UPDATED 2022, 2023, 2024: Rachel, had she lived, would see grandsons on opposite sides in the coming Civil War. Widow Richmond had gone with multiple children, Massachusetts-born, to a frontier-like place, to be near a brother-in-law's farm, since renamed as Richmond Heights, outside Cleveland. Rachel's two sons staying in Ohio would leave no moral stain from slavery to puzzle their descendants. However, son Jasper, who had left on a trip, married a woman of the Deep South, who later inherited her parents' slaves, owners not allowed by their state legislature to free their slaves. Their conversations were not of record, but the slaves were counted, shrinking in number, over time. Son Jasper stayed southward.

Rachel's daughter Amanda, married name French, living near Painesville, was widowed after spouse Warren French caught "lung fever". She would send her two children southward, to Claiborne County, MS, to visit Jasper. The daughter would die there, about the same time that Rachel died in Ohio, over a decade before the Civil War broke out, in years around 1852 known for a cholera outbreak.

Both grandchildren returned northward. Amanda's son joined the federal side for the war against slavery. Amanda's daughter, if wanting to teach, did it a "back door way", marrying a man hired to teach in unusual circumstances in territorial Minnesota, housing young women hired as teachers at his school, running a hotel on the side to serve travelers coming through an isolated area.

Who was the Jasper Richmond on the confederate side? Amanda's son would serve on the federal side.

Ohio-born grandson O.S. would try to heal the family rift afterward, letters with Mississippi-born cousin Tom Richmond saved at the Rutherford B Hayes Center in northwest Ohio (at OS's adopted town of Fremont, near Sandusky, considerably up the Lake Erie shoreline, northwest of Cleveland).

User Rick Foster confirmed Dec 25, 1852, as Rachel's death date, by locating her headstone. The stone gives her age as 77, implying she was born on or before Dec 25, 1775, which an undertaker would round to 1776. 1776 was in the upheaval of the American Revolution, people moving, hard to fully track.

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BANNS, June 11, 1794--Her intent, as Rachel Ferguson, to marry Abner Richmond, was announced in Peru, Berkshire County, Mass. , her and maybe his place of residence

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Her spouse's stone, presumed back in Mass. is not yet located; if it still stands, it might be unreadable. However, stones are found for her groom's known brother, Elihu Richmond, in Ohio, plus a possible brother or cousin called Andrew, buried "back in the home state" of Mass.:

Elihu Richmond b.1770, d. Richmond Heights, OH

Walker Richmond b.1788, d. Taunton, MA

Elihu also had married in Peru, Mass., but in Jan. of 1794. That six-month difference meant no double wedding. Their children, however, would be close in age, playmate material and possibly good friends in adulthood, given they lived close together.

Her son Jasper and brother-in-law Elihu were both born in Berkshire County, at the western edge of Mass, the Connecticut River flowing southward to the Atlantic coast via Conn.proper, parallel to New York state. Her spouse Abner's father, Edward, came from considerably east, from Taunton, in Bristol County, almost in Rhode Island. RI was a place with plantations and slaves early on, though fewer, on smaller farms, and the treatment usually not as harsh as in the deep south. No war in RI was needed to convince people that slavery violated their churches' Golden Rule and to voluntarily end it. In the south US, those locally who wanted slavery ended, were not necessarily small in number, but had less voting power. Instead of ending slavery, the powerful in the south expanded slavery, extending it west of the original colonies, taking it to Missouri and Arkansas and Mississippi, angry when other places denied them "the right" to go further. Less known, pre-statehood, Mississippi had attracted some from NY who earlier refused to free slaves. A resisting branch of the Rapplje/Rapalje family would go just north of where Rachel's son Jasper would end, near Port Gibson, some of the New Yorker stones dated, 1833-1835, remaining at Redbone and Vicksburg.

Rachel's spouse Abner was thought to return to distant Taunton at times, to farm his father's land (his parents were Edward and Abigail). How close to RI? Right on the state border, facing what became East Providence. People argued for some time, as to which state, Mass. or Rhode Island, ruled which place. The much disputed East Providence was handed to RI, after long being counted as part of Mass. , while Taunton stayed inside MA.

