Reconstructing the life of my third great-grandfather, Jacob Caseman, has required piecing together small and scattered records. Unlike his father, Frederick, or his son George, whose lives are well documented, Jacob and his wife, Lydia, left only brief traces in census entries, land documents, and local histories. This narrative brings together what can be known — and reasonably inferred — about their movements, family relationships, and circumstances as they traveled from Pennsylvania to Ohio and finally to Kentucky.
Third great-grandfather, Jacob Caseman (c.1793-1849), and his wife, Lydia, (1800-after 1870) have been the most elusive of all the Caseman generations. Frederick, Jacob’s father, left a substantial paper trail as a larger-than-life German immigrant whose presence is documented even in the late 1790s and early 1800s, George served in the Civil War and was a land owner, Mary Jane lived in an era when more records survived.
Then, there is Jacob, the hardest Caseman of all to trace. He has no birth, death, or marriage record, nor does Lydia, his wife. They appear in no town histories, newspapers, or cemeteries. Jacob surfaces only in the 1830 and 1840 censuses and Pendleton land records just before his death in the year before 1850, the first census year that finally listed all household members by name.
What we know about Jacob
Jacob was the eldest child of Frederick Kaseman and Elizabeth Huntzinger, both German immigrants and former indentured servants who settled in Maxatawny, Pennsylvania. Frederick spent his indenture years there and still appears in Maxatawny in 1800, so Jacob was almost certainly born in that township. In the 1800 census he is the only male child in the household, listed as under ten years old. Many online trees reasonably estimate his birth as 1793.
By the 1810 census, the family had moved to Windsor Township not far from Maxatawny, and no child over age ten appears in Frederick’s household. What happened to teenage Jacob? Did he remain in Maxatawny to work for another farmer? Did he strike out on his own? Suffer a falling-out with his father?Frederick was a prosperous farmer with over 50 acres and could have used a strong teenage son’s labor.
Jacob is missing again in 1820, after the family moved to Shamokin, Pennsylvania. By then he would have been twenty-seven. No direct record places him anywhere between the 1800 and 1830 census.
2nd GGF’s George Caseman’s (1828-1913) Civil War enlistment gave a key clue when it named George’s birthplace as Venango County, Pennsylvania. That detail led to the discovery of a single Caseman household in the county around the time of George’s birth: John J. Caseman in French Creek Township.
Further confirmation came from finding 50 year-old Lydia living in George’s Pendleton County household in 1850 and when Jacob and Lydia Caseman were linked together in Pendleton County, Kentucky land records.
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| Jacob's migration Maxatawny to French Creek, Pennsylvania |
French Creek, Venango County
For thousands of years, indigenous people cut and burned large swaths of land through the valley of French Creek, creating grasslands to sustain wildlife for hunting. The Venango Path, running from Presque Isle on Lake Erie to the headwaters of French Creek, served as a 15-mile portage for French military and trade expeditions from Canada to the Ohio River and Mississippi territories.
In December 1753, 21-year-old Major George Washington passed through the area on a reconnaissance mission. Several months later, in April 1754, the French built Fort Machault on the site of present-day Franklin in Venango County, located in northwestern Pennsylvania at the confluence of Allegheny and Ohio Rivers and French Creek. After the French abandoned and burned the fort and retreated into Canada to defend besieged Fort Niagara in 1759, the British built Fort Venango on the same site, later named Franklin after the Revolution.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, European settlement expanded rapidly, displacing the Algonquin forced out of eastern Pennsylvania, and the Seneca who lived in the region for two thousand years. While Franklin grew along the Allegheny River, upstream French Creek Township, commissioned in 1806, remained small, rural, and sparsely populated. With the creek for fishing, grasslands for hunting, cleared meadows for food growing, and a nearby town for trading, even poor families could subsist with minimal resources.
A member of the Venango County Historical Society graciously searched their records and, aside from the 1830 census, uncovered only an 1831 tax list showing Jacob owned no land and had a total valuation based solely on one cow. In short, the family was poor.
Jacob likely arrived in Venango County sometime between 1810 (age 17) and 1828 (age 35), the year George was born. Whether he came directly from Maxatawny or lived elsewhere in between remains unknown. At some point during that time period, he married Lydia.
