Jonathan Melugin (1783 - 1859)

Born 1783 in Territory South of the Ohio River

Husband of Sarah (Mitchell) Melugin — married about 1804 in Tennessee, United States [uncertain]

Descendants

Died 28 Nov 1859 at about age 76 in Lee County, Illinois

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Biography

Note: #NI117.

Notes

Note NI117Page 7 of the book "Memorial to the Melugin Family In American" , complied by Douthitt Melugin McKay , 618 Rayburn Drive, San Antonio, Eexas, 78221, 1981: for Jonathan shows he was born 1783 in Territory South of the Ohio River. Page 5, children of John Melugin show Jonathan was born 1784, a one year difference.

Jonathan was likely buried in the family cemetery Melugin-Robinson Cemetery, Compton, Lee, Illinois, but records have not been found.

From "A Memorial to the Melugin Family in America" p 7. , by Douthitt Melugin McKay This paragraph is about Jonathan Melugin:

He appears on 1820 Census, Dickson County, Tennessee with his wife and five of their children. His wife Sarah Mitchell was born 1786 in Pennsylvania. They migrated to Cotton Hill Township, Sangamon County, Illinois where he bought 80 acres of farmland in 1830. He sold out in 1837 and removed to Lee County. Jonathan purchased several plots in township 37 section 3, Range East 3rd Principal Meridian (National Land Management and Illinois State Archives). Jonathan died 28 November 1859 and was buried on a farm. List of heirs including Sarah was furnished by Office of the Circuit Court, Dixon, Lee County.

History of Lee County, Illinois, Published by : S J Clarke Publishing Company., 1914

CHAPTER XXIX- MELUGIN'S GROVE TOWNSHIP

The first settlements of this county were made in or on the fringe of groves, hence we find Melugin's Grove, Guthrie's Grove, Franklin Grove, Inlet Grove, Twin Grove, Paw Paw Grove, Palestine Grove, Gap Grove, etc., and for that same reason the sections of Lee county dotted with groves were settled long years before the beautiful prairie country which generally offered much better soil. The wealth of timber for fuel of course was the first consideration of the settler and so the groves were selected.

The Black Hawk war, which brought thousands of men from all over the state to Lee county, then in Jo Daviess county, made strong friendships for the locality and for John Dixon. Among the number were two men who had much to do with Melugin's Grove, Zachariah Melugin and his brother-in-law, John K. Robison.

Through the influence of Air. Dixon, Zachariah Melugin settled at the grove subsequently given his name and that point became the second in Lee county to be settled.

In 1832 Mr. Melugin lived near Springfield. When the Black Hawk war broke out he was on Rock island and on the arrival of the troops at the month of Rock river, he enlisted. The country around Dixon's ferry pleased him so well that after settling his affairs back at Springfield, he returned to Dixon's ferry in 1833.

Believing the new stage road between Galena and Chicago would open many possibilities, Mr. Melugin, at the suggestion of Mr. Dixon, selected the grove, twenty miles distant, for a stage station, and when on Jan. 1, 1834, the first stage traveled the route, Mr. Melugin took passage and stopped off at the grove and built his log cabin on what afterwards became the northeast quarter of section 4. The Indians were numerous but friendly, and without molestation he kept house all alone the first winter. The long evenings were generally spent visiting with the Indians who called.

In the spring his sister, Mary, came from Sangamon county and lived with him until Oct. 12, 1834, when, at Ottawa, he was married to Mary Ross, of Ross's Grove, DeKalb county. During that summer of 1834 Miss Melugin was alone many days, in the midst of Indians who dubbed her a "brave squaw, 17 The spring from which water was procured for the stage house was eighty rods away in the timber, but never was she annoyed by Indians. That spring played an important part in another particular. There were no churns, so in order to be busy when going to the spring, the empty pail was balanced on her head while with both hands the cream was shaken in a coffee pot until the butter "came."

During this summer Miss Melugin paid a visit to Mrs. Dixon at Dixon's Ferry. There she met c. He too had served in the Black Hawk war, from Hancock county, although he enlisted at the mouth of Rock river, and at the close of the war he remained with the Dixon family in the capacity of teacher for the children. On Sept. 10, 1835, Miss Melugin and Mr. Robison were married at the home of Zachariah Melugin, by the Reverend Harris, a Methodist circuit rider, and that was the first wedding ceremony performed at Melugin's Grove.

Mr. Robison built his house half a mile from Melugin's, of unhewed logs, chinked with pieces of wood and plastered over with a mortar made of clay. The shakes used for a roof were made of split trees, the same as the floor. The shelves for pans and dishes in this house were made by boring holes in the logs driving in long pins and laying a board across the pins.

