CARNAHAN NOTES
CARNAHAN NOTES
Born 1 Nov 1770 (according to family records)
ELIAS MARCELLUS CARNAHAN
(This story was obtained from a cousin in Illinois.)
History of the Hayes and Carnahan Families (History of Hayes & Carnahan families prepared largely by Miss Jennie M. Hayes & her sister Miss Ollie. Miss Jennie is now in her 90th year and will be 90 on July 17, 1940. Copies from clipping found in the Emden News.)
The story should be of interest to the people along the Tazewell line, especially to the surviving men and women who attended the schools taught by the author.
My grandfather, Abner Hayes was of Scotch and Irish descent but was American born. My Grandmother Hayes was Pennsylvania Dutch, also American born. I do not know the date of their marriage. They lived in Darke County, Ohio near Greenville. They had a family of six boys and two girls. Grandfather was Circuit Judge for Darke County during the 1850's and always went by the name of Judge Hayes. Their oldest son, David was a minister of the Gospel. Two sons, Barton and Samuel were portrait and landscape painters (in oil). My father, James, and Daniel were farmers. Isaac, the youngest was an insurance writer. I know but very little of my Grandmother's family. Her name was Sarah Cushman before her marriage. She had one sister, I know who lived to be 98 years old. Their daughter, Maria, died before my time. Aunt Jane married a Mr. Adams. They had two sons, William and George. The latter followed the ministry as his work. Mr. Adams died and Aunt Jane married, later, a Mr. Van Cleve. Two sons and three daughters blessed that union. Grandfather Hayes family are all dead. He died at Pleasant Hill, Indiana.
Grandfather Carnahan (mother's father) was of Irish descent, his father coming to the U.S. from Ireland but grandfather was American born. Grandfather Carnahan had three sisters, Margaret, Betsey and Charlotte. Aunt Margaret married Norman Sumner, Aunt Betsey married Orion Sumner. Josiah Webster "Web", (Zara's husband) was their son. Aunt Charlotte married a Dr. Summers. My grandmother Carnahan's name was Catharine Martin before her marriage. She had one brother and one sister that I knew of. My mother (Elizabeth) had three sisters Sarah Ann, Frances, and Charlotte. The Hayes and Carnahan families lived in the same neighborhood near Greenville, Ohio. About 1853 my grandfather Carnahan moved to Illinois with his family. The oldest son, William (Elias's father) married Mary Marks, Sarah Ann married John Westfall, Frances married John W. Hall in Ohio. All moved to Illinois, Logan County, and the other sons Elias, Martin and Robert married in Illinois. They are all dead.
My father and mother were married in 1846 in Ohio. At that time father and his brother Daniel had a cooper shop in Hagerstown, Wayne County, Indiana and were working at the cooper trade. My oldest sister Albina and I were born there. When I was about a year old they moved back to Greenville and so on after that my father bought a farm in Clay County, Indiana near Brazil where we lived until 1856 when they moved to Illinois as my mother's family wanted them to come. After that the J.W. Hall family moved back to Greenville, Ohio where he was a Sheriff of Darke County for a number of years.
We moved to Illinois in a covered wagon and a one horse spring wagon in which mother, accompanied by a young woman from Indiana, and we children rode, my sister, brothers Elias, Mark and I.
Three horses drew the large wagon. Father walked behind driving seven head of cattle, relieved at times by a young man from Indian, named Ike Deator. I must tell you here a story on myself. We children had never seen a train and we came in sight of a railroad crossing. Just then the train whistled. Mother was afraid the horses would get scared, so she stopped, got us three older children out and told us to run and get in a pasture nearby. It was enclosed by a rail fence. The other two got through all right, but I got my head fast between two rails, and before I could get loose the train rumbled past and was gone. The single horse was high spirited, so the young man left his three horse team to hold this one and sent the girl back to hold his team. I never forgot this incident.
We were on the road about three weeks but got through all right. My father bought the farm joining the one we moved from when going to Bloomington (the John B. McCormick place). It was then called the John Boovee Farm, $2100 was paid down on it in gold and father gave a mortgage for the rest for three years. The were raising wheat then, and Father did likewise the first year, 1856, the wheat crop was a failure. The second year he had a fine crop, all stacked, ready to thresh when a man set a fire out and it ran in a straight line for our wheat and burned it all up. The third year was another failure and the mortgage was due. Father went to his creditor before time and he said he would renew the mortgage so Father did not worry. The day it was due the mortgage came riding up before we had breakfast and said, "Well, brother Hayes, I have come to break bread with you." He ate his breakfast, got on his horse, and rode to the Court House in Lincoln and started to foreclose the mortgage on the farm. Judge David Davis of Bloomington, a friend of Abraham Lincoln was the judge.
We moved just across the road west as Uncle Daniel Hayes owned it, and Father rented it until during the Civil War, when he bought the farm John Jeckel, Sr. lived on. We lived there until 1883, when he sold it to Godfrey Betzelberger, Sr. and moved to Bloomington on the Market Street Road, here resided until his death. Mother and the heirs sold the farm sometime later and she moved to Saybrook, and lived there for seven years. Then with brother Roy and family, mother and we two daughters moved to Benton Harbor, Michigan. The Bloomington farm was sold to a neighbor, Craig Thompson, and one of his son still lives on it.
Mother died in Michigan and the rest of us remained there for 22 years. We sisters came to Clinton, Iowa about ten years ago and here we are. Our family are all dead except four, we two, sister Nora, and brother Charlie here in Clinton at 107 1/2 7th Avenue South.
I taught my first school one mile east of Emden and in the fall of 1872 attended the Illinois State Normal University at Normal. The Hon. D.M. Shivlar, long City Clerk of Delavan, got his first schooling that year in the country school mentioned. In the spring of 1873 I taught the Fairview school (formerly called the Willis School, as Mr. Willis lived just across the road south). Flora Ogden (now Mrs. Flora McCormick) and her sister Laura, the Taylor children, Temple children, some of my Uncle Martin Carnahan's children, and others I cannot name, attended. Leaving there I taught the winter term at the Prairie Creek School. The Hickey and Ryan children were among the 45 pupils I had enrolled. Next I went to Brush Hill in the Gilchrist District. In the fall of 1876, I attended the Valpariso Normal School. Professor Brown, the principal, was a fine man and a good instructor. In 1876, (I think it was) I taught the Boynton Center School. The Coddington, Curtis, Reardon, Famming and Cr