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Population records for Illinois are very
spotty due to innumerable problems of the day. First, the area, once part
of Virginia Territory, became a segment of Indiana Territory, then Illinois
Territory before the struggle for statehood early in the 1800s. When Eymans
first migrated to Southern Illinois, the area had become somewhat unpopulated
by French, some of whom moved into Louisiana Territory, where maintenance
of slavery as a practice seemed more likely. Thee were many efforts through
this period to do enumerations, though local sheriffs were sometimes fined
for not doing their part in developing inventories for war taxes. The war
of 1812 caused dislocations, and fire losses were not uncommon. In 1935,
when Margaret Cross Norton attempted to reconcile state and federal census
findings throughout the period published her work, full federal findings
had not been published, and local tax and voting rosters had not as yet
been compiled.
1810-1818
Early compilations of data from 1810 and
1818 show no record of Imans or Eymans, though there are plenty of court
and land records in the name of Abraham Eyman, who by this period had moved
from New Design or American Bottom up to the nearby prairie near Belleville.
When historians searched archives for the state of Illinois, they found
one bound volume of 1810-1818 records, though for St. Clair County in particular,
pages were missing or charred from fire, and badly water stained. It's
likely that Eyman records for Belleville would have perished, though it's
also true that many names (e.g. Stookey) don't appear for St. Clair while
one would have expected them to.
One might have expected to see other Eymans
or Imans listed for Monroe County by 1818, though none appear
– either for failure of records, or for lack for some other reason.
Of the 700 families in Monroe county at the time, Carrs and Kidds, Shepherd,
Brownfield, Whitesides, Lemens, Badgleys, Moredocks, and other names one
might expect do appear.
1820
Published Illinois census returns for 1820
as published by the Illinois State Library compare state and federal findings
in the 1818-1820 period and provide more complete information. If and when
full federal census results are published, even more information will be
available on ages, occupations, and township locations of those who were
enumerated. When we check these findings, we do locate Abraham and his
known family in St. Clair county, residing alongside Daniel Stookey (see
Figure 1 below). Findings for Monroe, however, leave us a bit puzzled,
for we find conflicts
Historians have had to deal with the confusion
of multiple censuses for 1820 since there were enumerations taken both
at the state level and for the federal census. There are many names which
appear in federal and not in state records, as there are the reverse. The
Eyman family of Monroe was found in both censuses, though there was a discrepancy
in names recorded (See Figure 3 below). For the state census, a Christopher
Eyman was named as the head of household, while the federal count registered
the head of household as "Henry Eyman".
There are a variety of reasons that such
discrepancies might have appeared. First, the countings were taken two
months apart from one another, and the structure of households might have
changed. Families frequently lived together temporarily and might not name
the same man as head of the family to different enumerators. Census takers
can be expected to have had difficulties with names if their language impacted
their efforts at phonetic recording – though one wonders if Christian-Christopher
would have been substituted for Henry. In Germanic households, first names often had religious
and formal significance, while second, or "middle" names were
used familiarly – in which case both names might apply to the same
person. It's also true that the authors, in compiling records noting this
discrepancy might have had access to listings in the name of Christopher
for 1818 which did not appear in census publications, but which created
an apparent discrepancy in the 1820 record of a household for Henry Eyman.
Until better data is available from archived records not yet published,
perhaps we need to inspect the findings themselves to try to make sense
of the situation.
The 1820 Household of Christopher Eyman
It seems that in 1820 there was a household
of twelve persons that was found in St. Clair County of Illinois, rather
than in the Monroe County location which we would have anticipated (See
Figure 2 below). Census records were listed by neighborhoods, and though
we have no land records for a Henry or a Christopher Eyman from the period,
we know that the neighbors in the census (Thomas Primm), moved in 1817
to a farm about 3 miles southwest of Belleville – thus these Eymans
were very close to Abraham Eyman.
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males<21 |
males 21-45 |
m>45 |
f<18 |
f18-45 |
f>45 |
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1820
state census |
4 |
2 |
1 |
3 |
1 |
1 |
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family
of Henry Eyman |
2 |
1 |
0 |
2 |
1 |
0 |
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Note that the census describes a couple
in the household as being over 45 years of age. The Henry Eyman who arrived
from Hardy during this period was married in 1811, and all records suggest
that he was born about 1790. He and Catherine sites had a number of children,
though best estimates would suggest the smaller household depicted in the
table about. Henry would not have been old enough to fill the shoes as
the elder of this house in 1820; nor would his wife, estimated to be born
at about the same time. We think it likely that the Christian and Catherine
of Hardy County migrated to Illinois with their son Henry and his wife,
Catherine Sites. There may be other siblings of Henry who were in the area
that we don't as yet know about. St. Clair genealogical notes not reviewed
index a "Charles Eyman" who has not otherwise been known; a court
case in the early 1800s involved testimony by a Joseph Eyman on behalf
of a neighbor's land claim (these were often questionable) from near 1790.
Figure 1
Abraham Eyman's family in St. Clair 1820
Figure 2
The household of Christopher Eyman involved elders
in the state census for 1820.
Figure 3
State records for Christopher Eyman were reconciled
to Henry as head of household in federal records of two months later.
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