Madison
County Genealogical Society
Minutes of the Meeting – October 12, 2017
The October 2017 meeting of the Madison
County Genealogical Society was held at the Edwardsville Public Library on
Thursday, October 12, at 7:00 pm.
President, Robert Ridenour, called the meeting to order.
GIFT
MEMBERSHIPS AVAILABLE
Do you have a family member that is
interested in (or even obsessed with) genealogy? A membership in the Madison
County Genealogical Society would be a very thoughtful gift. A gift card will
be sent to the recipient of any gift membership.
The following memberships are available:
Individual/Family Annual Membership $25.00
Patron Annual Membership $35.00
Life Membership $300.00
Contact our Secretary, Petie Hunter, at petie8135@att.net,
about a gift membership.
September Meeting
On October 12, 2017, Anne Barnett Gilham of Choteau
Township, an early settler of the Riverbend, visited us and shared hr life
story. [Anne
Barnett Gilham was portrayed by Joanne Lindhardt.]
It is such a joy to be here. You cannot believe how
wonderful it has been. I have become the recipient of a land bounty. Through
the gracious and wonderful work of the Honorable Benjamin Stephenson, I have
been awarded 160 acres in sections 15 and 16 of Choteau Township, Madison
County, Illinois Territory. But let me tell you how I qualified for such a
thing and also tell you how my husband and I tried to obtain compensation for
my trials and tribulations, but were not successful, but the Honorable Mister
Stephenson was successful.
I was born in Calf Pasture, Virginia, in 1757. I am
the daughter of Ann Clemons and Samuel Barnett. We were great friends with the
Barnetts, the Gilhams, and the Campbells. When I was approximately seven years
old, these three families decided to move to North Carolina. They were farmers
and in North Carolina, they stood a chance of producing a crop other than
tobacco from which they could make a living. In 1775, James Gilham and I
married. We were, at that point, in South Carolina, but we were married in
North Carolina and we were living in South Carolina because the state had
divided.
The War for Independence began and husbands, fathers,
brothers, and nephews all fought in that war. In the Gilham family, my
father-in-law, seven sons, four sons-in-law, and two nephews fought in the war
for independence. James’ last enlistment ended in 1783, and, at that point, we
had three children – Samuel, Isaac, and Mary. We decided that, rather than stay
in South Carolina, we would follow the trail established by Daniel Boone and go
west. We went along with some others of the Barnett family; and we bought land
and established a home on the Green River in Christian County, Kentuck. We made
a homestead, started to farm, and built a boat and ferried people both across
the River Green and north to the Ohio River.
It was a hard life; we knew that. We had grown up in a
situation where we knew we had to take care of ourselves and knew how to do it.
We also knew we were in Indian hunting territory, but we put our faith in the
Lord and decided we would be okay. One of the first things I did when we
arrived there was to establish a medical garden. I had some plants I brought
with me from South Carolina. I had others I found in the woods around where we
were living, and it soon became apparent to people in the neighborhood, that I
knew a little bit about doctoring and would find myself helping with their sick
loved ones.
By 1790, I had had another baby; Samuel was now 12,
Isaac was 10, Mary was 7, and Jacob was 4. James and Isaac had gone into the
cornfield to plow and to pull weeds and to cultivate. They were a little ways
away from our home and there was a skirt of trees between them and us. But,
they could hear if I had sounded an alarm. The other three children and I had
been in and out of our home on numerous occasions that day getting ready for
the noontime meal. Because we did not sense anything being wrong or any
problems, we had neglected to lock the door. All of a sudden, a strange noise
made us look around, and we were surrounded by a Kickapoo hunting party.
They quickly grabbed me, gagged me so that I could not
sound an alarm to James. They rounded up the children, put us all outside. They
went back into our home, pulled the ticks off of the beds, and emptied all the
feathers everywhere. They filled the ticks with clothes and some material
possessions, but no food. They started marching us through the woods. One scout
went well ahead of us to make sure that we were not going to run into anyone,
and one was behind us to make sure that no one was following, and to cover our
tracks.
