Abraham Dillow: From London Thief to Virginia Frontiersman

The origins of our Dillow family have been shrouded in mystery, much like those the original Caseman immigrant. Thanks to the work of Bettye Dillow and her grandson, Eric, we have known about the generations back to Abraham Dillow, Sr. and his son Abram, Jr. who lived in southwestern Virginia, his son Robert who migrated to Greenup, Kentucky, and his son, Abraham - Ramona’s grandfather - who fought in the Civil War. Records on generations before Ramona’s grandfather grows thin. 

Reasonable evidence, though, suggests a compelling story of a young man taken from his home in London - Christ Church to be precise - transported as a prisoner to the American colonies, and ultimately forging a new life on the Virginia frontier.

The Kentucky and Virginia Generations

Our Kentucky Dillow line is well documented to second great-grandparents Robert Dillow (1796-aft. 1873) and his wife, Elizabeth Cassady (1806-1881), who migrated from southwestern Virginia to Greenup County, Kentucky, about 1845 by way of Pike County, Kentucky. 

Earlier generations are more difficult to document. Record preservation in the 18th century frontier for Robert’s parents, Abram Dillow, Jr., (1768-1852) and Elizabeth Steele (1777-1860), and Abram, Jr’s parents, Abraham Dillow, Sr. (before 1728-1803), and Mary, is scarce and largely limited to land transactions, militia lists, and tax records. 

Even so, the Dillow lineage can be reasonably traced from London to Augusta and Montgomery Counties, and ultimately to the banks of Walker’s Creek, Wythe County (now Bland County), Virginia through military records, land deeds, and family connections. 

Abraham Dillow Sr. and his children were the only Dillows located in the Walker’s Creek area in the late 1700s. Their descendants bought and sold land and married into families of Wythe and Tazewell counties. 

But where was Abraham’s origin?

Possible Origins of the Surname Dillow

The surname appears in multiple forms—Dillow, Dellow, and Delo—and likely has medieval origins. It may derive from the Norman French de l’eau, meaning “of the water.” Early references appear in England as far back as the 13th century as Dilwyn in Herefordshire and  recorded as Delewe in 1295.

A later wave of similarly named families may reflect Huguenot influence following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, when French Protestants fled to England, Ireland, and the German Palatinate, and eventually to the American colonies.

Both English and German Dillows appear in early American records. Among them are John Dellow in Pennsylvania, Thomas Dillow in Virginia, and Michael Hartman Dillow, who arrived in Philadelphia from the Palatinate in the mid-18th century

Our Original Dillow Immigrant

The Abraham Dellow who arrived in Virginia on the English prison ship Whiteing in December 1753, is a compelling candidate for our original Dillow immigrant.

Court records from London, the Surrey Quarter Sessions, November 1753: 

Abraham Dellow confesses to stealing from Messrs Low and Co's glasshouse at the Old Barge [?] house in the parish of Christ Church, 2 iron bars which he intended to sell to Gibbons Pemberton a blacksmith in White Chapel as he had done 2 other iron bars which he also stole from Messrs Low and Co. He also says that 'Gibbons Pemberton has frequently encouraged and told him this examinant that if he would get any iron bars he would buy them of him, to be worked up and made into heaters...'

*The Old Barge House was built by Henry VIII in 1530 on the south bank of the River Thames and used to store the royal barges until the mid 1600s.

One has to wonder what led Abraham to confess to all these crimes, and whether he left a family behind when he was abruptly transported to the colonies. 

 Indentured Servitude in the Colonies

England was sending convicts to America long before she began the practice of shuttling them to Australia. In the years from 1614 to the American Revolution, approximately 50,000 English convicts were transported to the American colonies, chained in the hold for the duration of the journey. Once there, they were sold as indentured servants, typically for four to seven years of labor.

An indentured servant worked without wages, often under harsh conditions, and received only food, shelter, and clothing. The vast majority remained in the colonies after completing their terms, due to greater economic opportunity and the cost of returning to England.

Most convict ships landed at ports along the Potomac and Rappahanock Rivers, then sold their prisoners to plantations owners for work in grain and tobacco fields. By 1753, prisoners were increasingly sent inland to support settlement in the colonial backcountry, notably Shenandoah Valley.

