This is a multi-post series about the Blessing Sisters. Anna Eliza Blessing Winney is my 3rd great grandmother. You can see all of the posts in the series here: Blessing Sister Stories
Restless Virginians
The Ohio-bound Blessings weren’t the only Virginians to feel the urge to move. Starting in mid-1825, when James Monroe’s presidency ended, Virginians were surprised by an unfamiliar status. “Four of the first five presidents were Virginians who guided the nation through its first three decades. But now, the political stature of Virginia declined on the national stage when no successors of ability emerged to replace the Founding Fathers.
The state had lost power in Congress because of population shifts. ‘What has become of our political rank and eminence in the Union?’ worried Benjamin Watkins Leigh. ‘Virginia has declined and is declining.’ (10)
Abraham Blessing Leaves Virginia
Sometime in 1827, Eliza Blessing passed away. Abraham married Mary Anderson within a year, and their baby John Anderson Blessing was born on May 10, 1829 in Virginia.
While his parents, brothers, and sisters had joined the extended Blessing family contingent already in Greene County, Ohio, Abraham chose a more adventurous path for his family. Several factors probably propelled Abraham to venture into the unknown. First, land continued to open up west of the Appalachian mountains as Americans pushed further into the heart of the vast new land.
Second, Abraham was a farmer, and around the time that he left, the land in Virginia was “worn out,” as John Randolph put it, and “pioneers eventually pushed to the farthest reaches of ‘the West.’ Kentucky and Illinois––first as Virginia counties and later as states––also beckoned, along with Indiana and Missouri.” Abraham and his family joined this second wave of Virgnians seeking new land and opportunities. (Virginia Museum of History & Culture, “Political Decline and Westward Migration” )
Whatever the reason, Abraham must have felt a strong pull to leave Virginia when his baby boy was so young. I narrowed the time frame of when they left Virginia to between the fall of 1829 and 1830 by two known events, Anna Blessing’s birth in August 1826, and John Blessing’s birth in May 1829, along with a letter Abraham sent to his brother John in February 1831 with a reference to the time of year he left Virginia.
His daughters, Elizabeth and Anna were six and three years old, but John Anderson was only six months old. Traveling the 845 miles to Palmyra, Missouri would have taken them across rough terrain of the Appalachian mountains, across rivers, and newly created paths with uncertain obstacles.
Passed down family lore has them walking to Missouri. I haven’t found definitive proof that they walked. If they did, though, can you even imagine six-year-old Elizabeth and three-year-old Anna walking from Virginia to Missouri? I imagine it was a combination of wagon, horses, and walking when needed. After a hundred+ years of retelling, stories can definitely get muddled.
An excerpt from a letter that Polly Patterson, Great-Granddaughter of Elizabeth Jane (Blessing) Basford, wrote to Michael Winney echoes the family stories I’ve always heard:
“Anna Eliza Blessing Winney and Elizabeth Jane Blessing were definitely sisters, Anna being the youngest. Their father was Abraham Blessing. He was a widower and he and the two girls (all children that we know of anyway) walked to Wisconsin Territory from Missouri and Virginia in the 1830’s to work in the lead mines around Grant Co. When gold was found in CA, he left for the gold fields and died there. There is no further record of him after he left Grant Co.”(13)
You’ll note that no mention of Abraham’s son, John Anderson Blessing, is mentioned in this letter. It wasn’t until I read the newly discovered letters in 2019 that I knew he existed, so you can see now how invaluable those letters have been for my research.
A Hard Life in Missouri
After Abraham, Mary, Elizabeth, Anna, and John crossed the Mississippi River into St. Louis, Missouri, they traveled 130 miles over land to Palmyra. Other families from Shenandoah, and other Virginia counties also made their way to this area, which may have also influenced Abrahams’ choice to settle there.
Arriving in the fall of 1829, Abraham would have seen rich colors, and fertile land. He found a place thirteen miles north of Palmyra and within two miles of the Mississippi River to raise his family and grow his crops. Soon after arriving at their new homestead, they learned that Mary was pregnant. Happy news continued, as Abraham’s crops did very well that first season.
Less than a year later, beginning in June 1830, the entire Blessing family fell ill from cholera. Because of his prolonged illness, Abraham couldn’t work his land in the summer and fall of that year. Not only did he lose money on the current crop, he wasn’t able to prepare his land for the following growing season, either.