The nearest big city to Taunton was, thus, out-of-state Providence. Descendants' graveyards might easily have been split with RI, had their parents not gone to Berkshire County in western Mass., had Rachel and her brother-in-law Elihu then not left for Ohio.

INTENT VS VOWS. The "intent" paperwork was their era's version of a marriage license. Instead of seeking approval from the county or town, both church congregations, bride's and groom's, were asked for approval. If they attended the same church, there was just one intent. The vows could proceed, If there were no objections ("She's only twelve!" "He deserted and left his pregnant wife penniless, so his infant starved!"). With no objections relayed, the wedding was then usually at the bride's church, if their churches were in different locations.

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ONE WEDDING INTENT AND MANY CHILDEN'S BIRTH DATES, THEIR OLD SOURCE: "Vital Records of Peru, Massachusetts, to the Year 1850", compiled by the town of Peru, Mass., in 1902, pp.39-40.

Handwritten church-and-town records were found, copied, then type-set, theirs printed in 1907, a common thing to do in Mass., often financed by a town trust named at the book's front. One copy of Peru's is found at Hathitrust.org. Anything published before 1970 is free of copyright, but it's good manners and allows double-checking to name sources, with page numbers.

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THEIR CHILDREN. The same old book of 1902 lists her children with Jasper. By birth/baptismal order:

The compilers found a local Census, not done US-wide, that listed the parents first, then her first six children's births:

1795 "Nabby" (nickname for Abigail, thus, named for her mother-in-law),

1797 James "Farguson" Richmond,

1800 Amanda,

1803 Ermina,

1806 Jasper & Justin. Twin Justin died young, to be remembered by giving his name again, to a later son.

That handwritten census ended with twin Justin, his death on the next line listed as eleven months after birth. There were no births listed for other households after 1807. The handwritten census image is archived here:

FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L9QB-93Q

Other sources found showed two more children, born circa War of 1812:

1812 Anna,

1813 Justin Philander Richmond (often called Philander).

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As happened in the Revolution, the War of 1812 caused moves to new places. Civilians left war scenes in order to stay safe. Post-war, soldiers saw and told others of places they deemed better than their original hometowns-- Whatever or whoever seemed better varied, land more fertile, towns made more intelligent by schools, more prosperous, etc. Ohio's northeast corner had more fertile land and access to shipping via the Great Lakes?

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HER CHILDREN'S MASSACHUSETTS BIRTH TOWN. Peru had started as Partridgefield, called that 1771-1806, named for an Oliver Partridge granted land there. Rachel had turned 24 by the end of 1800, which marked a national US-wide census, the US with far fewer states than true now. The town was renamed as Peru, before the US census of 1810, by a minister who said, unless it had gold and silver, it would be worth less than Peru.

Did the minister mean that the land was not suited to farming? The minister and his family left for northeast Ohio. A widowed Rachel, with at least four of her children, followed later.

CHILDREN'S LAST PLACES. Two remained in north Ohio. Two others of the four, once grown, would leave Ohio, pre-Civil War, for Mississippi.

The two leaving would die during hard times. Both lie buried at Pisgah Cemetery, in the state of Mississippi, in an old and now deserted church burying ground, its building moved elsewhere (Pisgah is near Port Gibson, its main town, which lays alongside the Mississippi River, south of war-beleaguered Natchez).

AMANDA. Of the two to MS, widowed daughter Amanda, long ill, maybe a visitor to her brother Jasper's house, not intending to stay permanently, died 8 or 9 months before her mother, this Rachel, died in Ohio. Amanda's death in April 1852 was mere months before a yellow fever plague was noted in MS. The low bayous and river deltas pushing into the Mississippi River's larger delta were prone to certain diseases?

