thomas Muspratt,
who is born around 1614 and buried 30 Oct 1671, all in
Urchfont. According to a posting for PhpGed View, John
Geydding was born 1525 and died, 26 Feb 1587, at the
age of 62, St Michael, Urchfont, Wiltshire, England. He
married Leyssekyn Geydding, who was born 1534 in
Urchfont, she died at the age of 63, in 1597, St Michael,
Urchfont. They have a child, Edward Geyddings, see
above, buried 25 March 1595, at the age of 45, St
Michael, Urchfont, his wife Mary Willis, born, 1555, St
Michael, Urchfont, death at the age of 36 in 1591, their
child, Edith Geydding, born 1683, dies at the age of 27 in
Urchfont. Per posting for the Pyle Family Tree, Edith
Geyddings and John Msprat (son of Thomas Musprat and
Margaret Myles) are the parents of Thomas Musprat Sr.,
who married Edith Byffen, daughter of Nicholas Byffen
and Jone Web. Thomas Muspratt and Edith Byffen are
the parents of Edith Muspratt, born 1640?, Urchfont,
died 10 Jun 1676, Bishops Canning. Nicholas Pyle,
married Edith Muspratt 22 Sep 1656 in Bishops Canning.
They have the following children: Robert, 29 Dec 1650,
Thorton, Wiltshire, died 17 Jan 1728, Bethel,
Pennsylvania; Mary; John; Ambrose; Susannah; Edith;
Nicholas Pyle, born 12 Aug 1666 in Bishops Canning,
Wiltshire, England, my ancestor, ancestor of Benjamin
Harrison Lingenfelter, married Abigail Bushnell 9 Nov
1688, Ann Webb 13 Dec 1713 ( Philadelphia Monthly
Meeting); Dr. Samuel Pyle; Ralph Pyle, born 31 Jun 1669?
in Bishops Canning, died 1741 in Concord, Pennsylvania;
William Pyle, born 8 July 1672 in Bishops Canning, died
1694, married Abigail in Cove, Pennsylvania; Elizabeth.
According to a posting, Pyles of the Past by June Harris,
there are a number of Pyle families along the edges of
Hampshire and Wiltshire. Many ended up in Nether
Wallop, which is a narrow valley in a shallow chalky
stream surrounded by sloping downs. June Harris thinks
the Pyles were Norman. In 1298, Warin Pel went to
Carisbrooke Piory in Isle of Wight to represent a Norman
Benedictine Abbey of Lire. Thomas de Pyle has half a
knights fee in Trucketon, close to Nettlestone, Isle of
Wight, which was owned by a Norman, John de Insula.
Prior Warin Pyel remained at Carisbrooke until 1313.
There are a number of Pyle locations on the Isle of
Wright: Pyle Farm, Pyle Shute, in Newport, the capital,
there is a Pyle Street, a Pyle House. Opposite the island,
there is Pylewell House, Park, Lake, and Pylewell Point.
The Abbey of Lire had property in Goodworth Clatford,
two miles south of Andover. The de Insula family, who
rented land to Thomas de Pyle, held a demesne from the
King in the manor of Chute, they also acquired the manor
of Thruxton, both of these are just west of Andover in
Hampshire and on the edge of Wiltshire. A document
dated 1405 has a signature of John Pille as a witness, and
there are indications he was an important burgess of the
town, which had been a self-governing borough in
medieval times. During the reign of Henry VI, Thomas de
la Pylee was one of the representatives of Ludgershall in
the Parlament of 1441-1442. At Over Wallop,
Hampshire, seven miles south and west, parish registers
show Pyles from 1546 onward, in Sept. 6 1546, a son of a
John Pyle was buried and in 1577, a daughter of John Pile
junior was buried (op. cit., p. 2).
Kit Withers has accumulated material on the Withers of
Bishop Cannings. There is a will for Thomas Withers, the
elder of Bishops Canning, yeoman, that is dated
22.4.1624, in which he gives 20 shillings to the poor, 5
pounds to his daughter Susan’s children, 4 to his
daughter Briget’s children, his best mare to his son
Robert. He gives Jone, his wife, a featherbed, and room
in the house sufficient for her, corn to find her bread,
and wood to make her fire, 1 coffer of her choice and 1
cow the best, all the residue of his goods to Thomas
Withers, he to be sole executer, and his friends William
Nash and Arthur Sloper to be my overseers.
