| Notes |
- The following information on John and Sarah Holladay Newlin and their family is quoted from "The Newlin Family: Ancestors and Descendants of John and Mary Pyle Newlin" (1965) by Dr. Algie I. Newlin and Harvey Newlin, pages 212-219:
By the beginning of the nineteenth century John and Sarah (Holladay) Newlin and members of their family had become restless again, if they had ever been otherwise. Throughout their known history the Newlins have ridden the crest of the waves of the migrations which swept, in succession, the communities in which they lived. The census of 1790 indicates that John and Sarah (Holladay) Newlin were living in Chatham County, North Carolina. On December 3, 1803, they took the certificates of membership for their family from Cane Creek to Center Monthly Meeting near the Guilford-Randolph County line. At that time Center was the closest monthly meeting of Friends to their new home in Northwestern Randolph County. In the following year James and Thomas, bachelor sons of John and Sarah, moved their membership to the same monthly meeting. These three men, the father and two sons, acquired large tracts of land in the valleys of the Carraway and Uwharrie, a few miles west of the present village of Sophia. This family trek was a short one, less than fifty miles, but it was only a beginning. Here they would remain but little more than a decade before moving ten times as far, into the heart of the Middle West.
In 1804 James Newlin married Elizabeth Symons at Marlboro, a subordinate meeting of Center Monthly Meeting, and much closer to the community in which these Newlins lived. Four years later James' older brother, Thomas, was united in marriage to Elizabeth's sister, Margaret. Elizabeth and Margaret were daughters of John and Elizabeth Gilbert Symons, who, in 1800, had moved with their daughters to Randolph County from Symons Creek Meeting, located in Pasquotank County, near the northeastern coast of North Carolina. Those who bore this name were numerous in the Symons Creek community.
In the wake of the War for Independence, the Carolina Quakers began setting up homes and meetings in eastern Tennessee. Evidence that Newlins were among these settlers of Tennessee is found in their biographical accounts as given in Perrin's "History of Crawford and Clark Counties, Illinois." That book pictures Nathaniel Newlin, the sixth son of John and Sarah, making a trip into Tennessee to try to persuade his brothers, John and Eli, to get into the emigrant stream which was then flowing from the Carolinas, Tennessee, and other states, to the new "Promised Land" of Indiana. When did John and Eli go to Tennessee? And when did young Nathaniel go there to persuade them to move on to better land? No clear answer is given by Perrin or anyone else. It may be assumed that if Nathaniel saw his brothers in Tennessee they had been there long enough to get established. In 1817, according to Perrin's story, the three brothers went together from there to Indiana. However, later statements by members of their families contradict this date of their meeting in Tennessee. The weight of evidence shows John and Jane Hill Newlin and Eli and "Polly" Robbins Newlin settling in Sullivan County, Indiana, as early as 1815. In the fall of 1817 Nathaniel, then twenty-one years of age, returned from Indiana to North Carolina to help his father and family move to a new home in Sullivan County.
Members of the Eli and Polly Robbins Newlin family, speaking through the Federal Census reports for Crawford County, give evidence which carries considerable weight. The report of 1850 says Polly Robbins was born in Tennessee but information more relevant to the question comes from later census reports. The report for 1870 indicates that Mahala, the oldest child of Eli and Polly Robbins Newlin, was born in Tennessee. The Census of 1880 reveals that Jonathan, the next child after Mahala, was born in Indiana. Jonathan was born on December 30, 1815. Mahala's birth was in 1814. These records indicate that Eli and his wife and baby daughter made the journey from Tennessee to Indiana at some time between the birth of Mahala in 1814 and that of Jonathan in 1815. John Newlin and Jane Hill were married in 1815 and immediately joined the Hill family caravan to Sullivan County, Indiana Territory. Nathaniel could have seen these two brothers in Tennessee no later than the summer of 1815, before Eli and John left for Indiana. At that time Nathaniel's nineteenth birthday came up.
Bits of information about James and his family will stimulate more speculation about the riddle of Newlin migration. On March 18, 1818, when John and Sarah Holladay Newlin were granted certificates to enable them to go west with the sanction of Friends, the preparative meeting reported to Marlboro Monthly Meeting that James Newlin and family had already gone to Indiana without asking for a certificate of removal. When did they go? Certainly not during the winter which was just coming to an end, and certainly not later than the preceding fall. Could he and his family have been in the party that went out in 1815?
As if to make the stream of family history more uncertain the Perrin history gives a conflicting account of the actions of John, the fifth child of John, Sr. In the short biography of Sergant Newlin is the assertion that in 1815 his parents, John and Jane Hill Newlin "...emigrated to Indiana and settled in Sullivan, and in 1818 came to Crawford County...", Illinois.
