Against All Odds: Frederick Wilhelm Kaseman (1760-1867)

 This article traces the intertwined lives of Frederick and Elizabeth, and their journey from mid-18th-century German origins to the family they ultimately built together in America. Against the backdrop of immigration, indenture, and the shifting landscapes of rural Pennsylvania, their story emerges through scattered census records, community histories, and newspaper articles. Though the paper trail is often thin, their resilience, fortitude, and determination shine through, offering a glimpse into the courage and persistence that shaped their descendants’ lives.

My last writing about our German Kentucky family focused on my 2nd GGF and Civil War veteran George W. Caseman of Pendleton County, KY, father of Mary Jane Caseman Martin of Lewis County, Kentucky.  George’s lineage had always been something of a puzzle. The only clues were a likely connection to Jacob and Lydia Caseman in Pendleton County and a Civil War enlistment record listing his birthplace as Venango County, Pennsylvania.

I believe I have unraveled his ancestry, supported by strong evidence linking generations back to our original immigrant ancestor, 4th GGF Frederick Wilhelm Kaseman, who arrived  from Germany in 1772. I suspect the “W.” of George’s middle name honors his grandfather.

Frederick’s birthdate, June 8, 1760, is engraved on his gravestone in St. Peter's Reformed Church cemetery in Paxinos, Pennsylvania. Newspaper death notices and town histories identify his birthplace as Nassau-dillenburg, in what is now the Rhein-Lahn district of Rhineland-Palatinate in southwestern Germany. 

Nassau sits along the Lahn River with the requisite castle on the hill built in 1100 and historically ruled by a local dynasty. In the 1760s, Germany was still a patchwork of independent states frequently in conflict with one another; the Holy Roman Empire was declining.

Twelve-year-old Frederick arrived at the port of Philadelphia in 1772 under the name Friedrich Wilhelm Kaesemann, accompanied by a brother and possibly a sister. The surname is derived from German for “cheese man.” What would lead a youngster to undertake the daunting journey without a parent, knowing he would be indentured on arrival? The answer - for many poor immigrants indentured servitude was the only route to a hopefully better life.

George Sell, a farmer some 60 miles north west of Philadelphia, came to purchase laborers and took Frederick into his household for a period of seven years. When Frederick died, he still possessed the original indenture document. He had been bought for a debt of twelve pounds, and that in addition to food, lodging, and clothing, Sell would have him taught to read and write and provide two suits of clothes, one of which had to be new, plus twelve pounds at the completion of his indenture.

The system of indenture in the 1700s operated through ship captains who sold the rights to the labor of immigrants unable to pay passage. The captain, and sometimes merchants who profited from the indentured servant trade, advertised the immigrants who had not paid their passage.  Buyers inspected the servants and and purchased their labor for a fixed number of years - seven in Frederick’s case - during which the immigrant was property of the buyer. In return the new master provided housing, food, and clothing until the period of indenture was finished. In time, landowners came upon a better idea - enslave Africans and you had a work force for life.

Sell was an early settler in Maxatawny located in the Kutztown area of Berks County, a region heavily settled by Palatine German immigrants. Maxatawny itself is 60 miles northwest from the Port of Philadelphia.

Philadelphia to Maxatawny

Frederick’s servitude ended around 1779, when he became a free man. His marriage record to Elizabeth Huntzinger has not been located, but the marriage must have taken place before the estimated birth of his first child, our 3rd GGF Jacob Kaseman in the early 1790s.

Children of Frederick and Elizabeth:

Jacob (3rd GGF), b. early 1790s in Maxatawny, married by 1820 to Lydia, surname unconfirmed but census records indicate she is second-generation immigrant. Jacob died in Pendleton County, Kentucky, before the 1850 census, at about age 57.

Lydia, b. 1798 in Maxatawny, d. 1831 in Shamokin. She married Johann Pensyl, a shoemaker and farmer. They had six children before her death at 33. Johann later moved to nearby Rush, remarried, and raised another seven children.

John W., b. 1802 in Maxatawny, d. 1889, age 86 from a stroke. A weaver, he married twice: first to Elizabeth Reichard, and after her death in 1871, to Christina Yost.

Elizabeth, b.1807 in Maxatawny, d. 1888 in Shamokin. She married Leonard Pensyl, brother of Johann.

