{"id":6340,"date":"2016-09-15T21:14:01","date_gmt":"2016-09-16T01:14:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/?p=6340"},"modified":"2016-09-15T21:14:01","modified_gmt":"2016-09-16T01:14:01","slug":"the-stephen-townsend-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/the-stephen-townsend-family\/","title":{"rendered":"The Stephen Townsend Family"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m taking a brief side trip today, based on the report of Laura Denman Booth (as last posted) about stopping to visit, stay for awhile, with her relatives in Illinois outside Chicago.\u00a0 This was the Stephen and Ann Denman Townsend family.<\/p>\n

When I read that portion of Laura\u2019s memoir and figured out who the family had to be, I went looking on the Bureau of Land Management<\/a> website to see if I could find them buying land in Illinois and, voila!, there they were.\u00a0 By looking for original patents, which are the first sale by the federal government to an individual, I found Stephen Townsend purchasing 4 pieces of land in township 41N in Dekalb County, Illinois, between September 1845 and December 1850.\u00a0 He ended up with 160 acres, buying 40 acres at a time.\u00a0 Townships were squares, approximately 6 miles on a side, divided into 36 sections one mile on a side.\u00a0 This article on rootsweb.com<\/a> describes the Illinois system.\u00a0 When Stephen had purchased his 4 parcels he had the equivalent of a quarter section, spanning 2 different sections.\u00a0 This map shows the location of the first quarter of a quarter he purchased:\u00a0 \"Townsend,<\/a><\/p>\n

A biographical sketch of the Townsends contained in a book titled Past and Present of Dekalb County, found on ancestry.com, recorded that most of the Townsends migrated to Dekalb County in 1840.\u00a0 Since both Stephen and his father Joshua Townsend were enumerated in Neversink, Sullivan, New York for the 1840 federal population census, they must have left after June 1, 1840.\u00a0 Stephen\u2019s brother Charles was said to have gone first, in 1837.\u00a0 (Charles is found in the 1840 census in Illinois with a wife and young daughter.)\u00a0 In 1840 Stephen and his wife Ann and their 5 children, along with father Joshua and mother Phebe, headed West.\u00a0 They traveled in wagons pulled by teams and the trip is said to have taken several weeks, given slow speeds and often-poor roads.\u00a0 Thus, Laura\u2019s description of them as being pioneers and as having experienced the difficulties of taming new land rings true.<\/p>\n

What isn\u2019t clear yet is what drew them to move when they did and to where they did.\u00a0 Certainly the federal government was willing to sell some of its land.\u00a0 In 1830 Congress had passed a Pre-emption Act which granted settlers the right to purchase at $1.25 per acre 160 acres of public land which they have cultivated for at least 12 months (protecting squatters to some extent but also setting a price and amount of land).\u00a0 This, with the opening of the Erie Canal, opened the Illinois priarie lands to easier access.\u00a0 A map of the land cover of Dekalb County in the early days seems to show that the Townsends found rich bottom-land to buy, which supported their agricultural efforts.<\/p>\n

This is a family I wish I knew more about.\u00a0 It seems that they settled into Dekalb County, Illinois and contributed to their communities.\u00a0 If there are any Townsend\/Denman relatives who know additional details, I would love to hear from you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m taking a brief side trip today, based on the report of Laura Denman Booth (as last posted) about stopping to visit, stay for awhile, with her relatives in Illinois outside Chicago.\u00a0 This was the Stephen and Ann Denman Townsend …<\/p>\n

The Stephen Townsend Family<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18,350,348],"class_list":["post-6340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","tag-denman-family","tag-illinois","tag-townsend-family"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6340"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6344,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6340\/revisions\/6344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}