Amanda was survived by two children, a daughter and a son. Before Amanda died, her daughter Valucia/Volucia married Mr. Reynolds in MS. Grandmother Rachel possibly also attended? Once Amanda died, Amanda's two children, now fully orphaned, would return north, pre-Civil War, the daughter married before leaving, the son to never marry. Both would be buried westward of Cleveland, in Fremont, a town where the son did business. It is on a narrow end of Lake Erie, nearer to Canada than had been their towns east of Cleveland? It was a town with ex-slaves mixed into its population, safer for those escaping slavemasters as it was easier to slip into Canada if pursued by slave-chasers. The son then remained in Ohio post-Civil War. However, the daughter Valucia and her spouse Mr. Reynolds spent their married years in Minnesota, in a part where the so-called "Sioux Uprising" overlapped with the Civil War. Mr. Reynolds would end in an "old soldiers' home" in Minnesota, presumed to die there, while Valucia would return to Ohio for her widowhood, to stay with her younger brother, financially well-off by then, bringing with her Mattie Wiliams, Ohio-born, a younger escapee from the Sioux uprising who'd been a pupil while Valucia and Mr. Reynolds boarded guests at their hotel. The son, Oratus Seba French, called O.S., had served his Civil War years, not on land, not in Minnesota, but on varied waters, on the federal side, working as an engineer on a steam-powered ship.

JASPER. Rachel's Mississippi-bound son, Jasper, died in August of 1865, at the Civil War's end, still in MS after he married there. He'd married in Claiborne County in 1839, his wife TN-born, a woman who would inherit land and slaves. Their wedding record named her as Eliza Phillips. He died as the Civil War ended. They'd had sufficient time to understand their elder son, Jasper W., his namesake off to War, would never come home (perhaps dying at Natchez?) . Jasper and Eliza's daughter, a former school teacher, also called Amanda, to honor Jasper's sister, would marry a non-farmer, Mr. Trim, and have children. The Trims would be town-dwellers. That left a young son Thomas to take over the farm/plantation. He would raise a large family, multiple daughters surviving into modern times, just one son to reach adulthood, the son never married.

In those days, census interviewers moved around, as did households. No one asked people where they lived on April 15 of the census year, as done now. They instead wrote down the town and county true as of the interview day, days spread through out the Census year. People could thus move mid-year and be double-counted, making up for those not counted at all, related to traveling. Thus, the 1800 Census in Massachusetts caught Abner and Rachel's household twice, in their two "hearth counties". Rachel remained anonymous in both interviews, women and children not named in the early Censuses (pre-1850) whenever there was a male head of household. In both 1800 interviews, their household's count included two young girls and a boy. Looking at the list of her children, they would match to Nabby, James Ferguson/Farguson, and a baby Amanda.

Common then, neighbors included close relatives, key support in a time of no EMS or childcare. Looking near Abner's home in Taunton, in Bristol County, their place was tucked between those of a Walker Richmond and a James Walker, again, any wife and children inside the head's household unnamed, as was the custom then. A few pages earlier, a much larger cluster of Richmonds was named together, older households first, Abraham, Asa, and Stephen (older in the sense that no one was counted in the youngest males' column). Younger households were next, Noah, Abiel, Edward, Elijah and Seth, all with youngish boys, the male youth of interest for a "well-organized militia" once sufficiently old, everyone's name made public, no secret militias "up to no good" Instead,, training dates were announced as needed, gunpowder kept in an armory of some sort distributed as needed. Females and elderly need not apply. Both male heads and widowed female heads would be polled for taxes.

Abner's brother Elihu was of record later, having moved, this Rachel to share his cemetery, before urban development caused removal of the graves. Again, Abner would die in Mass., did not move to Ohio.

Cleveland was westward inside Cuyahoga County, the county named for a river that connected the Ohio River to Lake Erie, via the building of a canal circa 1825 that joined that interior Cuyahoga river to the larger Ohio River southward, southward. The canal would have taken steamboats from Cleveland down to the Mississippi River and gone south, thus taking son Jasper, earlier trained to be an attorney, past Natchez to Port Gibson. That Cuyahoga River over a century later caught on fire, from industrial pollution, since cleaned up.

