52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Thomas and Roxcellana (Smith) Johnson: A Study in Westward Movement

Welcome to the second post in the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks series! For this week I chose the Thomas and Roxcellana (Smith) Johnson family, which is a perfect study in pre-Civil War westward movement. Unlike the romantic pioneer image of the family packing up a Conestoga wagon, and leaving everything behind, the Johnson family experienced a far more typical progression westward, that of a slow progression in small family groups. 

    

    The Johnson family largely lived in Vernon, a town in Windham County, Vermont. The history of Vernon is a complex one, with pieces of the town being acquired through land grants from Massachusetts and New Hampshire. In fact, the name of the town, Vernon, wasn't formally established until 1802; before 1802, the town was called Hinsdale, located directly across the Connecticut River from Hinsdale, NH. Early on, the town itself was the site of Fort Bridgeman, very much located in Native American territory, and the site of a massacre on the 17 Jun 1755, when Native Americans ambushed 12 settlers who had been hoeing fields. While several were immediately killed, a further disaster awaited; the families of the men who had been ambushed, anxious to find out the fate of their men, threw open the gates of the fort while the Natives were still present. Three families were captured in their entirety, the women and children taken to Canada by way of Lake Champlain and given into French custody, and the fort ransacked and burned. 

    Thomas may have been the son of a Thomas Johnson, given that he seems to have been a second, but the only evidence that he was using the suffix is from Vermont Vital Records, which was transcribed from the original records in the 1930's as part of the Works Progress Administration, and he doesn't seem to have used it anywhere else. A Vermont record lists a Thomas Johnson, son of Isaac Johnson and Dinah LNU born in Vernon, Vermont on 9 Aug 1785, which is more than likely to the same man as the husband of Roxcellana, but not confirmed. 

    

    Roxcellana has been far harder to track down. There are no birth records for her in Vermont, but that's not surprising as Vernon sits close to the borders of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, and it is as equally likely that she may have been born in either of those two states as Vermont. Nor is her first name as unusual as it might first appear; I found the name being used several times in New England by at least six or seven different women in the late 1700's and early 1800's. All we know about her is that her maiden name was Smith, and she was probably born in the area. There is some speculation that her father may have been a Massachusetts man named Rufus Chandler Smith, and this idea has some merit; one of her sons was named Darius Chandler, indicating a possible connection to the family, but it's far from proof. 

 

    Thomas and Roxcellana married on the 11th of Dec 1807 in Vernon. The officiant, Cyrus Washburn, was a prominent medical doctor and justice of the peace in Vernon; he performed about 853 marriages in Vernon and served as town clerk for 28 years. He seems to have been a quirky personage, renowned for a long and unusual marriage service. 

After their marriage, the Johnsons settled down in Vernon, and farmed. How successful the farm was is unknown, but by 1830 the family had grown to epic proportions- 11 children had been born to Roxcellana and Thomas:

1. Ferona A., born 1809

2. Lucena Serizia, born 1811

3. Oren Bernard, born 1814

4. Barney Levitt, born 1815

5. Willard Martin, born 1818

6. Darius Chandler, born 1820

7. Andrew Barnet, born 1822

8. Amanda Malvina, born 1823

9. Isaac LeRoy, born 1825

10. Althea Arvilla, born 1827

11. Julia Ann "Maria", born 1829

Between 1830 and 1835 there would be two more sons born in Vernon:

12. Rollin Ransom, born 1833 

13. Ira Thomas Younglove, born 1835

    Interestingly, in the 1810 US Federal Census, the family is listed as having two boys under the age of 10 living with them, but no girls in the same age range. This could indicate that the family had sons who died early. More puzzling is the omission of the girl; Ferona should have been listed with the family, having been born in 1809. One of the boys might actually be Ferona, listed as male by census error. Furthermore, a female aged 45 or older is enumerated in the household. A mother to Thomas or Roxilana, perhaps?

    By the late 1840's the older children in the family had begun to marry and move out on their own, and it was once the children became young adults that they began to migrate westward. The first seems to have been Oren. Oren Bernard and his family were in Wisconsin by 1846, evidenced by the birthplaces of their children. We have some idea why Oren might have immigrated west; a notice in the 26 Jan 1855 Vermont Patriot and State Gazette indicates that Oren had applied for debt relief, and was insolvent:

Leaving for greener pastures seems to have been what motivated Oren to move his family to Wisconsin: he was certainly in financial trouble, and needed some heavy duty debt relief. The rest of the family followed in slow progression. In the 1850 Census, Oren, Althea, and Amanda and their families were in Wisconsin.

    At the about the same time as Oren, his siblings Lucena, Julia, and Ira, made a move west themselves, but instead of Wisconsin, they went not just west but south as well. Lucena had graduated from the Greenville High School For Young Ladies in 1837, and in September of 1847 married Jared Marcy Finch, in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Their son, Edwin Wilson Finch, was born in Pennsylvania in 1848, but by 1849, the little family was in Mobile, Alabama, where Jared died on Christmas Eve 1849. The Federal Mortality Schedule on the 1850 Census, gives his cause of death as consumption. Julia and Ira went to Mobile themselves to be with Lucena and her son, while Lucena took a job as a teacher. Julia and Ira stayed in Mobile for ten years with Lucena, and were joined by Ferona's eldest son, also called Ira. Ira Johnson began working as an agent for a cotton shipping company in Mobile, although by 1861, they had seen the writing on the wall. Ira severed his connection with the shipping company, and with Lucena, Edwin, Julia, and the other Ira, moved to Wisconsin to be with the family.

     By that time, Julia had married William Summers Yuille, scion of a wealthy Scottish immigrant family who owned a large commercial bakery in Mobile, but who had chosen to become a physician. Julia and William, had one son, George, born in Wisconsin. After the Civil War, the family returned to Mobile, where William died in 1879. Julia moved to Chicago later in her life and is buried there.

    Barney died in February of 1847, ten days after the birth of his son, also called Barney Levitt, in Vermont. However, it looks very much like he too was preparing to move somewhere, as he advertised his farm for sale in the Vermont Phoenix in March of 1846:

  

    Thomas and Willard, who had married a daughter of another locally prominent family, Mary Louisa Streeter, were in Vernon in the 1850 Census, along with Ira, who seems to have been enumerated twice on the census- once in Vermont and once in Mobile, Alabama. Willard was by far the longest hold out, only moving to Wisconsin in the early 1860's after the death of his first wife and his remarriage; his son Marshall was born in Wisconsin in early 1864. Roxcellana, Rollin, Andrew, and Darius Chandler, frequently called DC, are unaccounted for in 1850.

    DC and his brother Rollin caught the westward bug, and after stops in Wisconsin, both brothers continued west. DC took up a homestead claim in Nebraska in 1880, but finally stopped in Eugene, Oregon where he died in 1893 and is buried. Rollin seemingly settled for a very long time in Wisconsin, but then abruptly moved to Washington, and died there sometime before 1908, when his wife was listed as his widow in the city directory of Gray's Harbor.

    The Johnson family, much like other westward bound families, did not conform to the romantic vision of prairie-schooner-packed-with-the-whole family-and-all their-worldly-goods pioneers, we're familiar with. Instead, what we get with the Johnson family is more typical: a slow, westward progression, with family members trailing along as they could. In 1850, Wisconsin was still very much a frontier. Beaver Dam, the town where most of the Johnson family migrated, had only been founded by white settlers in 1841, and there was still very much a Native American presence in the area. Furthermore, according to one account, there were only about 120 settlers in 1846, and the Johnson siblings and their families would have been among them.