Whether we wished it or not, whether we accepted or fought it, the Pandemic taught each of us lessons about solitude. There was hardship, but there was beauty, if one chose to see it. A good friend gave me a greeting card, which I have framed, of two friends in side-by-side treehouses, passing a basket on a clothesline. They are apart, but breaking bread.
When I examine the tree and the ancestors and relatives I share with Rachel, I don’t feel I know enough about most of them to decide if some felt or chose solitude. Little facts, and even fewer anecdotes remain. But one person stood out, and it’s come to me in the last few days that if I can manage a few short paragraphs, especially about those that seem most forgotten, then I have done what I can in my work to record them all.
William Field was the only son of John and Jane (Staton) Field to be recorded and to have reached adulthood. He was born in Kentucky and lived near the Ohio River, which was likely a huge part of his life. As a teen, he lost his father, and sometime shortly after 1850, he and his mother appear to have followed his sister Nancy across the river to Pulaski County Illinois where all of the members of the immediate family lived the rest of their days.
Probably around 1856 or 57, William (age about 27) married Parilee, or PL Lowe, who was about 15. In November 1857 or 58, they had a baby daughter with a very big name: Josephine Emeline Matilda Field. She may have been their only child, and it certainly seems so. There is no further record of her mother after the 1860 census, when little Jo is a year old. She may have died of any number of causes, but this is the only record of her.
The Civil War intervened, and William enlisted in the 11th Illinois, Company H. No known relatives of his, be they cousins or in-laws, served in this unit, so it appears he did not necessarily set off in a band of brothers. Also, after his young wife leaves the narrative, it appears he didn’t remarry, or not for any length of time, as he never appears in any Pension rolls or as the veteran in a Widow’s application.
In the 1870 census (see below) he lists his daughter by one of her middle names, but she is also listed by her first name (the name she used as an adult) a few households away on the same page, living with a sister-in-law of her aunt. Given the situation at home, with no mother for a young girl and the absence of her grandmother, who had lived with Jo as an infant but died shortly after the war ended, my interpretation is that William was largely alone. Certainly not alone by choice, and perhaps with the happy benefit of family nearby, but he is also unlisted in any further mention in newspaper or official record, although many family members do appear.
Another clue to William’s theoretic solitude is Jo’s marriage to Gideon Castle. She is not quite 16, and perhaps the same age as her mother when marrying her father. Was she leaving her aunt’s home? Was her father present? There is no further record of William. Several family trees that include Jo (presumably some by her descendants) estimate William’s death as 1874. He would have been only 44 years old.
He had one sister, who married before he came of age. His wife and his mother appear to have died within the cloak of War and the immediate aftermath, and I imagine him having been unable or unwilling to cope with a young daughter on his own. And then he is gone.
But rather than the presumed death date, I like to see him seated on a strong horse, wishing his newly married daughter well, and riding west. It's much nicer to imagine that he had a future on the horizon, that perhaps there were colorful letters. Perhaps an owner of one of those online trees knows a bit more about him.
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