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Category: Historical (Page 3 of 4)

The Immigrant

Thousands of immigrants braved the dangerous ocean journey to America. Many of us are descended from people who thought the possibility of a better life was worth the risk of the journey. We’re here because they took the first step.

Author Note (added sometime later than the writing of this entry): I have no actual proof, no DNA matches, no official records…no proof whatsoever that this guy is my actual ancestor. I’m all about the story of these people who braved hardships to come to this country and become what they became, but in the months since this was written it has been pointed out to me there are no “proofs” that this is my guy, so the story is as factual as I can write it from what I’ve found…but he may not be my “immigrant.” He is someone’s immigrant, though, and I honor that.

In genealogy, the first family descendant who left the home country to seek fortune in America is called “the immigrant.”

I’ve finally located the “immigrant” of my Collings branch of the family, the guy who left England and endured the 6 to 14-week ocean journey to make a place for him (and eventually, well…me) in the New World sometime around 1700. His name was Anthony Andrew Collings, and he brought with him his wife, Jane or Jaine.

Anthony was born in Cornwall, England in 1678. Jane has been a little more challenging to track down, and I’m still unsure of her maiden name. It might have been Lancelott, or it might have been Spence. Other reports claim that he was married twice, first to Jane Spence, then to Jane Lancelott. Either scenario leads me down different paths. Because of this uncertainty, I’m not sure what year or where he and Jane were married, but I believe Anthony’s son Zebulon (my ancestor) was born in 1706 in Frederick, Pennsylvania.

In 1712, there are some reports of a daughter Winifred being born in Westmoreland, Virginia. There is also some information about a daughter Elizabeth born in 1712 in Westmoreland, Virginia. That would seem to indicate that Anthony, a twin himself, had twin daughters.

Anthony and Jane at some point moved to Charles County, Maryland where they owned property and lived until their deaths, Anthony in 1754, at age 76.

I don’t know why Anthony came to America, but I have some thoughts and theories (of course I do). There were many reasons people took such a challenging journey, but I think there were probably three main reasons:

  1. The primary goal, of course, the one we all heard in history class in school, was freedom of religion. Major religious conflicts raged throughout the countries of Europe and the British Isles during the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries. People were desperate to escape persecution and to be able to worship as they wished.
  2.  Another reason was a desire to become landowners and create wealth and security for their family. There were complicated rules for the disbursement of English property upon the death of the owners and titles passed to first sons. Second, third, fourth sons and so on, made do with what they could when fathers died. In America, they could, by hard work and clever trading, become prosperous and successful.
  3. For many, though, the allure of the New World was the adventure. These are the immigrants who just could not be satisfied with the limitations they suffered in their homelands. These were the immigrants who traveled to the new world at any cost, then pushed the boundaries of the country westward.

No one can know for sure why any one particular immigrant came, but I’d like to think that I have figured out Anthony Andrew Collings. He was not the first son of Sir Roger and Elizabeth Collings; he was not the second or third son. He and his twin brother, Roger, were the fourth and fifth sons.

I think that young Anthony Collings, sensing there was little future for himself in England, decided to travel to America to build his own legacy.

Anthony started his American adventure in Westmoreland Co. in the Colony of Virginia, then for some reason moved to Charles Co., in the Colony of Maryland where he lived out his life.

Anthony Collings returned to England, probably around 1715 returning to America in 1716 when he is listed as a passenger on a ship arriving from England. It’s possible this trip had something to do with a disputed inheritance concerning his grandmother, which is an interesting side story, but I find no official records to support that.

I did find, however, that in 1717, one Anthony Collings purchased 100 acres of a 320-acre plantation called Partner’s Content, for the price of “2500# tobacco.” I can’t help but wonder if Anthony returned from his trip to England with enough money to buy this land and start his life as a plantation owner and man of some esteem in his community.

In those early days of our country, property was described on deeds and in legal paperwork by the names of the neighboring plantations and their owners. Several pieces of property in early Maryland records are listed as bordering on or bounded by the property of Anthony Collings. He was also listed in various wills as creditor, appraiser and “test.” which I took to mean that he attested to the signatures of the witnesses of those wills, possibly individuals who could only sign their name with a “mark” or X.

I also found records of his paying for land and other goods with various amounts of tobacco, which was the main crop of those early plantations. The Maryland Tax Roll of 1733 lists him as owning 1 taxable property in “Durham Parish, Upper Part.”

I believe Durham Parish was in Maryland at that time, but one of the fun little tricks of genealogy that I have discovered is that our ancestors may not have moved around in America as often as we thought. It was actually the state, county, and other boundaries that were fluid.

The states of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina all disputed boundaries and claimed land that was or was not theirs well into the late 1700s. The same town could one year be in one state, the next year in another. Sometimes these changes would be accompanied by a county name change, or the familiar county name might show up in a different state at a later date.

Interesting sidebar fact: these disputes continued until two men were sent to survey the disputed areas and established a line from which all future claims could be decided. The names of those men were Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, and the property line they surveyed, known as the Mason-Dixon Line, played an essential part in the history of our country for many years.

I want to briefly return to the above three reasons immigrants chose to come to America. Strangely, while these immigrants were firm in their determination, second-generation Americans seemed to gravitate to the third category…adventurers.

The newly minted citizens who came seeking religious freedom did establish communities dedicated to their religious beliefs, but many of their children became dissatisfied with the rules and regulations…and began pushing the boundaries of our country westward.

