The Abraham Lincoln Connection

The Abraham Lincoln Connection

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 2 Theme: Challenge

James Elmore
Generation 9
My 4th Great Grandfather

Rigsby - Kienlen - Aden - Holland - Hartman - Estep - Elmore

Most of the time I really enjoy researching my family history. Sometimes, however, I encounter frustrating challenges. I have decided to write about one of these for this week's entry:  James Elmore.

James was born about 1821 in Kentucky, possibly in Green County. At some point, many people with the surnames Elmore and Strader moved from Green County, Kentucky to the New Salem area of Illinois. Many New Salem residents later relocated to nearby Petersburg in what is now Menard County, Illinois. For those of you who don't know this, New Salem was also home to Abraham Lincoln. The town has been partially reconstructed 
and is a now tourist site. 

( New Salem, Illinois, April 2018; Original photograph by Leslie D. Rigsby)

There were several families who intermarried quite a bit and used a lot of the same names. There is no easy way to sore them out. To make things even more challenging, EVERYONE with online trees assumes that Conrad/Coonrod Elmore, living with James in 1850, was his father. There is only a 15 year difference, so I am hesitant to believe this. Also, no one has a source for this information. I currently have three different Elmore family

 trees on Ancestry.com and I am attempting to sort them out. 

Hopefully I will be able to merge them at some point.

I am challenging myself to work on this in 2019, and I hope to finally be able to break through this brick wall.  

Last May I went to the National Archives in Washington, D.C. to find Civil War pension records for other ancestors. I was fortunate to also find Elmore records from the Black Hawk War. One of the documents I found for a man named Travice Elmore (one of several Travis/Travice Elmores) was signed by Abraham Lincoln. THE Abraham Lincoln!

(National Archives, Washington D.C. - now relocated from bounty land file so current location unknown.)

Like any good researcher, I knew that this should have been separated from the rest of the Bounty Land file and put in a special place. I notified the staff and I felt like I had discovered the tomb of King Tut! The staff were just as excited to find this as I was! I had already learned that my Elmore family had known and interacted with Lincoln. 

Now I want to find out how well they knew him. 

I do not know how I relate to this Travice Elmore. I have not identified the parents of James Elmore. The information I have is scant, but I will keep searching for more.

What follows is all I know of James Elmore, my 4th Great Grandfather.