The children were upset, of course, and they were
barefoot, their feet soon became very sore because they were walking on briars
and sticks. Even though they were accustomed to being barefoot, this was
different because we were in a very thick heavy part of the woods. I tore my
clothes into strips and made bandages to tie up their feet. The Indians had a
little bit of jerked venison with them and gave that to the children to eat,
but there was nothing for the adults. The Indians were used to that, but I was
not. The fact that I was also pregnant again, made it doubly hard for me. But
we survived, and we kept on going.
After a period of time, they stopped and sent two of
their best hunters out to find something for us to eat. They were gone for a
considerable amount of time and, when they came back, they had the scrawniest,
skinniest looking raccoon you have ever seen in your life. They singed off the
fur, cleaned out the intestines, cut it up totally – bones, entrails, skin –
everything, put it in a pot, and stewed it. We ate it with bone spoons and
forked sticks. It was wonderful; I never appreciated anything quite so much as
that scrawny raccoon.
We continued on at a fairly fast pace, until we came
to the Ohio River. I couldn’t imagine how we were going to get across, but the
Indians knew how to do it. They made a raft of dry logs that they found along the
edge of the river. Under the cover of darkness, which scared me to death, we
crossed the Ohio River. I was sure that one of my kids was going to end up in
that river. We made it across.
Once we got to the other side, we were in the Indiana
Territory; and the Indians were very jubilant because they considered it quite
feat to have kidnapped a white woman and three children. We continued on
through the Indiana Territory at a slower pace because, at this point, the
Indians realized they were not being followed. They slowed down and went
hunting more often and we had plenty to eat from that point on. They went
though the Indiana Territory to Terre Haute and we crossed the Wabash River
into the Illinois Territory. We continued on until we came to the Salt River in
what is now Logan County and their village.
Once we reached their village, there was a great
celebration because, as I said, kidnapping a white woman and three children
helped to provide them with some of the people they had lost over the years in battle.
It also meant they had some profitable people to be ransomed.
The Indians divided us up. They put Samuel with a
family and Mary with a family. Jacob, at 4, was placed with a group of boys
near his age – three and four years old – which were being taught the Indian
ways by an elder. I was put with the medicine man as his assistant. I have no
idea whether they knew that I knew anything about medicine or not, or that was
just where they had a need – so that’s where I wound up.
When James and Isaac came back to our cabin for the
noonday meal and found it in great disarray, James knew immediately what had
happened. What he didn’t know was whether we had been kidnapped or whether we
were dead. Isaac began hollering for his mother, but James had to get him very
quiet because he didn’t know whether the Indians were anywhere near wanting to
kill them if they had already killed us or whether they weren’t.
Once he found some footprints, he knew we had been
kidnapped. He proceeded to begin to follow that trail as far as he could. By
dark, he realized that Isaac was not going to be able to continue with him. He
went back home and went to some of the neighbors who were also relatives and
left Isaac with them.
The next morning, he started out again and he tracked
as far as he could go. He eventually lost the track; but he continued, he did
not give up hope. Over the next four years, he did everything he could. He went
into the Indiana Territory; he wound up in the Illinois Territory, looking for
us.
Of course, in between times when he went to look, it
would be a time when he did not need to be farming and he could have the time
to go the distances that he did. He came into the Illinois Territory and went
to the town of Cahokia. He met a Frenchman by the name of Atchison. Atchison
assured him that there was a white woman and three children at the Kickapoo
village; and he had made arrangements for ransom.
So James and two other Frenchmen, one as an
interpreter and one as a guide, went to the Kickapoo village. Sure enough,
there we were. Now you remember that I told you I was pregnant at the time that
the Indians captured me? Well, I had that baby and that baby was given to a
childless woman. It was brought to me twice to be taken care of because it was
ill. Other than that, that was the only contact I had with that child.