Those men who came to America to obtain land or become merchants and shop owners, ambitions that were never available to them in the Old Country, were often successful and became influential citizens. Their children, though, were reluctant to be tied down by the responsibilities of those same plantations and shops…so they traveled westward to seek their own fortunes.

And the children of the adventurers who simply came to the New World to see what they could see? They kept looking and they, too, pushed west.

My family was no different. That second generation, the children of Anthony Andrew and Jane Collings moved west.

The story continues.

All About the Land Part 2

Early map of the 1700s.

In 1768, after tough negotiations, the Cherokee Indians and the British government finalized the Treaty of Hard Labor to establish a western boundary beyond which the Indians had full rights and the American settlers had none.

The Treaty of Hard Labor relinquished the rights of the Cherokee to most of the territory we now know as West Virginia. The Indians would own the land west of the Ohio River and white settlers (and land speculators) would be able to claim, sell and improve the wilderness in nearly the entire area we now know as West Virginia.

A month later a different set of British negotiators met with the Iroquois and finalized the Treaty of Fort Stanwix which set a different boundary pushing the Indian lands farther west, leaving them the areas that later became Kentucky and Tennessee as their “forever hunting grounds.”

While these treaties opened vast areas of new territory for settlement, government officials had actually given to the Indians territory that early land speculators such as Jacob Hite thought they had already purchased from individual Indian tribes.

You will remember that Jacob Hite, upon learning that his land purchase was voided faced losing everything he owned to settle his debts. He responded by packing up his household goods, slaves and livestock and fleeing to the disputed land he felt he owned.

The British treaties that set these boundaries also set the stage for legal battles with men whose names have become synonymous with Revolutionary patriotism. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, in particular, had been seeking to purchase land in the area now ceded to the Cherokee Indians. And of course, Jacob Hite was nearly destroyed financially by the treaties and the British insistence that settlers abide by the new boundaries.

The British had their motives. If they could establish certain boundaries to the satisfaction of the Indians, settlers could safely and legally move into new lands and the British would not be called upon to protect those settlers from the Indians who would happily hunt and live in the land further west.

That was the plan, anyway. There were two problems with that plan: 1) no words on paper could stem the flow of those early pioneers who were hungry to claim land of their own, and 2) the entrepreneurs seeking to claim and then sell the land had no intention of letting the British thwart their dreams of wealth.

Jefferson, Washington and every member of the Virginia House of Burgesses felt that the British were imposing impossible limits on the economic growth of their state and, more importantly, on their wealthy citizens. They petitioned the British to revoke the treaties and to allow the state (or colony) of Virginia to annex the areas further west including what we now call Kentucky.

The friction between Indians and settlers, and between British and Americans truly began to smolder towards an explosive situation with the signing of these two treaties.

Freedom from British oppression was something every citizen could get behind, but make no mistake, controlling the land and thus the economy was the spark that triggered the American Revolution.

So, knowing all this, why did my ancestors move from their homes in western Pennsylvania to the Indians beloved hunting grounds in Kentucky?

Because they could. Following the Revolutionary War, the British treaties were no longer valid and American speculators could now officially seek ownership of the Indian land. Individual settlers in small groups could begin to claim the land a few hundred acres at a time. They could move from the smothering rules and regulations that told them what they could and could not do and into the wilderness where they were their own law and government.

Last week when I wrote about the legal problems of Jacob Hite, I thought I was just trying to set the stage for you to understand some of the economic struggles leading up to the Revolutionary War.

This week, I found that Jacob Hite’s story directly relates to my own story. I keep forgetting what a small world that world was!

Hite’s sister, Elizabeth, married a man named John Paul Froman of New Jersey and sometime before 1780, the Froman family moved to that rugged Kentucky territory that Jacob Hite wished to claim. The Froman family established a “station” or small community near Cox’s Creek in the area of the salt licks south of present-day Louisville.

This was the area that Jacob Hite had purchased from the Cherokee.
This was the area where Jacob Hite fled to avoid authorities in Virginia who had attempted to seize his personal property.

And in 1778, George Crist, writing in the Crist family journal, wrote “Me and Nicholas and Henry want to explore the land in Kaintuck that Daniel Boone keeps talking of. He says there is thousands of acres of land waiting to be claimed. Plenty of wild game and wild horses and that the land will grow anything. The Indians are worse there but we think with enough men it will be safe enough.”

We know that Henry did travel to Kentucky several times and experienced at least one adventure as his group was attacked by Indians, an attack he barely survived.

Based on the stories Henry brought back about the rich lands of Kentucky, and the stories of Danial Boone who was actively encouraging settlers, George finally wrote in 1783: “Me, Henry, Nicholas and William and our families and Besy’s parents and their families along with many more it’s about three hundred in all are going to leave in two days to go to Kaintuck.”

William in that passage would be William Elston Collings and the “others” would be his parents and brothers and their families, and that’s how my ancestors began their journey west, settling first in the area of Kentucky known as Froman’s Creek or Froman’s Station near the land of Jacob Hite.

Later, I’ll tell you what it took to make that journey.

All About the Land

Early map of the 1700s.

In spite of the politicians and the press, wars are seldom fought for high ideals. Those advertised high principles and lofty ideals are incentives for the soldiers and the families who send the soldiers, but most wars are more often fought for economic reasons, to gain territory and power, or in retribution.

That may sound cynical but just think about it in terms of the wars you’ve known. I don’t want to get into a heated argument here, I just have some problems with wars in general, and in my genealogical studies, I’ve been reading about the Revolutionary War or the War for Independence.

