Month: August 2017

The Last of their Line: The Barnes Family

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Occasionally a family dies out.  Not in the sense that there are absolutely no connections to a particular person or an ancestral couple, but in the sense that they no longer have any direct living descendants.  So it is with Absalom and Bethiah Emiline (Robbins) Barnes.

Absalom Barnes was married to one of Nathaniel and Nancy Robbins’ daughters, Emiline, as she was called by the family, in 1848 in Decatur County, Indiana.  In 1850 the Barnes, with one son, were living next door to Emiline’s parents, her siblings, and her grandfather Absalom Robbins.  The Barnes were another large family in that county.

The young couple joined Nathaniel Robbins’ family as they left Indiana in the fall of 1851, now with two little boys, wintered over in Missouri, and then set out on the Oregon Trail in mid-April of 1852.  About a month out on the trail the Barnes’ wagon tipped over, reportedly only spilling some molasses and breaking some small things.  But sadly this would not be worst thing to happen during the trek, as both Absalom and Emiline died of cholera in Nebraska, along with two of Emiline’s sisters.

Hired man John Lewis recorded in his diary of the Emiline’s death on May 31st:  “…this morning found the ill no better & we remaind in camp Mrs Barns d6ied at half past nine…” and then Absalom’s on June 3rd:  “…we laid in camp on the account of the sick being worse A Barns died at 5oc in the afternoon & was beried at 6oc he was beried on a high gravel point on the bank of the little blew R. 5 m. west of the place whare his wife was…”  Both of the little boys would be taken in by their grandparents.

The oldest boy, Nathaniel Norval Barnes, was born in 1848, while the younger William Zachew Barnes (the middle name probably coming from his grandfather Zacheus Barnes), was born about 1851.  Both were born in Decatur County.  After arriving in Oregon, Nathaniel Robbins, the boys’ grandfather, went to the Clackamas county court and was named guardian of the two boys.  For the rest of the 1850s and into the 1860s they lived with their grandparents.  Again, sadly, William was not destined for a long life.  He died at age 16 in 1867.  In 1870, Nathaniel Barnes, the last of the Barnes family in Oregon, was living with his bachelor uncle John Dow Robbins, working on his farm in western Clackamas County, near the location of today’s Wilsonville, Oregon.

N.N. & Annie Barnes, with daughter Etta Viola

The following year he was married to Annie Mary Walker, and they had two children, Ettie Viola and Frederick Elijah Barnes.  Again an early death would strike the family.  Nathaniel Norval Barnes died at age 37 in 1886.  He joined his brother in the nearby Robert Bird Cemetery.  That left his widow Annie, and children Ettie and Fred.

Annie lived until age 56, dying in 1910.  Fred, the only son, never married.  He enlisted at Vancouver Barracks in 1917 in the 116th Aero Squadron, based at Kelly Field, Texas, and served overseas from December 1917 to May 1919.  The unit was re-designated the 637th in 1918 and was involved in the construction of the 1st Air Depot on the Western Front.  After returning from the war, Fred died of cancer in 1921, age 46.

The remaining member of the Barnes family, Etta Viola, married John Seth in 1926.  Fifty-six years old at the time of her marriage, she and John never had any children.  They weren’t married long either: she died in 1933 at age 61, having outlived all the rest of her biological family.  Her husband John only survived her by two years.

Etta Viola (Barnes) Seth

Frederick Elijah Barnes

And this ends the line of Absalom and Emiline (Robbins) Barnes.  We probably wouldn’t even have photos of them today except that Etta Viola corresponded with her second cousin Hallie May (Lee) Jaques, a granddaughter of Nancy (Robbins) Barstow, Emiline’s younger sister.  Hallie passed photos on to her daughter, genealogist Margaret Davis, who in turn passed copies of the photos, and photocopies of others, on to me.  This family line died out, but they are not forgotten.

(Jacob Robbins-William Robbins/Absalom Robbins-Nathaniel Robbins/Nancy Robbins-Bethiah Emiline (Robbins) Barnes)

 

How Many Absaloms?

