Sorry for the lack of posts the past few days. I wasn’t at my best, so I took some time off from my research. I jumped back in today, though, and, as the title says, did a little of this and a little of that.
I started with some Beech Creek Township OPS things. I had a tab left open from a few days ago where I had randomly searched for Newark in the Worthington, Indiana newspaper and came across a pretty interesting Civil War connection. I initially came across this entry from the 25 June 1863 issue of the Worthington Gazette:
On Monday and Tuesday the people of Greene county were all in commotion. A great many rumors were afloat, and a certain class of men dropped their work and rushed pell mell towards Monroe county. Runners were sent to the different townships, and from what we can learn several hundred men were en route for some place and for some object on Monday and Tuesday. A few days more will probably reveal their intentions.
P. S. Since the above was put in type we learn that up to Tuesday at 10 o’clock about 500 armed men had assembled at Newark, a small village in the north east corner of this county. After mustering several hours, they dispersed for their homes. The true object of their visit is not yet fully known.
Intrigued, I checked the next result, which was from the 2 July 1863 issue of the Worthington Gazette, which had this to say:
The War in Greene County.
The following dispatches by grape vine telegraph have been received at this place during the past ten days. They are just about as re-lie-able as most of the dispatches sent to the Western city papers by the Associated Press:
1st. That a man by the name of Osborn was shot at three times between this place and Woodrow’s mill, one shot raising the dust on his horses’ main.
2d. That the rebel Morgan had arrived at Bloomington with 1,200 men, and that the horn-blowing, Constitutional party of this county had gone to that place in large numbers to repel the invasion.
3d. That 1,500 of Uncle Sam’s cavalry had made a dash on Newark, and dispersed 75 of the enemy, one Ben. Crocket having been fired at three times. Some tall running was done, but no one was hurt.
4th. That the enemy are throwing up entrenchments at Linton, and that a general engagement cannot be delayed but a few days.
5th. That Gen. Humphreys had called on the Federal Col. Thompson, at Terre Haute, and informed him that there should be a cessation of hostilities in this county. Also the Confederate General asked Col. T. whether the guns for the Worthington and Bloomfield Home Guards had arrived at that city-if so, he would be glad to escort them down. That Gen. A. also imformed [sic] the Colonel that Lieutenant General Daniel W. Voorhees, of the C. S. A., could not succeed in enrolling the militia of two townships in Sullivan county.
6th. That 50 of the enemy had surrounded a discharged soldier of the Abolition army, at Charley Beasley’s Still house, and after some rough treatment he was forced to take the oath of allegiance, and was the paroled as a prisoner of war.
7th. That the 71st regiment, together with three pieces of artillery and 1,000 cavalry, had arrived at Bloomington, en route for Greene county, and that they would reach Solsbury [sic] on Sunday, and would arrive at this place on Monday. – Great preparations were being made to meet them.
8th. A paroled prisoner by the name of Strongarm arrived at this place on Monday morning, reports that there are some 2,000 of the enemy, well fortified, at the Five Hollows, over on Beech Creek. Also, that all the Constitutional party within 10 miles of Solsbury [sic] have gone into the army to fight for “the Constitution as it is, and the Union as it was.”
9th. It is currently reported in official circles that Abe Lincoln and Governor Morton are on their way to this county to use their utmost efforts to induce General Humphreys to become a Union man.
Some of the above may possibly turn out to be sensation dispatches, but we leave our readers free to believe just what they please.
Being from Bloomington, this took me by surprise because I had never heard anything about John Hunt Morgan and his men having any connection to Bloomington. In fact, I still can’t find any connection besides what this article states. I suppose the article itself even warns that some of what was reported could be “sensation dispatches,” which that part certainly seems to be.
Another article I found in the 7 July 1863 issue of the Daily Evansville Journal states the following:
The Bloomington Republican states that on Friday, June 19th, an armed force of perhaps eighty or more, which had been drilling for sometime, attacked the enrolling officer, of Indian Creek Township, (W. F. Hensley,) whilst out discharging his duty, and compelled him to give up his enrolling papers, threatening with death if he revealed their names to any one. Mr. Hensley reported their names to Col. McCrea, Provost Marshal. On Wednesday morning, June 24th, Col. Biddle of the 71st Indiana Regiment arrived there with about six hundred infantry and a company of the 3d Indiana Cavalry, having been in the south part of the State to ascertain the state of affairs there, with regard to the reported invasion by the rebels of that section of country. Soon after their arrival, Colonel McCrea, (Provost Marshal) with a few assistants, and the Cavalry company, visited Indian Creek to ascertain the exact state of affairs, and, if possible, to procure the papers and arrest the persons the persons [sic] who took them from the officer. The result was the arrest of some sixteen persons, supposed to be the leaders in this and other insurrectionary movements, and the recovery of the enrolling officer’s papers.
This is great, right? I’ve at least confirmed the connection to the 71st regiment. Things took a disappointing turn when more digging revealed this article from the Indiana State Sentinel, dated 13 July 1863:
The Enrollment in Indiana
Indianapolis, June 29.
Over 1,000 troops are in Sullivan and Greene counties, enforcing the enrollment and arresting deserters.
We find this dispatch in the New York Tribune, and we presume it was published in all the other leading Eastern journals of the day succeeding its date. From the tenor of this telegram one would be led to suppose that there was extraordinary resistance to the enrollment in Sullivan and Greene counties to require a thousand soldiers to protect the officers when engaged in that duty and in arresting deserters. What would be the astonishment of the leaders of these newspapers if they should be told – which they will not be – that no resistance to the draft whatever has occurred in these counties?
