Greene and Clinton Counties, Ohio Results

In August, 2011, I had the long-anticipated opportunity of visiting the land of James Stapleton Lewis' birth near Bellbrook, Sugar Creek Township, Greene Co., Ohio.  Bellbrook is a lovely little town built on hills near the Little Miami River valley.  The highway ran past the Bellbrook Cemetery so I made a stop there.  Though I knew there were family members buried there, I didn't have time to search for graves.  I did take a photo of the cemetery and of the area around the town which I'll post. 

The area surrounding Bellbrook, Greene County, Ohio

The reason I didn't stop in Bellbrook was to allow time to visit the Clinton County Genealogy Society library in Wilmington, Ohio.  The people there were so kind and helpful - though they laughed when I said I was looking for a John Jones.  All genealogists know the difficulties in searching for ancestors with common names.

In all the land records I searched in that library (and in two other large libraries in the region), I could not find any record of Joel Lewis (JSL's father) owning land in the Greene County area.  This surprised me.  Arthur Kennedy Love's work from the 1930s states:  "When Joel Lewis settled in Greene County Ohio, in 1808, the only record discovered of real estate owned by him in the Recorder's Office, is the sale of a lot which he had purchased in Bellbrook.  This lot was deeded to Isaac Fallis in 1836.  Isaac Fallis was the father of Mercy Vaughn Fallis, who married Joel's son Joel.  Whether Joel built a cabin and lived on this lot, or whether he lived else-where in Sugar Creek township, is not known.  However it is known that he was a resident either in the township or the town from 1808 to 1819 or 1820, when he moved to Ward township, Randolph County, Indiana."  I did find reference to land ownership in Randolph County (though it is possible it is a record of Joel Lewis Jr's land) but no record of the transaction Arthur Love noted.

I found records of the land owned in Ohio by Joel's brothers-in-law, Cyrus Sackett, Abram VanEaton, and Daniel Lewis, Sr. whose families left North Carolina before Joel did.  Presumably Joel and Rachel lived near and farmed with one or more of those relatives when they moved to Greene County.  In his journal JSL wrote, "My father afterward carried the United States mails through this Indiana wilderness country. . "  Could he have been doing that in Ohio as well?

One of the things I hoped to find in Clinton County was a record for the death of Sarah Sumpter Jones, mother of Anna Jones Lewis.  It is believed that she died in Clinton County; it's probably  where Anna's brothers George and John died as well.  However, I wasn't successful.  I did find the death record of a Sarah Jones married to a John Jones of Clinton County, but they were too young to be the correct Jones family.  The kind folks at the Wilmington library told me we are unlikely to find any record for Sarah since death records weren't required in that time period and women then didn't have wills or estates to probate.  That makes cemetery records about the only possible source.  I searched all available cemetery records for the areas in and near Clinton County to no avail.  I wonder if there was a family burial plot which has since disappeared.

JSL referred to his father-in-law as Reverend John Jones and as John Jones esquire.  The Wilmington library staff did shed a little light on that.  The Reverend probably means that he was a Baptist Circuit Rider who traveled to various communities to preach.  The esquire probably means that he practiced law to some extent, though that doesn't mean that he had any formal training in the law.

It was disappointing to not find the missing pieces to these family history puzzles.  However, it was thrilling to visit the places where they lived and worked nearly 200 years ago.