James Buchanan and Me
I enjoyed researching this connection because it took me back to my Rhode Island ancestors, the Deuel family (or Devol, Davol, Deul, and various other spellings). The story goes that the family name was originally Davol, of French origin, but that it was too close to “devil” so the family changed it. I don’t exactly buy that. I think it’s more a function of the fact that the interior letters look like a bunch of squiggles when people signed their names so people read the squiggles differently.
I also enjoyed encountering my 5th great-grandfather Benanuel (or Emmanuel) Deuel again. I have ample evidence that he served in the American Revolution, but he’s not in the DAR database with a proven lineage because no one can figure out how to spell his name to link the records together.
As I move through the rest of this suggested connection between me and President Buchanan, I encounter a problem – I can’t document a connection between William Gaylord (#13) and Samuel Gaylord (#14), who is supposed to be his son. I’ve spent a couple of hours on this, and I’m just not finding it. Life is too short to spend any more time on this connection.
WikiTree is always evolving, and when I visited the site this morning to check a couple of connections, I found a new line between me and President Buchanan.
I don’t have to spend much time analyzing this connection – a quick survey shows me a persistent problem with my mother’s Workman family line. #6 on this lineage is Lydia Bilyeu, and there are a bunch of women named Lydia Bilyeu in my family.
I know there are duplicate Lydias on this list. I’ll fix that sometime but not today.
Now let’s see what Geni has to offer for this connection.
At first glance, I’m happy to have a chance to explore this connection. I recognize these names back to Elizabeth “Betsy” Hunt and her brother Jefferson Hunt (although in my tree I have documentation that his first name is Thomas, not Charles, which makes sense because he was born in 1803, during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson).
This line is fun because Jefferson Hunt converted to the Mormon faith in the 1820s and became a leader of the group that first settled in Nauvoo, Illinois, and then moved on to Salt Lake City under Brigham Young. The Mormons have written extensively about Jefferson Hunt.
Jefferson Hunt was a member of the Nauvoo Legion in Nauvoo, where he was also ordained into the priesthood, but he and his family moved to Iowa early in 1846 when the persecution of Mormons in Nauvoo intensified. While in Iowa, he volunteered to serve in the Mexican War as Captain of Company A of the Mormon Battalion. This Battalion (the only religion-based unit ever formed in the U.S. Military) was created at the request of President Polk; the Saints had been asking for government protection against the persecution they had suffered at the hands of local residents in Nauvoo, and the Mormon leaders believed that federal help would be forthcoming if the Saints aided the United States in its military effort against Mexico.
Jefferson left military service in 1847. Pauline Udall Smith wrote a book all about him – Jefferson Hunt of the Mormon Battalion. He also has an entry in the four-volume set Conquerors of the West by Florence Youngberg. After his service with the military, he went to California and settled the part of the state that became San Bernardino, serving in the first California legislature from 1853 to 1857. He is honored as the “Founder of San Bernardino.” He moved back to Utah, settling in Ogden Valley, where the town of Huntsville is named in his honor.
So with that out of the way, let’s see how the rest of this lineage matches what I have on my tree.
As hard as it is to believe, Jefferson Hunt had a son named Liberty Independence, and he had a daughter named Consuela – so far, so good. Consuela married Thomas Jasper Thornton and they had a daughter they named Sunbeam. Swear to Goddess. A side note – she died in 2014 at the age of 95.
Here’s a picture of “Bea” Thornton – she enlisted in the Army in 1944 as a surgical technician.
Bea’s first husband, Lyle Mower, was a pilot who later became a POW during World War II. They had no children before divorcing in 1946. Lyle also married several times; his third wife, Bessie Buchanan, is the link to the Buchanan family. Bessie’s great-grandfather, John Buchanan III, was born in Ireland but immigrated to the United States sometime before 1812, when his marriage to Nancy Buche (or Bache) was documented in Kentucky. John Buchanan and his family converted to the Mormon faith in the 1830s, and after John died in 1830 they joined with the church in Nauvoo and then went to Salt Lake City with them.
As I explored this family, I wondered why James Buchanan Sr. did not join the Mormon church when his brother John’s family converted to that faith. It appears that James’s parents both died when he was young and he was sent to live with his mother’s brother Samuel in Ireland and then at age 22 came to the United States to live with his mother’s other brother, Joshua.
Overall, this family connection checks out. I enjoyed exploring it because it took me from President Buchanan’s 19th-century Irish grandparents, through the founding and migration of the Mormon Church, to his brother’s descendants (President Buchanan never married and had no children) who served in World War II and lived until 2014. Quite a ride!