Our readers will remember that some days ago we had information through special telegrams from Indianapolis, that there were a thousand men assembled in Monroe county to resist the enrollment. Upon seeing this we at once requested a friend at Bloomington to send us full particulars of these extraordinary demonstrations of the Monroe Copperheads. He sent us the facts, which were published, showing that all the foundation for this story was that three men had got possession of an enrolling officer’s papers and refused to deliver them up, and that these and about a dozen other noisy men had been arsested. [sic]
A few days subsequent to this another Indianapolis “special” stated that affairs in Monroe county were getting more serious, that fifteen hundred men were in arms to resist the enrollment, &c. Thinking there must certainly be something in this, we put ourselves in communication with a Republican gentleman in Monroe county, with a request for the particulars, who replied that “there was not one word of truth in the story.”
So far as Sullivan county is concerned, it is true that an enrolling officer – a worthy citizen – was foully murdered by some cowardly assassin. But it is believed to have been done by a personal enemy, and not because of the duty in which the unfortunate man was engaged. No resistance to the enrollment had taken place in Sullivan previous to the murder nor has any taken place since, that we have heard of. The same may be said of Greene. If a thousand soldiers were sent to these counties it is not because they were necessary to enforce the enrollment, but because, as we suppose, it was necessary to give employment to the troops.
The sending abroad of such dispatches as the above is an act of injustice to the State, which can not be too severely condemned. Resistance to the enrollment is an offense punishable under the law which makes the enrollment necessary, and in the very few instances in which resistance was offered a squad of soldiers was all that was necessary to make the necessary arrests. Why a whole regiment was sent to Monroe county, and afterwards to Sullivan and Greene, where no resistance was offered, we hope the military authorities will be able to satisfactorily explain. – [New Albany Ledger]
This is corroborated by another article in the same issue of the Indiana State Sentinel:
The Difficulties in Sullivan and Greene Counties.
Brig. Gen. Mansfield of the Indiana Legion, came through Greene county to Sullivan last Thursday from the scene of the fabulous rebellion in Monroe county. He informed us that the reports circulated of the numbers congregated to resist the enrollment, draft, &c., were gross exaggerations, and that the difficulties there were happily settled without any resort to force. We learn also that he was agreeably disappointed to find that the reports of rebellious propensities on the part of the Democrats of Greene county were falsehoods…
And further corroborated by an article in the Plymouth Weekly Democrat from 2 July 1863:
Col. Biddle, in his campaign through the counties of Monroe, Sullivan, and Greene, Ind., found the people peaceably disposed…
So there seemingly was a very small resistance in Monroe County, and Col. Biddle and the troops did come through the area, but there certainly wasn’t anything as fanciful as Morgan and his men raiding Bloomington going on.
It does make me wonder how Benjamin Crockett’s name specifically got brought into this. Was he a Confederate sympathizer? The Crockett family were Democrats from Tennessee, so it wouldn’t be so surprising, but it is only speculation. What might be more telling is that he moved to Moultrie County, Illinois by 1870. This, too, is only speculation, but people don’t typically up and leave their home of multiple decades and move to a new state for no reason, which could imply there was a problem for him in Newark. Really, what I’m saying is “I don’t know, but it’s interesting to think about.”
What stinks is I’m not sure how to utilize this information for my OPS. There’s a lot of confusion around what actually happened, and I couldn’t find anything corroborating the stories told about Newark itself. So, I guess what started off as trying to verify an interesting story to include in my OPS turned into a total dud. Meh.
Anyway, I learned the definition of a new word today. That word is “nonjuror,” and Merriam-Webster defines it as “a person refusing to take an oath especially of allegiance, supremacy, or abjuration.” I had run into this word about 11 months ago when I was researching Henry Michael/Mikel I, who was a nonjuror in Capt. Eakles’ District of Rowan County, North Carolina in 1778. Not realizing what the word meant, I kind of just filed it away for a later time. Well, today was that later time because I randomly ran into the word and its definition while replying to a FRECOGS email this morning.
This “nonjuror” business is really interesting to me because I had long sought a way to get descendants into the D.A.R. and S.A.R. through some sort of hypothetical contribution to the war made by Henry. To learn now that he refused to signed the oath of allegiance in 1778 brings a whole new question into play: why’d he refuse? Did he not support the fight for independence? If so, why not? Or was it some sort of cultural or religious belief that restricted him from taking an oath? Or possibly some other reason? I’m not sure, but I’m intrigued.
After I finished writing the aforementioned FRECOGS email, I picked up work on my Michael family direct paternal line descendants chart. This is a chart I’m creating of all direct paternal line descendants of the Michael family so a cousin (a descendant of Joseph Mikel, son of Henry I) and I can better visualize what branches we need to test when it comes to Y-DNA. The chart is very much still a work in progress and will be for a while as there are A LOT of direct paternal line descendants.
The final thing I worked on today was the 1903 marriage of my 2nd great grandparents Martha Michael (2nd great granddaughter of Henry I) and Francis “Frank” Ooley. Despite a clear preference for the Baptist church amongst Martha’s ancestors, she herself was married by a Methodist preacher, Rev. Charles W. Woods. Martha is pretty far removed from Henry I, so I’m not so surprised to see her deviate from the norm of the family, but it’s still pretty interesting.
One last interesting thing I want to mention is that I found another Michael relative named for not just one Republican, but two: Roosevelt McKinley Mikel, son of John Riley Mikel, grandson of Alexander Mikel, great grandson of Joseph Mikel. Of course, I already knew Joseph’s son Daniel Mikel was a supporter of the Republican Party, but to find another branch of Joseph’s family supported the Republicans just adds more evidence to the Michael family case.
Anyway, that’s all for today. Reach out to me below if you’re a cousin!