Joseph, b. 1811 in Windsor Township; d. 1853 in Shamokin at age 42, cause of death “consumption.”  A farmer, he married Anna Maria “Mary” Haas in 1830. They had four children. Mary never remarried, but lived several years with a son, and then as a boarder.

Catherine, b. 1813, the last child to be born in Berks County; moved to Shamokin as a toddler; d. 1889 in Fairfield, Lycoming County. Married Swiss immigrant, Jacob Egli in 1830, a weaver by trade in Shamokin. Catherine was left widowed with five children in 1844. She remarried Gottlieb Fogle in 1849 and had a sixth child before being widowed again at 48, the same year her mother died. Catherine lived another 27 years.

Daniel, b. 1814 in Shamokin; d. 1897 at 82 in Bear Gap, only a couple miles from the family homestead in Shamokin. A farmer, he married Elizabeth Adams around 1835, and had seven children.

David, b. 1818 in Shamokin; d. at age 26 in nearby Rush Township. Married Elizabeth, with whom he had two sons Nathan and Frederick. After David’s death, young Nathan was raised by his grandparents Frederick and Elizabeth.

Tracking Frederick and Elizabeth through the Census

1790 Census

I’m still looking for this one, but Frederick, even though a free man, is unlikely to appear unless he is a head of household.

1800 Census (Maxatawny, Berks County)

Frederick and Elizabeth appear with three children under the age of 10; 2 girls (Lydia and perhaps a girl who did not survive the decade) and 1 boy (Jacob). Frederick is a laborer, not yet able to purchase land.

1810 Census (Windsor Township, Berks County)

The family, now about 13 miles rom Maxatawny, includes Frederick, Elizabeth, 12-year-old Lydia, 8-year-old John, 3-year-old Elizabeth, and an unidentified young adult female. Jacob is absent and may already have married, as he has a daughter born by about 1810.

1820 Census (Shamokin, Northumberland County)

The Kaseman’s made a significant move from Windsor Township about 50 miles west to that part of Shamokin later set off as the unincorporated township of Ralpho. 

Maxatawny to Shamokin

Local histories describe him as an earlier settler, likely arriving around 1814. This move likely afforded him opportunity to become a landowner and, over time, he expanded his farm beyond the original 50 acres. Four additional children were born during the 1810s, even as Frederick is in his 50s. The census lists seven children in the household. Newspapers describe Frederick as both a successful farmer and businessman.

1830 Census (Shamokin)

Only 69-year-old Frederick, 59-year old Elizabeth, and the two youngest sons remain on the farm. The daughters had married, though Lydia died the following year at 33.

1840 Census (Shamokin)

Frederick, Elizabeth, and a teenage girl are in the home, likely a granddaughter.

Over the next decade, two more sons passed away, 

David, age 26, who had moved to Rush Township

Jacob (3rd GGF) about age 50, who had migrated from Pennsylvania to Ohio and then to Pendleton County, Kentucky 

Frederick became guardian to David’s young son, Nathan, who enlisted with the Pennsylvania 50th Infantry at age 17. He served four and half years - Sept 18661 through to Appomatox in April 1865. Wounded five times in the lower extremities, he finally received a medical discharge two weeks after war's end. His regiment fought at Second Manassas, Antietam, Fredricksburg, siege of Vicksburg, Battle of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna, and countless others. How Frederick and Elizabeth must have worried about him!

1850 Census (Shamokin) 

This is the first census that lists all members of the household.

Son Joseph, age 39, is living on the family farm with Frederick and Elizabeth, while Joseph’s wife and children are on an adjacent property. Joseph died three years later of tuberculosis. Son John and his family are also on a nearby farm. Notably, all the family members, including the older generations could read and write, indicating value placed on literacy despite growing up in rural, sparsely populated areas.

1860 Census (Shamokin)

Only 15 year-old Nathan, listed as a farm hand, is living with 100-year-old Frederick and 90- year-old Elizabeth. Son Daniel and family live a few farms away.

Elizabeth died two years later at the age of 92, and Frederick lived until 1867, dying at the remarkable age of 107. 

