James Pogue is my 3rd great-grandfather. I know very little about him. He was likely born about 1807, probably in Kentucky. I'm not sure who his parents were. He married at least twice. First in 1831, in Gallatin County, Illinois, to Lydia Medlin, and second in 1839 in Franklin County to Nancy Plaster. Some trees also speculate about a marriage to Nancy Taylor. It's unclear if that's an additional marriage or if Nancy Plaster and Nancy Taylor were the same person.
James, along with a group of others in his neighborhood, served briefly in the Black Hawk War in 1832. He was part of Captain Archilaus Coffey's Company, 1st Regiment, 1st Brigade of Illinois Volunteers.
James had at least four children: William R., George W., L.E. (possibly Lydia), and Josiah Pogue. There may have been two others - David and James. It's not even clear who the children's real mother is. The family, minus David and James, is enumerated in the 1850 Franklin County census. But after that, they seemed to have disappeared.
In 1860, Josiah was living with the John M Foster family. George hasn't been found, but he enlisted in the Union Army in May of 1861 in Anna, Illinois. I've seen no sign of L.E. Pogue, the family's only daughter. She would have been about 15 or so in 1860, so likely too young to get married. Perhaps she was adopted by someone and changed her name. And I don't even really know what her first name was. I've always assumed it was Lydia because her brother Josiah named his first daughter Lydia. But in truth, I don't know.
William R. Pogue was a 22-year-old living in Springfield, Lane County, Oregon. He married and stayed in Oregon, buying land and raising a family. He eventually ended up in an asylum, where he died in 1921.
For years, I assumed that both James and his wife had died sometime after 1850, since they could not be found in the 1860 census. But I found a land purchase in 1851, and later that year, an interesting abstract of a court record in Franklin County, Illinois.
The court record, which gave the last name as Page (a common mis-transcription of the name), noted that one James Page had willfully neglected his minor children - George W, aged 9, Lyenin, aged 7, and Josiah, aged 4. One Joseph Swafford was made their guardian. I haven't been able to locate the original of this court record. The interesting thing is that this transcript does not mention William R., who would have been 11 or 12 at the time, and still a minor.
In April of 1852, James Poague of Franklin County sold the land he had purchased just a year ago. And this was the last record I've been able to find for James Pogue.
So what happened to him? And why wasn't William listed in the court case?
In the fall of 2025, I took a SLIG course, Tracing Westward Journeys: Events that Paved the American West (1787-1890), coordinated by Katherine Willson. One of the instructors, Amber Oldenburg, discussed the Oregon Trail, noting that it was unknown how many people actually died along the trail as they traveled west.
I got to thinking about William R. Pogue, the young man who ended up in Oregon. How and why did he travel out there? Was he traveling alone, working his way out there? That led me to wonder whether his father might not have taken him and headed west, perhaps dying somewhere along the way, leaving a young William to fend for himself.
So this is my Theory in Progress--the possibility that James Pogue and his son William traveled west to Oregon once he sold his property in 1852. He may have only had the capacity to take care of one child and chose the oldest. He may have been lured by the stories of others who travelled west, found gold or good land.
My next step will be to revisit the 1860 census records to see whether James Pogue is listed anywhere. Since I don't know for sure when they might have made the journey, I want to check manuscripts, diaries, etc., to see if there is any mention of James Pogue and, perhaps, how and where he died.
While this is just a theory, some parts of it make sense. It may be a theory that is very hard to prove. But it's a place to start!
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This week's #52Ancestors Prompt is Theory in Progress