Thomas Withers and his wife Joan (Jone) Nash Withers
are apparently ancestors of Mary Ellen Pyle Lingenfelter
and, thus, my ancestors. There is material on the
Withers of Bishop Canning about Thomas Withers,
Junior, who is, I believe, the brother of my ancestor,
Mary Withers Pyle. This Thomas Withers, born 1596 and
buried in Bishops Canning 1668? appears to have been
badly treated because of being a Quaker. The oppression
appears to have begun in 1656 during the second year of
Cromwell. Thomas was arrested by a constable at
Market Lavington and kept in a tavern and then taken to
the county jail. At trial, he was given further
imprisonment. Further notes indicate that he was often
in trouble and when the preaching of George Fox took
hold he was equally stubborn in defense of his belief. He
was fined 20 shillings for refusing to take off his hat in
court. According to these notes, he died early, at the age
of 46 as a result of imprisonment and bad treatment.
According to this account, when William Penn visited
Wiltshire, Ralph and Thomas Withers were the Quaker
leaders in Devizes. Further notes indicate that the Mayor
of Malborough has Ralph Withers put in prison and
spending weeks in the Devizes jail. He is driven from a
meeting at Marden by a vicar and a party armed with
pikes. William Penn addressed a large gathering in the
Great Market Hall at Devizes, according to these notes.
Ralph Withers was chosen to go London in 1678 in
support of William Penn. Once Ralph settles in
Pennsylvania, he becomes a member of the Provincial
Council and of the first Pennsylvania Assembly.
Markedixon posted the following material to Rootschat:
The Pyle family had connections to Withers, Sloper, Nash
and Smith family in Bishops Canning, Bourton, Urchfont,
Stanton, and St. Bernard. He gives the following
condensed tree: Robert and Nicholas Pyle, sons of
Nicholas Pyle (1624 -1691) and Edith Musprat (1635 1676). Nicholas Pyle, son of John Pyle (1594 -1652) and
Mary Withers (1604 -1666). Edith Musprat, daughter of
Thomas Musprat (1600) and Edith Byffen (1600). John
Pyle, son of John Pyle (1564 – 1652) and Elizabeth. Mary
Withers, daughter of Thomas Withers (1545 -1624) and
Joan Nash (1630). Thomas Withers, son of William
Withers (1520) and Isabel Smith (1532). Isabel Smith,
daughter of William Smith of Bourton and Laura.
The Family Tree Makers Genealogy, Dorothy C. Burt, for
Ancestors of Charles Alfred, includes the following
material for Robert Pyle, brother of Nicholas Pyle, my
ancestor: Robert was a leader in the Chester County
community and an early leader against slavery. Robert
arrived in Chester in 1683. He held many offices, Justice
of the Peace, assessor, tax commissioner. He served on
the jury that acquitted Margaret Mattson of witchcraft in
1684. He talked of how he had been tempted to buy
slaves to care for his large family of children. Robert
said the temptation to buy slaves was selfish and violated
the golden rule. He stated that those who had bought
slaves should teach them to read and write. Robert
started serving in the legislature in 1688. Nicholas and
Robert served in every assembly from 1699 to 1705.
These lineages going back to Pennsylvania and to
Bishop’s Canning in England and to the Rhineland in
Germany gave Benjamin Harrison Lingenfelter roots in
the anti-slavery movements of the North. His future
wife, Henrietta Kennedy, was of mainly Southern
ancestors, thorough John Bennett Kennedy, born in
North Carolina, with lineages reaching back to France
and to Ireland and Scotland, and with the Smith and
Crittenden lines which connect to North Carolina and
Virginia, and Forrest and Cheesman lines tracing possibly
to Jamestown in Virginia, and before that to Sussex. My
understanding is that the family political feuds turned
around an affinity with the Democrats on the part of
Henrietta and with the Republicans on the part of
Benjamin. This would fit the material set out above,
particularly, if Henrietta could look to possible ancestors
in the founding of Virginia at Jamestown, and Benjamin
could substantiate his Pyle ties to the colonial legislature
of Pennsylvania. With Benjamin being born in the year of
Lincoln’s death, and in the shadow of Civil War battles
like Gettysburg, considering how badly Missouri suffered
in the Civil War, these appear to be issues that never
went away.
Note in respect to the Kennedy Smith Crittenden lineage,
the Web posting on Early Colonial Virginia, genealogical
gleanings: for Amelia, Virginia: John Forrest was born
about 1650 in Virginia and is the son of Henry Forrest
and Ann Long. John Forrest is the son of Henry Forrest
and Elizabeth Cheesman. Henry was born about 1623,
possibly in Jamestown. It is possible that he is descended
from, or related to Thomas Forrest of Jamestown 1608.
Richard Crittenden, ancestor of Elizabeth Crittenden and
Lucretia Webster Smith Kennedy, married Anne Forrest,
daughter of Henry Forest and Elizabeth Cheesman, born
in England around 1623, daughter of Edmund Cheesman
of Sussex England, born in England 1592, died in
Gloucester, Virginia around 1640.