Earlier, in Rachel's day, the problem of the 1850s would be different, several rounds of cholera, bacteria carried downstream human sewage dumped by towns and steamboats. Her cause of death was more likely something related to old age. Daughter Amanda, however, was not as old, died eight or nine months ahead of her mother Rachel.

In the 1820s, the first leaders of the Mormons (Latter Day Saints) had arrived in Ohio and then departed from an adjacent county, just eastward of her Cuyahoga, both of the counties on Lake Erie's south shoreline. That adjacent one was then called Geauga County, where Amanda's spouse Warren French had died ahead of Amanda's move to Miss. (The LDS temple was at Kirtland Twp. near Mentor, accessed by ridge roads "higher up" and thus freer of malaria threats from mosquitoes breeding in stagnant waters. In contrast, Warren's family was eastward, in Concord and Painesville, on the Grand River. In 1840, the towns/townships on the north end, by the Lake, were set apart from south Geauga County, in a new Lake County, right at lake Erie's edge.)

IN OHIO. A recent book, "Buried Beneath Cleveland", from 2015, by William J. Krejci, says that Rachel Richmond moved to Ohio after her husband's death in Massachusetts. Krejci gave the date as 1840, maybe meant the end of the year, or some unknown date afterward, as 1840 was the census year spouse Abner Richmond still headed a household in Peru, Berkshire County.

Some adult children had already followed brother-in-law Elihu Richmond's family to northeast Ohio. Their 1850 US Census was done in Euclid, Ohio, in October, closer to Lake Erie than was what later became Richmond Heights. The 1850 Census was the first to name everyone in a household, not merely count them under the head's name. It listed a birth state and age. It found her with two of her three surviving sons, with Jasper instead surveyed in MS.

For herself in 1850, at age 74, Rachel was counted while in the house of James Richmond, 52. He was that son apparently unmarried. The larger family of another son, Philander, 36, was down the road, all in what was then Euclid.

Both James and Philander Richmond called themselves Massachusetts-born, as did she. They also called themselves farmers, which was the most common occupation of the place, pre-suburbia.

SOURCE: 1850 US Census, handwritten page, image archived at Familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-65B4-58 (No fees to view, but giving an email to register for a password is required, no spamming done.)

Son Jasper Richmond, had already moved to Mississippi, his first Census there in 1840, a year or so after marriage (counts only, his wife's inherited slaves counted but not named on the following page). His 1850 and his 1860 named people in his house (counted slaves on a separate schedule, far fewer in number than seen in 1840, we have not researched why. Sold? Purposely set free before it became illegal to do that? Dead of some awful contagion? Allowed enough spare time to work for neighbors that they then could save money and buy their and relatives freedom? Es?)

Married daughter Amanda Richmond French, was, by then, a widow of Warren French, living in the Concord/Painesville area in the next county to the east, connected to Lake Erie by the Grand River. She had sent her two children to live with their uncle in Mississippi, Jasper Richmond. They were counted with him in 1850 in Claiborne County, Mississippi. Amanda was not present at Jasper's, for her children's 1850 Census. Instead, an Amanda of the right age (49) and birthplace (Massachusetts), was counted living alone, on the same Census page for Euclid Township, as two brothers, with that Amanda's name and address tucked directly between those of Rachel's sons, James and Philander. It seems likely, but can't be proven, that this was the widowed Amanda Richmond French, soon to die. Like her mother, Amanda would die in 1852, except Amanda had joined her children by then, so died in Miss.)

No record is found of that daughter remarrying. Amanda "Franklin" was the name found directly next-door to Rachel, so maybe surname French was mis-understood. Or, maybe that party was not Rachel's daughter.

Further down the page was the very large family of an Edmund Richmond, age 49, born Mass. There were no Edmunds on Rachel's list of baptized children in Peru, Mass. Further research might show him to be a cousin to Rachel's sons, via Rachel's brother-in-law, Elihu Richmond?