Abraham Arrives in America

Once Abraham arrived in the colonies, he could have been indentured anywhere in the mid-Atlantic region, but the timing suggests he was sent inland to the Shenandoah Valley where labor demands on plantations were growing.

Direct sources are meager for inland and frontier Virginia in the 1700s. Virginia officially began to keep marriage records in 1785 and birth/death records in 1853. Militia lists kept by frontier counties were used for both military service and as a basis for taxes. Early taxes were “tithables” on heads of households, much like a poll tax. Virginia formally established two sets of tax lists in 1781 - land and personal property, which might have been a mule or a cow.

Documented Records of Abraham Dillow

• 1753: Transcript of Abraham Dellow's confession in Surrey Court records
• 1753: Passenger list of Coldham’s Emigrants in Bondage, Abraham Dellow of Christ Church, on prison ship Whiteing
• 1777: Augusta County Tithables, as Ab Dillow
• 1778:  Register of Virginians in the Revolution, Abraham Dillow, Captain Johnston’s Company, Augusta County, exempted for age
• 1778: Tax list, Augusta County
• 1779: Virginia Will Book, Augusta County, showing Abraham Dillow was paid for shoemaking
• 1781: Montgomery County militia under Captain Abraham Trigg
• 1794: Montgomery County marriage record for Elizabeth Dillow, naming parents Abraham and Mary Dillow, witnessed by brother James
• 1793-1800: Personal property tax, Wythe County
• 1873: Bland County Deeds, sale of land by Robert Dillow, inherited from his father on waters of Walker's Creek

Migration to the Frontier

England had control over the coastal colonies in the early and mid-1700s, but France claimed a large swath that stretched from Louisiana to Canada. To create a buffer zone between eastern Virginia and the French and Native American interior, the British enacted generous land policies to attract settlers to its frontier areas.

The massive 118,000 acre Beverly Manor land grant in the upper Shenandoah Valley covering much of what is now Augusta County in Virginia was sold and subdivided to encourage settlement west of the Blue Ridge. Could this have been the location of Abraham’s indenture?

How did Abraham get to the frontier?  

The Great Wagon Road

Primary north-south access to the region west of the Blue Ridge was the Great Wagon Road (GWR), originally used by indigenous tribes, and later by tens of thousands of settlers, many of them Scots-Irish and German. The GWR began at the port of Philadelphia, ran south through the Shenandoah Valley, and split into a fork - one going to Augusta, Georgia, and the other to southwestern Virginia.

If Abraham were indentured in the Philadelphia or upper Shenandoah area, he had a straight shot down the Great Wagon Road to southwestern Virginia. Other routes to access the GWR were established by the mid-1700s. For example, he could have reached the Great Wagon Road from the Potomac River area by using the Pioneer Road established in about 1746. The Great Wagon Road passed close to the vicinity of Big Walker Mountain in southwest Virginia where Abraham eventually owned land.

Wythe County land sale records of his grandson, Robert, in the 1800s indicate the family eventually settled in that area of Wythe County on the banks of Walker’s Creek at the foot of Big Walker Mountain in what is today Bland County, Virginia.

Southwest Virginia County formation

Understanding shifting county boundaries in frontier Virginia is essential for tracking Abraham’s migration.

Augusta County, a massive frontier county formed in 1738 from Orange County, included all of southwestern Virginia, most of West Virginia, and extended, by British claim, to the Mississippi. As more settlers moved into the frontier, Augusta County was further divided into daughter counties and states.

1770  Botetourt County, created from Augusta County, was still a huge area including southwestern Virginia, parts of seven states, and extending to the Mississippi.

1772   Fincastle County was formed from Botetourt.

1776  Fincastle was dissolved and used to form Montgomery County which was still immense and included 20 of today’s counties in Virginia and Kentucky.

1790 Wythe County was formed from Montgomery County

1861 Bland County was formed from parts of Wythe, Giles, and Tazewell counties.

Colonial Virginia Land Grants and Settlement

In 1749, two land companies - the Ohio Land Company and the Loyal Land Company - were formed and awarded 800,000 acres in southwestern Virginia. An expeditionary party, including Dr. Thomas Walker, a co-founder of the Loyal Land Company, was sent out to survey and explore areas suitable for settlement. In 1750, Dr. Walker and his group were the first recorded Euro-Americans to journey through Cumberland Gap to Kentucky.

