Category Archives: Maps

Leaving Chicago

03 Sunday Aug 2014

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Just before her departure from Chicago in 1946, Lolith Irene Maddox sentimentally photographed the sites of her daily routine.  They were all taken around her 4602 Beacon Street apartment.  The trio of photos below, and Irene’s commentary, provide an unusual first-hand viewpoint.

Buvid's Bus Stop View 1946 corrected

Irene wrote on the back of this one, “For fourteen years – you saw this view – as you waited for your bus – .”

Is there a bus coming 1946 Chicago

On the back of this photo, Irene joked indecipherably, “Is there a bus coming? My True Rat looked for the answer here many, many times.”

Diane of the Beacons corrected

Irene (Diane) wrote on the back of this photo, “Diane of the Beacons – saw this view – thousands of times -.”

The Devil’s Backbone

05 Wednesday Feb 2014

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The Crawford County Historical Society recently pinpointed the various hellish-sounding geographic features around the Maddox farms in Crawford County, Illinois.

The Devil’s Backbone was a stone’s throw east of the Maddox farms.  It ran north-south from Heathville and probably paralleled or traced the current route 33.  It was so called because it went up and down so many hills.  The Devil’s Backbone was also called Purgatory Road, earning the name after a snake-infested swamp in its path swallowed too many livestock.

Devil’s Neck was the site of “The Battle of the Devil’s Neck” along the Wabash River, 3 miles south of Palestine.  The “battle” was really just an effort to arrest recalcitrant Southern sympathizers – mostly men who had avoided draft into Indiana units, including the “notorious” Harvey Beshears.

Hell’s Half Acre was a foreboding hang-out for horse thieves and other ne’er-do-wells, along the shores of the Wabash River in Northeast Montgomery Township.

Source: E. Tennis, Crawford County Historical Society Newsletter, January 2014.

A patchwork of fields – coming together slowly

01 Monday Oct 2012

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Here’s an updated version of the watercolors… clockwise from the top left, they’re Charles County, Maryland, then Abbeville, South Carolina, then Crawford County, Illinois, and finally Christian County, Kentucky.

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Mapping the 19th Century Maddox farms of Crawford County, Illinois

06 Thursday Sep 2012

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Here’s a map of the Maddox farms of Crawford County, Illinois. In the mid-19th century, beginning with Benjamin (III) in 1837 at the latest, the family moved from Christian County, Kentucky, to Illinois and bought at least five farms there over the next 70 years.  They lived within a mile of each other and were frequent visitors to nearby Flat Rock, Morea, Heathsville and Palestine.  Many of the family would be buried at the Maddox Cemetery, which is located on Benjamin (III)’s farm.

Missing from the map is a farm in the name of Joseph Maddox.  Joseph moved to Crawford County at age 77 (four years before he died), probably to live with one of his sons.  He brought his 5-year-old son John Napoleon with him.  He was buried in the Maddox Cemetery along with his father.

Beer… and the Maddox lands in Maryland, South Carolina, Kentucky and Illinois

16 Thursday Aug 2012

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Matt geolocating Joseph Maddox’s farm

It takes a lot of energy – and sometimes a lot of beer – to locate long-lost ancestral lands.  First there’s the hunt for original records in city halls’ dusty volumes, then there’s the interpretation of land descriptions that sometimes use only trees and rocks as landmarks, then there’s the bribery of brothers (with beer) to go along for the search through streambeds and vacant fields.  But the discovery is so worth it.  Here are the big four… click on the lat/long coordinates to see maps.

1. Benjamin Maddox I’s tobacco plantation Hornfair, Charles County, Maryland, at 38.445989, -77.214779 – just south-west of Nanjemoy and east of the Potomac River.

2. Benjamin Maddox II’s farmland in Abbeville County, South Carolina, at 34.43823, -82.272513 – just northwest of Maddox Bridge and Maddox Shoals on the Saluda River.

3. Joseph Maddox’s farm “along the meanders of the Tradewater River,” Christian County, Kentucky, at 37.036721, -87.519756.

4. John Napoleon Maddox’s Sunny Side Stock Farm, Crawford County, Illinois, at 38.914757, -87.604777 – just west of the Wabash River.

The migration westward

15 Wednesday Aug 2012

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Beginning from Maryland, and over the generations, the Maddox family moved westward as the frontier opened, first to South Carolina, then to Tennessee, Kentucky and Illinois (one half went north, while the other half went south to GA and then AL).  They didn’t go it alone.  The pioneers travelled as groups, probably for safety, and followed a few established trails and highways.  Over the years of our research, often by accident, we’ve found the same recurring family names next to the Maddox name in land and personal documents.  Here is a chart – that still requires some work – of the associated families over the generations.

Many of the descendants of Cornelius Maddox, including our Benjamin Maddox (II) and Benjamin Maddox (III) moved from Maryland to South Carolina in 1790, along with the Poseys, Wares, Lucketts, Knights, Greys and Fords.  From South Carolina, our Benjamin (III) moved to Kentucky (via Tennessee) around 1808, along with members of the Knight, Grey, Ford and Magee families. At about the same time, Benjamin (III)’s brother William and his sons and some nephews moved south to Georgia and then Alabama.  From Kentucky, our Benjamin (III) and his son Joseph moved to Illinois around 1823-1830, where they rejoined descendants of the Gaines, Brashears and possibly Posey families, who they had lived next to in South Carolina.

Lolith Irene Maddox‘s teenage escape from the family land in Illinois in about 1920 was a dramatic leap from the agrarian lifestyle of six previous generations in America, and parallels America’s more general urbanization (she moved to Chicago in the 1930s).  Her frustration with the family farm, however, probably was not a reflection of most new urbanites’ attitudes.  She was strongly independent.

The Calverts, Don Quixote and the Maddoxes

06 Friday Jul 2012

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It’s difficult to pinpoint property locations from Colonial warrants and patents.  The location of a tract of land is described in reference to another previously established tract of land.  In Benjamin (I)’s case, his tract Posey’s Chance, for example, was described in relation to Hornfair and Hopewell, two other tracts that he’d also eventually own.  What is immediately clear, though, is that he managed to lease (it was a feudal system so ownership was a fiction really) numerous adjoining tracts from Lord Calvert’s “esquires.”  By doing so, he built a profitable plantation of 300+ acres.

Looking closely at early warrants for Posey’s Chance and other tracts, the eye wanders to a strange name… “Panquiyah.”  William Henson, the author of the warrants, described the tracts as being part of Panquiyah Manor.  It’s a strange name.  First I thought it was an Indian name, but my searches led me to only one definite reference – a 1765 letter to Governor Sharpe from his Calvert lords describing a vast expanse of acreage that they recommend for immediate lease.  They mention a 10,420 acre site called “Pancaya Manor,” next to Beaverdam Manor – absolutely the same place as Panquiyah.

Digging a little deeper, I found that “Pancaya” is mentioned in only one other place… in a 1605 book called Don Quixote! It’s not the first time I’ve seen the Colonists mock themselves (Maddox’s Folly is the name of one relative’s plantation), but this goes a step further.  Don Quixote explains to his readers on page 249 that he’s been duped… he fell early on in life for a fantasy of literature, and among those fantastical literary descriptions was “balsam of Pancaya” –  an impossibile poetic promise, like gold from Tiber and pearls from the South Sea.  Or a Colony of milk and honey.