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From: "Richard A. Pence" <>
Subject: [ILHENDER-L] Western Migration - A Long Response, Part 2
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1999 17:31:28 -0500


As stated earlier, a great many families who migrated as far west as
Illinois in the early part of the 19th Century did so in stages.

In the last message, I related how my Pence ancestors moved from the
Shenandoah Valley to Champaign County, Oh. This message will outline the
steps from ther to Henderson County.

By 1820, when the last of the Pences from the Shenandoah Valley arrived in
Shenandoah County, my third great grandfather (known in Henderson County as
"Judge John Pence), decided to move his family on to Indiana. He sold his
"home place" of more than 700 acres to his first cousin Lewis Pence, then
just arriving from Virginia. The central part of Indiana had just been
surveyed and the land was put up for auction.

Prior to 1820, the federal goverment sold land at $2 an acre, minimum
purchase of 160 acres. One-fourth of the price was paid at purchase and the
balance was due in three annual installments. Partly because of the high
rate of default, in 1820 Congress lowered the minimum price to $1.25 an acre
and the minimum purchase 80 acres. However, all land had to be paid for in
full at purchase.

On 20 Oct., Judge Pence purchase 42 80-acre tracts at the U.S. land office
in Brookville, Ind. As in the previous migration, it was a "group effort."
Eventually moving to Indiana with Judge Pence (he earned his title by being
elected associate judge for three terms when Bartholomew County was
organized) were his two married daughters and their families, two brothers
and their families, a sister and her family, his father-in-law and some of
his wife's brothers (the father-in-law had also moved with Pence from
Virginia to Ohio) and a horde of nieces and nephews. A good deal of his land
was sold to these relatives.

As before, this move was planned years in advance, for in 1818, Pence had
sent a crew of men from Champaign County to what was to become Bartholomew
County and they cleared about 20 acres, which he later bought from the
government.

The time between this move and the next was considerably shorter. The 1820s
brought extremely hard times to the frontier and Judge Pence also had
financial setbacks which forced him to dispose of much of his remaining land
and a distillery and a mill he had built. About 1825, his wife died and the
next year he remarried to a widow with two children. With 11 children of his
own and two young stepsons, and having lost much of the wealth he brought
with him from Virginia to Ohio to Indiana, Judge Pence once again headed
west, this time to the banks of the Mississippi in Illinois in 1828.

After staying briefly at the site of present site of Joliet, Pence pushed on
to Rock Island, where history records he arrived on 9 Dec. and then spent
the rest of the winter in the lodge of Chief Blackhawk. After raising one
crop at Rock Island, Pence moved to Oquawka Township where he reamined until
his death in 1841. He was elected a county commissioner when Warren County
was formed in 1830 and apparently held court in what was then called the
Yellow Banks district, now Henderson County (formed 1841).

Again he was joined by his grown children and a brother, plus a number of
nephews. Three of his sons, his brother and some nephews moved on to Iowa
when settlement first began there in 1834.

Judge Pence's oldest son, George (my second great grandfather) had remained
in Bartholomew County and in 1834 he moved with his in-laws (Swisher) to
Warren County, Indiana.

The Warren County, Indiana, part of the story may be of more interest two
you, for it is there that I acquired a great grandmother by the name of
Crane .... from New Jersey!

You mentioned not knowing how your Crane ancestors got from New Jersey to
Henderson County. And I am not as well versed on the Cranes as I am the
Pences. However, the Crane family was well established in New Jersey by the
mid-1650s and their migration to the west also began in the 19th Century.
Early in the 1800s a substantial number of that family moved to Red Lion in
Warren County, Oh. Moses Crane, my third great grandfather, moved with many
members of his family to Fountain County, Indiana (adjoining Warren County)
in the 1830s and there my great grandmother Mary Margaret Crane, daughter of
Elias, son of Moses, was born. So I would guess your Cranes also stopped on
the way to Illinois in either Ohio or Indiana. The qute likely travelled
overland to Ohio along the Great Warrior Path from Philadelphia to
Hagerstown, then west along the Cumberland Road-National Road into and,
eventually through, Ohio and on west.

Patricia, you also mentioned having ancestors from Lycoming County, PA, in
Henderson County. It happens there was another John Pence in early Henderson
County. This one was born in Lycoming County about 1778, moved to Henderson
County in 1847 (apparently directly) and died in Henderson in 1862 (buried
in Crane Cemetery). His son, Thomas Foster Pence, also went to Henderson
County, but by a more circuitous route. Somewhere - in one of the Henderson
histories - it says he was born in Lycoming Co in 1811, married in Lycoming
in 1834. He moved to Huntington County, IN, in 1846, Wabash County, IN, in
1848, Peoria County, IL, in 1851, and to Henderson County in 1853.

There were still other PENCE/PENSE families in Henderson County. Most of
these lived in Ohio before moving to Illinois.

So, to conclude a rather windy recital, the who, what, where, when, why and
how of western migration covers a wide spectrum. In general, though, growing
families, lack of space, worn land, the lure of cheap land and the pull of
close relatives were instrumental. In general, those are the typical factors
which moved most families to each new western frontier.

Now - aren't you sorry you asked? <g>

Regards,
Richard A. Pence, 3211 Adams Ct, Fairfax, VA 22030
Voice 703-591-4243 Fax 703-385-0971
Pence Family History <http://www.pipeline.com/~richardpence/&g

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