Johnson County Genealogical & Historical Society
March Meeting of JCGHS
The March meeting of the Johnson County Genealogical & Historical Society will be a joint meeting with the Illinois Chapter of the Trail of Tears Association. Cherokee family research will be the topic. Come join us on Sunday, March 21 at 2:30PM in the Community Room of the Vienna Library.
Levi Casey - Pioneer of Johnson County
Levi Casey and his wife, the former Mary Sherrell, brought their ten children by ox-cart into Bloomfield Township from Tennessee in 1808. Here they settled near a large spring which has been known for many years as Casey's Spring. Some of their children were: Rachel, Mary, Jane, Randolph, Patsy, Belva, Susanna, and another son who died at eighteen and was said to be the first person buried in Casey's Spring Cemetery, one of the oldest in the county. The burial was in 1816.
According to tradition, Levi Casey is responsible for naming the town of Buncombe. he suggested the name after his home county in North Carolina before moving to Tennessee.
One of Levi Casey's brothers, Zadoc Casey, was elected Lieutenant Governor of Illinois and presided in the Constitutional Convention of of 1848. Zadoc settled early in Jefferson County and founded the city of Mt. Vernon.
Randolph Casey, a son of Levi and Mary, spent his life as a farmer. He never went to school a day in his life and learned to read after he was forty years old. He became a great reader and was well-informed on the history of this government and acquired a good geographical knowledge of this county and the world at large. He was a great student of the Bible. In 1819, he laid a new floor in the courthouse at Elvira and was paid $18.00.
For more information on the Levi Casey family, see the full story, written by Shirley Wolfe in the March 2010 issue of the "Johnson County Heritage Journal," published monthly for distribution to members of the Johnson County Genealogical & Historical Society. See our website for information on membership at http://johnsoncountyil.net