So when James got to the Kickapoo village and knew
that it was truly us, it was just the three children and myself that were
ransomed. The other child stayed with the Kickapoos. The ransom was $3,000, but
with the interest that had to be paid, it amounted to $8,000. James managed; we
got ransomed. We paid for a long time to get that paid off, but we did get
ransomed. We borrowed from family, sold whatever we could, selling land –
whatever we could do.
Jacob, who had been 4 at the time, did not remember
his father at all. He did not speak English. He was totally indoctrinated into
the Kickapoo culture, and he did not want to leave. He knew that the baby, who
was now a child of 4, was his sibling and he wanted to stay there with that
child. It took several trips back and forth before we finally convinced Jacob
to come with us. But he finally did come and we were all reunited with Isaac
back on the Green River.
James had been very enamored with what he found in the
way of land, timber, water, and the quality of the soil in the Illinois
Territory, and he wanted to come back to that. So we left Kentuck; we took our
boat up to the Ohio River. We travelled down the Ohio River to the Mississippi
and made our way to Fort Kaskaskia. From Fort Kaskaskia, we went on to the
small town of Harrisonville. In Harrisonville, we purchased land, we built a
home, we started a farm, and we started a ferry business. We lived there for
two years. I had another child who was born while we were living there.
James wanted to go on farther north. So we packed up
again and we went approximately thirty mile north of Cahokia and started there
again. James had written to his four brothers and the children of two brothers
who had died in the War for Independence. They all decided to come and join us
in the area where we were living. So, by the early 1800s, there were five
Gilham families plus the children of two other Gilhams living in the area. The
area where we were living was part of St. Clair County. James was very active
in the local politics. James felt that we needed government closer to home.
Madison County was something he worked to have happen.
James died in 1811. Here it is 1815 and I am the proud
owner of 160 acres in Sections 15 and 16 of Chouteau Township, Madison County,
Illinois Territory. Oh the joy of it!
The portrayer of Anne Barnett Gilham, Joanne Lenhardt,
was dressed as a farmwoman of the 1800s. Joanne is a retired teacher and a
member of the DAR. When the Lewis & Clark State Historic site opened, she
had been a volunteer for 10 years at the Discovery Room at the St. Louis
Science Center. She decided to come back to Illinois and volunteered at the
Lewis & Clark Historic site. She has since retired from there, but
volunteers at the Great Rivers Center. She added the comments below after her
presentation:
In 1824, at the Illinois Constitutional Convention,
500 Gilhams voted as a bloc against slavery. It was said you could go from St. Louis
to Chicago and stay with a Gilham every night.
James and Anne’s graves were lost – they were buried
on their own land. The same is true of William, Isaac, and Thomas, James’
brothers who came here. John, however, gave part of the land that he claimed as
his, after they could make land claims, to create Wanda Cemetery. John, his
wife, and other family members are buried in the southern end of Wanda
Cemetery. William wound up in Jersey County; and he is buried on his ground and
his grave has been marked. If you go to Wanda Cemetery, you will find cenotaphs
placed there by the DAR to honor the other brothers because they were
Revolutionary War veterans.
The land that Anne got was at the north end of Long
Lake, and the best that I can figure, on today’s maps, James and Anne’s farm
was between Illinois Routes 3 and 203 and Interstate 270, near the current town
of Mitchell.
I have been asked where I got my information and why. As
to where, here in the Edwardsville Public Library and the Madison County Historical
Library. There was a minister by the name of Father John Clark who came with
them down the Ohio River to help man the boat as they came from Kentucky. He
went on across the Mississippi to St. Genevieve, while the Gilhams came on
north. Father Clark has a book of his remembrances that someone ghost wrote for
him.
Nothing that I have read nor any of the research that
I have done indicated the sex of the child who did not come back. My own
personal opinion is that it was a female. I say this because the Kickapoos
continued to come into this area to hunt after the Gilhams established their
home here. Jacob would somehow know when they were going to be here. He would
go and visit with the hunting party and bring back news of that child to his
parents. If the child had been a male, he could very well have been with that
hunting party. There was never any reference that the younger child was seen by
Jacob, only that he had knowledge of that child.
This presentation was very well received and
provoked many questions and comments.