Monday Is for Mothers: Emily Jane Wilson (About 1800 - Before 1850)

Another female ancestor who is represented in very few records is Emily Jane Wilson, my maternal 3rd great grandmother, who was born in either Barren or Jefferson County, Kentucky, in about 1800. She was the third child and second daughter of  Ruth (Welborn) and John Wilson who were both natives of Rowan County, North Carolina.

[A Map of The Western Part of the Territories belonging to the United States of America. Drawn from the best Authorities. Engraved for Imlay's Topographical Description of that Country. T. Conder Sculpt. Published June 1st 1795, by J. Debrett, Picadilly, London.

Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection]

By 1820 the Wilson family had moved on to Crawford County, in southern Indiana, where Emily Jane married William T. Slater on July 30th of that year.

[Indiana. Drawn and Published by F. Lucas Jr., Baltimore. (1822). Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection]

By the 1830 U.S. Census the Slater family were living in Pike County, Indiana, west of Crawford County and two years later they had moved on to Illinois, first to Lawrence County in the eastern part of the state and finally to Montgomery County, to the south of the state capitol in Springfield.

[Illinois By David H. Burr New York. Engd by Illman & Pilbrow. Entered ... 1834 by Illman & Pilbrow ... New York.

Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection]

William and Emily Jane had eleven children and my descent is from their youngest boy, George W. Slater (1832-1899).

William died in 1847 in Coffeen, Montgomery County, Illinois. We assume that Emily Jane died before 1850 because there's no census record for her in that enumeration. There's no record of where she's buried.

And we have a presidential connection through Emily Jane's older sister Christina (1798-about 1834) whose great great granddaughter Madelyn Lee Payne (1922-2008) was Barack Hussein Obama's beloved maternal grandmother.



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