Where the Blacktop Ends: 52 Ancestors

One of the fun experiences during a genealogy field trip is visiting the homestead where your ancestors lived. Visiting with a local guide enriches the experience, as they can add so much context that otherwise you would never know. For this week's prompt -- Homestead -- I'm dusting off one of those wonderful visits.

Barb Dahman of the then Morgan County Genealogical Society took my cousin and me on a tour of Scott County, Illinois, including a visit to the Maddox farm. She had talked to the current owner in advance of the tour, so she was able to tell us all about the farm as we drove through in 2003. A couple of years later, in a family history writing seminar, I wrote the following paragraphs about my impressions.

If you follow Merritt Blacktop Road west from Merritt and turn north on Turkey Farm Road, you will find yourself sliding on dirt and gravel. Of course, the turkey farm at the top of Maddox Hill has long been abandoned, Maddox Pond next to Mauvaisterre Creek holds no water and the Maddox farm and the Maddox family have disappeared, absorbed into neighboring farms and into the soil of Scott County. As you descend the steep hill to the creek, a fine brown cloud will rise up and surround you with the smell and taste of the rich Illinois farmland.

In summer, you will find wild roses blooming red, wrapping round the broken gatepost north of the creek, to mark the old entrance to the farm. No trace remains of the house and barn, their bones carried away long ago by scavengers. The house is now found only as a dot on the surveyor's plat in the foreclosure file at the Winchester courthouse. Weeds and brush have reclaimed the apple orchards that once climbed the hill north of the house. Much of the long forty acres that once comprised the widow's portion  is now overgrown, occupied only by snakes and other wild creatures.

South of the house site, a few fertile acres sprout corn on land that has been repeatedly flooded by the creek. It was here that the pond ebbed and flowed before the creek was dammed upstream at Jacksonville. The banks of the creek and the adjacent bottom land are a dark red-brown, in contrast to the lighter brown of the surrounding land. The covered bridge that once spanned the creek has been torn away and dragged downstream, leaving only a concrete and timber crossing barely wide enough for one car.

Across Turkey Farm Road to the east, two hundred acres that once were farmed by the Maddox family are now covered in soybeans, guarded by a large sign that announces this is private property. The owners have built a large house in the midst of the soybeans and you will wonder if the wood from the Maddox farm has burned in their fireplace. They will tell you they don't know anyone named Maddox. Yet they will also tell you, over 125 years after the Maddox family moved north to the next county, to drive down past Maddox Pond and climb up Maddox Hill to get back onto the blacktop road.

Nancy Jane Webb Maddox was the widow that asked for the long 40 acres on the west side when the farm went to foreclosure. That request resulted in a survey that shows the layout of the farm in 1876.

Nancy was born in Maryland about 1821. Her mother, Nancy Townson (Townsend?) died young and Nancy and her father, Elijah Webb, moved to Ohio by 1830.

Nancy married William W Maddox on February 21, 1840, in Pickaway County, Ohio. She had at least seven children: John, David, Louis (Lewis), William, George, Joseph Allen and Margaret. Only three of those are known to have descendants: Louis, George and Allen. Each of those three gave her one grandchild prior to her death.

After William's death in 1869, Nancy had to keep the farm running. She also had to raise the money to bail out and defend Louis and William, who were charged with killing their father. The family mortgaged the farm, but lost most of it to foreclosure, due to inability to pay their legal bills.

Nancy became the fifth wife of Joseph Pease in Brown County on September 15, 1878. Tragically, she died of pneumonia in Versailles Township just a few months later, on February 4, 1879. She was buried in the Lavina Henry Cemetery in Versailles Township.

Who's Your Daddy - Part Three

Have you ever examined a confusing census record and wished you could go back in time and travel with that census taker? Perhaps there are extra or missing family members. Ages, birthplaces or relationships could be missing or wrong. Even worse, maybe the family is entirely missing in the index or in the microfilm. You'll never know how the census taker got their information. Was it a child, a senile adult, a neighbor or even personal knowledge and assumption?

