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| Old Fennimore: Sixty years after the Jacob Smith Family Arrived |
Fennimore, Grant County, Wisconsin. It is my belief that this is wrong.
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Jacob Smith is my 3GG. It is believed he was born in 1798 in New Jersey or New York (no confirming documents have been discovered) and also that his father was James Smith (reportedly of New Jersey), who later moved to Ohio. There are available records of the existence of both James and Jacob in Ohio.
Jacob married Mary Catherine "Cathie" Randolph at an unknown location and date. In 1820, Jacob was living in Richland, Belmont, Ohio and in 1840 he was in Smithfield, Jefferson, Ohio. Birth records of his children also detail that the Smith's lived in Guernsey, Ohio (1822) and Harrison County (1826 until at least 1831) before ending up in Jefferson County.
In 1846, Jacob's oldest son James and his wife had their third child, John Richard, in Grant County, Wisconsin; their previous child, Alexander, was born in Jefferson County, Ohio in 1845. So, we can presume, since they all went together, that they arrived in Wisconsin in late 1845 or early 1846. Jacob and children are all reflected in the 1850 census in Grant County.
Oddly enough, there was a second Jacob Smith living in the Fennimore area at the same time my Jacob Smith lived there. It is his death date that is attributed in error to our Jacob Smith.
This was easily disproved through two documents: The obituary of the "other" Jacob Smith and the probate documents of the same "other" Jacob Smith.
First, the obituary:
"Mr. SMITH was born in Wayne county, Penn., March 19, 1829, son of Jacob and Sophia (WHEELER) SMITH. His father was born east of the Green Mountains, in Vermont, in 1802, and his grandfather was a clergyman of the Methodist Church, and lived in New England al his life. Jacob SMITH was the youngest son in a family of twelve children, six sons and six daughters, all of whom were given Bible names, as was the fashion of the times. The sons were called Simeon, Reuben, Daniel, Abram, Isaac and Jacob. The names of the daughters cannot now be obtained, as that generation has passed from earth. In 1824 Jacob SMITH married Sophia WHEELER, who was born in Massachusetts, her birth occurring the same year as her husband's. She as a daughter of Simeon and Polly (NOBLE) WHEELER. Her mother was a daughter of Capt. Charles NOBLE, a Revolutionary soldier, who died before the close of the Revolution, from disease contracted in the service. Melford Pratt SMITH therefore is a great-grandson of a Revolutionary soldier. The NOBLE family was long prominent in Massachusetts. Four brothers came from England in early Colonial times, and from them are descended the greater part of the NOBLES in the United States.
In 1826 Jacob SMITH, with his wife and only child, removed to Wayne county, Penn., and in 1853 the parents, with their family, then consisting of six children, came to Grant county, Wis., and settled on a farm in the town of Fennimore. Within six years after their arrival five of the family had passed away. The parents and three of their children, Algernon and Celestial and Cecilia (twins), had succumbed to sickness, and gone on "to join the great majority," The children reached maturity before they died. The mother's death occurred in 1857, and the father's the following year. There are now living of this family, Esther (the wife of O.N. SMITH, of Eau Claire, Wis.), Melford P., and Alfica (of Iowa)."
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In the end, we are put in a place that the best we can narrow down my Jacob Smith's death date to between the census of 1850 to the census of 1860, where in 1860 his wife is found living with his mentally disabled son and spinster daughter in the home of their son William Custer Smith in Fremont Township, Butler County, Iowa.
We may never know what exactly became of Jacob, but there is a high likelihood he did not ever come to Iowa with several other members of the family, but died in Grant County.
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