Andrew Johnson and Me
It would be okay with me if I couldn’t prove this connection to the 17th President, Andrew Johnson. He was pretty much not a good guy and is to blame for some (although certainly not all) of the problems during Reconstruction after the Civil War.
But I think this connection is good. Once again, it goes through my mother’s Workman family line to the Bilyeu family, but this time we have the right Bilyeu. James Workman (#4) was the son of #5 Elizabeth Bilyeu, and I was able to walk these connections back to Andrew Johnson with little difficulty.
I wasn’t familiar with most of the individuals in this line, so I wanted to find out a little about them. Levi Harbour had been born in Illinois, and Cynthia had moved there from Overton County, Tennessee, with her parents sometime before 1830. Levi and Cynthia had met and married by 1847. Levi died in 1899, and the 1900 census shows Cynthia living alone as a widow in Laomi township in Sangamon County, Illinois. But a quick look at the census record shows that she was not alone on the prairie; her neighbors included a Workman family that lived nearby, and another family with the “Harbour” surname lived down the road. The Bilyeu and Workman families had intermarried since the early 18th century with both family left New York to settle in New Jersey. One genealogist wrote that this family was more like a family “wreath” than a “tree,” My 2nd great-grandfather James Workman (#4) moved to this part of Illinois with him family in the late 1860s.
The connection to Andrew Johnson takes us back through Levi’s parents, Samuel Harbour and Elizabeth Lindley. Samuel had been born in Kentucky and lived there until he moved to Illinois sometime before 1840. Both the Bilyeu and Workman families had lived in Kentucky before they moved to Tennessee and then to Illinois. Elizabeth’s father, Simon Lindley, was born in North Carolina but followed a common migration path to Kentucky and then to Illinois in the early 1800s. The Lindley and Harbour surnames are featured in a book about the early settlers of Sangamon County, Illinois.
Simon Lindley’s father, John, was born to Quaker parents in Pennsylvania. He was disowned by the Quakers in 1768 because he married outside of the faith, and they were living in South Carolina by 1779. One source noted that he was arrested as a British sympathizer in North Carolina in 1882 and deprived of his property. After this, he moved to Delaware.
The connection goes next to John’s brother James, who was also a Loyalist in the revolution. James was captured at the Battle of Kettle Creek, Georgia, in 1799 and hanged after being convicted of treason. James’s daughter Mary who was 15 when her father was executed, apparently had a child, Mary, by a man named Andrew McDonough (to whom she was not married) before married Colville Abercrombie, with whom she had 10 children. Mary married Jacob Johnson in 1801; their son, Andrew Johnson, was born in 1808.
I would say that President Johnson does not come from a glorious ancestry. His great-uncle was kicked out of the Quaker Meeting in Pennsylvania and was a Loyalist, his grandfather James Lindley was executed for treason during the American Revolution, and his grandmother got pregnant with his mother before she was married. But the connection is accurate anyway.
This possible connection takes me through a line I haven’t explored thus far in these essays. I recognize the names through Johan George Ilgenfritz, III, in the middle of the second row. He is my paternal 3rd great-grandfather on my Ellefritz line. This line is complicated by three facts. One, people spelled this name in a variety of creative ways. Two, Hans Georg Ilgenfritz III had 22 children by three wives. And three, his father (also named Johannes Georg) had 19 children by two wives. I haven’t explored any of the collateral lines in this family wreath, so this connection gives me the chance to do this.
I found that Hans Georg III had a brother named Frederick, so that’s good. I have been able to find out a little about Frederick Ilgenfritz. He served in the York County, Pennsylvania, Militia during the American Revolution and was a member of the Moravian Church in that community (along with hundreds of other people named Ilgenfritz or variations thereof). Frederick only had 10 children (slacker), but his youngest son was named Daniel, so that works. I don’t know when this family decides to go by the surname “Fritz” rather than “Ilgenfritz” or “Ellefritz,” but the 1880 census (he was in Michigan by that time) shows his surname as “Fritz”, as does his 1887 grave marker, and that’s the name his children took.
By 1881, Daniel had died and his wife Elizabeth had moved back to Pennsylvania. Here’s a page from the 1881 City Director for York, Pennsylvania. You can see the problem in documenting this prolific family. There are three George Ilgenfritztes (a brickmaker, a farmer, and a painter) and two William Ilgenfritzes (a toll gate keeper and an engineer) on this portion of the page alone.
The rest of this line works out as well. Daniel’s daughter Almira (Myra), who had been born in Ohio, married Abraham (or Abram) Lance in Ohio in 1866. Then to get to Andrew Johnson, we have to move back through the Lance family, to Abrahm’s father Christopher Columbus Lance (born in Ohio in 1810, very early for Ohio), to Christopher’s father John Lance (born in New Jersey in 1782), and to John’s mother Sarah Johnson, born in New Jersey in 1751. Sarah’s husband (John’s father) Christopher Lance was born in Europe and came to America sometime before the American Revolution, but I don’t have any information about military service for him.
The connection then goes through Sarah’s brother, noted on Geni as Andrew William Johnson. I think that’s wrong; she had a brother named William Andrew Johnson, and I can verify a connection through him. William’s son Jacob was born in North Carolina in 1778, and Jacob’s son Andrew (with Mary McDonough, remember her?) was born in 1808.
There’s nothing particularly interesting or juicy about this connection to Andrew Johnson, but I think it’s accurate.