LOST FAMILY OF WEST VIRGINIA
by Edward Pinkowski
If you didnt know, John Johnson was the grandson of Anthony Sadowski, the famous Polish pioneer, and spawned so many children that they filled nine branches on the family tree. In more than thirty-five years of tracking the Sadowski family, I have not seen very little on John Johnsons children, spouses, and connecting lines.
In John Johnsons life, however, he undoubtedly collected many Sadowski heirlooms. For more than 70 years he lived in the same place on Pattersons Creek, on a tract of land practically four-fifths of a mile square, and three generations of his line were either born or raised on the 400-acre farm his father, Isaac Johnson, carved out of the wilderness in the 1740s. When his father died in 1752, John Johnson got two thirds of the 400-acre plantation and his mother, Anthony Sadowskis daughter, one third, but it was not official until 1768 when the same was patented to him by Lord Fairfaxs land office.
Its easy to picture the land grant on Pattersons Creek. The starting point was two white oak trees on Theodore Daviss line, which David Vance used in his 1768 survey, and then N.35 degrees, E. 253 poles(253x16 1/2 ft.) to a white oak and a red oak on the side of a mountain, then N. 50 degrees W 253 poles to two pines on a hill, then S. 35 degrees W. 253 poles to a pine, and finally S. 50 degrees 253 poles to the beginning. As you see, you have an odd square with lines that show the bounds of 400 acres. Somehow, in the log cabin and other improvements Isaac Johnson made on this tract on Pattersons Creek, John Johnson saw his father die in 1752, his grandmother, Mary Palmer, Anthony Sadowskis first wife, who came to the Virginia frontier before 1752 from the present village of Douglassville, Pennsylvania, and lived with her daughter, Sophia, until her death in 1758, and his stepfather, William Darling, an Irish pioneer whom his mother married, the birth and growth of their three children, or his half siblings, and, longer than any other period of his life, his own family. The name of his wife got lost in the shuffle.
When John Johnson died intestate in 1821, because no widow survived, the land he owned in Virginia, which abolished primogenture in 1786, was equally divided among his nine children. The land records of Hardy County, where he died, provide the names of seven daughters and two sons, seven spouses, and eleven heirs. In separate deeds, each sibling conveyed to the eldest son, Isaac Johnson, heir at law, an eighth of the land for $200. This is, then, an untapped goldmine of Sadowski genealogy. The census records and courthouses of Coshocton, Licking, Hanover, and Muskingum counties in Ohio, Mercer County in Kentucky, Clark County in Illinois, and Hampshire County in Virginia until 1862, would provide more details, how long these branches and connecting lines of John Johnson were around, ages of the children, and other changes in their lives.
On October 21, 1827, six years after John Johnsons death, the first sibling to convey an eighth of the farm on Pattersons Creek to Isaac Johnson was Anna Johnson, who was born in 1769 and married John Strother, four years younger. After their son, John Johnson Strother, was born on January 4, 1800, in Hampshire County, adjoining Hardy County, the family moved to Licking County, in east central Ohio, where John Strother died in 1821 and his wife in 1851. Anna was also the first name of one of Anthony Sadowskis daughters, from whom President Gerald R. Ford is descended, and the pattern was similar in other siblings. For example, Mary Johnson, who married William Vandiver, bears the same first name as Anthony Sadowskis wife; Justina Johnson, who married James Ogilvie, was probably the namesake of Justina Sadowski, Anthony Sadowskis daughter; Sophia Johnson, who married Zachariah Bonham, was named after John Johnsons mother; Jacob Johnson carried the same first name as a son of Anthony Sadowski who, like Justina, died before Sophia Sadowski married Isaac Johnson, John Johnsons parents. The court records of Hardy County were not checked to determine if any orders were issued to convey land from Anna Strother and other siblings to their oldest brother.
The second grantee was actually not living on September 30, 1830, when the executor of Elizabeth Ryan's estate sold the eighth of her fathers farm to the eldest brother. She died in Mercer County, Kentucky. The first name of the spouse is not known.
When the third transaction was made on October 16, 1832, Sarah Johnson was dead, and John Minton of Licking County, Ohio, to whom she was married, sold her eighth of the farm to Isaac Johnson.
The story of Lydia Johnson, who inherited an eighth of her fathers lands and sold it to her eldest brother on December 9, 1832, has many angles. She was the only daughter who wasn't married at the time of her fathers death., and her predicament in 1821 was practically the same as her grandmothers in 1786 when William Darling died. Comparing the two women, what they did after the death of loved ones, presents an unusual view of life on Pattersons Creek in the early years of the republic. Obviously, although William Vandiver, to whom Mary Johnson, John Johnsons daughter, was married, rented the farm for $95 a year, Lydia Johnson remained with her sister, or closeby, just as Sophia Darling evidently did with John Johnson in 1786. One third of the 400-acre farm was Sophia Darlings dowry since 1752, and Lydia Johnson owned one eighth of it from 1821 to 1832.
Certainly Anthony Sadowskis daughter was better off than Lydia Johnson, who, like her grandmother, had to shift for herself. Although we dont have any knowledge of Sophia Darlings living quarters, we know to a certain extent what Lydia Johnson did to get along in a frontier society. She went to the Hardy County courthouse at Moorefield on March 30, 1821, when the sale of John Johnsons moveable goods was held, and purchased 25 objects, many of them probably family heirlooms, for which she paid $92.52. For starters, the bed she bought for $32 was probably her own. The evidence that she remained on the farm, at least until her marriage, was that she bought one of her fathers cows for $9.50, a hay stack for $7., and a milking pail, then called a piggin, for $1.25. As no home was without one in the early days, Lydia Johnson bought two spinning wheels, each for fifty cents, that were probably in the family for generations. Her grandmother inherited a small spinning wheel from Mary Palmer in 1758. In her cabin, living quarters, or whatever it was called, she had a fireplace and bought two of her fathers trammels to hold pots at different levels over a fire. In addition, she bought two buckets, a tea kettle, a flat iron and horn, an oven and lid, a stew kettle, a coffee mill, shoe brush, salt cellar, pepper castor, pickle leaves and waiter, two salad dishes, a pitcher, sheep shears, mirror, bread basket, carpet, spoons, knives and forks.
