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Col. Aaron Noble Phelps is descended from George Phelps and Phillura
Randall Phelps, pioneer settlers of Windsor, Connecticut. Based on statements
made in The Phelps Family
of America and Their English Ancestors, many genealogists have
accepted at face value that William
Phelps and George
Phelps were brothers who
emigrated together from Tewkesbury, England. Substantive
research has since disproved their origins in Tewkesbury and cast
some doubt as to whether they were brothers.
War of 1812
My third great-grandfather Aaron Noble Phelps was a Captain in Foote's
Regiment, Massachusetts Militia, during the War of 1812. Aaron died
in Massachusetts after the war.
His son Ronald
Aaron Noble Phelps was born on 9 Sep 1819 in Westfield, Massachusetts.
Noble, as he was called in contemporary accounts, left Massachusetts
with his wifeSarah
Jerusha Adams Phelps, his mother Clarissa
Root Phelps, and 25 others, for the far west, in Illinois.
Emigration to the West
Aaron
was among a number of people that comprised a huge surge in the white
population of Illinois, which exploded after the War of 1812, exceeding
50,000 in 1820 and 150,000 in 1830.
Aaron served in William McMurtry's company of Rangers
in Knox Country, Illinois, during the Blackhawk
Indian Wars." During the war, William McMurtry organized a
company of Rangers of about eighty-nine, which embraced nearly all
that were fit for service in Knox, Warren, and Mercer counties. They
were all mounted, each man furnishing his own rifle and horse. They
pursued the Indians in all directions but were never engaged in battle."(1)
Clarissa Root Phelps was the sister of Riley
Root and brought two of his daughters west, along with another
brother's son, Moses. A generous spirit, she later took charge of two
additional children, sons of Dr. Gordon Grant.
According to the Knox
College history, "On June
2, 1837, the first colonists arrived in a wagon train and settled
temporarily at Log City [near current Lake Storey], three miles northwest
of the present site of Galesburg." At the time of Mr. Phelps'
arrival in Illinois, the amount of his worldly possessions at that
time was enough
to buy a box stove and a cow, valued at $30. (2) (History
of Knox County,
p. 840). Knox College was founded by the same social reformers
in 1837 who opposed slavery and were committed to help all individuals
uncover their potential, to learn, grow and contribute to the greater
good of the community.
Founding of Galesburg
Galesburg was
also home to the first anti-slavery society in the state of Illinois,
also organized in 1837, and was a stop on the underground railroad. Real
railroads played a key role in Galesburg's history. The first railroad
came to Galesburg in 1854, causing no amount of unhappiness with the
residents of Knoxville, the county seat. The settlers later founded the
pioneer First Church of Christ in Galesburg.
The book Phelps
Family in America gives Ronald's name as "Roger." My
grandfather, Harold B. Phelps Sr., penciled this out and inserted "Ronald".
He also corrected Ronald's birth year from 1812 to 1819. The book
also gives his death at Wataga, Illinois, which my grandfather has
crossed out, but not corrected. Noble is buried in the Hope Cemetery
in Galesburg, Illinois.
The Best Farm in Knox County, Illinois
"Mr. Phelps was born in Westfield, Mass., September 8, 1819. He
came, with his mother and two sisters, to Galesburg [Illinois] in 1836.
The amount of his worldly possessions at that time was enough to buy
a box stove and a cow, valued at $30. The eldest daughter [of Col. Phelps,
or Aaron's sister, Seraphina
Princess Phelps] became Mrs. G. Avery, of Galesburg, and the youngest
[Sybelana
Phelps] the wife of B. Killbourn, of Wisconsin. The mother died at
Galesburg, November 29, 1855.
"The father, Aaron
Noble Phelps, had died previous to the family's moving west, at
Westfield, Mass., in March 1830. He and his wife (Miss Clarissa Root)
were married in 1814. Their only son, A. N. Phelps and Mrs. Sarah J.
Adams were married March 29, 1847, and moved to their present home
in 1856, which has since taken the premiums already
mentioned." (3)
"Section 8 also includes the premium farm owned by A. N. Phelps,
Esq., and contains 200 acres without a foot of waste land... As an indication
that Sparta [Township] is a rich agricultural
locality, capable of producing a great quantity as well as a great variety
of crops and having in it many enterprising stock-raisers, besides begin
well watered by natural streams and springs, may be noted the fact that
A. N. Phelps' two-hundred acre farm now owned by William Robson on Section
8, took three first prizes from the
State Agricultural Society."(5) The
farm was ranked first in 1868, 1870, and "previously for five
successive years." The "premium" itself was a silver-plated
coffee service which is still in the family today.
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