To compound the misery, Mary was in her last month of pregnancy when she contracted the disease and passed away on September 5, 1830. Their baby daughter, whose name wasn’t recorded for history, was just four weeks old.
Eight months later, in February 1831 when Abraham relayed these troubles to his brother John Blessing in Xenia, Ohio, neither he nor his oldest daughter, Elizabeth had fully recovered. “The neighbors tell me it has been more sickly last fall and this winter than it was ever known before.”
The cascade of problems—mourning his wife, his own illness, addressing the devastating crop loss, and caring for his children—took a heavy toll. But Abraham was working out a plan to get him and his family back on track.
His priority was for his children to be taken care of and had one request of his family in Ohio. “I have been compelled to break up housekeeping and have put out my children to good places. If you will take the two youngest and take care of them I will satisfy you for it. Take them until I can get a home for myself which will not be very long if I can get my health. If you will take them I will carry them in next summer for if I get no better than I have been for the last two month it must break me up for I have to pay a high board for them and myself. I can make out with my two oldest ones if any of you agree to take the two youngest you will please let me know immediately on the receipt of this. Also let me know whether and what time the ohio will be navigable for steamboats as it is much cheaper to go by water than by land.”
Abraham had a strong sense of family that echoed his grandfather, Jacob Blessing Sr. In his will in 1790, Jacob wrote wrote “If so be my wife should die before all the Children come to age, the said Children shall be sufficiently brought up out of said Estate at the discretion of my Executors and none of them to be bound out without their own comfort.”
According to Virginia law at the time, the court placed under-aged children whose parents had died in household and care of another man (bound out). The new guardian was required to teach both boys and girls to read, write and a trade to the boys. In turn indentured children were expected to work. Boys did farm work or man’s trade. Girls did housework.
This was done even if the mother was still living, so Jacob went against the norms of the his time to spell out in a legal document that this wouldn’t happen to his children. And now Abraham was trying to shield his own in an era and place where it wasn’t uncommon to board out your children or place them in orphanages when you could no longer take care of them.
The Plan Falls Apart
Despite the hardships that had befallen him, Abraham sounded upbeat when he wrote in that same letter to John,“… so far as much as I have seen [of the country] tho I have not been about much to see it yet but expect to go about 15 or 20 miles west of this place shortly if I am able to look at it.”
He loved the Missouri fields where he had staked his claim, just a few miles from the Mississippi River. He was a farmer, and the son of a farmer, and seemed determined to stay and start over. Unfortunately, no part of his plan came to fruition.
Abraham wasn’t able to get to a steamboat in time to send the two youngest children to his family in Ohio, where they would have had a large extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins who were settled and prosperous.
It also appears that he wasn’t able to restart farming his land as successfully as needed to support his family. In 1831, a year after his last letter to John, all of his options in Missouri had run out.
On June 25, 1835, Abraham wrote to his brother John to tell him what had happened. “I have been mining since the fall of 1831 that that misfortune happened to me in Missouri – the loss of my companion and my girl and myself being sick so long and my children. It broke me up unto [illegible]. When I recovered my health again I was not able to bring my family to you. I was informed that the led mines was a great place to make a wage. I had no way for to help myself and I concluded I would come and try my luck awhile but I have been unfortunate as yet.”
For a man who had sounded so optimistic when he wrote to his family in 1830 that “I am much pleased with the country,” the change in Abraham’s fortune was devastating.
He hoped working in the lead mines would turn his luck around and reunite him with his children.
Sources
Fully cited sources can be found on the Blessing Sisters Story Cited Sources page. Below are the footnotes for Part 2 of the series. I’ve continued the numbering from Part 2 to make it easier to follow.
10. (Virginia Museum of History & Culture, “Establishing a Nation” )
11. (Virginia Museum of History & Culture, “Political Decline and Westward Migration” )
12. (U.S. Army Indian Campaign Service Records Index, 1815-1858, entry for Abraham Blessing)
13. (Michael A. Winney 2007, pg 44)
14. (Wikipedia, “Black Hawk War,” 2019)
15. (U.S. Army Indian Campaign Service Records Index, 1815-1858, entry for Abraham Blessing)
16. (US Army Insignia)
17. (Consul Wilshire Butterfield 1881)
The Women Who Gave Us a Legacy of Strength 
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