Another sign that Anthony Sadowskis daughter did not neglect the education of her son in the hinterland was the number of books that were on his shelves. Like his mother, who was taught to read and write by Anthony Sadowski, John Johnson learned to read books. No one knows how many of them came from his mother. He had a large collection of books at the time of his death. The books that Lydia Johnson purchased were probably the familys favorites -- Thomas Cokes four-volume commentary on the New Testament and Woods dictionary of the Bible. Her father and grandmother lived at a time when Coke, a Methodist missionary who was born in Wales, over an apothecary shop, held camp meetings wherever he could assemble people. In the last two decades of the 18th century, Virginia had a severe shortage of Anglican clergy because most of them, steadfastly loyal to England during the American Revolution, returned to the mother country. In 1784, John Wesley, founder of Methodism, sent Coke, a 37-year-old assistant, to carry on his work in the new world. The first year Coke traveled 800 miles, crossing rivers and mountains, and held camp meetings in Virginia and Maryland, to which either or both John Johnson and his mother could have gone, and he made repeated visits to the United States. When John Johnson bought the religious books, or who owned them before him, is not known. The Coke books were first imported from England and later republished in the United States. Obviously, Lydia Johnson, who bought the books that were in her fathers library for twelve dollars, kept Cokes books on her shelves, and when she married James Dye and moved to Coshocton County, Ohio, where her fathers half-brother, Robert Darling, was one of the first settlers, she carried the books with her.
With four down and four siblings to go, Isaac Johnson purchased three more parts of his fathers farm in 1835. The first of these from the heirs of William and Mary Vandiver was laden with memories. When John Johnson died, his daughter, Mary Johnson, and her husband, William Vandiver, rented his farm for $95 a year and raised their six children there as John Johnson raised nine children there before them. William Vandiver purchased a great deal of John Johnsons moveable goods, many of which were in the family for two generations, and by January 30, 1835, when Mary Vandivers eighth was sold, neither of them was alive. At the time, Isaac Johnson and Mary Vandivers children were living in Hampshire County. In addition to Sophia Vandiver,
who was married to Samuel Hendren, Matilda Vandiver, who was married to James Riggs, and John Vandiver, who was married to Nancy (last name unknown), William, Elizabeth, Sarah Ann Vandiver were still not married.
On September 30, 1835, Justina Johnson, written Christina in few places by mistake, named after Justina Sadowski, who died six years before Anthony Sadowski in Pennsylvania, and her husband, James Ogilvie, of Coshocton County, Ohio, sold her part of the farm on Pattersons Creek to Isaac Johnson. On the same day, the heirs of Sophia Johnson, who was married to Zachariah Bonham and who died in Muskingum County, Ohio, sold her share of the ancestral farm. The heirs included Amos Bonham, Robert Bonham, Johnson and Nancy Bonham, husband and wife, of Hancock County, Ohio, Hezebiah Bonham and Nancy Bonham, husband and wife, Jacob Bonham, Elizabeth Bonham, James and Elizabeth Green, husband and wife, all of Muskingum County, Ohio. Not until Jacob Johnson of Clark County, Illinois, sold his share on February 27, 1837, did Isaac Johnson have the 400-acre farm all to himself.
The two grandsons of Sophia Darling who were born and raised on Pattersons Creek raises an interesting question and brings her back into focus. After the death of her second husband in the lowlands across the South Branch of the Potomac River from Moorefield, Sophia Darling looked again to her dowry and the fields and pastures of the farm on Pattersons Creek. One third of it was endowed to her in 1752 by the laws of Virginia and after her death it was returned to John Johnson without any legal action. In the 1787 census of Virginia, however, Sophia Darling was assessed for one white male between 16 and 21 years of age, eight horses or mules, and 19 head of cattle. No one knows who the person was, but her grandsons, either Isaac or Jacob Johnson, would probably fit the description. Because she was on endowed land, where she lived was not taxed or listed. The legal description of the 400-acre farm is practically the same from 1768, when it was surveyed for John Johnson, to April 18, 1843, six years after the last eighth was turned over to him, when Isaac Johnson sold the family homestead to William J. Armstrong. Unlike his siblings, most of whom moved to Ohio when they were married, Isaac Johnson remained in Hampshire County, where Ann was the name of his wife in 1843 and Nancy in 1845. The last sighting of him was in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1858. No story of John Johnson would be complete without the question of his age. Certainly he was born on a farm lying along the Schuylkill River, fifty miles north of Philadelphia, where Isaac Johnson and Sophia Sadowski were married, prior to their migration to Virginia in the late 1740s. If he could not be legally recognized as a heir-at-law until he was 21 years old, the year the tract on Pattersons Creek was entered in his name would make 1747 the year of his birth. Lord Fairfaxs land records, however, list the same name, John Johnson, who was granted 268 acres of land on both sides of Little Cacaphon Creek in Hampshire County in 1762. Unless there was another person of the same name, John Johnson was, then, born in 1741 rather than 1747. What is so puzzling about John Johnson is that, despite his books and nine children, nothing is known about his real age. Hopefully, in the future, someone will find a reliable record of his age. As more and more descendants of Anthony Sadowski dig for their roots, name by name, more work will be done on John Johnson and his progeny.
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/SANDUSKY/2000-08/0965309444