And now one may ask, whom did Nathaniel go to see in 1817, or before? Or if he went on that date did he go there just to see the land where his two brothers had been, prospecting for his own future home, and then go on to see Indiana where his brothers had settled? From that point he could have gone back to North Carolina in the fall of 1817 to persuade his parents to get on the tide to the West. This fits the action of Marlboro Meeting in granting the certificates of removal on March 7, 1818, for John, Sr., and family and Nathaniel, in time for them to make the journey as soon as Spring weather and road conditions would allow.
Their certificate was recorded at Lick Creek Meeting, Orange County, Indiana on the twenty-fifth of the following month. It is possible that it was left there by the Newlin family as they passed through that county en route to Sullivan County, Indiana. The two youngest sons, William and Jonathan, were included in their parent's certificate. Nathaniel presented a separate certificate at the same time.
In the Sullivan County homes of those who had already settled there, a large part of John Newlin's family--children and grandchildren included--were possibly together in the Spring of 1818. The families of Jacob and Thomas were still in North Carolina. The latter would leave for Illinois in the fall of that year, but Jacob and his family would remain in North Carolina for almost thirty years. As for Nathaniel he had been keeping the roads so hot between North Carolina and Indiana that it will not be possible to get him settled until the late autumn. He returned to North Carolina where he is seen getting married and at the same time preparing another band of Newlins for the journey to new homes in the West.
Only the Wabash River separated Sullivan County from the Illinois side of the watershed. It was relatively easy for these land-hungry, travel-weary Newlins to scout Crawford County for its best available land. Certainly some of them had already done so.
In May, 1818, John and Sarah Newlin made another of the historic steps in their peripatetic life; this time it was to Illinois, where they would spend the remainder of their lives, though not without making at least one more change of residence. Tradition has them arriving at their new log cabin home in Crawford County in a late snow storm.
Before Winter could make its claim on the last weeks of the year 1818, another band of Newlins, of the John and Sarah Holladay Newlin family, pulled up stakes in Randolph County, North Carolina, and moved deliberately along the road which they considered the most direct to the Illinois community, where their relatives had been for the past five months. This autumn journey was one of hard work, romance, and tragedy.
Tragedy struck before the party could cross the Appalachian Divide. Thomas Newlin had planned to have his family in the caravan which left for Sullivan County in the early spring, but his wife, Margaret Symons Newlin, became too ill for the rigors of the journey. Their fifth child, John D. Newlin, was only one year old. During the summer months her health improved sufficiently to warrant their attempting the move. Marlboro Friends granted their certificates of transfer to Lick Creek Meeting, on September 5, 1818.
Though Lick Creek Meeting was in Orange County, Indiana, and a long distance from Illinois, it was the nearest monthly meeting to their new home, and their road to Illinois would take them through Lick Creek community. The roads which they would travel were not new to Nathaniel, who had just returned to North Carolina after assisting his parents and their road party to get settled in Sullivan County. He helped his brother, Thomas, in the necessary preparation for the journey and no doubt this help was indispensable as they met the difficulties of travel in that day. Their course led them through Western North Carolina, into Virginia over the Blue Ridge Mountains, along river valleys, across eastern Tennessee and again into the southwestern tip of Virginia, east of Cumberland Gap. Here illness struck Margaret again. This time it was fatal and her grave is today one of the countless number scattered over wide areas of the United States, lost in the wake of trains of settlers moving relentlessly to the conquest of the West.
Nathaniel was the dashing courier, and ever present helper in the successive Newlin caravans which moved out of North Carolina and for more than five hundred miles westward to their new homes. He covered the distance between Indiana and North Carolina at least five times within a two year period, with three of the trips made in 1818. It seems safe to assume that he walked most of the way on the westward journeys with the moving caravans, and rode horseback on the return trips to Carolina. But in the autumn of 1818 there was something very special for him. He and Elizabeth Elder were married just before the train of emigrants moved out of Randolph County, and they made this difficult journey serve as their honeymoon.
Marlboro Meeting had given its approval for Nathaniel Newlin to transfer his membership to Lick Creek Meeting on the same day that similar certificates were granted to his father and mother. When Nathaniel and Elizabeth Elder were married in North Carolina his membership was already in Indiana. Three years later, and after his membership certificate had been sent to Honey Creek Meeting, which was the nearest monthly meeting in Crawford County, he was disowned by that Meeting because he had married "out of unity" with Quaker discipline.
Elizabeth had been given a horse as a wedding present and it may be assumed that she covered many miles in the saddle. After Margaret's death it is quite likely that she spent much time in the one well loaded covered wagon, a Virginia Schooner, with Thomas' five children. And would anyone think she would forego the test of strength and the exhilaration of walking beside her young husband along many miles of the woodland road, even over hills and mountains.