The patriots who fought in the Revolutionary War, our ancestors, fought for independence from Britain, freedom from the oppressive taxes that England imposed, the ability to govern themselves and the land on which they lived. Lofty and admirable as those principles were, that war was also fought mostly because some of the prominent citizens of our country were unhappy that Britain was blocking their ability to claim and sell (at huge profits) the vast territories to the west of the settled lands of the 13 colonies.

For those of you who slept through jr. high American history, the 1700s were chaotic times in the Colonies. With Indians to the west of us and the Atlantic Ocean to the east of us, with more and more immigrants landing on our shores, owning and selling property became more and more profitable and desirable.

Some of the more well-known patriots, those men we call the “fathers” of our country early on began to look at acquiring ownership of large tracts of land to the west of the Allegheny and Appalachian mountains. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, George Mason all were eager to acquire rights to property that lay in what we now know as Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. And they wanted those lands, not for the greater good…they intended to claim and own those lands for their personal gain.

One particular early land transaction in 1774 that sets the scene involved a man named Jacob Hite, an unapologetic land speculator in the Shenandoah Valley. Jacob’s father Jost Hite had made a great deal of money buying and selling land. Jacob aspired to build his own reputation and fortune in the same way.

Hite and a partner, Richard Pearis, conspired to acquire a large tract of land in the unsettled territories west of what is now South Carolina. This was Indian land, land the natives had hunted and lived in for centuries, but Hite and Pearis had a plan. Pearis had a son named George by a Cherokee Indian woman. Using the son’s standing with the Indians, the two men backed George to buy 150,000 acres of the Cherokee land which he then sold to his father and Hite.

It was a smart plan and should have worked to make the men rich. They would survey the land, divide it into smaller lots and sell it to settlers eager to move into the area and establish their own land holdings.

There was only one serious problem with the plan.

British officials had severe reservations about the wisdom of angering the Indians who had not been consulted or signed on to the sale of the land. The British were at that time on shaky ground as to their relations with the Indians who were attempting to form an anti-British confederation of several tribes.

In the interest of keeping the peace with the Indians, the British convinced a South Carolina court (which after all, ultimately answered to their British rulers) to void the deal.

This left Jacob Hite in severe financial jeopardy. As a land speculator, he had gambled heavily on the sale of these lands to acquire the funds to pay off debts which he now could not pay. In the domino effect often created by gambling and speculation, his creditors also had loans to pay off and at their insistence officials were ordered to seize personal property of Jacob Hite and auction off said property to raise the money to pay his debts.

Jacob was not happy about this solution to his money problems, and he vowed to stop any sale that took place. Gathering together some friends, Hite and a gang of armed men stormed the jail to take back his horses, slaves and other property. Unable to convince the jailor to turn over the keys or open the door, they chopped the door down with axes and then broke the lock on the stable door to retake his property.

Following the raid, Hite fled with his family and his belongings to the land he attempted to purchase in the Cherokee country.

Some of the perpetrators were subsequently arrested and charged with breach of the peace, but were acquitted due to sympathy by the locals for debtors who they felt were wrongly deprived of their personal property. British intervention in local business deals was an unpopular action and was already a factor in the increasing unrest in the colonies.

Following the failure of the legal system to punish Hite’s “gang,” heated verbal battles ensued as accusations flew back and forth between the sheriff, Adam Stephen, whose job it was to seize the property and Hite whose very livelihood depended on not losing his possessions.

Over the next few years Hite and Stephen carried on a bitter rivalry that involved letters in local newspapers and court cases, until in the fall of 1776 when a newspaper report stated: “…Mr. Jacob Hite, who lately removed from Berkeley county to the neighbourhood of the Cherokee country, with his family and a large parcel of negroes, were murdered at his own house by those savages, with most of his slaves, and his wife and children carried off prisoners; his son, who was in the Cherokee country, was likewise murdered.”

This incident was just one example of how important and life-altering ownership of the wilderness land to the west could be to individuals in Colonial America and how anger at the British style of government was simmering.

Next week, I’ll tell you how our patriotic forefathers were involved in similar schemes leading up to the Revolutionary War.

Past as Present

Fire as execution method in the 1600’s.

I thought I would share with you some of the rabbit holes that open up to those of us who go searching for ancestors.

I recently received a long note from my niece that illustrated all of the problems I have already detailed…women’s records are difficult and spotty, common names like Jane and John and William are hard to wade through, families often switch between references to first and middle and then compound names (Michelle, I’d suspect that Sarah Jane actually could be the full name for someone referred to as Sarah and/or Jane).

There is the frustrating use of junior and senior, which in the old days did not necessarily indicate father and son (or mother and daughter) but rather meant older and younger closely related family possibly living in the same house or neighborhood.

Then there’s the rabbit hole of a good story possibly unrelated to your family. I went down that rabbit hole yesterday.

One of my ancestors had a unique middle name. In researching his father, I found that I had two choices for his mother, both with the same first name, but one with the last name that matched my ancestor’s middle name. That was a pretty good clue as to which possible mother I should track, so I began to look for that surname which was Elston.

I casually scrolled down several pages of search results, finding several probable new relatives when I was struck by one result that read “A Warning for Bad Wives or The Manner of the Burning of Sarah Elston Who was Burnt to Death on Wednesday the 24th of April 1678 For Murdering her Husband….”

Wait…what?

I had no indication that where were any ancestors named Sarah or Thomas Elston in that generation of my Elston line, but how could I pass up a story like this? I couldn’t.