Elizabeth’s death notice in the Shamokin Herald reads:

We are pained to learn that Mrs. Elizabeth Kaseman, aged 92 years, wife of the venerable Mr. Kaseman, whose age is 102 years, fell off the hay mow in the barn of Mr. K. yesterday morning and broke her neck. This accident separates a couple who have lived happily in the bonds of wedlock nearly three-fourths of a century. Mrs. Kaseman was in the enjoyment of good health and was remarkably active for one of her age. She was a native of Germany, and when she arrived in this country was sold for 20 pounds to pay her passage money. She has for many years resigned in this county. We believe this remarkable couple carried on farming with little or no assistance and she was thus engage when she met her untimely end.

Interestingly, from 1850 onward, census records list Elizabeth’s birth place as Pennsylvania, while Frederick’s consistently note his German birth. Berks County, where Frederick lived during his indenture, has a substantial Huntzinger presence, but I have not able to place Elizabeth within any documented Huntzinger family. Her German birth, however, is supported by an 1860 interview for the Sunbury Register in which she produced her “Daufshine” stating she was born August 20, 1771. As no such word exists in German, the reporter must have misheard “Taufschein,” meaning a German baptismal certificate.

The same reporter observed Frederick had ten clocks in two downstairs rooms and “a few more upstairs,” “so he may continually have before him an ocular demonstration of the fleetness of time.” 

An item in the July 21, 1860 Sunbury Gazette reported:

The most extraordinary man in the county is Mr. Kaseman, the patriarch of Shamokin township. Although over one hundred years old, we are informed that one day last week he cradled, bound, and shocked thirteen shocks of wheat. The paper later reported they had been corrected by Frederick - it was 90 shocks instead of 13, with 10 sheaves in each shock.

Frederick lived another five years after Elizabeth passed. He died in 1867 after an incredible, courageous, and productive life. His obituary in the New York Tribune reads:

Frederick William Kaseman died in Shamokin Township, Northumberland County, PA, aged 107 years, 1 month, and 22 days. He was born in Nasa, Dilbourg, Germany, on the 8th of June, 1760. When he came across the sea with his older brother, he was sold for his passage, amounting to 12 pounds, for seven years to George Sell, in Maxatang Township, near Kutztown, Berks County, the agreement for which service he still had in his possession, with the signature of the county seal upon it, dated in the year 1772. The said George Sell was bound in this agreement to give him his board and lodging, and apparel, and have him taught to read and write, and at the end of the term to give him two suits of clothes, one of which must be new, besides the twelve pounds in money; so that he must have been about 22 years of age at the time, which is what he claimed. Although having reached this remarkable age, only a few years ago he cradled, bound, and shocked twelve or fourteen dozen of rye in a day, without hat or shoes, and only during the last summer he was able to hoe and take out his own potatoes.

In his will, Frederick donated an acre of land for the construction of a school in Ralpho. A one-story brick school house was erected and named in his honor. In October 1867, his son John and son-in-law Leonard Pensyl, acting as executors of the estate, advertised the sale of the property: 14 acres, a dwelling with a well near the door, a barn with good stabling, a carriage house, “necessary” out-buildings, a fruit orchard, and several acres of white oak timber.

St. Peter's Lutheran Reformed Church, also known as "the Blue Church

Frederick was a deacon and elder at St. Peter’s Blue Lutheran Reformed Church in nearby Paxinos where he, Elizabeth, and six of their offspring are buried.

 

Frederick Kaseman
Is not my help in me and is wisdom driven quite from me?

Frederick's quote from Job 6:13 is perplexing for a man of such accomplishments as it reflects feelings of hopelessness and despair.

Elizabeth Huntzinger Kaseman
I have fought the good fight. I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.

Elizabeth's quote buried beneath the dirt reflects a woman who can look back on her life feeling she has done her best.

Next post: Jacob Caseman, the link between Frederick W. Kaseman and George W. Caseman.

The Caseman Family: George W. Caseman (1828-1913)

*Grace was born to an unmarried Mary Jane and took on the last name of her stepfather, William Martin.

*Since this blog was posted, further research has uncovered George's ancestry. See posts on Frederick Kaseman and Jacob Caseman.

Tracing the Caseman family beyond Mary Jane becomes more difficult as we go back into the 1700’s and early 1800’s.  Records become scarcer, lost in floods, fires, or never recorded in the frontier and backwoods of Kentucky and western Pennsylvania.  Maybe someone from the family got into town to record a birth or death at the court house and often they didn’t; or perhaps there was no nearby court house.  The dead might be buried on the farm with just a stone or wooden cross marker, or the headstone has been destroyed.