Several families started together in this emigrant train. Marlboro Meeting granted certificates to four other families, who wished to move to the West, at the time the Newlins were given theirs. One week earlier, and only a few miles away, Back Creek Meeting granted similar certificates to two families. On July 25, that Meeting had granted another family permission to settle in the West. Here in these two meetings, were eight families who had secured the sanction of their meetings in time to move out with this emigrant train before the middle of September. It is possible that some Friends were without certificates and it is quite likely that non-Friends were teamed up to make this a long train.
After the death of Margaret Newlin the wagons, riders on horseback, pedestrians, and live stock, all in a long line, snaked their way over the Cumberland Gap and along the winding Wilderness Road to Crab Orchard, Kentucky. Here they came to a parting of roads. All those whose destination was eastern Indiana would take the road to the right, and go north by way of Cincinnati. Of the Quaker families with certificates, four were to White Water Meeting, now Richmond, Indiana. The Newlin certificates were to Lick Creek Meeting. Some of these were sent on to Honey Creek near Terre Haute. They and all others who were headed for Western Indiana or Eastern Illinois would follow the road to the left, to Louisville on the Ohio, and from there continue past the Lick Creek Community in Orange County and on across Indiana for a stop in Sullivan County, before crossing into Crawford County, Illinois.
When this party of Newlins arrived in Crawford County, just ahead of winter, Thomas Newlin wasted little time in making a trip to Vincennes, Indiana, where he purchased the tools and other equipment necessary for a blacksmith's shop. Though he had owned several hundred acres of land in Randolph County, North Carolina, he had learned the blacksmith's trade.
For John Newlin, Sr., moving had become almost a lifetime habit. It is quite possible that he was with his parents when they made at least two changes of residence in Pennsylvania, and he was a teenager when the long journey was made to the new parental home on Haw River. After his marriage he and Sarah made two efforts to find a permanent home in North Carolina. In 1818, he completed the second great ordeal of his life, the moving of the family more than five hundred miles; first to Indiana, and then their last stop, Robinson Township, Crawford County, Illinois. His life was one long safari which had led him along undeveloped roads and trails that stretched, all told, for more than a thousand miles across eight present day states, ever in search of better land and a new home. And the travel experience of his children and grandchildren would make a long and fascinating story as they fanned out over a great part of the United States, even to all the states of the Pacific coast, including Hawaii and Alaska.
The last of the John and Sarah (Holladay) Newlin family to make the break from North Carolina, to go into the burgeoning Middle West, were members of the Jacob and Ruth (Vestal) Newlin family. They broke new ground for the Newlins by going mainly to Parke County, Indiana, but one son and his family pushed on father west into Iowa.
Just over a decade after John and Sarah and most of their children and grandchildren had begun spreading over Crawford County and its environs, Lydia Newlin and Jesse Hobson moved with their three children to Bloomfield Meeting, in Parke County, Indiana. When Spring Meeting granted their certificates for removal, on 1-VIII-1829, it also granted certificates to the same destination for Jesse Hobson's parents and their minor children. Three of Lydia's unmarried brothers soon followed her lead: David in 1830, Elias and John in 1831; all went to Bloomfield. Then on 25-VII-1846, at the age of sixty-nine, Jacob secured a certificate to Bloomfield for himself, his wife and daughter, Zilla. On the same date his son, Jehu and family were given certificates to Pleasant Plains Meeting in Iowa, to break the trail for Newlins to that state just as it was being admitted into the Union. It was becoming a sort of habit for Newlins to make their initial entry into states just as they were emerging from the territorial status. In the case of Ohio it was three years after admission; Indiana was the year before and they reached Illinois and Iowa the year of the chang
The first settler in Robinson Township, Crawford County, Illinois, is reputed to have been William Mitchell, an English bachelor, who settled there in 1817. Five years later he married Sarah Newlin, the daughter of John Newlin, Sr. In 1818 six closely related Newlin families settled in adjacent Hutsonville Township. These were the families of John and Sarah Holladay Newlin and those of five of their sons: Thomas, whose wife had died on the Wilderness Road in Virginia; James and Elizabeth Symons Newlin; John, Jr. and Jane Hill Newlin; Eli and Polly Robbins Newlin; and the recently married Nathaniel and Elizabeth Elder Newlin. At least thirty Newlins were in this 1818 invasion of Illinois.