It was a most controversial case, raising all the questions that we struggle with in this day and age. On the bare facts of the case, Sarah’s crime would appear to be a matter of self-defense. During a heated argument, Thomas had beat Sarah severely with a fire shovel and was reaching for a frying pan to continue the abuse when Sarah stabbed him in the left chest with a pair of scissors.

An editorial note here: a frying pan would not have been a lightweight, one-egg Teflon pan like we use today—it would have been a large, cast iron skillet and would have probably resulted in a totally different outcome for Thomas and Sarah.

The story does, however, include much testimony from neighbors and paints a picture of regular marital strife including violent arguments, physical altercations and loud and public threats of future revenge and even death.

Neighbors told of Sarah’s threats on her husband’s life and how her drunkenness and profligate spending had driven him to try “to beat her out of this wicked course, and to that end [he] did sometimes chastise her with blows…”

Thomas was described as “troubled and disturbed” by his need to use violence on his wife, violence that included throwing her down the stairs on the night of the final argument.

Witnesses heard Thomas “wish himself dead, or that he had been buried alive that day he was married to her” and Sarah’s threats that at one time or other she would kill him.

Historian J.M. Beattie, PhD. is a professor in the History Department of the University of Toronto, and he wrote extensively about crime and law in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He commented on this case, and I’m sure many will be upset by what he says, but remember, he is telling it like it was in the 1600’s.

He says the “self-defense plea was inappropriate in the context of husband-murder” because “in law, wielding a knife or pair of scissors against a man who used mere bodily force or a blunt instrument indicated excessive retaliation,” not legitimate self-defense.

Bottom line, Sarah was found guilty and burned at the stake for her crime. At the stake, before her sentence was carried out, it was reported that she said, “notwithstanding all his Abuses,” she still felt that “she had done very ill in lifting up her hand against her Husband, and offering to revenge her self of him.”

My guess is that all law enforcement officers would recognize these events back in the 1600’s as exactly the kind of domestic situations they find themselves called out on in this day and age.

You see how I get involved in this research and end up being late to work or unable to eke out time to write or forget to go to bed at a reasonable time!

Once again, I must say, schools should teach history this way, with genealogical research. The problems, the relationships, the issues, the hopes and dreams of the past are all present now in the lives we live every day.

Probably some of the truest words ever spoken are George Santayana’s: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (Yes, Winston Churchill said something like this, but Santayana said it first.)

I think I might add that those who can’t understand the past will never understand the present.

Odds and Ends

Writing a journal may seem a boring thing to do, but it can tell the story of a life lived.

This past week has had an air of the terrible,-horrible,-no-good,-very-bad-day story. Without going into details, it’s enough to say that, in case anyone noticed, I did not get my usual Thursday blog posted.

Please don’t worry, there is no physical or even long-lasting mental damage…just the frustration of huge projects that did not get completed and co-workers who moved on to greener pastures and the looming holiday that I cannot seem to get under control.

So, today, a few days late, you are getting a bag of odd sand ends of facts and thoughts. This may not be too satisfying for you the reader but will clear my plate for a continuation of family stories after the holidays! There are more adventures to come.

Some readers (well, one reader) wanted a little more information about Henry Crist, survivor of the attack and long journey home on hands and knees.

During and after a long recovery from his injuries, Henry became a salt-maker and acquired several parcels of land in the Bullitt County and Shepherdsville area of future Kentucky. As a land owner and respected businessman he participated in the act of creating the state of Kentucky, became a justice of the peace, was duly elected to serve in the state legislature representing Nelson County and later, Bullitt County. He went on to serve in the 11th Congress of the United States (1809-1811) and was commissioned a general in the Kentucky state militia.

Henry died in Shepherdsville, KY in 1844 and was buried there, but in 1869, the Kentucky Legislature elected to recognize his service to the young state by having his remains moved to Frankfort, Kentucky, the state capitol, where a monument stands in his honor.

I want to explain once again that Henry Crist is not a direct relative of mine, but the Crist family is related to mine by marriage and by long time association. I came upon the Crist story while doing research into my family, the Collings. At one point, I became very frustrated trying to account for one of the women of the family at a certain point in our history.

Family research is interesting and frustrating at the same time, but it is further complicated because the records of females mostly depends on the records of their fathers and their husbands.

I was delighted to finally answer an important question about my fifth great grandmother with the help of the Crist family journal or account book. For this reason, I have become a strong advocate for journaling.

A group of us talked about this in a writing workshop recently. Journaling is one of those activities which seems mundane and kind of useless at the time, but which records for all times the details of a life lived. I’m sure that Nicolaus Heinrich Crist had no idea when he started his journal, that one day over 200 years later, I would find one line written in that journal that would answer a burning question for my family (or at least for me).

Today, more than ever before, we have a problem with recording the details of ordinary lives. Living on into eternity we will have official records of the politics of the day, the wars we fight, the major disasters we experience. But where will future generations read about how we as individuals feel about those events?

I read in the Crist journal about how families suffered during the Revolutionary War and how it felt to have sons fighting, knowing that any news of their fate could take months to reach them. I read about the concerns of traveling into unexplored wilderness and setting off for a land only heard of in other travelers’ tales.

Nicolaus Heinrich Crist wrote early on in his journal these words: “I am going to write in my account book about me so if we die they will know who we are.”

I can’t think of a better reason to start a journal and would only change the word “if” to “when” to make it the motto of my own writings.

Desperate Journey

Cover on both shores made for dangerous travel.

