52 Ancestors #14: Pick a Lindsey, any Lindsey!
I have spent the better part of the evening deciphering my Lindsey heraldry. Okay, it was actually only one family, quite a distance from any royal line, but I had names and birth and death dates completely out of joint and it was driving me nutty. So, like any good family historian, I pulled the puzzle apart and put it back together again. I have poured over old Scottish genealogy and history books thanks to Google Books (many free ebooks!) and reconstructed my Lindsey lines … yes, I said lines. The Lindsey Clan makes up a quarter of my current family tree!
It all began when I suddenly realized that my Grandpa Raines‘ parents’ mothers were both Lindseys … cousins. I laughed. I moved on to find their common ancestor, their grandfather, Reverend Caleb Lindsey. That’s when the family tree that barely branched shot branches and leaves out everywhere, kicking up a little dirt. I got lost in the haze.
The haze has settled … 5 hours later.
Reverend Caleb Lindsey
Caleb Lindsey was born 1778 In Rockingham County, North Carolina. According to the Lindsay Clan website, his parents were Joshua (b. 1756) and Mildred Vernon (b. 1763) (update January 3, 2020 – this information is not longer availabe and thus not substantiated. I am currently researching this line). Caleb married Rebecca Green in 1795 in Rutherford County, North Carolina. Together, they had 14 children … 8 boys and 6 girls … listed below:
- Sallie (1796-1860)
- William (Billy, 1803-1887)
- Elizabeth (d.1883)
- Nancy (d. 1862)
- Richard Green (1804-1876)
- Martin (1807-1875)
- Rebecca (1809-1870)
- James (1812-1880, my 3rd great grandfather)
- Easter (1813-1898)
- Joshua (1815-1863)
- John (1816-1891)
- Caleb (1817-1881)
- Charlotte (1824-1878)
- Lewis (1825-1847)
Lindsey’s in Southern Illinois
Caleb migrated from North Carolina to Warren County, Kentucky between 1800 and 1810; he is found on the 1800 Rutherford, North Carolina Census. In October of 1810, I find him with 150 acres in Warren County along Green River. By 1815, Caleb Lindsey had found his way to southern Illinois and settled with four of his children and their families near Pomona in Jackson County.
What I know of Caleb Lindsey and his descendants comes both from stories told while I was growing up along with a great written account by Isadore Lindsey, Caleb’s great grandson. I received my first copy of this from a Lindsey cousin ages ago … long before the Internet. Thankfully for family historians, it is now available digitally.
It has long been told in the Raines family that Caleb Lindsey founded and settled Pomona, Illinois. While I have never seen their names in print proving the story, we do know that they settled in an area called Cave Creek that predates Pomona Township. The Lindsey’s cultivated the land, planting fruit trees and cutting timber by hand for their homes. They turned the hilly plateau into something livable; generations of Lindseys were raised in this area … then Douglases … Raines … and the list goes on and on.
My husband teases me because I can’t hardly bump into someone at the grocery store and not be related to him/her.
Imagining the Lindseys
Jackson County is in the rural Midwest. The area around Pomona, while settled, is still kind of in the middle of nowhere. Country roads that feed off the state highway wind for miles and miles, but the landscape is gorgeous, and the land is lush with orchards and wineries … and forest.
I don’t know what Caleb or his family looked like … I only have the images conjured in my mind … amalgamations of relatives’ features pieced together to form ancestral faces. It’s like reading a novel and picturing what the characters look like, and thinking about how they act in their daily lives. Caleb and Rebecca Lindsey are like that in my mind … characters in the story of my family.
Reverend Caleb Lindsey died in 1853 at the age of 75. He is buried, along with his wife and 13 other relatives, in the Lindsey-Stearns Cemetery in Jackson County, Illinois … out in the middle of nowhere on what was once family farmland.
Lindsey? I too have Lindsey ancestry; I am just delving into their history and genealogy. However, what I know so far is mostly from oral family history / lore and compiled genealogies that are short on documentation, if any. So, that is my starting task, trying to document the Lindsey’s in my tree. What I know so far, with some limited success in finding that documentation is that my Lindsey’s arrived here in the colonies – from Scotland via a time in Northern Ireland – sometime in the 1720s – ish, possibly in Virginia at first and then moving and settling in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and for my specific branch – predominately northeast Pennsylvania. However, the documentation is scant and still vague, so much work to do to really ‘nail’ my Lindsey’s down and for me to feel a bit more comfortable that the information is ‘proven’ more than to be just family lore.
I look forward to learning more about you Lindsey’s; perhaps our branches are cousins. But, if not, perhaps some of your research strategies will help define mine.
Have a great day and thank you for sharing about your Lindsey branch(es).
Hi cousin! I’m pretty sure our branches will intersect at some point. I’ll get some links to the books I mentioned up on my blog soon so you can take a look. There is a ton of information on the Clan Lindsay website as well … I think all the Lindsay books are listed there, too. They also have DNA information which is helpful in piecing some things together.
The second child of Caleb, William (Billy) Lindsey listed above, is my 3rd great grandfather. He was also a Reverend. He and his wife moved their family to Benton County Missouri in the 1850s. Billy and his wife fled back to Illinois during the civil unrest then war in the area, but returned to Benton County (Warsaw area) when the war was over. He later died in Missouri and is buried in the Cobb Cemetery next to his wife. His son Albin Green Lindsey first married Rachel Harris and had a family. After she died, he married a widow named Rebecca J. Allen, and they had two children, one of whom was my great grandfather, Oscar Albin Lindsey.
I haven’t been able to trace back farther than Caleb because of the lack of having spouse’s and children’s names listed on census records, along with the fact that there seem to be numerous Caleb Lindseys. Where did you find the info that links our Caleb to his parents and so on? I’ve been doing this for a while, but I have only used the internet.
Do you have any advice for me? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much.
Sonya Lindsey Anderson
Hi, Sonya. Thanks for the information. I’ll add it to my notes. I went back to look at my source notes (I haven’t looked at the Lindsey line in a while) and the information on the Lindsay Clan site is no longer there, so I’ve updated the post. There is a DNA project you might be interested in (https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/lindsey-lindsay/about), but it lists Caleb’s origin as unknown. There are a couple of theories, but I think we’re all in the same Lindsey boat, so to speak, trying to find answers. I have struggled for years… and the family appears to use traditional naming patters (at least somewhat) at this stage so that alone makes deciphering them difficult. Keep in touch, cousin!
Hi Sonya, my 3rd great grandfather is also William! My 2nd great grandmother is his daughter Margaret.
This is so interesting….just started on ancestry.com to try and find some info about long lost relatives! So much info about the Lindsey’s