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We sometimes find that the story that gets passed down from generation to generation is incorrect.  One of the stories that I have seen passed down in family notes was there were three generations of Absalom Robbins – who I will call: Sr., Jr. and III.  I have found evidence that this is incorrect and this post is a report of my research.

The Story

Family notes state that Absalom Robbins Sr. was born in 1765, was married to Mary Ogle in 1787, had eight children, with the second eldest being Absalom Robbins Jr.  Absalom Jr. was married to an unknown woman, had one child, Absalom III who was born in 1810.  Absalom Jr. later married an Elizabeth Anderson in 1823, and then he died early, perhaps around 1839.  His son, Absalom III, married Jemima Hanks, and moved to Breckinridge County, Kentucky, where his grandfather Absalom Sr. joined him in the 1850s.

Three Absaloms in Oral History

The Records

We know that Absalom Robbins Sr. was born on 11 September 1765 as he stated so in his sister-in-law Bethiah’s application for a pension for William’s service in the American Revolution.  We know from the marriage record that he was married to Mary Ogle on 13 March 1787 in Franklin County, Virginia.  In letter from Ogle researcher William McIntosh, the year of 1824 is given for the death of Mary.  There is no other record to confirm this date.  Absalom was married to Susannah Huffman on 20 August 1842 in Hendricks County, Indiana.  According to the 1860 Mortality Schedule of the U.S. Census, Absalom died at “age 100” in June 1859 in Breckinridge County, Kentucky.

Absalom Robbins III was born, according to census records, in approximately 1810.  He was married to Jemima Hanks on 28 December 1831 in Decatur County, Indiana.  He died sometime between 1885 and 1893 in Breckinridge County, Kentucky, where he and his family moved before 1840.

The story of an Absalom Jr. (between Sr. and III) indicate he was born about 1789, which would have made him 21 years of age in 1810, when his single child was born.  As such, you would expect to find a marriage record by or before 1810, and you would expect to find him as an adult in the tax records of Kentucky where the rest of the Robbins family were living.  We do not.

Tax records list one Absalom Robbins living in Shelby County, Kentucky, from 1800 to 1805.  He then appears in Henry County, Kentucky, beginning in 1806 and continuing until 1829.  There are a couple of years in the 1820s where there is more than one Absalom Robbins listed in the tax records, which could support an intermediate Absalom.  There are two listings for Absaloms in 1825 and 1828, and in 1826 and 1827 there is a listing for both a Sr. and a Jr.  Absalom Robbins III was only 16 and 17 in the latter two listings, so theoretically was not to be listed.  However, there are no earlier or later tax listings for another Absalom.  Absalom Jr. should have shown up by 1810 and continued on, either to his death, or his later appearance in census records, as his father and the rest of his siblings do.  Only one Absalom appears in the 1820 Kentucky census and that is Senior.  No Absaloms appear in Indiana or Illinois, where other family members were living or had lived, either.

We have a marriage record in 1823 in Shelby County, Kentucky, for an Absalom Robbins to an Elizabeth Anderson.  If the year of 1824 for Mary (Ogle) Robbins’ death is correct, then this could not be for Absalom Sr.  But if the undocumented year of death is wrong, could Absalom have remarried after Mary’s death?

The marriage record and the very few tax listings for two Absaloms could still provide doubt as to how many Absalom’s there were.  But we have further information, found in an unlikely source.

Affidavit (portion) by Jemima (Hanks) Robbins in support of the mother’s pension application of Elizabeth Robbins

In 1862 a young man named Thomas F. Robbins died while serving in the Union Army during the Civil War.  His parents were Hardin and Elizabeth Robbins, and his mother later applied for a pension based on his service.  Elizabeth provided a number of affidavits from relatives stating the relationship of Thomas to her and she and her husbands dependence on him for support.  One of the affidavits was written by Jemima (Hanks) Robbins.  Jemima states that Hardin Robbins, Elizabeth’s husband, was the son of Micajah Robbins, the brother of Jemima’s husband Absalom.  We know that Micajah Robbins was the eldest son of Absalom Robbins Sr. and this statement indicates that Jemima’s Absalom was not Seniors’ grandson, but his youngest son.  This statement negates the existence of an intervening Absalom.