Henry Crist thought he was about to die. As far as he knew, all his companions and his business partner were dead, killed in the sudden and brutal attack on their way up the Salt River to Mud Garrison. He had watched from the riverbank as the woman in their party was captured, and during his frantic escape he had been shot in the foot. Unable to walk upright, Henry crawled deep into the brush and assessed his situation.

As he lay weak from loss of blood and the terror of the battle, he though some of the men made it into the woods. Crepps, who had been running beside him, was hit by a ricocheting bullet and had disappeared into the brush, bleeding.

Henry was wounded and alone, his only hope to reach the closest settlement, Bullitt’s Lick. With the bones in his heel shattered, he tried to stand, but fell to the ground He would have to crawl.

Still bleeding, Henry removed his moccasins and tied them to his knees with strips of cloth torn from his shirt. He wrapped his hands with his hat and pieces of his hunting vest and began to crawl. All day, he moved slowly on hands and knees, following the river towards safety. He crawled over rocky ground, down into ravines and up out of them.

Knowing he needed to cross the river, he crawled until nightfall, then found a fallen log, slowly rolled it into the river, climbed on and let it float him across to the other side. There he pulled himself into a thicket and tried to rest. Exhausted, scared and weak, he lay on his back with his swollen, inflamed leg propped up, but found no relief and very little sleep.

Staring at the stars, he wondered if he would die. He thought about the battle. Could they have done anything different? Could he have done more to save the men who died? Were they all dead? He thought he had seen Moore escape and Crepps, though shot, he had last seen running, so perhaps they were alive. He thought about the woman and how steadfastly she had refused to move from the boat. If he had physically picked her up, they both would have been captured or killed. Should he have done that?

As despair set in, Henry made up his mind that he must move on if he wanted to survive. He couldn’t just curl up and die in the forest with no one knowing his fate. He renewed the makeshift padding on his hands and knees with the last of his shirt and trousers and began to crawl.

Sometime deep into the night, he saw a campfire and heard a dog barking ahead of him. He hesitated. How desperate was he? Should he call out for help? Creeping closer, he heard the voices of a group of Indians. Fear washed over him, and he lay flat to the ground and very still. As the voices quieted, the dog stopped barking and the fire died down to embers, he moved away from the camp as quietly as he could. He dropped into the water of a small branch of the river and pulled himself across large river rocks so as to leave no trail.

As morning began to bring light, Henry crawled up a small hill, hoping to be able to get his bearings. As he looked out over the land around him, all he could see was wilderness. He had not eaten nor had decent water since the day before the battle. Hunger, exhaustion and terrible pain washed over him.

He reckoned that Bullitt’s Lick was nearly 8 miles away and that he was able to crawl but a half mile an hour. He rested briefly, adjusted the wrappings and set off again. His injured leg was now so swollen and painful that he could no longer bear to use it, it dragged uselessly behind as he moved forward, but he knew he must keep moving.

Through another day and night, he crawled, resting—crawling—resting—crawling, ever so slowly, painfully. He could not give up. He would not give up.

As the third day of his ordeal turned into early evening, he knew he must be nearing the settlement, but he was growing so weary and so weak he finally began to consider that he might die. Even worse, he might reach Bullitt’s Lick only to die from his wounds.

As darkness fell, he could see numerous campfires that must be Bullitt’s Lick, but still over half a mile away and he had no strength left. He was nearly delirious from hunger and pain and he could crawl no further. His hands and his remaining knee were bloody raw wounds that were almost as painful as his wounded leg.

As he lay there exhausted and hopeless, he heard the sounds of a horseman approaching. Could it be? Could help be here now? He called out, weakly at first then louder. He heard the horseman stop briefly, then take off—riding away fast.

His last hope passed him by. He closed his eyes and gave in to death, wishing he had just been killed in the boat with his companions.

Meanwhile, the frightened horseman rode into the Bullitt’s Lick camp, shouting that Indians had called out to him along the path, babbling about being called by a name he didn’t recognize. The men in the camp realized that Indians would not have called to him but, more likely, would have killed him. An armed group quickly formed to find whoever was lurking outside their camp.

In the gathering darkness, they came upon the half-dead, 24-year-old Henry Crist, barely conscious and gravely wounded and brought him back to camp.

Henry survived, making a long slow recovery over the next year. He went on to live a long and productive life in the frontier territory that became the state of Kentucky, serving in the state legislature and even a term as a representative in the US Congress in Washington, D.C.

Henry Crist, one of those ancestors who crossed the Atlantic to America to seek a better life, who survived hardships we can only imagine and who helped build that better life for those of us who came after him.

Henry Crist

Cover on both shores made for dangerous travel.

A couple of weeks ago I told you about Henry Crist, one of the early pioneers of the Kentucky Territory and a sort of left handed relative of mine. From the age of around 15, Henry, along with members of his family and mine, made several trips into the Kentucky Territory. At a very early age Henry began working with a man named Jacob Myers, locating and laying claim to large tracts in the wilderness.

The most valuable commodity in this new land, besides the game, was the land itself…and salt. Salt deposits near the streams drew herds of deer and buffalo which drew hunters. The hunters required large quantities of salt to preserve their meat. But salt was expensive and difficult to transport over the mountains from the east.

The discovery that the area contained salt laden clay which leached into the waters, made this a prime area for the first industry in Kentucky…salt making.

Entrepreneurs found they could produce large quantities of salt by boiling away the water in huge kettles over a trench of fire.

In 1788, Henry Crist, with a friend named Solomon Spears, obtained interest in a production site called Long Lick. In the spring of that year, the two men purchased a quantity of large kettles in Louisville and hired a flatboat with crew to transport them by river to their claim.