Significant migration didn’t materialize until after the French and Indian War (1754-1763). Indian attacks, including massacres, remained problematic through the 1770s even as settlers began to flow down the Great Wagon Road. Daniel Boone traveled through the area leading hunting trips beginning in 1769 and was instrumental in clearing the Wilderness Road through Cumberland Gap into Kentucky, later to be used by Abraham’s grandson, Robert, as a route to Pikeville, Kentucky.

Abraham in Augusta County

Virginia militia exemption in 1778 places Abraham’s birth year between 1723 and 1728 or earlier, so he would have been about 25-30 years or older when he was transported to the colonies, and between 32-37 years old, now with farming experience, when his servitude ended in about 1761.  

No documentation survives for Abraham’s years between prisoner ship transport in 1753 and 1777 when a record of “tithables” places Ab Dillow in Augusta County, Virginia.

Abraham’s listing in 1778 tax records, as well as Virginia militia records showing he was too old to serve in the Revolution, also place him in Augusta County. Even though too old, militia officers maintained a man on the lists when not required to muster as he was still was liable for other duties, e.g. road maintenance or taxes. Usually the exemption age was over 50-55, which suggests Abraham’s birth year was in the 1720s.

Further, Abraham Dillow is named in the 1779 Augusta County Will Book #7 as having received payment for four pairs of shoes “for negros (sic) and servant boy” in the estate settlement for William Peas, Augusta County. He may have gained cordwaining as well as farming skills.

Abraham in Montgomery County

A 1781 Montgomery County militia listing for Abram Dillow, serving under Captain Abraham Trigg, indicates the family made a move out of Augusta County. The key here is that Montgomery County was formed in 1776, and records place Abraham in Augusta County until 1778, and perhaps 1779. Thus, the change in county wasn’t simply due to boundary changes, but an actual move.

An initial thought might be that Abraham traveled down the Great Wagon Road from Augusta County directly to Walker’s Creek which was in the vast Montgomery County in 1781. However, his listing in Captain Abraham Trigg’s militia indicates the family more likely relocated in Montgomery County closer to Captain Trigg’s location in the vicinity of Roanoke. Further, rampant Native American hostilities made the Walker's Creek area dangerous in the 1770s-1780s.

Abraham in Wythe County

Although the large Loyal Company land grant theoretically opened up the area in the 1750s, the French and Indian War (technically between the French and British) and Native American violent confrontation delayed settlement in southwestern Virginia.

The Treaty of Paris in 1763 ending the French and Indian War removed the French from the Continent. In order to appease the Native Americans and to discourage migrating colonists from getting ideas about independence, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 forbade settlement on lands in the Appalachians west of the Eastern Continental Divide, i.e., the Blue Ridge. Naturally, being who we are, settlers ignored the the Proclamation. Besides, exploration and investment in land claims had already been going on for a few years. 

As the Proclamation Line failed to prevent migration, Native Americans responded to colonist encroachment with raids, killings and kidnappings through the 1780s, including around Walker’s Mountain and Walker’s Creek.

Sustained settlement of Walker’s Creek began in the 1790’s after decline of frontier conflict, opening of land after the Revolution, and formation of Wythe County for governance. Wythe County split from Montgomery County in 1790 as settlers tired of trekking 50 miles over mountains to Christiansburg (then called Hans Meadows) to conduct any business. The piece containing Walker’s Creek became Bland County in 1861.

Abraham and family likely migrated to the Walker’s Creek area with the settlement phase beginning in the early 1790s. By now, his sons were in their late twenties and could help with the onerous task of getting to the area and clearing land for farming. Abraham was getting on in years, though, and the move may have been at the impetus of his sons who wanted an opportunity for land.

Abraham’s family

Abraham married Mary (last name unknown) and started a family in about 1764 when their first child,  James, was born. Whether Mary was Abraham’s only wife and mother of all his children is unknown as Virginia only began to keep marriage records in 1785, and we don’t know about any family in England before he was transported. The only evidence for Mary’s name comes from the youngest child’s marriage record. Since several records place Abraham in Augusta County until at least 1779, all the children were likely born there.