Conclusion

Absalom and Mary (Ogle) Robbins were the parents of eight children, the youngest son being Absalom Robbins, born about 1810.  There was no older Absalom born about 1789 and having a son Absalom III born in 1810.  The tax records suggest the presence of another Absalom but that could have been two listings for the same person, a totally different Absalom (though no other Absalom Robbins appears in any records at that time in Kentucky or Indiana), or a listing for the young Absalom, named before he reached the age of maturity.

Two Absaloms Documented

As for the two years a Senior and a Junior are listed, I believe the young Absalom was recorded.  We don’t know when Mary (Ogle) Robbins died but I suspect it was before 1824 and that the 1823 marriage of an Absalom to Elizabeth Anderson is a second marriage for Absalom Senior.  He has not been found in the 1830 census so we cannot check for any older females counted in his household.

The surprise affidavit in a Civil War pension application, in the absence of any contradictory evidence, concludes that there were only two Absalom Robbins, Senior and Junior.

(Jacob Robbins-Absalom Robbins Sr.-Absalom Robbins Jr.)

Melvin Robbins (1924-2017)

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In 1978, I first visited Greensburg, Indiana, as a teenager with my parents on a family vacation, that was only partly spent on genealogy.  We did some research at the Decatur County Courthouse, visited the local history room of the Greensburg Public Library, and visited the Mount Pleasant Cemetery south of town to find the graves of ancestors William and Bethiah Robbins.

Finding the cemetery was a chore – we ended up asking people on the country roads and once we saw a low stone wall on a hillside and couldn’t get a rise out of the then-owners of the property, parked by the road and climbed up the hill, oblivious to copperheads or whatever else lived there, to finally arrive at the cemetery.

Soon after we encountered someone who told us that Melvin Robbins of Greensburg helped clean up and take care of the cemetery.  We pulled into the driveway of the Robbins home in Greensburg and were immediately invited in by Melvin and his wife Rosalie who began sharing Robbins family history and telling us all about Decatur County.  Thus began a long friendship with distant cousins half way across the country.  Melvin was my mother’s fourth cousin.

Donna and Merrill Mittge with Melvin and Rosalie Robbins (1978)

I mention this because Melvin Robbins passed away last week at the age of 92 (he had lost Rosalie in 2015).  You can find Melvin’s obituary on the Porter-Oliger-Pearson Funeral Home website:

http://www.popfuneralhome.com/obituary/melvin-robbins.

Although our correspondence had lessened in the last years, I and my family have never forgotten the wonderful welcome we received from Melvin and Rosalie.  Years later we still recall another visit when Melvin, accompanied by local historian and cousin Dale Myers, led us on a cemetery tour around Decatur County.  We will miss him greatly!

(Jacob Robbins-Absalom Robbins-George Robbins-Job Robbins-George W. Robbins-Daniel Van Dola Robbins-Melvin Robbins), also,
(Jacob Robbins-Jacob Robbins-Eliza Catherine Robbins-George W. Robbins-Daniel Van Dola Robbins-Melvin Robbins)

Blue Bucket Gold

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The last two posts have discussed the first Robbins family to emigrate to Oregon (John and Dosha (Robbins) Herren and their children) and their barely-survivable “shortcut” across Oregon on the Meek Cutoff.  This post will focus more specifically on an incident which occurred during that ill-fated trip: the discovery of gold.

There are several versions of the story.  One of the most complete, though not error-free, accounts was written by Willard Hall Herren, son of William Jackson Herren, the eldest son of John and Dosha.  In 1922 W. H. Herren wrote an article which appeared in The Oregonian (Portland, Ore.).  Here are some excerpts:

Having noticed the several articles in The Oregonian regarding the Blue Bucket mine, some of my friends that know that I could give an account of its discovery have urged me to do so.  Both my father, W. J. Herren, and my mother were members of the company that Steve Meek undertook to pilot from the crossing of Snake river to the Dalles in 1845.