Crew and passengers, totaling twelve men and one woman, boarded the boat to travel along the Ohio to the Salt River, then up that river to a place called Mud Garrison, located near where modern-day Shepherdsville, Kentucky now stands.

You need to understand that in the late 1700’s, rivers were the interstates the pioneers used to move goods. On the map, the area of the salt licks was almost directly south of Louisville and not that far by land, but to move the heavy cargo of huge 100-pound kettles, the river was the route of choice.

The spring levels of the Ohio and Salt rivers made the journey somewhat easier. The water flowed above the sand banks and by May, the current was fairly slow and dependable. The broad Ohio was safe and easy. Traveling down the center of the river, boats and their passengers were out of reach of any sudden attacks from the ever-present Indians on shore, but upon entering the much narrower Salt River, the boats were in range of rifles and arrows from both shores. For this reason, the men sent out scouts on foot to watch for danger.

On the evening of their first day on the Salt River, Henry and a man named Floyd went ashore as scouts. While they did see some sort of trail, they found no recent evidence of Indians. Early in the morning they returned and around eight o’clock the crew took the boat ashore to cook and eat breakfast.

As they chained their boat to a tree, the party could hear what sounded like the gobbling of many turkeys and two of the crew, anxious to acquire fresh game, headed into the brush with their rifles. As they disappeared over the riverbank, gunfire and yelling erupted.

Horrified, the men on the boat watched as the two hunters reappeared, running for their lives, pursued by several Indians.

Henry Crist was standing in the bow of the boat with his rifle and he was able to fire at the pursuers causing them to drop back and seek cover. As the two hunters reached the water’s edge and climbed into the boat, others were able to retrieve their rifles and return fire. One of the would-be hunters was hit by a bullet which broke his arm, but he managed to get into the river and around to the back side of the boat to be hauled in by his companions.

The huge salt kettles had been loaded in rows down either side of the boat forming a long corridor in the center. Unfortunately, the boat, chained to a tree, was bow to the shore, allowing the Indians to shoot down the length of the boat, providing no cover for the defenders.

Desperate to loosen the chain that bound them to shore, the men needed to free the boat to gain cover and some mobility. Fossett, the injured hunter, could no longer use his rifle, so he grabbed a pole and with covering fire from the others began trying to dislodge the hook on the chain. Eventually, he was able to loosen the chain and the boat began drifting into the river, slowly turning so that the sides faced the bank, finally giving some cover from the Indians’ rifle fire.

With this short respite, the survivors took inventory of the damage. Five men lay dead. Spears, Floyd, Fossett and Boyce were injured, Spears so seriously that it was evident he would not survive. Only three men, Crepps, Moore and Henry Crist were uninjured.

Spears as he lay dying, urged the men to run the boat up on the opposite shore and run for their lives leaving him to his fate, but his companions refused to abandon him.

Ahead of the boat, the men could see a group of Indians crossing the river. They were now under fire from either side making a river escape impossible. As Spears breathed his last, the others saw they must do as he had advised: run the boat aground, separate and hide in the woods.

As the men clambered out of the boat, Crepps and Crist reached out to help the woman disembark, but she was frozen with fear and refused to move. No amount of coaxing would get her to budge and finally, the men had to use their rifles to cover their own escape into the woods.

Hopeless and desperate, the men charged the Indians that attempted to block their escape and managed to get past them, but as they slipped into the covering brush, the Indians fired a last volley. One shot ricocheted off a rock and struck Crepps in the side. Another bullet struck Crist in the heel, breaking several bones in his foot.

Looking back from their cover, the men saw the Indians turn and converge on the boat to take their woman companion captive. While the Indians were thus distracted, Crepps and Crist escaped into the woods where they became separated.

Next week, I’ll tell you of Crist’s desperate fight for survival.

Crist Story Continued

In 1767, George Heinrich Crist married Elizabeth “Betsey” Collings, sister to my fifth great grandfather, William Elston Collings.

George was the third of six sons of Johanne Nicolaus Heinrich, the original author of the account book from which I have been quoting, one of five brothers who traveled to America from Germany.

In 1778, Nicolaus reported that he was setting aside the account book as “it hurts to bad to write in it.” He may have been suffering from arthritis or from age (he was 62) or he may have been speaking of both physical and emotional pain, as life had been hard on him and his family.

Son George, who took over the writing of the account book after returning from service in the Revolutionary War, reports a few months later about an event: “… Pa was not well enough to take a part. His leg wound and the hard work he had to do while we was gone to war took its toll on him and Ma too.”

On February 12, 1783, five years after Nicolaus gave up the writing of the account book, George wrote: “We buried our parents today. Ma died the day before Pa…they died with pneumonia. What a loss and we will feel it for a long, long time.”

Thankfully, George was a good steward of the family account book, so we have a continued fair account of the Crist family, now directly related to my own Collings family as a result of George’s marriage to Betsey Collings.

In May of 1778, George wrote that: “Me and Nicholas and Henry want to explore the land in Kaintuck that Daniel Boone keeps talking of. He says there is thousands of acres of land waiting to be claimed. Plenty of wild game and wild horses and that the land will grow anything. The Indians are worse there but we think with enough men it would be safe enough.”

I’m sure in the passage above that George referred to himself and his brother Nicholas. I believe Henry to be George’s nephew, his brother Nicholas’ son.

This Henry was quite the character and he deserves a little sidebar in the story of the Crists and their relationship to my family, the Collings and the Richeys. At the time of George’s account book entry, his nephew Henry would have been 14 or 15 years old.

