Susannah (Tomlinson) Jackson (1809 - 1851)

Born 15 Oct 1809 in Kentucky

Ancestors

Wife of George Kirkman Jackson — married 3 Feb 1825 in Putnam County, Indiana

Descendants

Died 5 Oct 1851 at age 41 in Illinois

Problems/Questions Profile managers: Lynn Kelts [send private message] and George Kelts [send private message]

Biography

Susannah Tomlinson married George Jackson in Indiana in 1825, when she was 16 and he was 19. George made his living by farming. He also felt called to preach the gospel, which he began at an early age and continued to his dying day.

George and Susannah had nine children. In 1831 they moved to Illinois with a company of others including George's father and his family. They eventually settled outside Quincy, Illinois, at the west edge of the state (and moved around this area several times more).

In the sparsely settled areas where they lived, the family had to do nearly everything for itself, including grow its own food, build its own houses, make its own clothing, and educate their children. They often lived in a one-room 18-by-20-foot house. Susannah did the woolpicking, spinning, weaving, and sewing, including the brown jeans colored with walnut bark which the men of the family wore when working. She cooked at the fireplace using iron pots, making everything from scratch, of course, including churning the butter.

Susannah died young. According to her daughter Caroline^[1] "We went for the Dr. He come and said she had typhoid fever...She was sick eleven days, and passed away at the hour of midnight, Oct the 5th 1851, aged nearly 43 years.

"Her last words were for us to take care of Lottie who was then just in her third year. Dear Mother you have left us as numbers of mothers has had to do, and how we miss you as the days pass away. We miss your gentle voice, we miss you at home. We miss her at the table, we miss her everywhere, we see her empty chair, but mother is not here to take a seat by the fire with us. Oh Mother Mother it was so hard to give you up, and oh how sad to have to know and realize we can never see her again...We had her funeral preached at the house and then again we slowly took the way to the Harding grave yard and laid her to rest by the side of those who had gone on before. We returned home from the funeral lonesome enough. Mother had always been at home with us...

"And Lottie met us at the door and said did you take mother to the graveyard. We told her yes. And she said did you leave her there. We had to tell her yes. It nearly broke our hearts." Susannah is buried in Harding Cemetery, Hancock County, Illinois.^[2]

--Julie Kelts, written September 28, 2014 (and later)

Research notes

Susannah is called Susannah Thompkins in her marriage record, and in her memoir, Caroline Jackson Rowe names her as "Susannah Tompkins, or Tomkinson as the name was sometimes called." I am using the name Tomlinson because DNA evidence links us to the Tomlinson line. - JK

According to Find A Grave, which is based on the date on the grave stone, Susannah died in 1852. Yet her daughter Caroline's memoir says she died in 1851. It would not be the first time that a grave stone had the wrong date, even though it is hard to understand how that happens. I think most people remember when their mother died, and I am staying with Caroline's date. - JK

Sources

1. ↑ memoir of Caroline Jackson Rowe (1838-1929) handed down through family
2. ↑ Find A Grave: Memorial #107945128

• 1850 U.S. census
• marriage record