In this house the menage was exactly as in every other pioneer cabin. The fireplace warmed the room and served for a cooking stove bread was baked in iron kettles with iron covers, the kettle being placed in one side of the fireplace and covered with coals and hot ashes; potatoes were roasted also in those same ashes. Gourds played a very prominent part in the array of cooking utensils. They were used for baskets, basins, cups, dippers, Soap dishes etc. Hollow Trees sawed, were used for well curbs, beehives and storage receptacles for housing grain. Troughs hollowed from trees were used to contain sugar sap, and during a rain storm they were used to catch water under the eaves and to store it, and they were used for milk pans. Sometimes the troughs were used as cradles to rock the babies to sleep.

Butter bowls, ladles, rolling pins, brooms, etc., were made by the husband from wood with implements of the rudest sort. So, too, the husband mended his own harness and cobbled the household shoes. In the absence of clocks and watches, certain marks on the doors or side of the house indicated the time of day and the position of the Big Dipper indicated the same by night. The well or the water trough reflected the features for hairdressing and shaving, and with but one change of Clothing for each, the same was washed and ironed while the child slept. And such indeed was the house and the manner of housekeeping with that same John K. and Mrs. Robison.

Brooms in those days were made from young hickory trees about three inches through, peeling off the bark, then with pocket knife the men-folks commenced on the end of the stick intended for the brush part and peeled the stick in narrow strips or splints about a sixteenth of an inch thick and about eighteen inches long. The heart of the stick would not peel and that was cut off, leaving a stick about three inches long in the center of these splints. The splints being dropped back over this stick. they then commenced on the handle end and stripped splints toward those already made, and long enough to cover them. When the stick was stripped, the splints were all tied together around the stick left in the center of the splints first stripped, and the remainder of the handle was then stripped to complete the broom.

Flint and steel were used to kindle fire, but "borrowing fire" when learned, was much more common and much easier, when there were neighbors from whom to borrow.

The nearest grain and live stock market for Melugin was Chicago and to go 'and come seldom took less than seven days. In a muddy season, the time consumed was more.

The nearest gristmill then was Green's mill near Ottawa. A woolen mill there scutched and carded wool into rolls fit for spinning back at home by the women.

John K. Robison brought to the grove from Nauvoo the first currant bushes;. he carried them on horseback. The fashion of the day was for husband and wife to ride the same horse when they went a distance together, the man sitting ahead and the wife behind. Mr. Robison was not only the first teacher in Lee county, both at Dixon and Melugin, but he was the first justice the peace at Melugin. He taught school in his own house until the first school house was built, in 1837; at that time he had eight pupils.

...Cornelius Christeance was the first white child born, John Melugin and W. W. Gilmore followed; all born in the year 1835.

Church services were held at private houses when the circuit rider appeared, until church buildings or schoolhouses were built. In the Grove, the first church to be organized was the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1837, at the house of Melugin, and the first Sunday school to be organized was in 1847 or 1848, by Reverend Haney of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Zachariah Melugin being from Sangamon county and in the Black Hawk war, became intimately acquainted with Abraham Lincoln, and when Mr. Melugin returned there, Lincoln visited him at his father's home.

... Ezra Berry was another of the 1835 pioneers to settle at the grove. He married Miss Eleanor Melugin, sister of Zachariah. Some have said the first schoolhouse was built on the farm of Mr. Christeance in 1838, but investigation has proved conclusively the year was 1837, and that Zachariah Melugin was the first teacher succeeding Mr. Robison. Mr. Melugin was a man of superior intellect and ability. So early as the year 1836 or 1837 he composed a poem published in the Rock River Register, the first paper published on Rock river. He died in 1842 and his widow married William Atkinson.

... Melugin's Grove became, for a little place, a place of importance. ..

....Until 1873 Melugin's Grove prospered. Then the Kinyon railroad went through Brooklyn township, about a mile to the south, and Joel Compton platted the town of Compton, a mile away, and all the glamor and tradition of the old grove and the stage ride and stage coach days disappeared. One by one the Grove people moved over to the railroad and Compton. One by one the buildings were moved over to Compton. Love for the old place was strong, and the ties were hard to break, but the last had to give way, and to this day the entire population of prosperous Compton are descendants of the old Melugin's Grove stock, and so closely intermarried that nearly every family is related to every other family. ...

Sources

• burial: Find A Grave: Memorial #129102925
• Melugin Family In American"[1]
• History of Lee County, Illinois, Frank Everett Stevens, 1914 [2]

Note NI117Page 7 of the book "Memorial to the

• Zimmerle GEDCOM file provided by Howard Franklin Zimmerle. Any sources available provided in Notes section.