We have to be careful in our study of genealogy when trying to guess or attribute motive to our ancestors. We don’t really know why they chose to travel to the areas they did or why they settled in the areas they did or even why they undertook some of the adventures in which they found themselves.

On May 26, 1778, George reported: “Henry, Moore, Spears, Brown, Patton, Graham, Sanders, Green, Thomas, Shaw and about six others went to a meeting and after it was over they decided to go to Kaintuck. Daniel Boone says that ‘A man that stays in the valley always wonders what is on the other side of the mountain, he can guess but never knows for sure.’ So they decided to see for their self.”

We know what brought them to the area around what was to become Bullitt Co. Kentucky…salt.

To understand this, you must understand that in those days, food preservation, mainly the preservation of game, was vital to the survival of the settlers. And in those days, that meant salt was nearly worth its weight in gold.

Bullitt’s Lick was part of a concentration of salt, ranging from Bardstown Junction, Kentucky in the south, to across the Salt River to just north of present-day Fairdale, Kentucky, along the eastern side of the “Knobs” of the region. The salty streams drew deer, buffalo and other desirable game to obtain the salt they required in their diet, and hunters learned that not only were those spots great hunting grounds, but they could boil away the water to produce the great quantities of salt needed to preserve meat for storing through the winter.

Transporting salt over the mountains from the east was difficult and expensive. Being able to produce salt on the spot where hunting was most successful ensured the salt licks of Kentucky would become the new hot spot for speculators and entrepreneurs.

First came the surveyors, then the agents grabbing up all the land around the creeks and streams, then the actual workers who leased land to set up the saltworks.

Salt was extracted by boiling water in 100 pound kettles above a trench of fire. As the water evaporated from the heat, salt crystals resulted. Eventually, salt produced in and around the area was sold and shipped into the Illinois and Tennessee Territories and sent downriver to New Orleans.

Henry Crist, while still in his teens, saw the possibilities when he and his father first came to the Kentucky Territory. At that early age he became a land scout or “land locator” for a wealthy man named Jacob Myers, who eventually laid claim to most of the Kentucky Territory. As a result of his work for Myers, Henry obtained rights to some of the land he scouted.

At the age of about 20, Henry and a man named Solomon Spears bought out another man’s claim at the site called Long Lick.

In 1788, while supplying that claim, Henry and Solomon encountered a large band of Indians and fought for their lives in the Battle of the Kettles.

Next week, I’ll tell you that story.

Revolutionary War

If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll remember I’ve been following the adventures of a family named Crist who came to America in 1738. This family is closely tied with my own ancestors, the Collings family and I managed to find some very interesting accounts of life in those early days of our country based on the writings of Johann Nicolaus Crist who was given an account book by his father at the time Nicolaus and his brothers left for America.

When I last shared his adventures with you, Nicolaus had just returned from the Battle of Fort Necessity also known as the Battle of Great Meadows, where he received a very serious wound that nearly cost him his leg.

The leg wound that Nicolaus sustained affected his ability to work for the rest of his life and in his journal entry of August 5, 1754 he said, “I am lucky to have my sons.”

Nicolaus and Catherine had six sons and lost one infant daughter, obviously a painful loss as Nicolaus celebrated the marriages of three of his sons on May 7, 1763 by stating “Catherine and me finally got the daughters we never had (when) three of our sons was married yesterday. John Jacob married Regenah Cartmell, Nicholas Heinrich Jr. married Sarah Cartmell and Philip Henry married Rachel Cartmell. Rev. Henrie Dreher performed the wedding ceremony in the same Lutheran Church where Ana Catherin and me married.”

My Collings family enters the story as Nicolaus wrote on March 5, 1767: “Our fourth son George Heinrich married Elizabeth Collings today in the Lutheran Church where we got married. She was fifteen years of age today. Rev. Henrie Dreher performed the wedding Ceremony. Me and Elizabeth’s Pa, William Edward Collings growed up together and come to America on the same ship. He married Anne Elizabeth Nowlin a cousin to my Catherin. We had a feast, danced to good German music and played games all day.”

There are some aspects of this entry I don’t understand…William Edward Collings is shown in most of my research as having been born in America of English heritage. Still there is no doubt his daughter Elizabeth married George Crist and we have also been able to document that William Edward Collings was in fact married to Anne Elizabeth Nowlin.

History and genealogical study can be a very interesting and puzzling pastime!

Nicolaus and Catherin’s remaining two sons were married in 1769.

Life seemed good for the families, but harder times were ahead. December 24, 1776, Nicolaus wrote: I guess that I am more scared now than I was coming across the ocean to America. We have six sons in Washington’s Continental Army. Catherin and me are doing the best we can to take care of our daughters and grandchildren. Everyone is working hard from day break until dark trying to keep things going. We have seen bad times but it is worse now. Our food that we have stored is low. It seems that every one around us is in bad shape. The only thing that we can do is pray that it will get better and soon be over. Me and Catherin are so tired and scared, not for ourselves but for our loved ones.

The Revolutionary War was a heroic fight by a young nation to win freedom from England, but it was a hard time for those whose day to day life was affected not only by the shortage of goods from the outside world, but the fact their very farms and fields became the battlefields of the war.

All six of the Crist sons likely entered the war as militia, which was something like our National Guard is today, not fulltime soldiers, but citizen soldiers who took up arms to supplement regular army forces to defend home and country. Militia usually committed to two-year enlistments.

