The Line of Jesse McGehee

Jesse's Line

Around 1806, Charles McGehee, son of William McGehee of Albemarle County and grandson of James MackGehee and Rebecca Prewitt (and apparently brother of a William McGehee who roofed Monticello), left Virginia with his children and settled in Mason Co., Kentucky. One source has told me he believes this move followed the death of Charles' wife, but subsequent census information shows Charles sharing the household with his children and a woman close to his own age, suggesting either that the children's mother was still with him or, as is not at all unlikely, he had remarried in the few years since arriving in the new country.

Among Charles' sons was Jesse, born around 1791 in Virginia. Already approaching manhood by the time the family arrived in Kentucky, he met and married (1816) Sarah McCracken, and they made their home in Mason County for a number of years -- even though Sarah's immediate family moved west to Indiana. But in about the mid-1830s, Jesse and his father, who by this time owned some considerable amount of land in the area, had some kind of falling out that resulted in a lawsuit, which Jesse lost. But soon after the verdict, Charles -- by then approaching 70 -- began selling off his lands. He died not long after, by which time Jesse, Sarah and their children were moving to Daviess Co., Indiana, where her folks had moved. In Indiana, Jesse and Sarah added twice more to their progeny.

Years later, the Civil War began. Two of Jesse and Sarah's sons, Richard McGehee and James Milton McGehee, enlisted in the Indiana Volunteer Infantry. Richard was a sharpshooter with the rank of corporal in the 42d Indiana when it, as part of the Army of the Cumberland commanded by Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, met the Confederacy's Army of Tennessee under Gen. Braxton Bragg in the Battle of Stones River (Dec. 1862 - Jan. 1863) near Murfeesboro, TN. Cpl. McGehee suffered wounds to both thighs in a skirmish near the close of battle, and died Jan. 7, 1863. He was buried in a battlefield cemetery.

The youngest son of Jesse and Sarah -- and the only one born to them after their move to Indiana -- was Walter Warder McGehee, apparently named after a Baptist pastor back in Mason County. He married Mary Jane Connelly (Conley) in 1861, but was drafted into the Union Army in 1864, leaving his wife and stepson. His regiment, the 44th Indiana, served provost duty in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His unit was mustered out there in June 1865, and he returned home to start a family of his own. They had two daughters and two sons.

The eldest of these, Laura Elizabeth McGehee, married Sherman Staley in 1887 in Illinois, and died in childbirth circa 1894.

Laura and her sister Sarah Eliza McGehee, known as Sadie, apparently had a double wedding; Sadie married John Bunyan Bay, and they had five children, of whom four lived to adulthood. Sadie's son Carl had a sheep ranch in Colorado northeast of Denver in the 1920s.

The youngest son, Robert Harrison McGehee, sickened in late 1891 while the family was moving back from Arkansas, where Walter had spent a couple of years in the lumber business. Robert's mother also fell ill, and both died in December 1891. Walter remarried once in 1896 to Nancy Hays, but she died the following spring. His third marriage was in late October, 1897 to Mary Jane Colbert, who was widowed when Walter died of a stroke in 1920.

Third-born to Walter and Nancy was John Franklin McGehee, who moved to Iowa where he met and married (1894) Myrtle Wheeler. They settled in Ringgold Co., Iowa and had four children, of whom three lived to adulthood. Daughter Maymie and younger son Kenneth both married and raised their families in the area.

The eldest, Ward, also settled nearby with his wife Lottie, but in early 1925 moved their four children to Carl Bay's sheep ranch in Colorado, where Ward worked as foreman, and where he and Lottie produced two more children. After 1930 they returned to Ringgold Co., Iowa, but later moved to Marshall Co., also in Iowa. Of their six children, three still live -- two in Marshall County and one in Ringgold County. My father was a fourth still living until he passed away in January 2006 in Sacramento, California.

Those who have helped me to compile this information include Jeanne McCracken Everett, who has documented and maintained the history of the proud McCracken family of Kentucky and Indiana; Jean Bailey of Clay Co., Illinois, descendant of Jesse and Sarah's daughter Elizabeth; Mrs. Ruth Bay Birnbaum of southern California, daughter of the very same Carl Bay who employed my grandfather as foreman on his sheep ranch back in the 1920s; and Suzanne Thomas of northern Arkansas, fellow grandchild of Ward and Lottie McGehee.

Jesse McGehee's Gravesite

This photo was taken during a visit to the gravesite of my great great great grandfather, Jesse McGehee, in the Odd Fellows Cemetery (also known as "the old McCracken cemetery") in Daviess Co., Indiana, by Thomas and Angie McGehee; Thomas is a fellow descendant of Jesse.
Vandalism of unmaintained old cemeteries is a big problem, as is apparent from the condition of this marker. It has been thrown down and broken into several pieces. Fortunately the inscriptions are still legible.
The thumbnails below depict (left to right) the grave markers of John McGehee (shown in some genealogies as one of Jesse's sons), and Mary Ann McGehee (youngest daughter -- my great great grandfather Walter was the youngest son, and just two years older than Mary Ann); and another marker bearing only the letters M A G.
Since Jesse is generally recorded as born circa 1791, and John circa 1817, just a year after Jesse and Sarah were married, John would be their eldest if indeed he was their son.
Nothing in my database would explain the M A G stone if the letters refer to someone's initials; I don't find any McCracken or McGehee daughter married to someone with a last name beginning with G. Given the cemetery's "Odd Fellows" designation, this is quite possibly not a relative.

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