George’s Civil War background has been described in The Killing Fields of Chickamauga and They Stood As If Every Man was a Hero although George’s capture by Confederates outside Atlanta during Sherman’s march was not detailed.

Our mother - who would have been George’s great-granddaughter - always insisted Mary Jane’s side of the family was German.  Since George’s wife, Meriah, was likely Scottish descent the German side had to come from the Casemans.

Suggestions have been made that George's father Jacob descended from William Caseman in Frederick County, Virginia and later Greene County, Pennsylvania, and that William’s original name was Wilhelm Kaeseman.  Wilhelm was born in Nesselrode, Germany and was a Hessian mercenary fighting for the British when captured at Yorktown.  While being marched around as POW’s, the prisoners had opportunity to “get lost”, i.e., escape, and that Wilhelm stayed and settled in this country as a young man.  Again, this is myth until we are able to make documented connection between our Jacob and Wilhelm.

Venango County, Pennsylvania

Franklin, Pennsylvania, lies at the confluence of French Creek and the Allegheny River in Venango County.  Franklin was the site of first a French fort and later a British fort in the 1700’s, The British were massacred and Fort Venango burned  by Indians in 1763, followed by construction of Fort Franklin by the Americans.  A frontier community was established in the late 1700’s in the Fort Franklin area by Virginians, many claiming land for their services in the Revolution.  Travel through the early 1800’s was difficult due to poor condition of any roads and trails, leaving inhabitants heavily dependent on creeks and rivers.  Boats easily brought passengers and goods upstream from Pittsburgh via the Allegheny and this is likely the path by which the Caseman’s arrived.

The family’s presence in Venango County, Pennsylvania, in 1828 is established by the fortuitous finding of George’s birthplace on his Civil War enlistment and later his marriage certificate with Eliza.   His parents are established as Jacob Caseman and Lydia by records in Pendleton County.  Later census records establish Lydia’s birth as about 1798 in Pennsylvania, but Jacob’s birth, age, and their marriage have not yet been found.

There are no Casemans or families with similar spellings in the 1820 Venango County census so it is relatively safe to say at least John Jacob arrived between 1820 and George’s birth in 1828.  Did they arrive as a family, or did John Jacob migrate on his own and marry a local girl?

The 1830 census shows a John J Caseman family with man and woman in the appropriate age range and  and four children living in French Creek near the fork with the Allegheny River, the only Casemans in Venango County in that census year so we can be relatively certain this is our family.

We do know with some certainty that young Lydia, George’s older sister born in 1821, and the older Lydia, John Jacob’s wife, were both born in Pennsylvania but their birth places lack county documentation and we do not know the older Lydia’s maiden name.  There is a 7 year gap between sister Lydia and George’s births which could be accounted for by a number of possibilities.  That John Jacob and Lydia electively decided not to have children until they migrated from elsewhere in Pennsylvania would have been highly unusual for the times.  Another thought is that young Lydia was born from a previous marriage, her mother since died, and older Lydia was Jacob’s second wife, starting a second family with George in 1828.  However,  the most plausible explanation is that several children between young Lydia and George were born but died in childhood.  The support for this option is that young and old Lydias share a common name, a frequent practice at the time and a bane to genealogy researchers.

Hamilton County, Ohio

A History of Venango County relates one of the first settlers in Franklin was George Power who helped build the fort, stayed a bit longer, then moved on to Fort Washington which is now Cincinnati.  He returned to Franklin in 1790 and lived on the bank of French Creek until his death in 1845.  Did John Jacob hear about Ohio from this neighbor, or other neighbors?  Franklin was becoming more hospitable by the time John Jacob decided to move on with his family.  By the early 1800’s roads were being laid out, and by 1823 the town had a hotel, a lumber yard, brick maker, justice of the peace and two story houses.  An influx of settlers grew the county from 4000 in 1820 to 9000 by 1830.  Was it becoming too crowded and land too expensive?  If John Jacob had established his homestead on the banks of French Creek, were they prompted to leave due to frequent severe flooding?

In any event, several years after the birth of Lydia the couple had three more children in quick succession, George in 1828, Jacob in 1831, and Mary Anne in 1833.  By time of the 1840 census, the family and four children had migrated down the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers to Anderson, Hamilton County, Ohio.  A fifth and last child, Foster, was born in Hamilton County in 1842.

