Where He Wound Up

By Eilene Lyon

My 3^rd great-grandmother, Abigail “Abby” (Bedford) Jenkins (1801–1882) had seven surviving siblings and one who died as an infant. I’ve written about several of them, as well as about her father. I’m still searching for her maternal family line (Thompson).

Researching the Bedfords is somewhat complicated by the fact that they lived in the greater Philadelphia metro area in the early 19^th century. They didn’t always live in the city, but sometimes across the Delaware River in New Jersey. Most of the family moved to Springboro, Ohio, in the 1830s, a bucolic Quaker-founded town. Two of Abby’s siblings stayed behind in Pennsylvania: Philadelphia and Isaac T.

Some of the Bedford siblings, including Abby, later relocated to Indiana. She was close to her next younger sibling, Joseph A. Bedford. I’ve struggled to find records for him, but I have a little information from one of his children. Until earlier this year, I had little clue about his later life or where he died.

Joseph was born about 1802 in greater Philadelphia. Around 1823, he married a woman named Amy Collins.¹ At least three children were born to them in the metro area—Ann J., George T., and William S. In September 1835, Joseph decided to join his widowed mother and siblings in Ohio.²

While living there, Joseph and Amy buried several children in the late 1830s and early 1840s—there is no known record of their names or ages.³ The couple had two more surviving children: Henrietta D. (known as Retta) and Collins T. When these two had barely reached school age, their mother died. Amy was buried in the Friends cemetery in Springboro on December 31, 1845.⁴ This event splintered the family.

Ann and George were old enough by then to find work and board out. Joseph may have cared for the younger children for a few years, but by 1850 he had left them in the care of others. Retta and Collins were living with their older sister, who had married by then, and had an infant of her own to care for.⁵

According to a letter Abby wrote to her husband Henry, then mining for gold in California, her “brother Joe” was working with his son George in Cincinnati in 1851 and “doing better.”⁶ My search in Cincinnati city directories for the early 1850s did not turn up Joe or George.

Abby missed her family after moving to undeveloped eastern Indiana in 1837, so any direct contact with them had great meaning. In 1852, brother Joe was to visit Abby, but she told Henry that Joe was still on the road. Her family had built a new home and needed help. She wrote that “I am waiting for brother Joe. I cannot tell what keeps him—if he does not come I will try to get Wm, but he is very busy farming.”⁷ Whether Joe ever showed up at her home is in doubt.

Joe eventually surfaced in Fountain County in far western Indiana by 1860. His daughter, Retta, married her first husband in Fountain County in 1854, so he may have joined her there around that time.⁸ In 1862, Joe married a widow with young two sons: Frances (Drollinger) Bonebrake.⁹ Joe and Frances had a daughter together, Margaret Elizabeth “Maggie” Bedford, in 1864.¹⁰ It appears that Maggie cared for her much older half-sister, Retta, at the end of her life.¹¹

Joe lived on the land Frances and sons inherited from her first husband, Adam Bonebrake. Joseph farmed this land near Veedersburg and also worked as a carpenter.¹² The property provided the only clue to Joe’s death.

In June 1876, Frances filed a petition with the Fountain County court. This is the only mention I’ve found so far for “The Estate of Joseph A. Bedford, dec’d.” In her petition, Frances said the land, net of encumbrances, was not worth over $500. She got an appraisal for $475.32 and the court granted that this “property be set off to said widow absolutely” in the September 1876 term.¹³

Frances outlived Joseph by almost 30 years and was buried with her first husband in the Bonebrake Cemetery.¹⁴ This cemetery is located southeast of Veedersburg along W. Bonebrake Rd. Joseph’s final disposition is not certain, but he is almost certainly buried in the Bonebrake Cemetery, as is his daughter, Henrietta D. Perrin.¹⁵

Feature image: The historic Clinton F. Hesler Farmhouse near Veedersburg, Fountain County, Indiana (Wikimedia Commons).