BROTHER-IN-LAW. Elihu Richmond had moved his family to Ohio gradually, a few decades earlier, as the War of 1812 ended, its end making the Lake free of gunboats, so safer. He had bought a large section of land inside the so-called Western Reserve, more or less beginning a settlement made up of Richmonds inside Euclid Township. The suburb, officially called Richmond Heights, would not incorporate as a place with separate elections until much later, 1917. Its official history, written for the town's anniversary in 1967, is at: RichmondHeightsOhio.org/pdf_RichmondHeights/en-US/History/HistoryPart1.pdf

It describes the place of Euclid this way--Page 7 says that, in 1828, Euclid had created 11 school districts. Names associated with one, the old "Highland Road School", were not many. However, they included

Elihu, William, Edmund, and Levi Richmond

When Rachel died in 1852, she was buried in Elihu's family cemetery. Elihu's family had started that cemetery on the edge of their farm, on what is now called Richmond Road, in Richmond Heights. (Other details of its location and burials are in the Krejci book.) Then, it was abandoned as a cemetery. SOURCE: Chapter 13, in Krejci book.

A cemetery list at OhGenWeb verifies the book's statement that the cemetery, not begun until the family's first death in 1825, was eventually abandoned. Graves were moved to the Euclid Cemetery. SOURCE: RootsWeb.ancestry.com/~ohcuyaho/Cemeteries/index.html

Presumably, the old graveyard had been abandoned in slow steps. The wider area, at first called Claribel, for one of its schools, turned into a suburb named after the family. Rachel's stone was not photographed (as of Mar. 2016), not verified as having survived the cemetery change until found by Rich Foster..

Many Ohio graveyards have been relocated. For example, an old one in nearby Painesville, on Washington St., on the town square, near a first church, was closed to further burials around 1850 (too overcrowded) and then disappeared from view, after officials paved it over for a high school. Their strategy was merely to list the stones and to map the graves, unless relatives wished to do the physical work of moving things. (Apparently, usually just stones are moved for old graves, as caskets and contents have generally broken apart/dissipated.)

SOME DESCENDANTS. While multiple of her children died close-by, again, two of Rachel's children died in Claiborne County, Mississippi. There, her attorney son, Jasper, had married into a plantation family named Phillips. His wife's name was Eliza, always in official records as Eliza. (She was sometimes mistakenly remembered as Amanda, related to several in her family having been called Amanda, not just one. If Eliza remarried after Jasper's death, she would have been buried apart, while Jasper's stone, at Pisgah Church Cemetery down in Mississippi state, was near that of his sister Amanda's. Somebody assumed Jasper and Rachel's daughter Amanda were husband and wife, did not know they were brother and sister.

Daughter Amanda Richmond French, unlike son Jasper, had stayed north, near Rachel, in Ohio, married to Painesville-area resident Warren French (originally from Rutland County, VT, son of Seba and Mary/Mollie). After Warren died, Amanda, perhaps as she was already ill, sent her children to visit her brother Jasper, without Amanda. Rachel's grandchildren by Amanda were thus there with their uncle Jasper for the 1850 Census, there a year later for one to marry, there two years later when Amanda was buried there. Valucia French thus wed a Reynolds in 1851, and presumed there for Amanda's death in Miss. in 1852, the same year that Rachel died.

Her grandchildren by Amanda would return north from Miss. in time for the Civil War. The elder was listed as Ann J. V. French in the 1850 US Census with Jasper's family, her full name Valucia Jane Ann (misread as Volucia and Valencia). She married in Claiborne County, Mississippi, in 1851, to a Joseph Reynolds, the two about to become part of Minnesota history as owners of an inn and boarding school, fleeing an uprising in southwestern Minnesota, saved partly by leaving quickly, helped greatly by some Sioux neighbors with whom they had previously been friendly, who intervened when some others in what came to be called the Sioux Uprising tried to stop their departure. The Reynolds thus survived when others died.

