John Herrington 1759 - 1862

HERRINGTON, BAKER, CAVIN, HALES, CROWELL, WASHINGTON, HALL, MARSHEL, SHAW, MILLER, BLAKEMAN, ADAMS, TRUSDELL, HOWE, EMMONS, STEVENS, CLEAVES

Posted By: Charles Eugene Hales (email)
Date: 4/12/2005 at 13:36:08

John Herrington
1759 – 1862
This veteran of the Revolutionary War who lived to be one hundred and three years of age had a number of descendants who were either born, resided or died in Van Buren County, Iowa. This includes son Nathan and wife Julia Ann Baker and his youngest son James and wife Melvina Mann Cavin also four grandchildren; Moses Hales, John Hales III, Thomas Hales and Sarah Jane Hales Crowell.

When John Hales II married Sarah Herrington he acquired a father-in-law who was a veteran of the American Revolution. Imagine how Sarah and her family must have enjoyed hearing her father tell stories about the Revolution and his time with General Washington and the Valley Forge ordeal in the winter of 1777/78. We know a good deal more about Pvt. John Herrington and his full life of 103 years, than we do about his oldest daughter Sarah Herrington Hales.

John II married Sarah on December 19, 1813 in Carroll County, Ohio. In a space of thirteen years (1815 -1828) they had four boys and five girls.
After her husband died at a young age on March 1, 1829 we can only speculate just where she and her nine small children resided following his passing. This death is the oldest entry in their son Thomas’s Bible, affectionately known as “The Hales Bible.”

In the Hales plot at the Mt. Tabor Cemetery in Sec 29 Island Creek Township, Jefferson County, Ohio, there is a footstone bearing the initials “JH” in the same plot as the weathered stones of John, Sr. and wife Jane Hall. This is the marker for their son — significantly it represents the oldest known burial site of a Hales family member in America.

When the widow, Sarah, died 18 years later she was buried with her parents in the Herrington-Bethel Cemetery.
Earlier her father had helped them purchase a farm a mile southeast of the Herrington homestead in Sec 35 Augusta Township, Carroll County, Ohio.
The impressive stone house on the Herrington homestead still stands. It is a large two-story structure that was surely large enough to accommodate Sarah and her children.

In addition to the massive stone house John Herrington also built the Herrington -Bethel church and started the cemetery on his land. All of the brown limestone came from a quarry on his farm where it was cut and finely chiseled into large building blocks. Both the house and church are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Herrington was apparently born in York County, PA where he married Hannah Marshel on February 7, 1791. He was a farmer who joined the westward movement to Ohio around 1806, first buying land in present-day Carroll County in 1810.

They had 11 children:
Sarah Herrington Hales 1792 - 1847,
Elizabeth Herrington Shaw 1793 - 1873,
John, Jr. 1796 - 1874,
Thomas 1798 - 1864,
Hannah Herrington 1800 - 1802,
William 1802 - 1883,
Jacob 1806 -….,
Nathan 1808 - 1887,
twin Samuel 1808 - ….,
Rebecca Herrington Miller 1810 - 1875,
James 1812 - 1893.

The Carroll County Union newspaper dated May 21, 1862 ran a brief obituary about the old veteran. However, it makes no mention of his service in the Revolution but does substantiate the Methodist faith that has been a part of his family for more than two hundred years.

“DEATH OF A CENENARIAN Mr. John Herrington, of Augusta Township, in this County, died on Sunday last, at the advanced age of 103 years, 4 months and 18 days. Mr. Herrington was one of the first settlers of this county, and was universally respected. He was a man of great energy and of sober and industrious habits, he having cleared out, and raised and eaten fruit from no less than seven farms, a thing which perhaps no other man in Ohio can boast of. He was, during most of his long and eventful life, a worthy useful and exemplary member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.”

Surely his passing would have made a good story. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs there were 290,000 “Participants” in the Revolution. By 1862, when Herrington died, the survivors were scarce. The last veteran to die was named Daniel F. Blakeman who died in 1869 at the age 109.

By 1776, it was estimated there was 3 million people in America, of which about 500,000 was in slavery. John Adams said that one-third of the population was Loyalists who pledged allegiance to England; one-third was neutral; and one-third was loyal to the Patriot’s cause and actively participated in the war.

Pvt. Herrington was about 18 years old when he began his service in the Revolution. Enlistments in the War varied, the State Militias served for just one year. The more common length was for three years in the Continental Army. It is considered as the founder of the present United States Army. It was here that Herrington served three years from 1777 to 1779.

At the Valley Forge National Historical Park, John Herrington’s name appears here on the Continental Army Muster roll as Private John Harrington. This same spelling appears in a payroll sheet for the 11Th Pennsylvania Regiment residing in the National Archives in Washington, D. C. It is interesting to note that with all of the hardships, battles and deprivations it was not until October 1786 that he received his final pay of $33.30 for his last five months of pay. He signed his name with an “X”.

