Confusion Runs in the Family

Robert Turner was born in 1735 in Leicestershire, England. Maybe. The confusion is over where. It's a pretty common name. His parents' names are in dispute. Maybe there were two Robert Turners born on the same date or maybe there was only one.

At some point he came to North Carolina. There he met and married Mary Thornburg whose family name is spelled many ways over the years and is the subject of what seems to be a never-ending discussion on whether to make the spelling consistent or use the spelling in use at the time and location. (I vote for accuracy over consistency but agree the multiple spellings do make things difficult.)

Mary was a Quaker whose family came from Ulster, Northern Ireland, to North Carolina via Pennsylvania by 1730. Robert was not a Quaker so she was immediately "Dismissed" by the New Garden Monthly Meeting, Hopewell, Guilford, now Randolph County, North Carolina, for marrying "Out of Unity." Less than a year later it was changed to "Condemned."

Mary and Robert had ten children according to research by the late Dr. John Vallentine and others who used various records. (Some descendants of Mary and Robert became Pioneer Mormons. Much research has been done on the family.)

Robert may have fought in various colonial battles. There is a Captain Robert Turner in the records who seems to have the same credentials, like birth date, but not the same parents. And they both married the same woman...on the same date. It is unclear what happened to that Captain Robert Turner. DNA results seem to indicate a connection with this Captain Robert Turner's mother and descendants of Robert and Mary Turner.

It seems likely the real Robert Turner is a combination of the above. Confusion...and some creative  thinking perhaps.

Then came the American Revolution. 

Robert may have fought in colonial battles, but when it came to the English, he was a Loyalist. He was a Captain of a Randolph County, North Carolina, Company in the Loyalist Militia. (a Captain...sound familiar?). He was captured after the Battle of Moore's Bridge, north of Wilmington, on February 27, 1776. He was a prisoner at Halifax, North Carolina, on April 5, 1776. He was transferred to Maryland where he broke out of jail in September 1776 and escaped to parts unknown. Depending on the source, he was recaptured and died in prison or died while a fugitive. There is no indication he ever returned home.

In November 1777 the North Carolina General Assembly confiscated his property and, in 1779, he was listed among those who had committed treason against the state. This is well documented in North Carolina records.

As a result, Mary moved west to the area of Bristol, Tennessee, with her ten young children and, later, to Greene County, Ohio, where she died.

Some researchers are unhappy with a Loyalist ancestor. They say, without sources, that Robert Turner wasn't a Loyalist, that he did not die but also moved west -- to Jefferson County, Tennessee. (Bristol is in Sullivan County.) He died about 1795. That would mean the North Carolina General Assembly was confused.

So Many Children He Had To Marry and Marry and Marry

by genealogysleuth

Thomas Lucas didn’t live in a shoe but he had a lot of children, 16 in fact, possibly 17.

He was born April 27, 1814, in Liberty Township, Clinton County, Ohio, to James Lucas and Hannah Bowman. He came to central Illinois with the rest of the Abraham Lucas clan – Abraham was his grandfather – and members of their Baptist Church from Greene County, Ohio, in the later 1820s. Within a short time after their arrival, James Lucas died. John Lucas and John Turner, uncles, were named guardians of Thomas, age 13. John Lucas was married Hannah Bowman’s sister Mary. John Turner was married to James Lucas’ sister Sarah.

On June 10, 1834, Thomas married one of John and Sarah Bowman Turner’s granddaughters, Mary Turner, a sister of the infamous Spencer Turner. Thomas and Sarah had 10 children. There is a long-held story that their first daughter was named Minerva. She apparently was born before they were married and she died. I have found no evidence of this child. Mary Turner Lucas died on October 4, 1855, leaving seven living children. Two months later their two oldest daughters married. Thomas was left with an adult son, a not so healthy teenage son who did not survive his mother long, a 9 year old son and two young daughters.

On May 1, 1856, less than seven months after the death of his wife, Thomas Lucas married Harriet Gambrel, widow of John Lanham. She was 38 and had no children of her own. However, she added two daughters to the Thomas Lucas family before she died on January 5, 1867. By then there were two of Mary’s daughters and two of Harriet’s daughters at home but one of Mary’s daughters married in April of that year. Thomas was down to three minor children.

On July 10, 1867, six months after the death of his second wife and on the 33rd anniversary of his first marriage, Thomas Lucas married Charlotte Bowman, the widow of Jacob East and a relative of Thomas’ mother. She was also the sister of the soon to be husband of her new stepdaughter Arminda Lucas. Probably it was Thomas’ marriage to Charlotte that introduced the young couple.

We know Charlotte had three children by her first marriage but not what happened to them. It does not appear they survived infancy. Thomas had three children at home and soon he and Charlotte had more, four more to be exact. Thomas’ last child was born posthumously and only lived about six weeks.

Thomas Lucas died August 18, 1874. Both of Harriet’s daughters were at home although one married within months. (Parent dies, child marries. Seems to be a pattern.)