Older sister, Lydia, came of age in Hamilton County and married Robert Hay in 1842, subsequently remaining in the Covington area.  By 1870, Lydia was twice widowed and living in Falmouth, Pendleton County, Kentucky.  Her 70 year old mother, the older Lydia, is in the home.

Pendleton County, Kentucky

Our Jacob, Sr., and Lydia came to Pendleton County sometime between 1842 when Foster was born in Hamilton County and 1847 when there is documentation Jacob Sr. bought a mill from Alexander Rouse in Pendleton County (Pendleton Circuit Court, p. 229).  Jacob, Sr. likely died in the next 2-3 years as he is not listed in the 1850 census.  Proceedings in 1853 show the Jacob, Sr. was “much embarrassed” financially at the time of his death, and the mill was foreclosed leaving his heirs to pay his debts.

In 1850 widowed Lydia is living with 22 year old head of household George W. who is now supporting his mother, his three younger siblings, Jacob now 19, Mary Anne, 15, Foster 8, and a one year old Edward.  A circuit court document in 1855 issued a summons for George to appear before the judge to show cause why he should not be bound out in the death of the infant son of Jacob; this may be Edward as he does not show up in later censuses.  

Our 24 yr old George married 20 year old Meriah Johnson, daughter of farmer and mill owner William Johnson, in 1852.  George is farming in Flower Creek, indeed just a designated post office with no associated town.  The closest village is Butler.

The mother, 55 tear old Lydia, remarried  in 1855 to a neighboring farmer, 79 year old John Clinkenbeard, and left the family home.

Jacob, Jr., 26, married 15 year old Sarah Mains from a nearby farm in 1857. 

In 1860, twenty year old Foster is working as a farm hand in Campbell County, Kentucky, which is Sarah’s home county.

George and Meriah had their first child, Lydia, (another Lydia!) in November 1852 followed by another 3 children over the next 8 years.  Of these, only our great grandmother, Mary Jane, survived childhood.  Tragedy struck the family when 5 year old Lydia and 1 year old Jacob L (another Jacob!) died with infant flux within days of each other.  Young William, born in 1858 is on the census in 1860, but not ten years later in 1870 when he would have been only 12, and he must have died sometime in the interim.  Their fifth child, Emily, was born in 1861 months before George left for war.

In October 1861, 33 year old George and his two brothers, 30 year old Jacob and 19 year old Foster, enlisted in the Union Army, Kentucky 23rd Regiment, Company D, and trained a Camp King near Covington, Kentucky.  George is described as tall at 6’ 3/4”, hazel eyes, black hair, and a scar over his right temple.  Foster is described as 5’8”, dark complexion, brown eyes, black hair.

The regiment went by foot to Lexington, then to Louisville where they boarded a steamer and were transported to Nashville.  They wintered 1862-63 at Nashville and saw little action through the spring and summer.  Through this period, George was promoted through the ranks to Corporal before even leaving Lexington, then to Sergeant by July 1862.  All three boys left the unit in August 1862, “left behind on the march,” a week before the units first severe fight at Round Mountain in Tennessee and remained AWOL until March 30, 1863.  Very likely they went home to help with fall harvest, possibly tobacco; with some re-organization of Rosecrans’ army an amnesty was offered allowing the boys to return without penalty other than George was demoted back to private status.

The 23rd remained in Tennessee through the summer until moved to Chattanooga in September 1863.  They did reconnaissance up Lookout Mountain looking for Confederates and subsequently engaged in the horrific fight at Chickamauga.  On the first day of battle, September 19, Lt. Colonel Foy, commander of the 23rd, describes arriving at Lee and Gordon’s Mills about daylight, having some marching and flanking action and entering the fight at about 11 AM,