In the 1830 census, the household includes:
- one male and one female aged 30–40 (Jacob and Lydia),
- one female age 5–10 (Lydia Ann),
- two males under 5 (George and Jacob Jr.).
So what was going on with Jacob? He left the family farm when his father likely needed him most. As the eldest son, he could have expected to inherit at least part of the family farm. He adopted the name John despite already having a younger brother named John, altered the spelling of his family name to Caseman, and moved more than 200 miles from Shamokin - eventually ending up in Ohio and Kentucky. Meanwhile, his siblings all remained around the family area of Shamokin, kept the Kaseman surname spelling, and prospered in farming and various trades. Jacob, in contrast, was still poor well into his forties.
Who is Lydia?
Tracking daughter Lydia Ann through the later censuses places her birth around 1821 in Pennsylvania, possibly French Creek; Jacob would have been twenty-eight and Lydia twenty, suggesting a marriage around 1820-1821, likely somewhere in Pennsylvania.
By the time George was born in 1828, the couple was definitely in Venango County. Two more children were born in French Creek - Jacob Jr. (1831) and MaryAnne (1834).
Some online trees identify Lydia’s surname as Hayes, daughter of Isaac Hayes and Sara Walton, but no evidence supports this. The Hayes family lived in Chester County, a far distance from the Kaseman home in Berks County, had no daughter named Lydia, and were Quakers. A Samuel Hays did serve as sheriff of French Creek, but none of his children were named Lydia. Until other documentation emerges, Lydia’s parentage remains unknown.
Next Move, Hamilton County, Ohio
By 1840, the family had moved to Anderson Township, Hamilton County, Ohio, east of Cincinnati along the Ohio River. Their last child, Foster, was born there in 1842. Jacob never appears as a landowner in either Venango or Hamilton County.
The 1840 census shows eight people in the household, - Jacob, Lydia, their four children born in Pennsylvania, plus a young woman (20-29) and a boy (5-9). Their identities are unknown, though they may have been related to Lydia.
And again . . . to Pendleton County, Kentucky
Migration from Anderson Township to Flower Creek
"If your world doesn't allow you to dream, move to one where you can.” - Billy Idol
The family was still in Hamilton County in December 1842 when their last child, Foster, was born and oldest daughter Lydia Ann married Robert Hay. Lydia Ann and Robert settled in Covington, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati.
The rest of the Casemans also crossed the river to Kentucky, relocating to Pendleton County sometime between 1842 and January 1847 when Jacob Sr. purchased a mill and land “on the waters of Flour Creek.”
Flower Creek, known today as Flour Creek, is an unincorporated area on the bank of the Main Licking River that once had a post office (1832-1874). The nearest town is Butler; the county seat, Falmouth, is about 10 miles south. The settlement area originally grew up around Flour Creek Christian Church organized in 1826, an old log house for most of the years the Casemans lived in the area. Many of the Flower Creek records were destroyed in a 1964 flood. My sister, Janie, and I explored the area some years ago, attempting without luck to find the site of the Caseman’s farm and Jacob’s mill. I suggested we knock on a door and ask for information, but Janie nixed the idea, “you don’t do that around here.” At least we had a delicious lunch in town and went back for peach pie as consolation for not finding the property.
In September 1849, a civil suit brought to the Pendleton Circuit Court by Jacob Sr. versus Klette & Rouse (perhaps attorneys or a bank) resulted in an outcome of “suit abates,” often a judgment rendered when a party has died. This fairly well establishes Jacob died in this year. Lydia was left a widow and the family his debts, including the farm mortgage.
In the 1850 census the household was headed by George, age 22, and included Lydia, 52, Jacob, 19, Foster, 8, and Edward Caseman, a one-year-old born in Kentucky, whose parentage is unknown.
Children of Jacob and Lydia
Lydia Ann Caseman (b. 1821, PA)
Married (1) Robert Hay, December 1842, Hamilton County, (2) John Saunders, 1863 Falmouth, KY. Died after 1870.
George W. Caseman, (1828-1913)
Born in Venango County. Farmer. Married (1) Mariah Johnson, 1852, in Pendleton County, with whom he had 10 children and (2) Eliza Moore, 1880, Lewis County, with whom he had 4 more. Enlisted with brothers Jacob, Jr. and Foster in the Kentucky 23rd; fought at Chickamauga where Foster was killed in action and Jacob wounded; marched with Sherman through Georgia; captured at Kennesaw. Died 1913 in Lewis County.