Additionally, the US census images that we see on microfilm or online are generally not copies of the original census book. There are copies which were hand-copied from the original. When the copies were made, mistakes and shortcuts may have crept in. The copy that was sent to the federal government is usually the one that was filmed. The original book may be in an archive or may have been destroyed. I once had my hands on an original 1880 census book while looking for a court case in the vault of a county courthouse. At the time, I had no idea it was different than the microfilm. I missed my opportunity to examine it.

The 1850 census of Cass County, Illinois, is so full of errors that I try to validate every single piece of information. This post continues looking at the assumed children of Lindsay Lake.

The Mystery Children with Lindsay Lake

The children in the household of Lindsay Lake in 1850 are listed as:

• Precious Moore, 16 (niece)
• Joseph Lake, 14
• Aaron Lake, 10 (female, whoops)
• Jane Lake, 8

The date on the page is December 12, 1850. Did the weather play a part in the errors?

Lindsay had married multiple times. His wives by 1850 were:

• Milly Carter, married  August 28, 1834, Morgan County
• Mary Kinman, married April 23, 1846, Brown County
• Caroline Evans, married October 12, 1848, Brown County
• Mrs. Doratha Hatfield, married December 24, 1850, Cass County 

It is possible that the children listed with the surname Lake should have been listed with a surname of Kinman or Evans. It is also possible that the names and ages of Lindsay's children were just scrambled.

An Amazing 1845 Census

A state census of Illinois was taken in 1845. There are only three counties for which copies survive, one of which is Cass County. This particular census was similar to the 1850 census, as the census taker wrote the initial(s) and surname of each person in the county, along with their age. The other two counties are similar to the 1840 census.

The 1845 Cass County census is a gem. However, you have to study it very carefully, as the females and males were listed on different pages. There were approximately 500 more males than females, so the page with Milly Lake is many pages away from Lindsay Lake. Only by reviewing names before and after can family groups be identified. The Lake and allied families lived along the border of Cass County and Morgan County, so families living in Morgan County, though neighbors, are not included.

The census was completed on October 25, 1845. Females were on left pages and males on right pages. Free white females end on image 65 at Ancestry. The last three images are free white males, non-whites and summary. Look at the top of each page for whether it contains males or females.

Family members can be found on these pages and images:

Lucinda _____ Lake Carter page 112 (image 55)	John? Carter page 116 (image 57)
Angeline Lake "Carter" page 112
Rebecca Lake Hardy page 112	N Hardy page 118 (image 58)
Precious York page 114  (image 56)	John York page 132 (image 65)
Milly Lake page 114	Lindsay Lake page 132

Summary on image 68
Males 2972, Females 2484, non-white 15, total 5471

The Lake family, as shown below, included the following names:
Females: 
M Lake 25 (Milly)
C Lake 6 (Cynthiana born 1837?)
Males:
L Lake 35 (Lindsay)
A Lake 9 (Aaron born 1835)
J Lake 5 (John born 1840)
J Lake 3 (unknown boy)
T Lake 1 (unknown boy)

Comparing the Census Years

Matching the 1845 census to the 1850 census, it appears that the name Joseph (14) in 1850 should be Aaron, while the name Aaron (10, female) should be Cynthiana or John. Child Jane (8) doesn't fit, but could be John.

We need more clarity to sort out the children. The 1855 census is an old style census, so doesn't help. By 1860, the family had gone through many more changes. So let's go beyond the census to a very simple solution.

Probate and Guardianship Answer the Question

There is a guardianship in Cass County that absolutely names the children of Milly Carter. Every child in the 1850 census, if truly a Lake, would have been a child of Milly Carter Lake.

Milly's father, Thomas Carter, had died in 1849. Milly's children, his grandchildren, were among his heirs. Guardianship at that time was about assets, rather than children, so the children needed to have a guardian for the assets they would inherit from their grandfather. The guardianship states that the children "have an interest in an estate not derived from their father".