“…the battery to our rear was pouring in destructive fire into their (Confederate) ranks and the Twenty -third Kentucky poured in volley after volley.  After we had been in this position about one-half to three-quarters of an hour, I noticed that the enemy were renewing the attack with redoubled vigor.  The Second Kentucky retired step by step and inch by inch until they arrived on a line with us.  At this instant I noticed the 24th Ohio giving slowly back.  I immediately sent an officer to see what was the matter.  He brought the word back “all right” and that they intended to hold their ground.  We now fought, I suppose for about an hour longer, but right in the midst of the fighting, finding out that the artillery to our rear was wounding some of the men in the right companies we moved to the left … we renewed our ammunition, marked to pass lines to the rear, which was done in good order… we had scarcely fallen back when the enemy redoubled their attack with great fury…they stood as every man a hero…side by side and shoulder to shoulder did the 24th Ohio and 23rd Kentucky stand up and successively repulse the enemy in all his attacks…the fire now was very hot.  It appeared to me as though every third man in the regiment was struck… finally, seeing we were outnumbered at least five to one, I very reluctantly gave the command to retire.  I found my loss to be 1 officer killed, 3 officers wounded, and 42 enlisted men wounded and 9 killed.”

Among the 9 enlisted killed was young Foster, twenty one years old.  The Union had 16,170 casualties (killed in action, wounded, captured, missing) and Confederates 18,454 in those two days of battle.  Foster is buried at Chattanooga National Cemetery.

Foster Caseman, 1842-1864, killed in action at Chickamauga

Having lost a brother at their side, George and Jacob, nevertheless, would have to fight the following day which was just as horrendous until retreat of the Union Army into Chattanooga.

The 23rd remained in Chattanooga surrounded and under siege by the Confederate Army until General Grant opened a supply line across the river to the starving men.  A week after Chickamauga, Jacob was accidentally shot by a drunken guard in his barracks, requiring amputation at the elbow and ending his soldier career.

George, alone without his brothers, and the 23rd moved out and participated in the great charge up Missionary Ridge on November 25 to break the siege, “there was never such a bold and daring charge made or witnessed by the Army of the Cumberland,” according to the commander of the 23rd.

With their three year enlistment up in January 1864, George and most of regiment re-enlisted and continued on with Sherman’s march through Georgia. George fought through the battles at Rocky Face, Resaca, New Hope Church, Pine Top, and was finally captured at Kennesaw just outside Atlanta on September 24.  He was a prisoner of war, perhaps at the horrific prison at Andersonville as his release occurred in Savannah on November 21, 1864.  He reported back to the Union Army on November 25 and rejoined the fight chasing Hood’s army back into Tennessee and Alabama where he mustered out in January 1865.

After the war

Age 37, George returned to farming at Flower Creek, to Meriah and two young children, Mary Jane and Emily who was just months old when George enlisted. Over the previous 9 years, he had lost one brother killed in action at his side, one disabled with an arm amputation, the sudden deaths of two young children, an infant nephew in his home, and possibly a third child, William.  He and Meriah had another five children in rapid succession between 1866 and 1874.  Sometime before the1880 census Meriah died.  No record of her death or burial site has been found.

Jacob returned to Sarah Ann and the two children born before he went to war.  He worked the farm, bought a sawmill, and obtained an artificial arm.  He and Sarah had three more children, the last one born a month after Jacob’s death in 1874 at the age of 37.

Our great grandmother, Mary Jane was 10 when her father George returned home from the war and 4 years later, at age 15 in November 1869, Mary Jane married and left the home. She lived briefly in the Pendleton County area in Falmouth but within 3-4 years she and her husband, Frank Shumate, moved away to Illinois then to Lewis County, Kentucky, where Frank was killed by a horse, leaving her widowed with two young children.

Lewis County, Kentucky

The 1880 census finds widower George with six children near Vanceburg on a farm next to newly widowed Mary Jane and her two young children.  What drew the family to the Clarksburg area some distance from Flower Creek and who moved here first is unknown.  Mary Jane is supporting herself as a seamstress, likely living on the same farm in Valley where her husband was killed in 1879, and George is farming.

George and Eliza's marriage certificate

The same year, 1880, no doubt needing help with raising his young children, George took another wife, - a young Eliza Moore who was the same age as his daughter Mary Jane.  George had another four children with Eliza over the next 16 years, for a total of 14 children in all.  There was 32 years difference in age between Mary Jane and George’s last child. born when George was 68 years old.

George and Eliza remained in Valley on the farm next to Mary Jane and finished raising his children.

George and second wife Eliza Ellen

By 1910, George had moved into Vanceburg, living on Third Street, and Mary Jane has finished raising her children, soon if not already living on Dry Run close to Grace.

George died December 30, 1913 at his home at age 85.  He is buried in an unmarked grave in Clarksburg Cemetery.

