♂Thomas W. Wilkinson

Thomas W. Wilkinson (30 November 1767 – 15 August 1840) was a Yorkshire farmer from Howgill, in the parish of Sedbergh, who at the age of sixty-two emigrated to America with his second wife and nine of their children, and ended his life on forty acres of Illinois land. A county history published in 1883 records that he stood five feet eleven inches and weighed 294 pounds. He was the third great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son William Robert Wilkinson (1816–1886).

Early life

He was born on 30 November 1767 and baptized at Sedbergh on 1 January 1768, the son of Robert Wilkinson and Mary Robinson. The family farmed at Hole House, in the chapelry of Howgill, near Sedbergh, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire and since 1974 in Cumbria. The county history, whose account of the family appears to rest on what the family itself told the compiler, remembers his father as a man who spent most of his spare time fishing for trout and salmon, and whose politics were “Free Trade” and “Bread for All”; his three sons, it says, were “of the same political cast”.

Thomas was the eldest of those three sons, and the history describes all of them as men of more than ordinary size: his brother Anthony stood six feet and weighed 322 pounds, and William six feet two inches and 266 pounds. Anthony left England in 1788 and grew rich in Jamaica, on a plantation some sixty miles from Kingston that the history says was worked entirely by enslaved people; he came home to die at Hole House in 1842. William, the youngest, served under Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, later joined Anthony in Jamaica, and died at Sedbergh in 1837.

Marriages and family

On 29 May 1792 he married Agnes Airey at Sedbergh, after banns; the register describes him as a bachelor and her as a spinster, both of the parish. Three children were baptized at Sedbergh between 1792 and 1796: Robert, who according to the county history went to Jamaica in 1820 and died there; Mary, who married James Mattison and had four children; and Ann, who died without children. No child of his appears in the Sedbergh baptisms between 1796 and 1804, and an online family tree gives Agnes’s death as 1801, a date that rests on that compilation alone.

His second wife was Ann Rae (1784–1858), whose surname the county history prints as Rah and whom the Sedbergh register calls Nancy. A memorial compilation gives their marriage as 31 October 1802 at Sedbergh; the printed transcript of the Sedbergh marriages ends in 1800, so the date rests on that compilation alone. The history, calling her a Scotswoman, portrays her as a woman “of wonderful energy and perseverance”, kind to anyone in distress, who would say of poor children, “Poor things, they are somebody’s bairns.” Their children were baptized at Sedbergh between 1804 and 1821. The history names fourteen, of whom William Robert was the ninth, and adds a youngest child who died as an infant; Thomas, it says, was twice married and the father of nineteen children in all.

America

Anthony, the eldest son of the second marriage, emigrated in 1828. In May 1830 Thomas, his wife and nine of the children followed; they were eight weeks at sea and reached Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in July, where they lodged with a Mrs. Metcalf, an acquaintance from England who had gone before them. The family stayed in the Wyoming Valley for seven years, until enough money had been saved to go west. In May 1837 they set out by canal to the Allegheny Mountains, crossed them “over the inclined railway”, continued by canal to Pittsburgh and by steamboat down the Ohio to Shawneetown, and were carried by wagon teams to Edwards County, Illinois. The inclined railway was the Allegheny Portage Railroad, which hauled canal boats and passengers over the ridge on a series of rope-drawn inclines between the two halves of Pennsylvania’s canal system.

The history says he bought forty acres in White County, where he spent the rest of his life, and that his children settled near him and in neighboring Edwards County, each buying land as they could. A federal land patent issued on 1 October 1839 through the land office at Shawneetown confirms the purchase: it grants “Thomas Wilkinson of White County Illinois” forty acres, the north-east quarter of the north-east quarter of section 27, township 3 south, range 10 east, and is signed in the name of President Martin Van Buren. In the 1840 census of White County, taken in the summer a few weeks before he died, he was counted, as “Thomas Wilkerson”, at the head of a household of eight: himself in his seventies, a woman in her fifties who was surely his wife, two young men, a young woman and three boys under five; his son Anthony Wilkinson’s household was next door.

He died on 15 August 1840 near Grayville, White County, and at his own request was buried on his own land. His widow moved to Friendsville, in Wabash County, where she made her home with their son William Robert until her death.

Notes

The county history gives his birth as 30 November 1768. The baptism register shows he was born on 30 November 1767 and baptized on 1 January 1768; the year of the baptism appears to have passed into the history as the year of birth.

The baptism register names his mother only as Mary. The county history calls her Mary Wilson, and uses the same name, on the same page, for Thomas’s first wife; the Sedbergh marriage register names the bride of 1792 as Agnes Airey.

The county history itself gives two years for Ann’s death, 1852 on one page and 1858 on the next; a memorial compilation gives 10 October 1852, with burial in the Sherrel Farm Cemetery in Wabash County. No burial or probate record has been found to settle it.