Thomas Lucas was buried at Lake Bank Cemetery with two of his wives, several children and, later, other children and grandchildren.

Letters of Administration issued to Allen Lucas, eldest son, on August 22, 1874, same date as his Petition. The estate contained 918 acres of land. The widow received $234.88. The surviving children or their heirs each received $46.97.

Sometime after 1880 Charlotte and her surviving children moved to Oxford, Kansas, where there were other Lucases and Bowmans as well as others who had left central Illinois for the promise of land in Kansas. She did not remarry but is not buried in Lake Bank.

FEMALE ANCESTORS

How many generations in your direct female line do you know? This question is for females. The way records were kept men can generally go further back with data on male lines than females with their female lines. Mitochondrial DNA is inherited solely from the mother and thus enables the trace of your maternal line back in time. Unfortunately it can't put a name to the members of the line.

Obviously you are #1 and your mother is #2. My maternal grandmother #3 was Leona Ethel Ryan Downing who was born in 1892 and died in 1975. Her mother was Lillie Margaret Wood Ryan #4. Lillie was born in 1871 and died in 1956. I knew all of these people. Lillie's mother, #5, was Sarah Katherine Lucas Wood. Sarah was born in 1835 and died in 1896. Sarah's mother was Mary Turner Lucas #6. She was born in 1813 and died in 1855. Lillie, Sarah and Mary are buried in the same area of Lake Bank Cemetery, Lake Fork Township, Logan County, Illinois.

Mary's mother was Margaret Low Turner. Margaret #7 was born in Maryland around 1793, had 13 children and died, presumably, in DeWitt County, Illinois, after 1870. Her husband Allen had died in DeWitt in April 1846. Margaret's mother was Mary Low, maiden name unknown. We know her name was Mary from land records in Ohio. Mary #8 was born about 1771 in Maryland, married Nathan Low and died after 1827, presumably in Madison now Clark County, Ohio, where her husband died a few years later.

Spencer Turner Revisited

I have recently done more research on the Turners, not enough but more. Spencer Turner was one of the first settlers in DeWitt County, arriving in Wilson Township near Waynesville just east of Logan County in 1835. His parents had moved to Illinois in 1827 living first near Athens in Menard County, then Rocky Ford in Logan County, then to Waynesville in what became to DeWitt and eventually to Wapella.

From transcribed newspaper accounts of social goings on, which I read on the DeWitt County ILGenWeb site,  he apparently was not seriously damaged by being charged with murder and stiffing Abraham Lincoln. If I hadn't read the court record I would have strongly suspected the story was not factual or heavily embellished but no, it is true.

Spencer's stone in Sugar Grove Cemetery near Wapella does not look like that of a man who couldn't pay his legal bill. You can see the stone here. When his widow Nancy Hoblit died in 1900 she had three lots in the town of Wapella and an 80 acre farm.

Abe and Me

Where I come from is closely associated with Abraham Lincoln. "You can tell you are from Logan County because every school trip for 12 years was to Lincoln something." [There are several counties which could say the same.] In addition, we had one of the two remaining courthouses where he practiced in town. Unfortunately after they moved the actual court a fire destroyed most of the records from that time.

As a result I confess I am not terribly interested in one A. Lincoln. While others were trying to find a connection I was happy not to have one. My ancestors were farming, not spending time in court...or if they were it will remain secret because the records were destroyed.

2009 is the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth. Work has been going on for several years. It caused two web sites of interest to be created. One is the Lincoln Papers and the other is the Lincoln Log.

On July 10, 1834, in Sangamon now Logan County the Rev. Michael Mann married Thomas Lucas and Mary Turner. They had 10 or maybe 11 children before she died.

Mary had a brother named Spencer Turner. He lived in neighboring DeWitt County. Spencer Spencer liked his alcoholic beverages. One cold night, ironically April 15, in 1840 Spencer hit a fellow drinking buddy named Matthew K. Martin. Martin died on April 18 and my 3rd great granduncle became the first man charged with first degree murder in DeWitt County.

Spencer hired the legal team of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas defended him. Turner admitted that he hit Martin, saying Martin was drunk and made insulting remarks about Turner's wife Nancy Hoblit. Lincoln and Douglas argued that Martin did not die from the assault but from alcoholism or exposure to bad weather. The court agreed and issued a not guilty verdict.

The Turner-Lincoln connection did not end there. As the Lincoln Papers and Lincoln Log show, their relationship would drag on for several years.

Spencer did not pay his legal fees. In October 1841 Lincoln sued for $200. He eventually got a judgment but could not collect. Douglas also sued and, for whatever reason, Spencer paid Douglas.

After the matter dragged on for some time Turner and Lincoln reached an agreement. He offered Lincoln a horse in exchange for the fees due and Lincoln accepted. The horse soon went blind.

Lincoln died on April 15, 1865, the victim of an assassin's bullet. Spencer Turner died, presumably peacefully, on April 26, 1896, at the age of 79.