The Caseman Family: Mary Jane's Story

Mary Jane was born July 31, 1854 in Pendleton County, Kentucky. Her birth was recorded as Mary Jane Ceeseman, daughter of George W. Ceeseman and Mariah Radigal. Since the county listed mothers under their maiden names, Mariah’s appearance as “Radigal” is puzzling—her maiden name was Johnson, and no earlier marriage is known. No Radigals appear in the 1850 Pendleton census, and “Ceeseman” is almost certainly a misreading of the clerk’s handwriting.

The family lived on a farm in Flower Creek, Kentucky, rural Pendleton County with hilly, rolling terrain and fertile river flats.  Flower Creek had a post office on the east bank of the Main Licking River.  Flower Creek had a small post office on the east bank of the Main Licking River, and the region remained backwoods country with wagon roads and stage routes leading toward steamboat landings on the Ohio River.  The Kentucky Central Railroad came through in the year of Mary Jane’s birth, but the county would not have a newspaper until 1870. Falmouth’s old pioneer cemetery, destroyed in 1930 when its stone markers were crushed for road gravel, held some of the earliest settler graves. Mary Jane and her siblings likely attended the one-room schoolhouse built in nearby Butler in 1856.  

Her grandfather, William Johnson, operated a saw and grist mill on the South Fork of the Licking River beginning in 1832, and her uncle, Jacob Caseman, ran a sawmill on Flower Creek until his early death at age 37 in 1874.

Mary Jane was the second of fourteen children born to her father over thirty-four years and two marriages. Mariah had the first ten in Pendleton County, and George's second wife later added four more in Lewis County. Mary Jane's early years were marked by loss: two siblings - Jacob (15 months) and Lydia Ann(age 5) - died within a day of each other when she was four years old, both from "infant flux." No record is found of her borhter William H. (1858) after 1860, and likely died young as well. A sister, Emma, was born in 1861 several months before George enlisted in the Union Army. If George's five children born before the Civil War, only two survived childhood.

George was a farmer, likely a tobacco farmer as Pendleton County was one of the first counties in Kentucky to produce tobacco.  George was away at war from the time Mary Jane was seven until 10 years old, leaving Mariah with three young children, Mary Jane,  William, 3, and Emily, 7 months.  Seven-year-old Mary Jane would have taken on many household responsibilities.  George’s two brothers, Jacob and young Foster, enlisted at the same time, leaving leaving the Caseman farms without adult men. Jacob married in 1857 and that family also lived in Flower Creek with two young children when Jacob went off to war with his brothers.

Our only photo of George (1828-1913)

The three brothers, George, Jacob, and Foster, all farmers, enlisted in the Kentucky 23rd Infantry in the fall of 1861 after tobacco harvest  and left their infantry unit in August the following summer about the time crops would again have to be harvested.  They were absent from the Union Army for several months and returned before the 1863 spring campaign started.  As a result of absence over these few months, George was demoted from sergeant to private.

In June 1864 the family would receive news that George had been captured at Kennesaw Mountain just north of Atlanta during Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign.  He was released in November 1864 and returned home to the farm in January 1865.  After George’s return, he and Mariah had another five children in rapid succession. Mariah disappears from the records after the birth of her last child in 1874 and presumably died before 1880.

Five years after her father's return,  15-year-old Mary Jane married 23- year-old Francis Marion Shumate in the family home.  Frank was from nearby Carter County but there were other Shumates living in Pendleton; likely, Frank came to Pendleton County through these connections.

Mary Jane's and Frank's marriage license, Pendleton County

By the 1870 census, Frank and Mary Jane were living in Falmouth, where Frank worked as a laborer. His 14-year-old brother died the following year.   The couple had three children over the next several years, George W.  born in 1874, Frances Elizabeth (“Aunt Sis”) in 1876, both born in Illinois, and Jesse in Lewis County in 1879.  The family’s whereabouts in Illinois or when they moved out of Pendleton County is not known.

Mary Jane and Frank moved from Illinois to the Clarksburg area of Lewis County by early 1879.  Just days after the birth of her third child, Jesse, in April 1879, Frank was killed by being kicked in the head by a horse.  Only age 24, a widow, and mother of three young children, Mary Jane had suffered multiple losses, including three young siblings, her mother, two young uncles (Foster killed in the Civil War; Jacob in 1874), a mother-in-law in 1871, a 14 year old brother-in-law, and years of her father's wartime absence and captivity.

