From Island Ten

New Madrid, Missouri

Rebel lit

"braive Suthren frend,

from iland 10,..."

Remains Of John Lewis

Source

John Lewis is buried at Bellefonte, Augusta, Virginia

A Grave Found For Little Turtle

From Little Turtle (Me-she-kin-no-quah): the great chief of the Miami Indian ...:

He was thirty-nine years old at the time of St. Clair's defeat and sixty years old at the time of his death. It seemed that his grave had been lost to all human knowledge, and that the most diligent search in recent times had failed to locate the exact place of his burial. Thus after sleeping in an unknown grave for a number of years in the vicinity of his former glory, his remains were accidentally found on July 4th, 1911. Two brothers, Albert and Charles Lockner, who had contracted to build a house for Dr. George W. Gillie on Lawton Place, lot 28, near the west bank of the St. Joseph river, while engaged in digging the cellar, uncovered the supposed remains of the great Miami War Chief. [Source]

Source - Gravestone

More about Little Turtle.

Cruel Irony In Bayou Sara

(Relocated from my "Detour Through History" blog):

It’s a well-known fact that Zachary Taylor vehemently opposed the marriage of his daughter, Sarah Knox Taylor, to his subordinate in the military, Jefferson Davis.

The novel, There Was A Season, offers the reason for Taylor’s opposition and how Bayou Sara plays into this (Sarah’s mother is talking to her in this passage from the book):

You’ve heard his reasons for being so set against service marriages a hundred times, haven’t you? The reasons he’ll offer in explanation, that is. The real reason is one of which he won’t even speak. Do you have any memory at all of Bayou Sara? I think..yes. But I was terribly young then. It was the summer of 1820, and you were six. You and your three sisters and I sent that summer with friends at Bayou Sara in the Louisiana Delta, while your father was on duty in the North. And all five of us came down with the bilious fever. You and Ann were lightly stricken. I nearly succumbed-- Yes, Knox said softly, and little Maggie and Baby Octavia died. I remember being terribly sick…but that’s all. Zeke blamed himself, but I didn’t know till we were together again. I think there can be nothing worse than seen a strong man break down before your eyes. He blamed himself for leaving us in ‘that foul miasmic hole.” For being so wrapped up in a thousand details of his career. For not being there to see after us. But what could he have done? Nothing, of course. But that blind iron sense of duty wouldn’t let him accept the fact. I believe now that he wanted me to say something, anything that would absolve him in my eyes and his own. But I—God forgive me—my babies were dead, and the words wouldn’t come then. Later, when I tried to say them, he silenced me. The matter is closed, madam. Just that flatly. And of course it wasn’t closed; it will never be.

From: There Was A Season, A colorful biographical novel of Jefferson Davis and his poignant romance with Sarah Knox Taylor, Olsen, Theodore V., Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1972.

Zachary Taylor, while at Fort Crawford, http://www.fortcrawfordmuseum.com/history.html decided to become a property owner in Louisiana himself:

The Taylor corner (at the dance) was dominated by the colonel’s expansive and vigorous talk: exactly the unsoldierly sort any gentleman planter might make. On how the Southern levees were holding, his recent purchase of three hundred acres of Louisiana farmland [Note: Picture of historical marker near Rodney, Mississippi, explaining that Zachary Taylor had property in the area], last year’s tobacco crop on his Kentucky plantation. [There Was A Season]

















Shortly after Jefferson Davis and Sarah Knox Taylor were married they went to visit Jefferson’s brother, Joseph Davis, in southern Mississippi, where they both contracted malarial fever. While both were still quite sick, they boarded a steamboat bound for New Orleans. However, the extremely ill Davis couple disembarked at BAYOU SARA.

There Was A Season

…..we are approaching Bayou Sara on the Louisiana bank, sir. Bayou Sara. The name had a familiar ring. He gave his thoughts a sluggish fillip. Yes. His widowed sister Anna lived in Feliciana Parish, and he always disembarked at Bayou Sara when visiting Locust Grove, the plantation willed to Anna by Luther Smith, her late husband. Are you thinking, he whispered, of taking us to my sister’s place, James (Note: James was Jefferson Davis’s personal manservant)? Yes sir. Directly we dock, I’ll rent a wagon and move you and Miss Sarah to Locust Grove. Very well, James. We’re in your hands.

(Jefferson Davis to Sarah Knox Davis) We’ll lay in directly at Bayou Sara and go straight to my sister’s….(Sarah Knox): Where? Where did you say? Bayou Sara. Why…is something wrong? No, nothing. She smiled. It’s nothing.


Zachary Taylor’s greatest fear was realized – he lost another daughter to the fevers near Bayou Sara, Louisiana.

When In Savannah...

One sight to see in Savannah, Georgia, is Bonaventure Cemetery, made even more famous by the novel, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. While there, not only did we visit the graves of the famous, there was an unexpected genealogy angle as well. Trans- planted members of the New England Backus family (and their Georgia kin) were buried in Bonaventure. Jim took pictures of the Backus gravestones and I posted them at findagrave.com. For more information, a search can be done.

Henry Ritter Backus was born in Lindsley, New York, the oldest son of Ebenezer & Sarah (Lindsley) Backus. His Backus lineage: (Henry Ritter7, Ebenezer6, Delucena5, John4, John3, William2, William1). I am also a descendant of William1. He also lived in Binghamton, NY, and Athens, PA, before moving south to Wilmington, NC, eventually settling in Savannah, Georgia.

Buried near Henry Ritter Backus is his wife, Helen Jewett Backus, daughter, Annie Jewett Backus, son Henry Edward Backus (and his wife Alice Hardee) and daughter Elizabeth Welch (Backus) Mason.

The book, Biographical history of Westchester County, New York, pub. 1899, mentioned that Henry Ritter married Eliza Backus, daughter of Delucena Backus, and that Eliza was a descendant of Governor William Bradford (Mayflower). Apparently Henry Ritter Backus was named after his Aunt Eliza's husband. The book also stated that Delucena Backus married Electa Mallory. Delucena was the son of John Backus & Sybil Whiting and the grandson of John Backus & Mary Bingham. Then there was William Backus who married Elizabeth Pratt, and the next ancestor was William Backus who crossed over in the "Rainbow" and was first heard of in Saybrook, Connecticut in 1637.

The University of North Carolina houses a manuscript by Annie Jewett Backus

Manuscript by Annie J. Backus, tracing the descent of Mrs. Thomas Pinckney Waring's family, of Savannah, Ga., from the Backus family of Norwich, England, 1637-1908. Genealogical research includes character and family sketches, ancestoral anecdotes, and childhood recollections. Parent's marriage and courtship, mother's teaching school, and author's debut in society as well as encounters with Indians, condemned prisoners, and hurricanes are mentioned.

We also visited graves mentioned in the book by Berendt including songwriting legend Johnny Mercer, as well as poet Conrad Aiken and his parents.