W. H. Herren’s account, The Oregonian (1922)

Several of the young men that had saddle horses scouted the country over and finally found a ridge that led to the summit of the mountain.  They concluded that if they could once get their outfits up on to this ridge they could make it over the mountains.  By hitching ten and sometimes 12 yoke of oxen at a time to a wagon they finally succeeded in getting them up onto the divide.  There was no water on the divide so they had to make a dry camp.  The captain of the company told all of the young people who had saddle horses to take buckets and go hunt for water.  My father, who was then 23 years old, and his sister, who afterwards became the wife of William Wallace, took their old blue wooden buckets and started out to find water.  They finally found a dry creek bed which they followed until they found a place where a little water was seeping through the gravel and while my father was digging for water his sister saw something bright and picked it up.

The account given me states that they found two good sized lumps or nuggets, and that there were many fine particles in the gravel.  He was quite sure that it was gold at the time, and when he arrived at camp he showed it to some of the older men, who told him that if it was gold it would be malleable.  So one of them took a hammer and hammered both pieces out flat into a sauce-shaped disc.  He had a tool chest with a secret drawer in it.  He hid the gold in the chest, therefore no one but the members of the family ever knew what became of it.  I well remember the old tool chest and its secret drawer.

It is not known for sure where this incident took place, but many researchers, including the research team gathered for The Meek Cutoff by Brooks Ragan, one of the books I mentioned in the last post, believe it occurred in the Crooked River country, south and slightly east of today’s Prineville Reservoir.

There are other, different, stories that have come down in the family.  One version holds that William J. Herren and his cousin Dan Herren picked up two yellow rocks while out tracking some lost cattle.  Taking the rocks back to camp they showed them only to their family.  They were not sure whether it was gold or not, but to be safe they agreed to keep the find a secret.  John S. Clark, nephew of William J. Herren, later said that the family was more interested in their lost cattle than the nugget.  Clark didn’t believe that the emigrants knew what gold looked like anyway.

Another version has Dan Herren discovering a large nugget of gold by himself in some muddy tracks made by cattle going to water.  Still another story is recounted by Lydia (Wallace) Steckel, daughter of William and Susan (Herren) Wallace.  She told how family members found an old blue water bucket, made of cedar.  Near the bucket Susan Wallace picked up some heavy yellow metal in the bed of a stream.  She reportedly said, “If this is gold, I can fill the old blue bucket!”

Willard Hall Herren

Who knows which is the true story, but the consistency of accounts indicate gold, in some condition, was found.  I tend toward the W. H. Herren story, as his is the most complete and he heard it from his father.  He went on to describe later attempts to find the gold:

My people have always hoped that some members of the family would eventually find the place where the gold was discovered, and many years ago my father gave me an old leather-bound memorandum book, with maps and diagrams showing the water courses and giving a general description of the country. I once did some prospecting in the immediate vicinity of where the gold was found.  I found some fine gold, but it was late in the fall and the ground froze so that I had to give it up.  I intended to go back some time and try it over, but have never done so.  Many parties have hunted for the place.  In either 1855 or 1856 one of my uncles in company with four others started for the place, but at that time the Indians were bad, and they got away with the horses and two of the party were killed by the Indians.

A final account describes a search by M. B. Rees, kin to the Herren family, which appeared in the Blue Mountain Eagle (John Day, Ore.), which may explain the find:  “The Rees party followed the route so accurately that even the marks of the trail made by the immigrant wagons were visible.  They came to the camping place where the nugget had been picked up.  Mr. Rees was fairly well acquainted with mining and when the place was reached, he knew that the nugget which had been found was a mere chance discovery and that it had evidently been dropped there by some other agency than that through the working forces of nature.  This journey convinced Mr. Rees that the Blue Bucket Mines were destined to remain through the years as they had in the past – only a myth.”

Though the gold was never found again, the lure of a “lost gold mine” played no small part in the exploration and eventual settlement of eastern Oregon after the western parts of the state were filled with settlers.  Many of our family members went east to search for the gold and ended up mining, farming, or ranching, spreading our family throughout the inland Northwest.

(Jacob Robbins-William Robbins-Theodoshia (Robbins) Herren-William Jackson Herren-Willard Hall Herren)