Rickabaugh-Griffith-Lionberger
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Chapter VIII: Rickabaugh-Griffith-Lionberger Last Revised: November 22, 2013 Having established at long last that Adam Rickabaugh and Catherine {McCoy} Rickabaugh were the parents of Henry Rickabaugh, we can now explore what we know about them and their antecedents. Adam Rickabaugh was born in Virginia in 1790, probably on June 5 in that year. Based on what we know about his parents, he was likely born in what was then Shenandoah (now Page) County of that state before his parents moved further west to Greenbrier County, Virginia (now West Virginia). Adam died on June 30, 1865, very probably in Marion County, Iowa. He is buried in Rees (sometimes called Reins) Cemetery near Pleasantville in that county. Catherine was born in Kentucky on March 19, 1799. She appears on the 1870 Iowa census and was still alive as of 1872, when she applied for a U.S. pension for Adam’s military service. 1 In 1870 and 1872 she was residing with her son Samuel and his family in Marion County, Iowa. Evidently Catherine died sometime before 1880 because she is not listed on that year’s census in Iowa or elsewhere; the fact that Samuel and his family were enumerated in Henry Rickabaugh’s household in Iowa in 1880 reinforces that conclusion. Adam and Catherine were married in Gallia County, Ohio, in 1813 or in 1814, but the exact date is another mystery. 2 1 Adam is buried in Row 15, Grave 2 of this cemetery, which is found in the northwest quarter of the northwest quarter of Section 4 in Union Township, Marion County, Iowa. Rees Cemetery adjoins Adam’s property. Catherine was undoubtedly the “C” Rickabaugh in her son Samuel’s household on the 1870 census. Despite the fact that person is said to have been male, this person had the right age and state of birth – and was also “keeping house,” a term typically applied to females. 2 Two sources, including Catherine herself, gave the date as either September 13 or 30 in 1813; the county clerk, however, reported it as February 1, 1814. The county’s marriage book, though, is said to show the ceremony (conducted by a justice of the peace named Robert Armstrong) took place on September 30, 2 We do not know a great deal more about Adam and Catherine themselves, but because of her 1872 application for a pension based on Adam’s service during the War of 1812 we do have some knowledge of that episode in their lives. 3 Adam volunteered in August 1812, soon after war was declared, and served – with monthly extensions of his enlistment – into February 1813. He was present at the army camp located near the rapids of the Maumee River (later named Fort Meigs and now Perrysburg, Ohio), where he was discharged at the end of February 1813. In August 1813 he again entered service, this time as a substitute for another man, but he was discharged just about a month later. Since the war in the west ended soon thereafter, Adam saw no further military service. Adam’s first unit was a company of the Gallia Volunteer Riflemen attached to the Second Regiment (Safford’s) in General Edward Tupper’s command. The fact that his company was led first by Captain Isaac Butler and then by Lieutenant John Rader of the Quartermaster Corps, United States Supply, gives us a clue about the nature of Adam’s service, as do the applications of various other Rickabaughs who also served during the War of 1812. Because the Ohio militia performed so unreliably in combat during this war, it was generally used to keep the supply routes open. What this meant in practice is 1814 – a fourth date. Several possibilities come to mind. Catherine might have had a memory lapse. Someone might have confused the dates 13 and 30, which can sound alike. The wrong year might have been written down. The marriage might have been entered in the records later than it actually occurred. Possibly there were in fact two marriages, one before an itinerant minister and another before a justice of the peace to ensure that the marriage was recorded locally. 3 Catherine was awarded $8 per month commencing February 14, 1871. 3 that the militia ran wagon trains loaded with supplies, along with livestock on the hoof, from southern Ohio up to the northern part of the state, where most of the troops were encamped.4 Adam’s second stint in uniform, though, was with Daniel Womeldorff’s Mounted Regiment, which may have been something other than a supply unit. Adam and Catherine, who married soon after he returned from the war, must have lived in Gallia County for the next few years, but as we have seen in the previous chapter we cannot locate them in Ohio on the 1820 census. Between about 1824 and about 1827 they moved west to Indiana, which is where I finally located Adam Rickabaugh on the 1830 census – not as Rickabaugh but as “Rickbock.” He and his family were residing not where we would expect to find them, based on where they would live in 1840 (Greene County, Indiana), but quite a distance further north in Fountain County of that state. A son born to this couple in Indiana in 1827 was said to have been born in Greene County, which suggests one of two possibilities: either the Rickabaughs lived in Greene County for a time around 1827 and then moved on to Fountain County or this son was actually born in Fountain but remembered it was Greene County because his family later moved there. 4 A civilian who joined in driving the animals as part of these supply trains was a teenager named John Brown (1800-59), who would achieve fame and notoriety four decades later; one wonders if Adam ever met him. Surely the young Rickabaughs had had experience with livestock in Greenbrier County, and so Adam was a natural candidate for this wartime duty. 4 On the 1830 census, Adam Rickabaugh is shown as forty to fifty years old (he was forty years old that year) and Catherine is shown as thirty to forty years old (she was thirty-one years of age in 1830). The profile of the children listed for this couple matches quite closely that of the children we are aware of from other sources Adam and Catherine had in 1830, with the addition of three older children whose given names we do not know. The presence of these older children in 1830 confirms our suspicion that Adam and Catherine, married in 1813 or 1814, must have had other children before our Henry was born in 1819 or so; their existence is makes it even more unlikely that Henry was born as early as 1814. These older children had left the household by 1840, so Rickabaugh researchers also unaware of this 1830 census data for Adam’s family have not known about them – or about our Henry, for that matter. Best of all for us, one of those three older children on the 1830 Indiana census was a male ten to fifteen years of age, which was right where Henry Rickabaugh ought to have been listed that year if he was born in 1819 as we believe. Research has turned up no deeds or public land entries for Adam Rickabaugh, so evidently he was living on and farming someone else’s land in Fountain County, Indiana, in 1830. The same situation must have been true in Greene County ten years later, for again there are no deeds or public land entries for Adam Rickabaugh. Here, however, we know that Adam’s nephew, John Rickabaugh, was living on two adjoining properties in Fairplay Township that he would patent later during the 1840 calendar year; both were in 5 the northeast portion of Section 20 of Township 7 North, Range 5 West. It seems quite possible that Adam was residing with these relatives or else farming some other Greene County resident’s land at that time. A tax list in 1843 reveals that Adam was still in that county, and a mark on the list indicates (correctly) that he was over fifty years of age and so possibly exempt from the levy. Adam and Catherine moved again in 1845, when they were among the earliest people to settle around Knoxville in Union Township of Marion County, Iowa. They would reside in this place for the remainder of their lives and are found on the censuses here in 1850 and 1860. In both years, Adam Rickabaugh is described as a farmer. The 1850 non- population census shows him having had 30 improved acres and 70 unimproved acres; ten years later, the ratio had become 55 improved acres to 45 unimproved ones. The value of his real estate in 1850 was just $300; by the next census, in 1860, that value had increased four times, to $1,200, and he also had personal property worth $350 in 1860.5 We can describe what little we know about Catherine’s McCoy family in a few words. One possible lead to the identity of her parents is that Adam’s uncle, also named Adam 5 Adam Rickabaugh was tabulated on the 1850 non-population census as follows: two horses, two milk cows, two other cattle, twenty-two sheep, forty swine, and the production for sale of twenty bushels of wheat, 300 bushels of Indian corn, 100 pounds of butter, and some miscellaneous household manufacturing. His farm equipment was valued at $30, and the value of the animals he owned was $290.