Over the next two weeks at “From the History Room” we’ll present the further progress that has been made this summer in researching the African-American Ashby family who lived in Fulton, Tazewell, and Peoria counties.
For this week, in the past two months I’ve found a few more records that have revealed the name of the wife of Dr. James Ashby (c.1808-1850), Fulton County’s first African-American physician who was very probably the father of most of the African-American Ashby men who lived in Pekin during the 1800s.
To begin, we will give a close reading to the records of the U.S. Census for Liverpool Township, Fulton County, Illinois, on 18 Dec. 1850 in the household of Richard and Ann Hall, we find Pvt. Morgan Day who later was one of Tazewell County’s U.S. Colored Troops volunteers. Pvt. Day never made it to Juneteenth, though, falling sick in the spring of 1865 and dying later that year. His mother Rachel Day can be found further down the page of this very census record.
Looking closely at this census page, we notice that William Ashby, 38, is listed between the Hall and Clark households – and as we have shown here previously, we know that some of the daughters in the Clark household were in fact William Ashby’s daughters, not Benjamin Clark’s. Benjamin’s wife Elizabeth, mother of William’s three daughters, had the maiden name of Macklin or McLinn, and we notice that Rachel Day is in the same household as “Tobi” Macklin/McLinn, who was Elizabeth’s brother. Morgan Day’s sister Mary Day also married a Job McLinn, who appears to be another brother of Elizabeth (unless “Tobi” is a misspelling of “Job”).
I and other Ashby researchers are fairly sure that Morgan Day, son of Austin and Rachel Day, was a half-brother of William Ashby. Most of these people living nearby each other appear to be related by blood or by marriage.
Now, one of the persons in the household of Richard and Ann Hall is a 50-year-old woman whose name has been written very sloppily. Her first name appears to be spelled “Livina” – i.e., Lavina or Lavinia.
Her last name is even harder to read, but the last three letters are certainly -HBY. I think her last name should be read as “ASHBY.”
Who could this Livina [As]hby be? Well, her Christian name is identical to one of the daughters of Dr. James Ashby of Liverpool – namely, Lavinia or Lavina. So, this appears to be the widow of Dr. James Ashby (who had died earlier that year of lung fever, in May 1850), and his daughter Lavina was apparently named after her.
Since Lavinia was very probably a sister of Juneteenth eyewitness Pvt. Nathan Ashby of Pekin and Peoria, buried at Moffatt Cemetery, that would mean “Livina [As]hby” was very likely the mother of Pvt. Ashby, and of Dr. Ashby’s other probable children.
Another piece of evidence pertaining to Dr. James Ashby’s wife is provided by the 10 March 1885 marriage record of Dr. Ashby’s daughter Lavinia, who married on that date in Ottawa, Illinois, to Hilliard H. Harris. Their marriage record says Lavinia’s maiden name was Ashby, but also tells us that her mother’s maiden name was “SHERING.”
This would mean that Dr. James Ashby’s wife was named Lavinia Shering. Census records for the known and probable children of Dr. Ashby state that their mother – i.e., Lavinia (Shering) Ashby – was born in either Ohio or Virginia.
Next week we will learn about the life of Henry Chase, second husband of Dr. James Ashby’s daughter Lavinia.
