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2 - Origins in Maryland

Our quest for identifying the parents of Jesse Tracy now moves south from the Old Turkey Run Cemetery to Waynetown, Indiana. Waynetown is also located in Montgomery County and is due west of the county seat at Crawfordsville.

Map showing Montgomery County and Waynetown.
By DemocraticLuntz at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63582566

In the year 1880 the population of Waynetown stood at 569 people. One of those residents was a 77 year old farmer named Bazzle (or Bazil) Tracy. He cannot read nor write and, consequently, his name does not have a consistent spelling. Bazzle is important to the family history by being the brother of Jesse Tracy (see the previous tale). For it is in this year, or nearly so, that Bazzle would provide us with an important clue to unlocking the origins of this family of Tracys. 

About this same time, a man named Hiram W. Beckwith was writing a book on the history of Montgomery County, Indiana.

Beckwith was an interesting fellow. He was born on March 5, 1833, in Danville, Illinois. His father was an early Illinois pioneer and among one of the founders of Danville. Beckwith became a lawyer and was actually a law partner of Abraham Lincoln from 1856 to 1861. By the time he retired in the 1870s, Beckwith had amassed an enormous collection of books and maps focused on the history of the Northwest Territories, particularly Illinois and Indiana. His interest in local history led him to publish a number of books about localities in both states, including Montgomery County in Indiana.

Beckwith aimed to preserve the history and memory of the region’s early pioneers before they all died. Considering that most of the county’s first settlers arrived in the 1820s and 1830s, there wasn’t much time remaining.

The book was published in 1881 with the straightforward title “History of Montgomery County.” The rather unwieldily subtitle notes that the book was “gleaned from early authors, old maps and manuscripts, private and official correspondence, and other authentic, though, for the most part, out-of-the-way sources.”


Hiram William Beckwith along with the title page of his book.

At some point Beckwith must have either met or managed to correspond with Bazzle Tracy (who, remember, could not read nor write). While it is not exactly clear how he obtained his information, the result was a rather detailed biographical sketch of Bazzle that reads, at least, like it came from first-hand knowledge. Most importantly, Beckwith names Bazzle's parents and provides that crucial clue to unlocking this family’s origins:
Bazzle Tracy, Waynetown, was born in Mason county, Kentucky, in the year 1802, but was raised in Fleming county, and is the son of John and Nancy Tracy. (p. 593)

And so there we have it. John and Nancy Tracy.

The birth year turns out to be off by one year. Nevertheless, we can combine this information with data from the 1880 US Census, which puts the birth place of both of Bazzle Tracy's parents in Maryland.

The Bazzle (Basil) Tracy household in 1880 included his wife, Elizabeth (occupation "house keeping"), a grandson William, a granddaughter Matilda, and a Daniel Brown who worked on the farm and lived in the house. Both Bazil and Elizabeth are noted as being born in Kentucky.

We are now working with the following relationships:


Don’t worry, it will get a bit more complicated than this.

To summarize, we know that Bazzle Tracy was living in Waynetown, Indiana in 1880 but was born in Kentucky in the early 1800s and had parents named John and Nancy who were both born in Maryland. His brothers, Jesse, Vezey, and John, all migrated from Kentucky to Montgomery County with him in the late 1820s.

In just two generations the family had migrated from Maryland to the middle of Indiana.

So now the question becomes, who were John and Nancy Tracy?

Found out in the next tale, 3 - The Price Connection.

Sources

  • Map and Waynetown population - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waynetown,_Indiana
  • “Law Partner of Lincoln. Hiram W. Beckwith Dies in a Chicago Hospital.” The Bottineau Courant (Bottineau, North Dakota) 26 Dec 1903, Sat. Page 1. 
  • Hiram W. Beckwith’s book collection - Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Illinois) 30 Dec 1894, Sun. Page 26. 
  • Hiram W. Beckwith. History of Montgomery County: together with historic notes on the Wabash Valley, gleaned from early authors, old maps and manuscripts, private and official correspondence, and other authentic, though, for the most part, out-of-the-way sources. Chicago: H.H. Hills and N. Iddings, Publishers, 1881.
  • Photo of Hiram W. Beckwith - https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/38835112/hiram-w.-beckwith 

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