Illinois in the early 1800s

My 3-gr-grandfather, Ichabod/Ike/Bird Hensley moved to Illinois before 1839.  He married Nancy Webb 14 Jan 1839 in Clay County, Illinois.  I do not yet know if Bird was living in Clay County before his marriage to Nancy.

Illinois Statewide Marriage Index:
http://www.ilsos.gov/GenealogyMWeb/MarriageSearchServlet

But I do know that it is likely that Nancy was living with her parents before her marriage to Bird.  Her parents are found in the 1830 census of Clay County:

William Webb

1 Male 20 to 30

1 Male 60 to 70

1 Female 15 to 16

1 female 40 to 50

Bird and Nancy are still living in Clay County in 1840: 

 The  1840 Clay County census lists:   Bird Henslee household as the

following:  1 male under 5 years of age, and one 20 to 30 .  1 female under 5 years of age, one 5 to 10, one 10 to 15, and one 20 to 30.

By 1850 Bird and Nancy had moved their families back to Cabell County, Virginia (now WV).


Nancy HensleyAge:38Birth Year:abt 1812Birthplace:VirginiaHome in 1850:District 10, Cabell, Virginia, USAGender:FemaleFamily Number:453Household Members:

Name	Age
Bird Hensley	39
Nancy Hensley	38
Lucinda Hensley	20
Belinda Hensley	18
Elizabeth Hensley	16
William Hensley	11
Mary A Hensley	9
Sarah Hensley	6
Columbus Hensley	3

What I am finding is that there seem to be a number of families who made the same journey to Illinois who came back to what was then Virginia before 1850.  As I find these families, I would like a place to add them into my notes.  So here they are.  This is NOT my research below.  It is gathered from the sources that I note without my checking to be sure of the accuracy.

"Benjamin Franklin Swann (2nd child of Leven and Elizabeth Jenkins Swann) is said to have:

Benjamin Franklin (1793-1870) married Elizabeth Jarrett and had at least four children.  After a brief move to Sangamon County, Illinois (1828-abt. 1836) he came back here and settled in Mason County.  He was a widower with his brother Hezekiah in the 1870 Cabell Census."  [this information taken from an article written by George Swann and published in the KYOWVA Fall 2011 Newsletter on p.6]  George maintains a website at:  http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~swannfamily/

I have sent George an e-mail as it seems that his ancestor, Josiah Swann also moved to Illinois...perhaps even Clay County.....I will update this as I have more information.  After Josiah moved back to Cabell County, he married Rachel Morrison and it is from this wife that George descends.  I will edit this after I talk with George.

Franco-Prussian War and Hornberger

On my third week of treatment for lymphedema in my right arm, I began cleaning out my bottomless pit of an inbox to pass the morning hours with right arm bound.  One e-mail piqued my curiosity, and I began to read an article about JK Rowlings "Who Do You Think You Are" episodes:


http://www.jkrowling.com/uploads/documents/en_GB-press-wdytya-1373364821.pdf

The link had been sent via one of my favorite mail lists:

alsace-lorraine@rootsweb.com

and from reading that I decided it is a good time to read more about what was happening in the Alsace-Lorraine area just before my grandmother's Hornberger/Schweikart family moved to Ironton OH from that area.  It is quite possible that Jack and I drove through this town on our way to Strasburg.  No looking at map we probably drove on the larger highway shown in blue.  Brumath is the area outlined  with A4 marked going through the town just south of Haguenau.

The family folklore says that Fred Hornberger's father, George, had fought under Napoleon.  Well after my reading today, it definitely was NOT Napoleon Bonaparte!

Summer 2014 Charlotte Erickson and I went to library in Ironton.  At this visit, I made a copy of the Naturalization of Fred.  It is stored in Hornberger file on computer and can be viewed in multimedia in Reunion.  It states that Frederick Hornberger is a native of Germany and that he came to the US about July 1880 and was under the age of 18 when he arrived.  He is now (2Nov 1886 in probate court) over the age of 21.


[Naturalization records have been filed in the U.S. District and Circuit Courts and in the local courts in Ohio counties, especially in the courts of common pleas and the probate courts (after 1851). No centralized files exist before 1906.]

Napoleon Bonaparte rose to prominence during the French Revolution (1789-1799). The Napoleonic Wars took place from 1803-1815.  Napoleon died in 1821.  Much too early for George Hornberger to have been a part of.  Perhaps an earlier generation?  Or perhaps Napoleon III.....Napoleon II ruled for a VERY brief amount of time.  He was the son of Napoleon Bonaparte,  However, Napoleon III was in power

Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (20 April 1808 – 9 January 1873) was the only President (1848–52) of the French Second Republic and, as Napoleon III, the Emperor (1852–70) of the Second French Empire. He was the nephew and heir of Napoleon I. He was the first President of France to be elected by a direct popular vote. When he was blocked by the Constitution and Parliament from running for a second term, he organized a coup d'état in 1851, and then took the throne as Napoleon III on 2 December 1852, the forty-eighth anniversary of Napoleon I's coronation. He remains the longest-serving French head of state since the French Revolution.

So it would have been this man under whom George Hornberger would have served.  He would have probably taken part in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871.  The german victory led to 

The people of the area were allowed to choose to become German and stay where they lived or to move.