Valucia Jane's brother instead left his uncle's deep south state, to serve on the Union side in the Civil War, to go home, but settling further west on Lake Erie's Ohio shoreline than Rachel had been, became wealthy. He was Oratus Seba French. Frequent mis-spellings of Amanda's and Warren's son included "Arestes" in 1850, when at his uncle Jasper's house. He became wealthy through his manufacturing business. His papers, post-death, would be sent to the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library in Fremont, Ohio, for safekeeping. They are useful today for family genealogy, as well as the politics of the time, and were viewed by this writer. The letters saved between the childless bachelor and his relatives touching. A few to relatives east of Cleveland, by Painesville, who were amazed by his lovely house, but his best were to Tom Richmond, younger cousin, now a farmer, whose older brother had died on the confederate side, and who spoke respectfully of his black tenant farmer, seemed worried over his own bachelor son, and tried to find areas of agreement about politics and war.

Oratus Seba French was a wealthy man with no children or siblings surviving him. His sister stayed childless except for a young woman she more or less fostered after she fled the uprising with them. The wealth of Oratus went instead to distant cousins, both French and Richmond. Following the death of OS, they had to be identified using his papers and letters, a genealogist brought in.

Jasper's daughter and Tom's sister, Amanda V., married to William Trim, would be Rachel's last trackable female descendant in Mississippi named Richmond at birth. Jasper's son, Jasper W., would die in the Civil War. The last known male descendant of Jasper born a Richmond would have been Jasper's childless grandson by Tom. a fancily named William Mandeville Richmond. His father and the correspondent with OS, Thomas Young Richmond, was too young for the Civil War. (His letters to his older cousin Oratus French, on the Union side in the Civil War, are the best of what's archived at the Hayes center.) When her great-grandson in Mississippi, W.M. Richmond, died unmarried, his living place was the plantation house called Greenwood. It was one of multiple that would burn later, most in the 1930s and 1940s, as families deserted them, houses way too large to maintain, arson a possibility for some, too much land worn out by relentless cotton growing, too few cow pastures to re-fertilize the land, reverting to second-growth timber, with railroads and associated paper mills replacing the farms. The woodedness is viewable by air, aerial photography of terrain a layer for maps at Google.

If there are male descendants of Rachel elsewhere bearing the Richmond name, some easily found would descend of son Philander's two. They were named in 1850 in Euclid as James W. Richmond, then age 5, and Byron Richmond, age 2. (Daughters of the son born as Justin Philander were Susan and Matilda, 11 and 7.)

Less easily found would be grandsons by son Elihu. His son Edmund Richmond had many listed with him in 1850, plus one daughter (eldest to youngest, born first were Alden, William, Warner, and Eliza, ages 21 to 15, while those born later were Orlando, Thomas, Franklin and Cassius, ages 11 to 5.)

All of the grandchildren named, including those of daughter Amanda French, were born in Ohio. The only exceptions were the children of Jasper Richmond, born in Mississippi, after Jasper met and married a woman whose parents owned slaves. That was something that created a divide in the family, given the majority stayed in northern Ohio, a region known for abolitionist sentiment. Daughter Amanda was sufficiently close in age to and fond of Jasper that, if she tried to set up a conversation, pre-Civil War, it ended with her death. Her children's visit was temporary, but son OS continued the conversation. Some in Mississippi remained belligerent post-War, as noted by a German-reared officer out of St Louis, MO, on the Union side, named Hassendeubel called in as military governor. He spoke well of the local CIT (Colored Infantry Troops who joined the federal side) and others directly joining union regiments. Their death rate extra hig,h as some on the confederate side would boast they shot colored men first, while some officers boasted they would take none as prisoners, would only execute those caught, while still others among the confederates boasted of shooting Germans, who proved as anti-slavery as they had been anti-peasantry and anti-serfdom. detectable by speech and build and very dark hair).

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Copyright by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin, TX, March, 2016, revised to add the 1850 Census and Richmond Heights history, May, 2021, the finding of her gravestone, in June and Sept 2022. Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page. Relatives of Rachel may quote from this, if stating the source, in family materials, and not for general publication. Anything can be paraphrased, but source should always be stated, as taught in high school English.