Whether sons James and William married before they arrived in Walker’s Creek is unclear. Oftentimes, churches kept at least baptismal and marriage records before counties became organized enough to keep vital records, but the first church established near Walker’s Creek was in 1817. 

Children:

• James Dillow (b. about 1764, Augusta County, VA, d. Wythe County, VA)

• William Dillow (b. About 1766, Augusta County VA, d. Wythe County, VA)

• 3rd GGF Abraham “Abram” Dillow Jr (b. 1768, VA, d. about 1852, Walker’s Creek, Wythe, VA) Abram’s birthdate and location are derived from the 1850 census record.

• Elizabeth (b. about 1776, VA) married William Mullin on June 16, 1794 in Montgomery County, Virginia. The 1810 and 1820 censuses placing the Elizabeth and William in Christiansburg, Virginia, may be a clue to where Abraham Sr.’s family lived prior to moving to Walker’s Creek 50 miles distant.

Abraham Sr. and sons James, William, and Abram Jr. all paid personal property tax in Wythe County from 1793 to 1800. Elizabeth’s marriage in Montgomery County in 1794 could suggest the women stayed behind while Abraham and the boys cleared land and built shelter in Walker’s Creek. The last tax record for Abraham Sr. is 1803. He would have been about 75 years old. The last, indeed the only, record of Mary was Elizabeth’s marriage record in 1794.

Abram Dillow, Jr.

Third great-grandfather Abram, Jr.  married Elizabeth Steele in 1795 and they had eleven children between 1796 and 1827. They spent all their lives on Walker’s Mountain. Abram fathered children until the age of 59, and purchased land on Walker’s Creek as late as 1847. 

There is no doubt this family was poor. Three of their children - Granville, William, and Nancy - appear in  Mary Kegley’s Lost Children of Wythe County, a compilation of records in the 1830s of poor children given county resources to pay for their teacher and books.

His son, 2nd great-grandfather Robert didn’t marry until age 37, to 21 year old Elizabeth Cassady, and they left Walker’s Creek soon after.

Sale of the Dillow land

Land records for the Walker’s Creek acreage could not be located, but, if the land was legitimately acquired, may be in the Library of Virginia. Building a cabin and clearing land on the Appalachian frontier the 1790s as a squatter gave a low cost way to purchase up to 400 acres, but sometimes came in conflict with large land companies, such as the Loyal Land Company which had already claimed and surveyed the land.

An 1873 Bland County deed records the sale of the Dillow property on Walker’s Creek by second great-grandfather Robert Dillow, “son and heir of Abraham Dillow,” who was living in Greenup, Kentucky at the time:

 "Witnesseth that the said Robert Dillow and Elizabeth his wife by their said attorney for and in consideration of the sum of twenty dollars in hand paid the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged, the said Parties of the first part doth grant and convey unto said A.A. Ashworth one undivided tenth part of a certain tract or parcel of land on waters of Walker's Creek, Bland County, Virginia..to which said grantor Robert Dillow is entitled as son and heir at Law of Abraham Dillow deceased being the tract known as the Brazier land and adjoining the land of William P. Bruce and others, suppose to contain eighty five acres be the same more or less.”

A Plausible Reconstruction

Taking into account available records and conditions at the time, Abraham’s timeline may have looked like this:

• 1723  Born in Christ Church, England
• 1753  Convicted of theft and transported to the colonies to be sold as indentured servant
• 1754-1760  Indentured servitude, likely in Augusta County, Virginia, or Shenandoah Valley
• c. 1764  Married to Mary, last name unknown
• 1764-1776   Four children born in Augusta County
• 1777-1779   Militia, tax, and probate records in Augusta County
• 1781  Listed in Montgomery County militia, probably in Roanoke/Christiansburg area
• 1793-1803  Personal property tax records in Wythe County

Our early southwestern Virginia ancestors were the Dillows, Steeles, Cassadys and Crocketts, all part of that wave of settlers who traveled down Shenandoah Valley on the Great Wagon Trail. A hundred years later, three grandsons of Robert Dillow serving under General Alfred Sheridan would lay waste to the Shenandoah Valley as part of the Union’s campaign to destroy the “breadbasket” of the Confederacy.

