Samuel Kirkman of Kickapoo Township

Samuel Kirkman

FamilySearch ID: LH8T-V2C

(1845-1931)

Private, Company K, 77th Illinois Kickapoo Township, Peoria County, Illinois

Samuel Kirkman was born on May 16, 1845 in Harwood, Bolton borough, Lancashire, England, which is about 10 miles northwest of the city of Manchester. He was one of at least five men in Company K who were born near Manchester, England. Samuel was the son of Robert Kirkman (1811-1891) and Alice Bromley Kirkman (1815-1890). Samuel had five brothers and five sisters. Samuel was christened on August 17, 1845 at Bolton le Moors Christ Church in Walmsley (Egerton), Lancashire, England. In 1857, when Samuel was 12, his family emigrated to America aboard the full-rigged ship West Point, which arrived in New York on December 7, 1857.

Sometime between their arrival in 1857 and the 1860 Census, the Kirkman family re-located to Kickapoo Township in Peoria County, Illinois. By 1860, Samuel was working as a farm hand (and likely living with) the Richard Howard family near Kickapoo. When the Civil War began in April of 1861, he was just a month short of his sixteenth birthday.

In the summer of 1862, at the urging of governors from several northern states, Abraham Lincoln called for 300,000 more volunteers to suppress the rebellion. On Wednesday, August 13, 1862, despite the fact that he was nine months short of the minimum enlistment age of 18, Samuel Kirkman volunteered for service in the Union Army, becoming a Private in Company K of the 77th Illinois Volunteer Infantry. Muster records indicate that he stood 5 feet 10½ inches tall with grey eyes, dark hair, and a dark complexion. During the Civil War, records show that Samuel was slightly wounded at the Battle of Fort Hindman (a.k.a. Arkansas Post) on January 11, 1863. Nearly three years after enlistment, Samuel mustered out of his regiment on July 10, 1865.

For Samuel, the end of war meant a return to farming in Peoria County. On February 21, 1867, at the age of 21, he married Louisa Greenhalgh (born February 24, 1845) in Peoria, Illinois, with Reverend J. H. Morron performing the ceremony. Like Samuel, Louisa had also been born in Bolton, Lancashire, England. In the years that followed, the Kirkmans had three children who survived infancy - Alice Ann (b. 1868), Mary (or "Millie") (b. 1871), and Robert (b. 1873).

In 1870, the couple moved to Richwoods Township, closer to the city of Peoria.

In 1874, they moved back to Kickapoo Township, and in 1898 they moved to Logan Township, which is southwest of Kickapoo Township.

Because of his honorable discharge, Samuel was eligible for a government pension and received one. His wife Louisa died on September 9, 1901, at the age of 56. Samuel outlived his wife by 30 years, dying on September 13, 1931 at the age of 86. He and his wife are buried in Cottonwood Cemetery, near the small town of Edwards in Peoria County, Illinois.

Ancestral Connections: Years after the war, on Thursday, February 18, 1892, Samuel Kirkman's daughter (Alice Ann Kirkman) married Daniel Slane's grandson (John Franklin Doubet), thereby connecting Samuel Kirkman to Daniel Slane's family. Daniel Slane had briefly been part of the 77th Illinois before the authorities realized that, at age 58, he was too old to serve in the army.

Fellow soldiers Jacob and John LaFollette were the nephews of Daniel Slane's wife, Mahala LaFollette Slane, so they also became kin with Samuel Kirkman because of this same 1892 marriage.

And as a final consequence of this 1892 Kirkman-Doubet marriage, Samuel Kirkman would become the author's great- great grandfather, Daniel Slane would become the author's 3rd great grandfather, and the LaFollette brothers would become the author's first cousins, 4 times removed.

Samuel Kirkman's younger sister Mary Jane (1846-1911) married William W. King in February of 1866. Like Samuel, King had served as a Private in Company K of the 77th Illinois, making him the husband of the author's 2nd great-grandaunt.

Sources:

https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/about/LH8T-V2C?

https://archive.org/details/041e-0006/page/16/

John Prichard of Kickapoo Township

John Pritchard

FamilySearch ID: GMSV-L5H

(1838-1911)

Private, Company K, 77th Illinois Kickapoo Township, Peoria County, Illinois.

John Pritchard, Jr. was one of five men who, like Samuel Kirkman, were born near Manchester, England. He was born in Heywood, Lancashire on April 28, 1838, and lived with his family in nearby Bury, Lancashire. John Jr. was the fourth child born to John Pritchard (b. 1811) and Ann Lonsdale (b. 1810), but sadly, he was their first child to survive past the age of 2½ years.

The family emigrated to the United States in 1843 just as John Jr. turned 5 years old, arriving in New Orleans from Liverpool on a ship named Bornholm. The 1850 Census confirmed that the Pritchards were residents of Peoria County, Illinois, the family consisting of father John, mother Ann (Lonsdale), John Jr., and five younger siblings. Ten years later, two additional children joined the family, bringing the total number to ten.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, John Sr., John Jr. and Thomas were working as farmers in Kickapoo Township, Peoria County, Illinois. Of all the soldiers represented by Samuel Kirkman's CdV collection, John Pritchard was the only other man who, like Kirkman, lived in Kickapoo Township. [Kickapoo Township lies just west of the city of Peoria, and today includes the towns of Kickapoo, Edwards, and Pottstown, as well as Wildlife Prairie Park].

In the summer of 1862, at the urging of governors from several northern states, Abraham Lincoln called for 300,000 more volunteers to suppress the rebellion. On August 16, 1862, at the age of 24, John volunteered for service in the Union Army, becoming a Private in Company K of the 77th Illinois Volunteer Infantry. Muster records indicate that he stood 5 feet 9 inches tall. He mustered out of the army on July 10, 1865. John's younger brother Thomas (b. 1839) also served in the Civil War, having joined the 47th Illinois Volunteer Infantry on September 4, 1861, about a year before John enlisted.

One noteworthy characteristic about the Pritchard family was that John and two of his siblings would marry three Lonsdale siblings who were their first cousins. The first of these marriages was John's younger brother Thomas, who married Mary Lonsdale on February 1, 1865. About a year later, on March 8, 1866, John Jr. married Mary's older sister Ellen Lonsdale (b. 1842), who was four years younger than John. On June 25, 1873, John's younger sister Sarah would marry Ellis Lonsdale. Such marriages were not particularly rare at the time, and first-cousin marriages remained legal in Illinois until 1887.

John and Ellen would raise seven children, with all but the first son surviving to adulthood. Their youngest child, Archie, lived 77 years, dying in 1961.

In 1878, at the age of 40, John Jr. and his brother Thomas moved to York County, Nebraska to farm a 160-acre tract of land. Around 1903, at the age of 65, John moved again, this time to Spokane County, Washington. He would live the remainder of his life there. His wife Ellen died on July 30, 1907, at the age of 65. John died nearly four years later, on June 9, 1911 at the age of 73. He is buried in the Greenwood Memorial Terrace in Spokane, Washington.

Ancestral Connections: None. However, John Pritchard is buried in the same cemetery Greenwood Memorial Terrace in Spokane County, Washington as fellow solider Imle Coulson. Given this cemetery's great distance from central Illinois, each man's decision to move to this part of the country may not have been purely coincidental.

Sources:

https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/about/GMSV-L5H?

https://archive.org/details/041e-0006/page/16/