Reeve, Isaac, Jr.

Summary

Father: Isaac Reeves, Sr.
Mother: Margery MMU

Birth: 2 Aug 1767, Virginia
Birth Source: 1850 Census of Morgan County, Illinois

Death: 11 Jan 1860, St. Clair, Morgan County, Illinois
Death Source: Gravestone inscription, photo at Find A Grave

Spouse1: Kerenhappuch MNU

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Narrative

Children of Isaac Reeve, Jr. and Karenhappuch:

1. Joel Reeve, b. 1794, d. Sep 1865
2. Martha Reeve, b. 30 Oct 1796
3. Lazarus Reeve, b. 1798
4. Robert Reeve, d. before 1810
5. John Reeve, b. 1802
6. Isaac Boone Reeve, b. 1804
7. Hurum Edgar Reeve or Hyrum, b. 10 May 1806
8. Keren H. Reeve, b. 1815
9. Jehu Reeve, d. very young

This family's surname has been listed Reeves or Reaves, but the majority of the records found in Illinois use the variation "Reeve". The signature of Isaac's brother Peter on his 1801 Wilkes County, North Carolina marriage bond is also clearly Reeve.

Isaac Reaves along his brother Joshua Reaves is listed on the 1799 tax lists of Madison County, Kentucky. There were no other Reeves' families living in Madison County at that time, but there is a marriage recorded there in 1798 for a Sarah Reeves to William Holton with James Reeve(s) as the bondsman. It is likely this is the same James Reeves who was listed in both 1796 and 1797 on the Madison County KY tax lists and then found in Mason County, Kentucky by 1800 and was the son of Isaac Reeves, Sr. of Wilkes County, North Carolina.

From Historic Morgan and classic Jacksonville, compiled in 1884-85 by Charles M. Eames, (Editor and Proprietor of the Daily and Weekly Journal):

The Settlers of 1820
The ranks of those who date back their residence in Morgan county "before the deep snow" are sadly thinned. Still fewer in number are those who can celebrate the "golden" anniversary of their location upon these prairies. Remarkable, then, was that social reunion, in 1877, of the Reeve family, the dining together of six out of a family of nine, who came to this "neck of the woods" in 1820, fifty-seven years previous. The party consisted of Messrs. Lazarus, John, Isaac and Huram, and Miss Keren Reeve and their sister, Mrs. Martha Reeve Grain (sic Crain). It was at the house of the latter that they met and recalled the days gone by. Only three of the family now are living.

One of the little company tells us that in 1820, when Isaac Reeve, Sr., came to this locality with his wife and nine children, the county boundaries covered what is now Madison and all that lies between that county and this, and was called Madison. In coming, the party followed an Indian trail, they being about the first white people to track the prairies between what is now Alton and Jacksonville. They drove ahead of them, all the way, a sow and her shoats and two cows having bells upon them that they might not be lost in the wild woods. Reaching here a halt was made, their property dumped upon the ground, while Mr. Reeve, Sr., started at once to return to Edwardsville for provisions. With the second load he brought a blacksmith's bellows, anvil and hammer. The former was swung between two saplings, a tree was felled and an anvil block made of the stump, logs were rolled up for the furnace and thus they began life in "Old Morgan." This first blacksmith shop was of great service to the emigrants, who began to settle in this region, for the sharpening of the plows with which the virgin sod of the "Prairie State" was to be upheaved. All provisions then had to be hauled one hundred miles.

Of Mr. Reeve's place of business. Rev. N. P. Heath has said in an historical address:
"It was a mammoth structure, as big as all out doors. Talk about your modern watch factories, and reaper factories, why the outside walls of Reeve's blacksmith shop extended as far as the lines of creation, to say nothing of the interior arrangements. This shop was the first for some time, and the only one in the county, in fact, it embraced all the county and more too. This soon became the headquarters of the county. Here, like the Athenians of old, the settlers would meet from all parts, in order to tell and hear the news...

The first ground broken in the county for purposes of cultivation was in the spring of 1820. We have been furnished with the following names of persons who settled in the county during that spring: John Wyatt, William Wyatt, Isaac P. Roe, Jeddediah Webster, Isaac Reeve...In the spring of 1820, James Deaton, Isaac Reeve, Sr., and family, Robert R. James and others settled north-west of the present site of Jacksonville.

Sources

Early Tax Lists of Madison County, Kentucky
Tax Lists of Wilkes County, North Carolina 1790, 1795 and 1805
1800 Census - Wilkes County, North Carolina
1810 Census - Wilkes County, North Carolina
1830 Census - Morgan County, Illinois
1850 Census - Morgan County, Illinois
1860 Census - Morgan County, Illinois
Illinois, Public Land Purchase Records, 1800-1990
Historic Morgan and classic Jacksonville, compiled in 1884-85 by Charles M. Eames