On March 18, 1850, Lindsay Lake became the legal guardian of the assets of Aaron Lake, Cynthia A Lake and John Lake. The other two children from the 1845 census were not included, so either had died or were not Milly and Lindsay's children. None of the mystery children from the 1850 census were named.

The bondsmen with Lindsay were James Pointer and Jonathan Lake. Jonathan Lake died a few months later and he will be examined in another post. Scaled-down images of the guardianship follow.

This ends the proof case for the children of Lindsay Lake: Aaron, Cynthiana and John were his only surviving children in 1850.

Who's Your Daddy - Part Two

Continuing with the theme of online family tree errors, the best defense is a good offense. Creating well-documented online family trees ourselves is our best defense against errors. This blog is one way to present more complex proof cases than can be done within the limits of the Ancestry trees.

My ancestor, Lindsay Lake of Morgan and Cass Counties, Illinois, has been named as the father of random Lake relatives. In the last post we looked at proving a negative -- who Lindsay's parents were not. This time I'll prove a positive -- the names of the seven children who were heirs of Lindsay Lake and the correct parentage of two women who were not his children.

Not Her Daddy

Two women who have been incorrectly named online as children of Lindsay are Precious Moore, born about 1836, and Ellen Lake, born about 1844.

Precious Moore was enumerated with Lindsay Lake in the 1850 census. Some researchers have assumed she was a married or widowed daughter of Lindsay. She was not. Precious was his ward and probably his niece. It requires only one piece of evidence to determine her parents -- her biography in a county history book. Her father's probate adds context. Her story is told in the blog post Precious Serendipity.

Ellen Lake truly baffles me. I'm not sure why she has been mistaken for a daughter of Lindsay. In the 1860 census of Brown County, Illinois, Ellen is living with her parents, Margaret Ann Long and Israel Lake. She married Richard M Williamson on June 23, 1861, in Cass County. Richard and Ellen acquired land near Lindsay Lake and lived next to several other members of the extended Lake family in Morgan County. The 1870 census shows quite a list of related people living around Lindsay, including the Williamsons.

Ellen Lake Williamson is mentioned in the obituary of her brother, William Harrison Lake. The obituary appeared in the Meredosia Budget on May 20, 1905, and not only states their parentage, but also ties together several branches of the Lake family.

While a small child he was brought by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Israel Lake, to the immediate vicinity of Meredosia ...

He is also survived by one brother, Jonathan Lake of Clayton, and probably one sister, Mrs. Ellen Williamson, is still living. H.L. Lake and Mrs. Lourissa J. Hale of Meredosia are first cousins of the deceased.

Ellen Lake Williamson and her siblings were first cousins to the children of Jesse Lake and Mary Polly Riddle -- children who were raised by Harrison Lord/Laird Lake. That family relationship was explored in the previous post in this series. The addition of this obituary helps to document the relationship of three brothers: Jesse Lake, Israel Lake and Harrison Lord/Laird Lake.

Solved in Chancery Court, not in Probate

Lindsay Lake had a will, but it was not well done. It listed bequests to his minor children, but not his adult children. That omission triggered a court fight among his heirs and generated many pages of Chancery Court records in Morgan County, Illinois. The pages are scrawled and hard to read. However, the heirs were definitively listed in the court filings. There were seven children and a widow, but no other heirs. These are the seven children of Lindsay Lake (1813-1876):

Aaron Lake, 1835-1909, married Sarah Elizabeth Bosseck (my line)
Cynthiana Lake, 1837-1906, married Nathaniel Bert Fanning
John Lindsay Lake, 1840-1896, married Elizabeth C Keller
Josephine Lake, 1861-, married Charles T Kessler
George B McClellan Lake, about 1864-
Isaac H Lake, 1866-1943, married Sarah Slater
Susan A Lake, about 1872-

Following are copies of a few key pages from the Chancery Court case file. As always, I'm happy to share full size copies of this file by email, if you leave a comment with your email address, which will remain private.