In the book Birthplace of an Army, author J. B. Trusell states that the pay rates were set by action of the Continental Congress on May 27, 1778. A private’s pay rate was 6 and 2/3 dollars per month; a colonel drew $75 per month. These figures agree with Herrington’s settlement pay.

There is more to be said about his service during the miserable winter of 1777/78 at Valley Forge. The campaign that resulted in the Valley Forge encampment began in late August when Sir William Howe, chief of British forces in North America, landed his veteran army at the upper end of Chesapeake Bay. His objective was the capture of Philadelphia, the patriot capitol. The American commander, General George Washington, maneuvered his Continental Army in an effort to defend the city. However, Howe’s skillful tactics, combined with errors made by Washington’s army, led to a British victory at Brandywine and caused the flight of the Continental Congress to York, PA. The British were again victorious at Germantown and immediately occupied Philadelphia.

With winter setting in, the prospects for further campaigning were greatly diminished, and Washington sought quarters for his men. Though several locations were proposed, he selected Valley Forge, 18 miles northwest of Philadelphia. It proved to be an excellent choice. Named for an iron forge on Valley Creek, the area was close enough to the British to keep their raiding and foraging parties out of the interior of Pennsylvania, yet far enough away to halt the threat of British surprise attacks.

The Continentals arrived on December 19, 1777. They were poorly fed, ill equipped and weary from long marches. With its population of twelve thousand, the encampment instantly became the second largest city in North America. Though the immediate construction of more than a thousand huts provided shelter, it did little to offset the critical shortages that continued to plague the army.
Soldiers received irregular supplies of meat and bread, some getting their only nourishment from “fire cakes,” a tasteless mixture of flour and water.

Clothing was wholly inadequate, blankets were scarce and tattered garments were seldom replaced. The long marches had destroyed shoes. At one point these shortages and sickness caused nearly 4,000 men to be listed as unfit for duty. Many lives were lost to typhus, typhoid, dysentery and pneumonia. Washington’s face was said to be scarred from an earlier case of smallpox. He ordered that all his men be vaccinated for the disease which likely saved many lives.

Pvt. Herrington must have had a personal contact with General Washington. It was said that he often told the story how, at one time, he had the care of Washington’s great white charger named “Horse.” He had the privilege or honor, as he worded it, of leading that beautiful animal to water. Where, or in how many places, that happened is hard to say.

It was at Valley Forge that the Army’s comprehensive training, reorganization and standardization was accomplished that winter. The structure remains to this day as the foundation not only of the United States Army but also throughout our military order. Pvt. John Herrington was a part of this enormous legacy of the United States military.

One of the unfinished chapters about John Herrington, and his family, concerns the missing Herrington Bible. This is best covered by including the story on their youngest son, James Herrington, and his Iowa connection.

James is the Ohio emigrant and his wife, Melvina Mann Cavin, who lived in Southeast Iowa long enough to have all ten children born there between the years of 1842 and 1861. He was the youngest of eleven children, apparently a wanderer, who did not chose to put down any roots in Ohio. It was said that he was a favorite of his mother, Hannah Marshel, who died in 1836, and that she gave him the Herrington Bible, which was printed in 1787.

He eventually migrated to Iowa locating near a nephew (son of his sister Sarah Herrington Hales.) This nephew, Moses Hales and wife Mary Jane Emmons, in 1840 established a successful merchandise and milling business, called the Desmoins Mill at Keosauqua on the Des Moines River.

In the census of 1849 and 1850 James, with a family of six, was residing in Harrisburg Township, Van Buren County, Iowa. His older brother Nathan also resided in Keosauqua probably at a later date. Nathan and wife, Julia Ann Baker, are buried in the Oak Lawn Cemetery at the north edge of Keosauqua.

According to a relative’s story, James lived from 1858 to 1864 on a farm some five miles from Bloomfield, Iowa. It was here that a severe Iowa rainstorm badly damaged the Herrington Family Bible, however the record of births and deaths was recovered.

The next move for the Bible was the long trip by oxen team in a caravan to Sonoma County, California.
Later they moved to San Benito County where James continued to farm, passing away in 1893. Both he and Melvina are buried at Hollister, California.
The Bible was passed on to their daughter Elizabeth Herrington Berry Stevens in 1912, when Melvina died.

The last known person to possess it was a granddaughter of James Herrington named Mary Melvina Cleaves, wife of Rev. Charles Hamilton Cleaves, who was living in the San Francisco Bay area of California in 1933.

John Herrington is my greatgreatgreat-grandfather. I have two very rare photos of him taken on his one hundreth birthday in 1859. I will be happy to share copies to those who may be interested in our family.
I would also like to know if the Herrington Bible still exists.
Thomas Hales is my great grandfather. He is buried in the Center Chapel Cemetery in Vernon Township, Van Buren County, Iowa. See below for clicking to his biography.

Thomas Hales Biography
 

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