Reavis, Charles

Summary

Father: Isham Reavis, Sr.
Mother: Anne Matilda Jones

Birth: 1774, Rutherford County, North Carolina
Birth Source:

Death: abt 1836, Menard County, Illinois
Death Source:

Spouse1: Polly Ingram

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Narrative

Children of Charles Reavis and Polly Ingram:

1. James Alexander Reavis, b. c1798
2. Isham Reavis, b. 1 Jul 1798
3. Elizabeth Reavis, b. c1804
4. Reavis, b. 1804-1820
5. Mary Reavis, b. c1806
6. Zachariah Reavis, b. c1808
7. Solomon Reavis, b. c1810
8. Charles Reavis, b. 1814

On the 17th of August 1799, Charles Reavis along with his father Isham, brothers Edward, Mark, Isham Jr. and brother-in-law Royal Potter were appointed by the County Court of Warren County, Kentucky to work on a road under overseer Robert Lee.

Charles is listed on the 1800 tax lists of Warren County, Kentucky along with Edward (listed as Revis), Mark and Isham Reavis (there is no indication of whether this is Isham Sr. or Jr.).

The 1824 Saline County, Missouri will of Isham Reavis, Sr. contains a statement that "Charles Reavis is not my son, he has one horse I gave him and now I give him one cow and one calf more and no more." However, in a letter to Logan Uriah Reavis from William Reavis of Evansville, Indiana dated 11 March 1883, Mr. Reavis states, "The expression in the will of Isham that 'Charles Reavis is not my son.' is not to be taken literally, but as indicating that relationship between the father and son were not then cordial.

By May of 1817, Charles Reavis was living in Illinois and recorded as a grand juror in Bond County. He built a hotel in Vandalia and is documented as having the first known tavern in Vandalia, occupying the southeast corner of Fifth and Johnson streets near the first capitol building.

When the Illinois legislature was in the process of seeking a new site for the seat of government in the state, the commissioners assembled at the remote cabin of Charles Reavis, pioneer farmer. Crossing the third principal meridian, the four commissioners went twenty miles up river, looking over the terrain on both banks. "After taking into view...the local advantages of each situation," they declared in their report to the legislature, the four examiners "did select" a picturesque wilderness highland, Reeve's Bluff (a corruption of Reavis) fifty feet above the west bank of the river and named it Vandalia. Source: Lincoln's Vandalia, a pioneer portrait By William E. Baringer pub. 1949.

Research Notes

Sources

The Reavis Family in America since 1700 by Marie Reavis Hall, pub 1971
Warren County, Kentucky Court Records
Tax Lists of Warren County KY
1810 Census - Warren County, Kentucky
1820 Census - Bond County, Illinois
Lincoln's Vandalia, a pioneer portrait By William E. Baringer pub. 1949