♂James Harvey

James Harvey (6 April 1821 – 12 December 1896) was a physician of Mount Carmel, Wabash County, Illinois, where he was born and died. A family narrative preserves the letter in which he proposed marriage to Eleanor Tougas Lovellette in December 1848, asking her to sign her name on the letter and send it back if she accepted, or “return it without your name” if she did not; the copy shows her answer written in: “E. Lovelette.” He was the great-great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Julia Esther Harvey (1857–1951), her daughter Mabel Wilkinson (1875–1954) and Mabel’s daughter Mary Esther Schneck (1900–1968).

Early life

He was born at Mount Carmel on 6 April 1821, the son of Beauchamp Harvey (1788–1859), a veteran of the War of 1812 and one of the first commissioners of Wabash County, and Hester M. Saylor (1796–1873). His parents had come to Illinois in 1819 from Piqua, in Miami County, Ohio, two years before his birth, with two small daughters, and he was their eldest son. His own son B. A. Harvey later wrote that he had heard his father say he was born in one of the three houses that then stood on the site of Mount Carmel; at his death the house was remembered at Sixth and Cherry streets, and he was called the town’s oldest native-born citizen. His brothers and sisters included Jane, later the wife of Silas Keneipp, Judith, William and David Saylor Harvey.

Marriage and family

The proposal letter is dated at Rochester, Illinois, on 10 December 1848 and addressed “To Miss E. Lovelette”. Eleanor Tougas Lovellette (1830–1898), whom the censuses call Ellen, belonged to the Tougas dit Laviolette family, French settlers of Wabash County. The couple married on 7 February 1849 in Coffee Precinct, Wabash County. They had seven children, born between 1850 and 1870: Beauchamp Augustus, Mary Alice, Julia Esther, James William, Ella May, Laura Eva and Orian Ross. All seven are named, with their married names and towns, in the obituary of the youngest in 1908.

The same family narrative preserves a paper of his titled “Advice of a Father to his Sons”, a list of maxims: employ good tradesmen and use the best materials; superintend your own business; never risk all you have in an uncertain speculation; avoid going security for others; keep your debts paid; be careful whom you trust in trade, since “the credit system ruins many”; support Christianity, morals, good laws and good schools; spend your money near home; and “be not too ambitious and impatient of gain — wealth is generally the reward of industry, economy and patience.”

Physician at Mount Carmel

He studied medicine at Mount Carmel under Dr. James Mahon, teaching school in the intervals, and began practice in 1848. A Methodist class was organized at Rochester largely through his influence, and he joined it in 1852; in 1856 he moved his membership to the Mount Carmel church, where he ended his life as senior class leader and a trustee of the church and parsonage.

The census of 1860 lists him at Mount Carmel as an M.D., with real estate valued at $5,000 and personal property at $2,000. His widowed mother, Hester, then 66, was living in his household. In 1870 he was again enumerated at Mount Carmel as a physician, with $6,000 in real estate, and his mother, by then 75 and keeping house on her own, lived in the next dwelling. A county history published in 1883 calls him Dr. James Harvey in recording the marriage of his daughter Julia to the lawyer Robert Thomas Wilkinson in 1874.

In May 1893 his youngest son, Orian Ross Harvey, married Anna Overby Brennan at “the residence of Dr. James Harvey, on West Second street”, in the presence of the two families; his granddaughter Mabel Wilkinson was maid of honor and his son James W. Harvey best man. The notice does not say how the host was related to the groom. Because it names the best man separately, the host was most likely the groom’s father, but that is an inference.

When his father, Beauchamp, died without a will in February 1859, James and David S. Harvey signed the administrator’s bond as sureties, and the estate was divided in May 1861 between the widow and six heirs.

Death

James Harvey died at his home at the corner of Second and Walnut streets, Mount Carmel, on the night of 12 December 1896, aged 75, after a brief illness. His wife and seven children survived him. The funeral was held at the Methodist Episcopal church with the Rev. J. F. Harmon officiating, the town’s physicians served as pall bearers, and he was buried in the Odd Fellows section of Rose Hill Cemetery, Mount Carmel. His gravestone reads “JAMES HARVEY, M.D.” and is shared with his wife, “Eleonore, his wife”, who died on 22 October 1898.

Notes

The marriage is dated 7 February 1849 in the family records, and the proposal letter of December 1848 agrees with that date. A cemetery memorial and a lineage application to the Daughters of the American Revolution give the year as 1848. The same family narrative suggests that Eleanor had first married Charles Lacosse at Vincennes, Indiana, in August 1848. The Lacosse children, however, were born in the same years as the Harvey children, so the Lacosse bride was most likely another Eleonore of the large Tougas dit Laviolette family at Vincennes.

The 1870 census lists a daughter Mary, aged 8, alongside Alice, aged 16. Whether she is Ella May, born in 1862, under another name has not been established; the 1908 obituary names seven children and no other. The 1860 census gives his age as 37 rather than 39, and a family chart gives his death as 12 April 1896; his gravestone gives 12 December. A 1939 obituary of his daughter Ella said the family descended from the English physician William Harvey. No evidence supports this, and William Harvey had no children.