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
Elizabeth Blessing Adjusts to Wisconsin
Although the farmland along the Mississippi River in the southwest corner of Wisconsin reminded her of home in Missouri, Elizabeth missed her brother and sisters terribly. Her father spent up to twelve hours each day in the mine, and when he returned home, he collapsed from exhaustion.
She distracted her mind by making the small cabin homey and ensuring Abraham was eating decent meals to keep his strength up for the grueling tasks. He had stressed his desire to bring her brother and sisters here, and she determined to have the house ready, no matter how cramped it might be.
Elizabeth also joined The Methodist Church of Cassville, and was baptized there in spring 1837. I don’t have any proof if Abraham attended church or not, but the long hours in the mines had to support more than his Cassville household. He sent a portion of his pay to the families in Missouri who boarded his youngest three children, so he may have saved his Sundays for much-needed rest, or perhaps even more work.
When Elizabeth had arrived in this small town, snugged between 300 foot bluffs on one side and the Mississippi River on the other, it was crawling from infancy to a settled town that attracted new investors, including Luther Basford, who had arrived from New York the previous year. He had hired on as a carpenter to work on the Dennison Hotel, billed as a world-class establishment. When that fell through, he returned to New York, but perhaps not before he took notice of Elizabeth in church each Sunday.
Elizabeth Blessing Marries
Luther returned to Cassville in spring 1837 and purchased several lots in town to start a mercantile business. After he felt established, the timing assumes he began courting his future wife.
On 23 May 1839, Elizabeth married local merchant, Luther Basford, in Cassville, Grant County, Wisconsin.(18) She was sixteen years old, and he was twenty-four. Within the year, twelve-year-old Anna left Missouri and went to live with the newly married Basfords. I don’t have any information on how she traveled, but the best explanations are either Abraham went to bring his daughter back to Wisconsin or her new brother-in-law, who had the funds to do so, arranged for her travel.
However it happened, the information in the 1840 Census shows 1 female between five and nine years old.(19) This is probably Anna, who would have been fourteen years old. The census was just a series of ticks in age columns so the census taker may have mismarked the column for Anna.
In that same census, Abraham is living not too far away, also in the Western Division, Grant, Wisconsin, employed in mining. (20) Working in the lead mines, he wasn’t in much of a position to take care of Anna on his own. The Basfords had just enough room for Anna and what they hoped would be a houseful of their own youngsters. The two youngest Blessing children would have to wait until a suitable time presented itself.
The Wisconsin Mines section of the Mining Artifacts website notes that, “In 1847, the Mineral Point Tribune reported that the town’s furnaces were producing 43,800 pounds of lead each day.”(22)
Seeing the pictures of the lead and soot covered miners hand picking for lead made me more sympathetic to Abraham leaving his daughter Anna in the care of her sister.
With an eye toward their own future, Elizabeth and Luther Basford started a family almost immediately. Caroline, the first of their six children, was born on 19 Jun 1840 and Martha came in June 1843. I imagine Anna stayed busy attending school and church and helping take care of her nieces and household chores.
I can’t speculate on whether Abraham saw his daughters or grandchildren often, but he wasn’t completely absent from their lives. On 1 May 1845, Abraham bought 160 acres with his son in law Luther Basford through the Land Act of 1820 that provided for the sale of public lands that were less than 160 acres. The lot was in Grant County, Wisconsin, and labeled as Section 13.(25)
Anna Blessing Marries
In 1842, twenty-four year old William James Winney arrived from Michigan and bought a farm near the Basfords. Since he was a new neighbor, and single, perhaps the Basfords and Anna invited him to supper or helped him get acquainted with the town.
Proximity to each other was certainly helpful. On 23 October 1845, nineteen-year-old Anna Blessing and twenty-eight-year-old William Winney married in Grant County, Territory of Wisconsin.(23) A Basford descendant, Elizabeth Wegman, provided Michael Winney with a copy of the handwritten marriage document signed by J.M. Dickinson, Justice of the Peace.
The Blessing sisters had endured loss and hardship in their early lives, but were working to create secure and happy homes. In the fall of 1845, the Blessing family had another reason to celebrate–Elizabeth gave birth to Adelaide in September.
By this time, Abraham had been working in the mines almost continuously for fifteen years. He had grown up a farmer’s son in the lush, green Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and farmed as an adult in the wide open Missouri plains and now, “follow[ed] mining for a living from one part of the diggings to another,” as he wrote his brother. So it was that he moved to Iowa County, about sixty miles east from where his daughters lived to follow another dig.
The Winneys gave Abraham another grandchild when Annie was born in August 1848, and the Basford’s followed suit when daughter Alice came along in September 1849.
Both families are stalwarts of the local community. Cassville was established in 1849, whereupon Luther was appointed to a committee to make nominations for the town offices. At the same time, William was appointed as a Constable.(29)
The 1850 and 1860 US Censuses show them living close to each other and their husbands doing well.
In 1850, Luther and Elizabeth are three dwellings away from William and Anna in District 24 (Cassville), Grant County.(26) Cassville sits on the banks of the Mississippi in the southwest corner of Wisconsin just across from Iowa. Luther is listed a farmer, with a real estate value of $2,000.(27) William is also listed as a farmer, but isn’t assigned a real estate value.(28) Perhaps he helped out on his brother in law Luther Basford’s farm.
It had once been Abraham’s dream to raise his children in a home filled with laughter and love, farming the land. It had eluded him, but perhaps he gained satisfaction seeing his daughters fulfill that for their families.
However, despite his years of sacrifice to bring his entire family to Wisconsin, Abraham was denied a reunion with his son, John, and youngest daughter—the latter who passed away in Missouri. He wrote to his brother, John, “I have only three children living and John is in California. The two girls live fifty miles from me.”
Continue to Part 5 (coming soon) or see all of the posts in the series here: Blessing Sister Stories
Sources
NOTE: I’ll update these soon due to new info. Fully cited sources can be found on the Blessing Sisters Story Cited Sources page. Below are the footnotes for Part 4 of the series. I’ve continued the numbering from Part 3 to make it easier to follow.
35. (Records of the Bureau of Land Management, entry for Luther Basford 1855)
36. (Records of the Bureau of Land Management, entry for Luther Basford 1855)
37. (A History of the Platteville Academy 1994)
38. (Bible of Luther Moulton Basford and Elizabeth Jane Blessing)
39. (Twelfth annual catalogue of the officers and students of Platteville Academy)
40. (1860 US Census, entry for Luther Basford household 1860; 1860 US Census, William Winney household 1860)
41. (“Elizabeth Blessing Basford Obituary,” Michael A. Winney 2007 pg 46)
42. (1880 US Census, entry for Charles Basford household 1880)
43. (1870 US Census, entry for Luther Basford household 1870)
44. (1870 US Census, entry for William Winney household 1870)
The Women Who Gave Us a Legacy of Strength 
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