They did not all cross the Wabash together. James Newlin had made one or more explorations at an earlier date and had "entered" a quarter of Section 22, of Hutsonville Township, on April 6, 1818. It is quite obvious that he had gone to Indiana before 1818. John and Jane Hill Newlin, and Eli and Polly Robbins Newlin, had gone to Sullivan County, Indiana in 1815. In the three year interval before they settled in Illinois there was plenty of time for prospecting in Illinois for favorably located good farm land. Nathaniel had been in Sullivan County on two previous occasions. It is quite possible that he, too, had explored the lands to the west of the Wabash. One of the early histories of Crawford and Clark Counties says that John Newlin, Sr. moved into Crawford County in May, 1818, just in time to be met by a late snow storm. He and his family had just arrived from North Carolina, possibly after a short rest in Sullivan County. His sons, James, Eli, and John moved their families to Crawford County in the same month. Whether in the same caravan is not known; but this was not so important since the distance was relatively short. In the fall of that year Thomas Newlin and his children and Nathaniel and Elizabeth Elder Newlin arrived to establish their new homes in Crawford County.
The scant references to the first dwelling houses of these new settlers give only the name "cabin." It is to be assumed that they were small log cabins, with low wooden hinged doors and puncheon floors, typical of the houses of the frontier in wooded areas of the West. When the fall contingent arrived, John Newlin, Sr., is said to have given up his "cabin" to another family, possibly to Thomas and his children, and built a smaller one for his own family.
The pieces of furniture in these pioneer "cabins" were scarce, home made, and generally crude. Little furniture had been brought from North Carolina to Indiana. "Three chairs" tied on the outside of a covered wagon, bound for Indiana, was a sight worth recording. Wagons were common in the migration from North Carolina; Thomas Newlin and family had left that state in a "Virginia Schooner," but wagons were scarce in the early West. Patsy Hill Newlin, wife of Oliver Newlin, born in Crawford County, in 1825, was strong and alert in 1913, when she wrote a short historical account of her early life. In this she said, "I remember the first two-horse wagon that was in this part of the country, people thought it was nicer than they do the automobile today, for then you could only go on horseback or on foot." This would indicate that the Newlin trek from Indiana to Illinois was probably not a wagon train but families moving on horseback and on foot. In this same account "Aunt Patsy" told of Indians coming to the home of her father, John Hill, to trade their wares for corn. Her mother had hidden little Patsy in a large clothes basket for fear the Indians might take her away. As a child she saw large herds of deer grazing on their wheat field.
By the time the sons and grandsons of John Newlin, Sr., had reached their peak in the acquisition of land it is quite possible that the total number of their farms was in excess of sixty. These were scattered over a community whose geographic center was about equidistant from Hutsonville, Robinson and Eaton. This Newlin community could be included, almost entirely, within a circle drawn from a radius of four miles. It would include the southwestern corner of Hutsonville Township, Southeastern Prairie, and most of the northern sections of Robinson Township.
The records which have come to light indicate that James was the first Newlin to acquire land in Illinois. On April 6, 1818, he entered the southwestern quarter of Section 22 of Hutsonville Township. This tract of land was three and one half miles due west of the present town of Hutsonville. It was in the upper valley of Turkey Creek. In May, 1818, James brought his family to this land. In the same year Doctor Hill established his home in the southeastern quarter of Section 22, on ehalf mile from that of the James Newlin family. In this same year John Newlin, Jr. (son of John and Sarah) acquired one half of Section 28 in Prairie Township, approximately a mile southeast of the home of his brother, James. Other arrivals in May, 1818 were Eli, who acquired a tract of land in Section 10 of Robinson Township, on May 28. This was also the time of the arrival of John Newlin, Sr., and family. In his (John Newlin's) will he specified that one half of his land should go to his wife Sarah, and the other half to his son, John, but the time of acquisition and the exact location of his lands have not been found.
About three miles south of James Newlin's and Doctor Hill's farms was Section 10, in Robinson Township. Newlins acquired the entire section and made it a sort of Newlin Preserve. Between May, 1818, and the year 1827, the four brothers: Thomas, James, Eli, and Nathaniel Newlin acquired tracts in this section varying from eighty to one hundred sixty acres. Thomas acquired the southeastern quarter in 1827. It is possible that he purchased this from his father, John Newlin, Sr. The land set aside for Newlin Cemetery was from this Tract. There is a tradition that the house in which John Newlin, Sr., lived was only a few rods from this cemetery.
In the sections along the northern border of Hutsonville Township Eli and Thomas Newlin owned land in Section 9, Thomas in Section 11, and Nathaniel and James in Section 12. The various tracts owned by James amounted to more than four hundred acres.
There was considerable uncertainty about the date of the death of John Newlin until the documents authorizing the execution of the will were discovered in the Crawford County archives. In the "Letters Testamentary to Jas. Newlin on the will of John Newlin, senr. decd." instructions were given to James Newlin "...to execute the...last will and testament" of his father, John Newlin, who "...died on or about the 20th day of April A.D. 1839, as it is said..."
From the will it is learned that all members of John Newlin's family were living when the document was written, in 1825. Unhappily there is no answer to the question, did Sarah Holladay Newlin survive her husband.
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1752 - 1839 (86 years)