The 1880 Census shows Mary Jane living in Valley, Lewis County, Kentucky, and working as a seamstress.  On the neighboring farm lived her widowed father, George, and his six children ranging in age from six to 19 years.  Mary Jane had been living in Lewis County at the time of Frank's death 1879 and her father and the rest of the children were in Lewis County at the time of the 1880 Census.

In 1883, Mary Jane, unwed, gave birth to another child, Grace Lee Shumate (aka Grace Martin), fathered by William Frederick Horsley, a 35-year-old farm laborer living on a neighboring farm with his sister, Amanda. A 1902 letter to Grace from William confirms the connection.

Eight months after Grace's birth, 29-year-old Mary Jane married 49 Abia J. Dillon, a farmer from Fleming County.  Notably, William Frederick Horsley was a witness at the wedding.

Mary Jane and Abia Dillon marriage certificate listing W.F. Horsley as a witness.

Mary Jane had another loss in 1885 when her son, George W., named after her father, died at eleven years old.  Her daughter, Francis, married at age fourteen in 1889 to William Johnson, age thirty. Mary Jane and second husband, Abia, may have separated that year before his death in 1889 in Fleming County.

Mary Jane's children:  Jesse Shumate, Grace Martin, Francis Shumate

In 1890, Mary Jane married a third time. William “Bill” Martin was ten years younger, and this marriage lasted forty five years until Mary Jane’s death.  Grace, who had been using the Shumate surname, adopted the Martin name after the marriage and was thereafter known as Grace Lee Martin.

Half sister, Lydia Caseman, Lydia's husband Charles Wallace, and Mary Jane, photo taken in 1890's

In the 1900 census, Mary Jane, husband Bill, and Grace are still in Valley.  Hiram Horsley, a nephew of William Frederick owns the next farm over and William Frederick is living with another nephew in Hamilton County, Ohio, working as a day laborer.  Her father, George, now 72, had remarried at age 52 to Eliza Ellen Moore, a woman the same age as daughter Mary Jane, and they are living on a nearby farm with their four teenage children. George fathered his last child at age 71.

Mary Jane and Bill had no children of their own, but my mother, Ramona, remembers Bill as a caring stepfather and grandfather.

Mary Jane’s youngest, Jesse Shumate, married and left the home in 1898, made a living as a farmer, but had his own tragedies with the deaths of two wives at young ages.  Jesse’s life was filled with loss and one of his descendants related Jesse felt he was a curse.  For a time around 1920, Mary Jane and Bill are caring for Jesse’s two children in their home.

Grace, 19, eloped in 1902 with Jacob Dillow, her teacher at Valley School. Why they eloped is unclear as Jacob was a fine, upstanding, educated young man.  They remained in Portsmouth for the next 3-4 years until buying a farm in Vanceburg just over the hill from Mary Jane and Bill’s farm in Valley. 

By the 1920 census, Mary Jane and Bill left their farm in Valley and moved to a home just across Dry Run Creek in Vanceburg, Lewis County where they were close at hand for Grace and Jacob’s seven children.  The family suffered another loss in 1925 when Grace and Jacob's son George, 17, died in 1925 from diabetes. Son Jesse's first two wives died at young ages, one in the 1918 influenza epidemic; another grandson died with typhoid fever in 1934.

By 1930, Mary Jane and Bill were still living in the Dry Creek home and operating a general store in the area.  Her daughter, Francis, married without children during Mary Jane's lifetime continued to live in Clarksburg, a once thriving community just north of Valley.  Grace and Jacob gave Mary Jane seven grandchildren and Jesse three grandchildren.

 William Martin and Mary Jane

William Martin in front of his and Mary Jane's General Store and Sunoco Station, Vanceburg, KY

Our mother spoke of Mary Jane with affection, often adding “the men really liked her.”  She had searched for the identity of Grace's biological father and only the advent of digital records finally confirmed him as William Frederick Horsley. He never married and lived with various relatives until his death in New Grand Chain, Illinois, in 1922.

Mary Jane died June 18, 1935, at age 80, with influenza; her husband survived her by sixteen years.  Both are buried in Woodland Cemetery in Vanceburg.