Gold Mines and Moonshine

“Francis Robbins went west to the gold rush and was never heard from again.”

This was a story I had never heard until I started researching my family history. And that’s all there was to it, too. Nothing about the man himself or the family he left behind. Because nobody knew anything else.

 

Frank left his family

Francis “Frank” Robbins was my 3^rd great-grandfather. He was listed on the 1850 census, at age 22, as living with his parents in Parke County, Indiana. In May 1851 he married Eliza Jane Kibby. Their son, Josiah, my 2^nd great-grandfather, was born in May 1852. By September 1855 Eliza had married her second husband, Jacob Hiler.

So, when, exactly, did Frank leave, and when did Eliza know he wasn’t coming back?

In 1860 Eliza and Jacob were living with 2 children surnamed Hiler (Minerva 12 and James 9, from Jacob’s first marriage) and 4 children named Robbins (although the younger ones went by Hiler later on): Josiah 8, Mary 3, John 1, and George 4/12.

So, who was the father of Mary, John and George? Probably Jacob, based on the marriage date. But why, then, were they going by Robbins in 1860? (That’s another puzzle for another day.)

Did Frank ever meet (or even know about) his son? Either way, Josiah surely grew up with the knowledge that his father “went west.”

 

Where did he go?

And where, exactly, was “the gold rush”? It’s kind of hard to research a location if you don’t  know where to look! There were multiple gold rushes in the western United States in the mid-1800s, including  California, Colorado, Nevada, Montana, and Idaho. And many miles in-between. But California seemed the most likely candidate.

So why could I not find him?

 

What happened next?

Did Frank reach his destination? If so, why did his family never hear from him again? Did he intentionally abandon them? Did he and Eliza officially (or unofficially) call it quits before he left? (I have found no divorce record.) Did he strike it rich? (This is highly unlikely, statistically speaking.) Did he start a new family? Did he die on the way and is buried in an unmarked grave somewhere? Have his bones turned to dust next to a secluded stream in which he was panning for gold alone?

 

Checking periodically

Mind you, I have not spent a ton of time searching for Frank. But I have checked periodically over the years to see if new records are available online that will help me determine what happened to him.

I found multiple Francis/Frank Robbinses in the mid-1800s. The two most likely candidates are in Siskiyou County, California (1860 Federal Census), and Snohomish County, Washington (1889 Territory Census — statehood came later that same year). Both areas were in the heart of gold country. Both men were listed with an approximately correct age or birthdate, with a reported birthplace of Indiana. Both were listed as farmers. So, were either of them “my” Frank? Both? Neither? Did he fail at gold mining (likely) and become a farmer (or farm hand)?

I’ve been slow to declare that I’ve “found” Frank because one document — or two of them, three decades and two states apart, with nothing else to tie them together — is simply not enough to satisfy the Genealogical Proof Standard.

Also, it is worth noting, this is a blog post, not a genealogical proof.

 

Reviewing what I already know

I recently tried again, starting the way genealogists do when faced with a “brick wall”: I reviewed what I already knew. All I had (after Frank’s disappearance) were the two census records from California and Washington.

And this time I did notice something new!

Previously, in Siskiyou County, California I had noticed Frank was living with a family and a couple of other single men. I thought nothing of that, assuming they were farm hands or boarders. But now I noticed that the head of household was a man roughly Frank’s age who was also listed as being from Indiana. Although it turned out he was born in OH, he had indeed lived in Wabash County, Indiana in 1850 with his parents.

Was Frank lucky enough to find someone from Indiana to board with and/or work for in California? Or did they know each other previously and migrate from Indiana to California together? How did they meet? Wabash is several counties away from Parke. Was Jerry simply passing through on his own way to the gold rush? And did Frank say, “Hey, wait up, I’ll come too” — ?

The man’s name was Jeremiah “Jerry” Heckathorn.

 

Researching Frank’s FAN club

Another thing genealogists do is they research an ancestor’s “FAN club”.

FAN stands for Friends, Associates and Neighbors. This term was coined by genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills, but I like to include Family in with the Fs to remind myself how often researching a child, or sibling, or cousin, or in-law will shed light on an ancestor’s otherwise shrouded life.

So I did a deep dive on Jeremiah “Jerry” Heckathorn.

Although records about Frank are scarce, records about Jerry are plentiful, as were the number of children he and his wife Anna had together (thanks in part to two sets of twins). One way I was able to trace Jerry’s movements was by noting the birth years and birth places of his twelve children:

Anna 1854 OR — Ida 1857 OR — Mary 1859 CA — Dora 1859 CA

Martin 1864 CA — Henrietta 1866 CA — Henry 1866 CA — Emma 1868 WA

Florence 1870 OR  — Elsie 1873 OR — Francelia 1875 OR — William 1880 OR

In looking at their respective timelines, I tracked both men, found some overlap, and also noticed that both were missing from any 1870 census record.

Frank born 1828 IN > 1850 IN > 1860 CA > 1870??? > 1880??? > 1889 WA (died when and where?)