In the days of the Revolutionary War, communication was impossible, and Nicolaus and Catherin endured the hardships of supporting themselves and the families of their sons as best they could without knowing the fate of their boys. Catherin worked to teach the grandchildren because they recognized education was important. In the words of Nicolaus, “They need to learn to read and write and arithmetic so bad. If they live through all this.”

By early 1778, his old war injury, the stress and strain of the current war and the uncertainty about the fate of his family was wearing hard on Nicolaus. At age 62, “I am putting my Account Book up. It hurts to bad to write in it. Some of our neighbors have lost sons in the war. Catherin lost her parents in 1749 and June 1750 I got word from Germany that my parents had died in February that year with pneumonia and we lost our little daughter and all that hurt. But our sons that we have raised all these years, I truly do not know. We do not know if our sons are dead or alive. They could be somewhere wounded in the cold with no shelter. We do have a shelter and fire to keep us warm and dry and food to eat. It has been so cold with sleet and rain and snow. It is so hard on their wives and children not knowing if they will see them again or not. The only thing that we can do is pray that they will be sent home to us safe and not be wounded and mangled for life that the day will be soon.”

Thankfully, Nicolaus’ prayers for his family were answered. All six of his sons returned to their families, and his fourth son George, husband to my ancestor, Elizabeth Collings, took up the duties of writing in the Account Book, so the adventures of the Crist family along with my Collings family could continue to be passed down through the generations.

Stay tuned for more adventures!

Corn

Corn, it’s what we do.

Corn, it’s what we do in Indiana. We measure our summers by the height of the corn. With days of sufficient rain and hot sun, the corn flourishes and towers over us and the fields appear to be vast blankets of lush dark green. When the days began to fade quicker and earlier in the evening, the progress of the corn beginning to dry becomes our clock to measure how long until Fall and Winter will overtake us. When the August sun has sucked all the moisture from the corn and the September wind blows through the long rows, the rattle of the leaves sounds like the bones of every farmer who has tilled the land. Then comes the harvest. Machines as wide as a county road strip the fields, our horizons expand again and we feel suddenly exposed and naked.

Having grown up in rural Indiana, I’m as used to corn in the summer as I am the hot, wet blanket feel of a humid July day. I never tire of teasing my city friends who freaked out every time they visited me, driving county roads bordered by towering corn plants on every side and from every direction even at intersections. They especially felt overpowered at twilight, hurrying to get to my house before full darkness pressed down on them as the corn seemed to get closer and closer to the sides of the car!

I heard a farmer casually state that the custom in his family was to plant corn on one side of the family farm, soy beans on the other. When asked why they did that, the young man paused for a moment as if he had never considered the question, then said, “Well, I guess it was because Dad didn’t like being surrounded by corn all around the house all summer. That can be pretty claustrophobic.”

Corn is so common here, it’s hard to remember it’s not exclusive to Indiana. In fact, corn is vital in the agricultural system of America. Its grown in nearly every state and its importance to the economy is not only in the actual corn on the ground, but in the research, breeding and promotion of corn and corn products.

In 2013, Indiana corn went 36% to Feed & Distillers, 26% to Ethanol production, 11% to foreign exports, 10% held for future use, 10% to starch and food production and the rest…well, just to Other.

As far back as the mid 1700’s farmers had to struggle with not only the problems of actually growing crops, but also how to use and store them in a way to maximize the profits. Crops fed their families, either directly or by feeding their animals, or by the sale or trade value of the surplus. Think of corn as money and you begin to understand early American economy.

Think about the huge grain bins that dot the midwestern countryside today and you realize that storing quantities of corn or grain until it can be sold or used is a bit of a problem. Pioneer farmers had that same problem. Early on our forefathers discovered a good way to store and monetize corn was to convert it into something more 1) portable, 2) economically rewarding, and 3) fun. Look back at the list of uses for corn in 2013 and note that 36% goes for feed and distillers and realize that once a farmer feeds his livestock, making whiskey solved the problem of how to store a grain that molds when it gets wet and is the favorite food of rats and other varmints when stored in a barn.

Whiskey storage barrels

In early America, distilling corn and other surplus grain into whiskey also solved another problem…stored away in wooden barrels, it only got better as time went on, so it was like money in the bank, earning interest every day, a win/win for the farmer. Making whiskey was not bootlegging in those days, it was sound economic business.

At least until 1791, when the government, as governments are wont to do, decided taxes would be the best way to reduce the huge debt incurred by the Revolutionary War. The new government of the United States imposed a tax on whiskey. The first tax on a domestic product, this “whiskey tax” was hugely unpopular, especially in western Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey. Since whiskey was an important commodity in the barter system that was the foundation of the frontier economy, this tax was like taxing money and was most burdensome to the poorer farmers and businessmen who did not have access to ready cash for their transactions.

The Whiskey Rebellion is one of those footnotes to history we don’t study much, but it played an important role in the westward movement.

There was a violent reaction and many of the protesters simply did not comply with the law. In 1794, more than 500 armed men attacked the home of the tax inspector, General John Neville. The government responded by sending 13,000 militia into Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania to squash the rebellion. The rebels disbursed to their homes with no bloodshed, but the government, while proving they had the will to enforce their laws, still found this tax difficult to collect.

As a direct result of this “government outrage” many of those pioneer farmers and entrepreneurs decided to move on into wilderness beyond the reach of taxes and government and that, I believe is when my ancestors left western Pennsylvania and headed to what today is known as the Bourbon Capitol of the World, Nelson County, Kentucky. There seems to be an interesting correlation there!

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