Web Soil Survey

Web Soil Survey

For Cutler IL

Web Soil Survey

Web Soil Survey

Catch Up

I've uploaded pictures of Elizabeth Rippey Turner and James Turner to the ancestry.com tree as well as what I believe to be the wedding picture of John Newton Rippey and his wife, all courtesy of Bobbie Ernst and Kingston Rippey.

John Newton Rippey and Wife Ann

Courtesy of Kingston Rippey and Bobbie Ernst:

Sarah Harshaws Sons

Supposedly Andrew, David, Michael, and William were all in the US by the early 1830's. There's a record of Sarah buying land in Mercer county in 1833. In the 1840 census David and William show up. But their ages and family compositions don't match well. Sarah could be living with William and wife, with a young son and someone else. The census shows 2 males 20-30--William might fit, but none of his brothers do, unless the census taker was sloppy. David Harshaw appears to be in a childless marriage--2 people in the household.

Neither Michael nor Andrew show up.

Orson

Found another George Orson, added to the Orson family document.

Prairie Albion

This is a book published in 1962, basically a compilation of documents relating to the founding of Albion, IL.

As wikipedia has it:

In 1816 a wealthy Englishman named George Flower came to America. He and another Englishman, Morris Birkbeck met and agreed to explore the western country with the idea of starting a colony of their own countrymen. After a long voyage of prospection through Ohio, Indiana, and the Illinois Territory, they were so impressed with the beauty they saw in the countryside when they reached Boultinghouse Prairie, they knew they had found the site for which they were searching. They soon bought up all the land they could afford, and eventually brought over from England more than 200 settlers, £100,000 in capital, and a carefully thought out selection of good livestock and agricultural implements: the area became known as the English Settlement.

It seems two wealthy Englishmen, Birkbeck and Flowers, became interested in the U.S. and disgusted with post-Napoleon England. So they visited the U.S., selected southeastern IL as the place to settle, wrote books on the U.S. and the opportunities, bought land, brought over settlers, split irrevocably, perhaps over love of the same woman, founded separate towns, Albion IL and a failed town, and then died. Lots of people visited them and wrote their opinions of the effort, pro and con. The book is a selection of writings from Birkbeck and Flowers plus those who wrote about their efforts.

It presents an interesting picture of the Illinois prairie country, roughly on the same latitude as Perry County where the Harshaws settled but 20 years earlier and miles further east What struck me was the extensive use of liquor. It may explain Rev. Michael Harshaw's firm temperance views.

Multiple Harshaw Family Trees

I learned in the 1970's that sometimes computers knew the difference between upper case and lower case letters and sometimes they didn't. Obviously Ancestry.com's computers do. There are three sites with the same name, but different capitalizations:

HARSHAW Family Tree, whose owner is a TracyHewitt.
harshaw Family Tree, whose owner is TracyHewitt
Harshaw Family Tree, whose owner is bharshaw.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all relatives.

Mills in York County

Here's a blog from York and a post providing background on the mills operative at the time of the Orsons and Rippeys. Remember Jonas Lighty was a millwright.

Orsons

I've now published the writeup on what we know and can deduce about the Orsons who were Mary Orson's ancestors.

Marjorie's New Blog

Marjorie has been galvanized by the Presidential primaries into setting up a new blog.,
which I've now added to our list of blogs.

The URL is "letters to Kaitlin", who is her 18-year old red-headed granddaughter.

Orsons

Started doing a little writing on the Orsons last night. Trying to come up with a document to weave together the map data and the extracts of wills and other data Jean did.

Google Maps and USGS Topographic Maps

Having fun trying to work between Google Maps and USGS Topographic maps. It had been a while since I visited the USGS site and I was pleased to find that you can now do a free download of the detailed topographic maps and see them in PDF format (with an added plugin.) Start here.

Google maps has also been improved, with a "terrain" tab, as well as the old road map and satellite tabs.

I set up a York area map, trying to nail down the sites of interest to descendants of Mary Orson and John Rippey. (See below.) The basic map is Google, with the placemarks. But I identified the lower Chanceford church location from the Topo map, as well as the "Orson run" id. Ideally I"d have links from the placemarks to the documents Jean extracted for the various tracts of land. Maybe next year.



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