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.

 

The following is the Treasurer's report for the month of September:

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 [email protected], 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 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. I 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 other 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. I 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 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.

 

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