A Family Tribute and Scrapbook This site is an online resource for the ancestry of Bruce Eugene Shirey and Gloria Julene Hughey, and Dr. LeRoy Cecil Mims and Nancy Grace Blackistone. This resource encompasses over 15,000 individuals including direct, collateral, and allied lines. The site also presents over 10,000 scanned images. We would like to thank all who have contributed to this ongoing project. If you have any questions, comments, information, or items to include please Contact The Site Manager.
Shortly after their marriage in 1800, Jonathan B. Reno and Sarah Rogers, moved from Elizabethton, Carter, Tennessee to Jackson County, Tennessee. They were on the Jackson County, Tennessee tax records in 1814. It was while here that Jonathan B. Reno was in the Tennessee Militia as a captain, and he fought in the War Of 1812. Jackson County, Tennessee is near Albany, Clinton, Kentucky, where Charles, his father and John, his eldest brother, came from Carter County, Tennessee in about 1799.
In 1825 Jonathan B. Reno took his family to Schuyler County, Illinois by ox team and settled on the north bluff of the Illinois River overlooking Beardstown, Cass, Illinois which was settled at about the same time as Beard's Ferry. He was the fourth or fifth white man to arrive in the county and was selected to oversee blazing a trail from Beardstown to Rushville (15 miles distant). Within 2 or 3 years he moved to a location 5 miles northeast of Rushville, where his son Francis died, who was about 9 years of age. Old Co. histories tell that Jonathan B. Reno provided the Judge and Jury with a jug of whiskey to use during the trial and deliberation of the first jury case in Schuyler County, Illinois.
About 1834 they sold their Schuyler County, Illinois land and moved near to Industry, McDonough, Illinois which was about 15 Miles north of their former home, and from there to Fandon, McDonough, Illinois, all of which was unsettled territory, and as civilization came in around him he moved.
In 1836 they moved to Iowa, and then near Springfield, Christian, Missouri which was a town of about 250 persons. He bought a 120 acre farm 5 miles southeast of Springfield, Christian, Missouri.
In the spring of1838 Jonathan rode into town one Saturday morning and went into the general store, which also sold liquor, on the square. Someone accosted Jonathan and told him four or five drunks were inside making a nuisance of themselves and asked him to "go in and clean them out". Although he was 58 years old, he apparently still relished a job like that, the first man he seized and undertook to evict, suddenly stabbed him in the heart, and he died almost instantly. The knife wielder was tried and sent to the Missouri Penitentiary, but was pardoned after a year or two. Sarah sold the farm a few years later, to her son-in-law, James Lee, and moved back to Schuyler County, Illinois and lived near her other children.
Jonathan B. Reno's estate was administrated by Avanant Hollingsworth, formerly of Schuyler County, Illinois and who had been a Sargent in the Blackhawk War, and in the same company with Jonathan's son Jonathan in 1832. Claims filed in his estate proceedings indicate that he also was a customer of the place he sought to "clean up". Besides his farm, stock and machinery, he also held several sizeable notes which his administrator put in judgment at the residence of debater's in Schuyler County, Illinois and
McDonough County, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri and Fairfield County, Iowa. He was apparently affluent to be a money lender. There wasn't a will but in the petition of administration the following "Missouri heirs": Jacob T. Reno, Polly Reno, William C. and Sarah, John and Adeline, Louisa "Eliza", and James M.. "Illinois heirs:" Norana, Joseph, Charles, Andrew J. and Jonathan. The farm was sold to James Lee, Jonathan's son-in-law, for $325.
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