I
originally planned to write my paper about Nellie Bessie Higgins, her husband
Edwin Emmanuel Peterson and their nine children. This is my mother-in-law’s family. As I started to write, I decided to mention
a little bit about Nellie and Ed’s grandparents. I started with Jackson Higgins as a child
making the trek with his family from Ohio to Schuyler County and never went
beyond that. There was so much to record
and learn about Brooklyn, Illinois in 1850.
I did not want to skim over this time.
The paper on the Peterson family will have to wait for another time.
This is the
story of Daniel and Sarah Higgins, their children and grandchildren. Daniel was born in Greene, Greene,
Pennsylvania to Joseph and Polly (Henderson) Higgins. It is about a period in time when Illinois
was a wild untamed place, a true frontier waiting to be civilized and
conquered. The stories of the massive snake dens especially caught my
attention. I can hardly image the
courage required to tame this place. I
hungered for more information. I wanted
to understand what experiences the Higgins family had that shaped their lives.
I was
delighted to find the story of Daniel, Jackson and Henry published in several
books such as the Biographical Review of
Cass, Schuyler and Brown Counties, Schuyler County Historical Encyclopedia
and Schuyler County Illinois History Vol
I and Vol II. I discovered a
wonderful web site, Illinois Gen Web Project that contains a wealth of
information for this project.
Candy
Moulton’s The Writer’s Guide to Everyday
Life in the Wild West had a great chapter on clothing for the time of my
paper. I found an Archaeological study
done on a cabin site of one of Daniel’s neighbors. This study published an 1872 plot map, which
was a jackpot of information for me. I
could actually see where the various farms were and who owned the neighboring
land. This map is on the title page.
Ancestry.com
proved to be a valuable resource as well.
Here I was able to locate the Federal Census Records, the non-population
agricultural Census Records and one Illinois state Census. I was disappointed in the non-population
agricultural census. There was so much
information available but I could not read the smeared printing to know what
the questions were. I searched the
internet and found a pdf file with the blank and very readable Agriculture
Census records as well as explanations for some of the fields. This find allowed me to harvest the fabulous
information found in the Agricultural Census Records giving a snap shot look at
their farms.
While
researching for this paper I discovered the internet site
scholar.google.com. What a great
resource for finding journals and papers!
I also learned quite a bit about the turmoil bubbling in Central
Illinois due to the Congressional Conscription Act in 1863. I was unable to find any direct reference to
how the Higgins family felt about the Civil War besides the fact that they were
democrats. According to what I learned,
the democrats were not in favor of the war, I am assuming this is true of the Higgins
boys as well. It appears none of them
ran off to enlist or actually fought into the war.
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