Hey Kids, Want to Go for a Walk. . . to Illinois?

The Research Library and History Center will be closed the week of December 21-27.

The Kelsey Family of the Bethel Community in Lukin

William Stinson Kelsey and Harriet Blanchard Chamberlain were married in Norwich, Vermont. Eight children were born to this marriage: William Henry, George Thomas, Charles Dexter, Francis, Albert Curtis, Harriet Elizabeth, James Edward and John. William Stinson died on August 3, 1849, leaving his widow with eight children between four and eighteen years of age.

According to family lore, in 1852, Mrs. Kelsey, leaving her younger children with nearby relatives, left New York State along with her sons, George and Albert, to begin a trip to Illinois on foot. Their destination was the home of Harriet’s sister, Asenath (Chamberlain) Blood and her husband Horace.

(Pause for just a minute and think about this. A widow with 8 young children wakes up one morning and decides to visit her sister. Nothing too unique about that….except that her sister lives 700 miles away. This is before trains and planes, of course, so walking was her mode of transportation. No paved roads, no Hampton Inns or McDonalds along the way. She leaves all the other kids with relatives, (and nobody tried to talk her out of this crazy idea ???) and takes two of her sons and sets off for Illinois on foot. Obviously, she doesn’t take the four- year- old, because no one wants to walk with a four-year- old more than a mile. “Are we there yet? I’m hungry. It’s raining. I’m wet.”)

Again, according to family lore, Harriet arrived at her sister’s house safely with her two sons. After spending a few years in Illinois, she returned (by foot presumably) to New York where she again established a home and reunited her children.

(Pause: Really….she was homesick for her CHILDREN? So much so, she decided to walk BACK to see them. Wouldn’t a letter have sufficed?)

The family lore continues that in May, 1860, she decided to once again return to Illinois. She and the children took the same route as before.  When they reached Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, they traveled by flatboat down the Ohio River to Evansville, Indiana. Once they arrived in Evansville, they traveled by foot again to Vincennes, Indiana. From Vincennes, they took the George Rogers Clark trail to St Francisville, Illinois. After another challenging ten miles they arrived at the home of their relatives, Mr. and Mrs. Horace Blood on July 1, 1860, having traveled around 700 miles carrying what belongings they could. (But probably not the grandfather clock, blanket chest, or family bible.)

Soon after arriving in Illinois, Harriet Kelsey and her children made their home in a log house across the road from the Couch Schoolhouse at Couch Corners. This was their home until after the Civil War. Harriet never remarried and stayed in Wabash and Lawrence Counties until her death in 1880. She is buried in Bethel next to several of her family members.

 (Goodness! This woman wakes up and decides it’s time to walk BACK to Illinois to visit her sister again, but with the rest of the children this time. She has more guts than anyone I know. I couldn’t get my children to walk to Bridgeport from Lawrenceville. I’d be surprised if they didn’t commit me for even asking. As for why Harriet never remarried… what man would marry a woman who had a history of waking up and deciding to walk halfway across the country?)

Another of Harriet’s sisters, Eliza Chamberlain was living in New Hampshire at the time of the 1870 census, but by the 1880 census, she was 72 years of age, living in the home of Aaron Schrader in Lukin Township where she listed her occupation as a weaver. Family history doesn’t report on the form of transportation she used to get to Lukin. She died in 1881 and was buried close to her sister, Harriet, in the Bethel Cemetery.