Jacob Caseman Jr. (b. c. 1831, PA, d. 1874 Falmouth, KY)
Farmer and mill owner. Married Sarah Mains, 1857. Enlisted in the Kentucky 23rd and was mildly wounded in the foot at Chickamauga; days later a drunk barracks guard shot his elbow leading to amputation.. Died at 44 of “softening of the brain.”
Mary Ann Caseman (b. 1833 PA)
Married (1) Peter Carlin, 1850; he died in 1852 leaving Mary Anne with an infant; (2) Harrison Plummer, 1853.
Foster (1842-1863)
Unmarried. Enlisted in the Kentucky 23rd; killed in action at Chickamauga; initially buried on the battlefield, later moved to Chattanooga National Cemetery.
The Mystery of Edward
The 1850 census lists a one-year old Edward Caseman living in Caseman household. Because Lydia was fifty at the time, researchers presume Foster was her last child. However, notes from family historian Bettye Dillow, who personally examined Pendleton County court records, show:
“A summons delivered to Lydia’s son, George W, April 2, 1855 to show why infant son of Jacob Sr., now deceased, should not be bound out. Infant child residing with George W. Caseman.”
In October 1855, the court record of John Clinkinbeard and Lydia against her son George, shows a statement is made “mother to bind out child,” and the judge ordered the case be discontinued.
These legal proceedings suggests Edward was indeed Jacob’s last child, born in the year Jacob died, and confirms that Lydia is not the biological mother. If not she, then who?
The Widow, Lydia
Lydia’s life reflects remarkable resilience shaped by hardship, poverty, migration, and unrelenting loss. She raised five children, sent three sons to war and lost one on the battlefield, lost three young grandchildren to childhood illness in a span of two years, and was three times widowed.
In 1853, at age fifty, Lydia married John Clinkenbeard, a seventy-five-year-old farmer of Flower Creek. Lydia and John became embroiled in several court proceedings against son George regarding her part of the “dower” along with the issue about the child.
In the 1860 census John, 82, and Lydia, 60, are living on his farm near Jacob Jr.’s farm and mill.
Clinkinbeard died before 1863 when Lydia married her third husband, Joseph Ferguson, age sixty-five. Joseph died sometime after 1869 when he and Lydia signed a deed conveying land belonging to her son Jacob Jr.
1870 census shows seventy-year-old Lydia living with her widowed daughter, Lydia Ann, in Flower Hill (Creek), along with four of the younger Lydia’s children. Interestingly, the census lists the older Lydia’s parents as foreign-born.
Lydia died sometime after the 1870 census and is reportedly buried in Old Falmouth Cemetery, but there is no evidence for this burial. More often, the deceased were buried on their land.
Jacob’s family of origin seems to have lost track of Jacob after he left Pennsylvania. The History of Northumberland County (1891) includes a biography of Jacob’s father, Frederick Kaseman, which states Jacob “died in Ohio.”
Frederick, a prosperous farmer in Shamokin, died in 1867 at the age of 107. In his will, he made an interesting statement and provision for Jacob’s heirs:
Whereas, I have made considerable advancements to my late son, Jacob, during his lifetime, but feeling a tender regard for his children, I therefore give and bequeath to them the sum of fifty dollars to be equally divided among them, share and share alike, or to their legal representatives.
Frederick’s executor, Leonard Pensyl, attempted to locate Jacob’s heirs by publishing notices in several Pennsylvania newspapers, likely unsuccessful since years earlier the family relocated to Kentucky, well beyond the reach of Pennsylvania legal notices.
Piecing together the lives of Jacob Caseman and his family meant following the faintest of trails. One reading suggests a life shaped by hardship, migration, and hard times. But, might it be otherwise? Could it be these were not the causes, but the outcomes of poor decisions and impaired judgment, perhaps even mental illness?
Could it be he left the family at an unusually early age despite having potential resources at home; that despite having “considerable advancements” from his father he struggled to establish stability and security for his own family; that when he finally purchased land in his late forties, he proved unable to meet the financial obligation of a mortgage; that he fathered an out-of-wedlock child while being barely able to support his own; and that the culmination of financial debt and an out-of-wedlock child may have led to an untimely death?