No single document directly links the Abraham Dellow of Christ Church to the frontiersman Abraham Dillow of southwestern Virginia. However, the cumulative evidence, including naming, age, migration routes, delay in starting a family, and absence of Abrahams in other Dillow immigrant families, strongly supports that they are likely the same person.

What can’t be filled in, but can be imagined, is the loss, hardship, and seemingly unsurmountable events of Abraham’s life that he met with resilience and will for survival.

The Odyssey of Jacob Caseman (1793-1849)

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 court records. 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, Jacob's son George served in the Civil War and was a land owner, and Jacob's granddaughter 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.

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 was 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

"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.” As Pendleton County had no banks, loans were made freely among neighbors.

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 and Rouse, likely the neighbors who loaned money for the land and mill purchase, 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 unclear.

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 Anne 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 Jacob Sr.'s last child. 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 and Lydia Clinkinbeard vs. George Caseman shows a statement is made “mother to bind out child,” and the judge ordered the case be discontinued.

These legal proceedings name Jacob Sr., deceased, as the father of the "infant son." It might be natural to assume the summons was referring to Edward, the one-year-old child living on the farm in 1850 and six years old at the time of the summons, and that "bound out" meant placing the child outside the home.

This explanation would be plausible as Lydia was remarried, no longer living in George’s home, and might not want  responsibility for an out-of-wedlock child. The summons clearly identifies Jacob Sr. was the child’s father, and, if the summons refers to Edward, then Lydia could not have been his mother.

The misleading term here is “infant.” Nineteenth-century courts routinely refer to anyone under the age of fourteen as “infants” and those under twenty-one as “minors.” The other “infant” in George’s home in 1855 besides Edward was his brother Foster, age thirteen. The term “bind out” more often meant placing a child into indentured servitude until they reached adulthood, especially children with families who could not afford to raise them - fewer mouths for the family to feed and free labor for someone. 

In 1855, Mary Anne and Lydia Ann were married and out of the house. Jacob Jr. was already adult and may or may not have been living in his brother George’s home. George may have had practical reasons for resisting Foster’s being bound out; Foster may have been essential labor on the family farm. After all, George was only twenty-one when his father died and George had responsibility for not just the farm, but also paying off Jacob Sr.'s mortgage debt. The court closed the case several months after the summons with the statement “mother to bind out child” which fits a 13-year-old but not a six-year-old. What remains puzzling is why Lydia objected to Foster being bound out, as she was remarried and living on a nearby farm with a seemingly prosperous farmer.

Five years later, the 1860 Census shows Foster, now eighteen, living on the Gosney farm in Flower Creek which appears consistent with an indenture.

If this interpretation is correct, who was the one-year-old Edward Caseman in the 1850 census? 

No other Caseman families lived in Pendleton County in 1850, and no child named Edward Caseman appears in the 1860 census. Pendleton County’s surviving vital records cover only select years in the 1840s and 1850s. Edward is absent from any birth, death, or court records in the years that remain.

The oldest daughter, Lydia Ann, married in 1842 and moved to another county. Daughter, Mary Anne, would have been only fifteen in 1849 and married the following year in 1850.  In those years, were she pregnant there would have been a shotgun wedding, unless the father was a family member. If the child were Mary Anne’s and the father known, the court would have required that Edward have the biological father’s name.

That leaves three Caseman men who could have fathered a child in 1849: Jacob Sr., George, or Jacob Jr. Of these, the most plausible is Jacob Sr. Edward appears in the household at around the time Jacob Sr. is believed to have died, and the oldest brother, George, would naturally become the logical caretaker of the child. Had George or Jacob Jr. been the biological father, and the child survived, a longer term presence would have been in their household.

 

Complicating the whole scenario, George married Mariah Johnson in 1852 and their sixth child was named George Edward Caseman, born 1866, undoubtedly honoring Edward who must have died at an early age.

Little Edward remains a mystery, but what little we know points to either Jacob Sr. or George as his father and his mother unknown.

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 to be bound out.

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, the year 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. 

The 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.

Epilogue

“I coulda been a contender…” Marlon Brando

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 or personality issues?

Could it be he unwisely left the family at an 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 possibly fathered an out-of-wedlock child - perhaps incestuous - 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?

The reader is invited to read posts on Jacob's legacies, George Caseman, Mary Jane Caseman, and Grace Dillow.