My pioneer family and ties to Lewis & Clark

Today's pioneer history lesson takes us back to 1799 and Gibson County's oldest known settler, Keen Field. I was transported back in time when I first saw his grave, marked with a pioneer-era tombstone, a piece of slate with his name rough-etched into it. He's buried north of Patoka, Indiana, in a cemetery now known as Field-Morrison Cemetery, once maintained by my late Uncle Les Dunning. It sits at the edge of a corn field alongside the railroad tracks and CR 50 E. It is the cemetery where my Morrison ancestors from North Carolina are buried.

It is Rachel E. Morrison (1840-1917), my third great aunt, who ties me to the famous pioneer family. I say famous because Keen Field's wife, Anna Lewis, was kin to Meriwether of the famed Lewis and Clark Expedition. Keen's brothers, Joseph and Reuben Field, were part of Lewis & Clark's Corps of Discovery. Anna (Lewis) Field gave Keen at least 10 children, some born in Kentucky before the move in 1799 to Indiana. Their grandson, Joseph Jackson Field (1831-1864), who died in a sorghum mill accident, was my Aunt Rachel's first husband, married in Gibson County 8 Jan 1863.

The Field and Morrison families were part of what became the Steelman Chapel neighborhood just north of Patoka. That area, first surveyed by the British when it was still part of the Northwest Territory, is laid out in 100-acre tracts running diagonally, SW to NE, known as Military Donations (land that was given to American war veterans in the late 18th and early 19th centuries). The Field family owned Military Donation 10, just south across Steelman Chapel Road, from where the pioneer cemetery mentioned above is located. The Morrisons took up farming just east of there and on the north side of Steelman Chapel Rd, sometime during the last half of the 1850's.

Aunt Rachel was married twice. After her first husband's accident, she married a Henry Barton, whose lineage I have not confirmed, as there were at least 3 Henry Barton's born around that time in Knox and Gibson counties. The headstone where he is buried at Shiloh Cemetery, not far from the original family farm, bears a birth date nine years later than his actual birth--a mistake on the part of the family or the gravestone engraver, I'll never know. I only have record of one child, Nancy Jane Field, being born of Rachel's first union. However, with Henry, she bore at least six children. She died 5 Dec 1917, at age 77, near Patoka and is buried near her parents, David and Jane (Swaim) Morrison, in the same cemetery as Keen Field.

Though not a direct relative, I took much time in researching the Field family from Virginia, who settled at the mouth of the Salt River, just south and west of Louisville, KY. I happened upon Lucie and Gene Field's research some years ago at luciefield.net, where they have painstakingly laid out the family history and retraced the famed steps of Meriwether Lewis and his intrepid group of explorers. It was with great sadness that I did not get to meet Gene and Lucie in person during their trip to SW Indiana in the Summer of 2011. Gene Field left this world two years later, leaving a great legacy to those of us who were connected to his family, either by birth, marriage or friendship.

I've been painstakingly tracing my roots back to the pioneers of Knox and Gibson counties for the better part of 15 years. My mom's lineage goes back to pre-Indiana statehood and pioneers from Maine by the English name, Mills. Since this is the state's bicentennial, admitted to the Union in 1816, I'm near the end of writing a book about that family, showing where we've come in 200 years, it's working title is "My Mills Family: 200 Years in Indiana." Stay tuned for more as I travel along in this quest.