Jerry born 1827 OH > 1850 IN > 1860 CA > 1870??? > 1880 OR (died 1891 in Siskiyou County, California, and was buried in Jackson County, Oregon)

If Frank settled in WA, did he ever live in OR? (I think it’s safe to say he traveled thru OR to get to WA.)

And if Jerry settled in OR, did he first go to WA? The answer to that question is: Yes! Records show that Jerry’s 8th child Emma was born there in 1868.

Why, then, did Jerry return to Oregon to spend the rest of his life? More digging revealed an obvious tie to the area, the most compelling of all reasons: Family. He and his brother George and their families are considered pioneers of Jackson County, Oregon.

Don’t forget about maps!

I use Google extensively in my research, as well as paid and free genealogy sites, and I refer to maps frequently when trying to answer questions.

Sample question: Where is one county in relation to another county, and are they maybe the same place, one county having been formed from another, and when did that happen?

In this case, I thought I knew where Siskiyou County was and never looked it up until just now, while writing this blog post. I thought it was near Sacramento, specifically near Sutter’s Mill, where the California Gold Rush started. But it isn’t! It’s way up near the Oregon border. And Jackson County, Oregon is only 50 miles away. They are equidistant from the Oregon/California border, which helps make sense out of these facts: 1) Jerry’s first two children were born in Oregon, 2) a third brother, David, settled in California, and 3) Jerry died in California and was then buried in Oregon.

Is wanderlust hereditary?

Meanwhile, Josiah Robbins (1852-1931) became a traveling salesman. This is according to his granddaughter (my grandmother) Villa Mae Lawrence Hankins (1904-1986). Although he was variously listed in census records as a coal miner, a sawmill worker, and a farm laborer, she claimed that he simply worked long enough to save up money for a trip. She also credited him with her own wanderlust, which she thought he may in turn have inherited from his father Francis/Frank, who “went west.” Although I don’t think she ever left the country, she did visit many U.S. states, including Alaska and Hawaii. She was more educated than most women of her time, having earned both nursing and teaching degrees, and was nonetheless known to say, “Travel is the best education.”

Josiah, while always a resident of Parke Co, Indiana, was known to periodically pack up some, if not all, of his family members in a covered wagon, and make a trip of nearly 300 miles down to the Land Between the Rivers area of Tennessee and Kentucky (which was later flooded to become the Land Between the Lakes National Recreational Area). One of his daughters, Ivan, told her daughter, Edith, who told me, that she never made it past 3^rd grade due to being taken along on several of these trips. She also reported that on one trip they buried a baby that had died on the way. (It was probably Josiah’s 3^rd wife Jane’s child.)

Why that area of Kentucky and Tennessee, though? Did they already have ties there, or did they develop them later? We may never know for sure, but a historian I met on a research trip there told me that the people on the Land Between the Rivers were especially poor and were famous for bootlegging moonshine. This is a pet (unproven) theory of mine for all the traveling back and forth, given that my grandma (Villa) also described her father, Horace Lawrence (1882-1952), as “a drunk and a rent jumper.” Her brothers were alcoholics as well. (For reference, Prohibition lasted from 1920 to 1933).

In any case, the Robbins family from Parke County, Indiana apparently met the Lawrence family of Stewart County, Tennessee on one of these trips. Sisters Ethel and Ivan Robbins married brothers Horace and Lee Lawrence. And Jennie Lawrence (1859-1905), a sister to Horace and Lee, became Josiah’s fourth wife. Thus, to Ethel and Ivan, Jennie was a sister-in-law and stepmother at the same time!

Josiah was eventually listed as a resident of the Parke County Poor Asylum for a few months in 1927. He died in Parke County in 1931, never having known what happened to his father.

In addition to Frank having “gone west”, there’s something else that may have influenced Josiah. In the 1850 Parke County census, when his mother, Eliza, was still living with her parents, they had two young men staying with them whose occupations are listed as Peddler — a traveling salesman of sorts, trading primarily in household items. Although he wasn’t born until two years later, I wonder if Josiah’s mom told him stories about the peddlers who stayed with them when she was a girl?

What do I still not know about Frank?

Back to Frank, there are lots of questions remaining. Did he remarry and/or have children? Did he die alone after all? When and where? Did he intend to leave his family forever, or did one thing just lead to another, making it more difficult as time went by for him to reestablish contact? Did he never own property or do the other sorts of things that usually leave a paper trail?

Some things we can never know. And it’s hard for the imagination not to fill in the gaps. I feel lucky to have learned this much about him! And I’m glad to think he had the Heckahorn family as friends.

Meanwhile, I have hundreds of other ancestors to learn more about.

In Frank’s generation alone I have 32 3^rd great-grandparents. But many of my lines extend to 7^th generation, and others as far as 11^th generation. So, there are hundreds of ancestors, all with stories of their own waiting to be told.

So, while I’m always open to new information, and more than willing to adjust accordingly, I think I’ll leave this one alone…for now.

Please share with us in the comments!

• Hazel Thornton is an author, genealogist, and retired home and office organizer.
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