Leonard VANDEGRIFT

                   Historical information included in notes


From Vandegrift Research: http://www.vandegriftsearch.com/leonard%20vandegrift.htm
Leonard Vandegrift 
Leonard was born May 18, 1799, perhaps in Uniontown , Pennsylvania . He married Mary E. Rutherford. She was born November 27, 1803 in a part of Virginia that today is West Virginia . 
Leonard was a cooper and a farmer by trade. 
It is thought that Leonard and Mary were probably married around Portsmouth , Ohio about 1823 or 1824. 
The Lower Scioto Valley was the same valley Leonards father and grandfather had traversed. It was here he developed his passion for hunting. 
Leonard was not one of the first pioneers but he was there when it was a young country. We can imagine that when he took Mary E. Rutherford for his wife, his life took a dramatic change  from the river to the land. He became one of those who cleared the virgin forests, raised rough-hewn cabins and became a farmer. 
It was a special event for people in those days when they raised a cabin. A few neighbors would assemble and have a house-raising. When they began, the logs would be saddled and notched. When it was up, they would chink and daub to keep out the rain, wind and cold. Re-daubing was an every fall event. 
It was only the adventuresome and industrious who sought new surroundings. Leonard and Mary were beginning a life of adventure as they, with their two children, Phillip and Mary Ann, packed into the Western Reserve wilderness of Virginia about 1828. 
Leonard, in those days, probably wore a home-made wool hat on his head and moccasins on his feet. During the summer time, they went barefoot  male and female, young and old. The outside wear for men was the blue linsey hunting shirt made with wide sleeves, large enough to envelop the body almost twice around. 
Mary, the pioneer wife, made Leonards clothing and moccasins of dressed deer-skins. She spun and wove the home-made cotton for herself. She made the clothing for their family. 
Many changes took place for Leonard and Mary during the time they resided in Lewis County . Seven more children were born: Emzey, Isabella, Samuel, Rebecca Jane, Willis, Allen and Ellen. 
There werent many conveniences for Mary in those days. She probably had a large fireplace which was fitted with a crane with a log overhead with a supply of hooks of different lengths and one to four different pans that could be hung over the fire at the same time. There may have been a long-handled frying pan, the bake pan, and the Dutch-oven. 
The Dutch-oven was a deep Dutch skillet with a closely fitting cast-iron cover. Coals would be placed both under and over it and the bread and biscuits would quickly rise and bake. 
Turkey and spareribs were sometimes roasted before the fire, suspended by a string with a dish underneath that would catch the drippings. 
Their primary diet was corn bread, hominy, venison, pork, honey, beans, pumpkin, turkey, prairie chicken, squirrel and some other game, with a few additional vegetables when they were in season. 
Wheat bread, tea, coffee and fruit were luxuries. Hot drinks were made with sassafras root, spicewood, or sycamore bark. Parched grains of rye or corn were pounded up as a substitute for coffee. 
The womans work was hot and laborious. 
As changes were taking place in the family, many changes were taking place in the county, too. There was increased trade with Pittsburgh . The Monongahela Navigation Company failed. Flatboats were built and canoes filled with produce floated down the river. The owners generally returned in canoes after selling their goods. They returned with some of the necessities of life and some cash. 
Bridges were built across streams and rivers. Most of the people settled on Steer Creek, Cedar Creek, Hughes River and the lower course of the Little Kanawha. 
Their little daughter, Elizabeth, died of consumption. She was nineteen months old. 
Between 1833 and 1839, Leonard owned 100 acres of land on Cedar Creek and there would have been a second cabin raising for Leonard and Mary. If their cabin was built similar to others, it would have been built of logs which had been nicely squared, so there were only small crevices to be filled, and the chimney would have been placed on the inside of the house to prevent the Indians from tearing away stones from the mud and mortar which held them from gaining entrance through the fireplace. Leonard farmed, hunted, traded and bought furs. 
It was customary in those days that only the very ambitious and the wealthy were educated. Leonard and Mary were not wealthy but they wanted a better opportunity for education for their children and in 1839 they sold their land and moved to Ohio . Perhaps, for about a year, they lived in Meigs County , but they moved to Camp Creek Township in Pike County , where in 1841, the purchased twenty-five acres of land for one-hundred dollars. Camp Creek Township was one of the prosperous sections of the county with exceptional agriculture. 
The original settlers traveled by canoe or flatboat between Portsmouth and Pike County . Leonards father had seen all this, but by the time Leonard and Mary arrived, roads had been used for about twenty-five years and, therefore, they could carry necessary belongings by wagon. 
Pike County was blessed with a number of good streams. The first rude log school house was built nearly forty years before. There were grist mills and industry. It was booming. There was even a newspaper when they arrived. 
Farming in Pike County left something to be desired. The soil was too thin and poor to ensure good crops. 
Seven years later, they sold the twenty-five acres for a twenty-five dollar profit and moved near Otto, Illinois sometime after April 22, 1852. Though Leonard farmed, he also cut trees and shipped lumber. He worked hard. It was here their son, Leonard J., was born. He would be their last baby. By that time, Leonard was fifty-one and Mary was forty-eight. 
They moved to Iowa sometime between 1852-1860. A few years later, they went to Mercer County , Missouri . They also lived in Iowa for a short while but about 1860, Leonard and Mary moved to Blue Township , Pottawatomie County , Kansas . 
Kansas had probably been on their mind some because the Kansas-Nebraska Act which had become law in 1854 was established to make homesteading available in the territories of Nebraska and Kansas . 
When they made their decision to move to Kansas , it was not yet a State. The struggle for Statehood had also begun in 1854 but the unsettling issue was whether Kansas should be slave or free. This was an economic issue. 
There were only a few communities in Pottawatomie County when the Vandegrift family moved there: Timber City , Rockingham, Pittsburgh , St. George, Webster and Louisville but other areas were being settled. St. George was the oldest town and was the county seat. Leonard and Mary saw the county seat moved to Louisville in 1861. 
The Kansas-Missouri border had been relatively quite for a couple years. They had only been there a short time when violence broke out along the border in 1861. 
The Confederacy was attempting to control Missouri . The Union control in Kansas was tenuous and the Civil War was not going well for the Union in 1862. President Lincoln called for 300,000 new volunteers. 
In spite of the fact that ten regiments of infantry and cavalry had already been recruited from the sparse population of Kansas , three more regiments of infantry were required. Three thousand volunteers were needed. There werent foot-loose men in Kansas any longer. There were mostly family men and farmers. They were poor and mostly fairly new to the territory. Leonard and Mary had three sons who were about to enlist in the newly formed 11th Kansas Cavalry: Samuel, Willis and Evans. 
Leonard saw the Kansas Pacific Railroad laid to St. George in 1866 and a year later it became the Union Pacific. 
Leonard enjoyed hunting. Prairie chickens, quail, wild turkeys, deer, wild geese and ducks were available at first but Leonard saw game become scare and hunting seasons became necessary. It was different from the old days. 
Seven of the Vandegrift children  some in the early adult age  died of the old fashioned consumption -- tuberculosis. Three sons served in the Civil War: Samuel, Evans and Willis. There was a measle epidemic and Willis died of the epidemic during the war. 
The 1870 census description of Leonards farm was 40 acres improved, 50 acres woodland, 4 horses, 2 mules and asses, 7 milch cows, 2 other cattle, 7 swine. Crops were spring wheat, Indian corn and oats. 
Leonard and Mary sold their property in Pottawatomie County to their son, Evans, in 1868 for $400.00. It was located about three miles west and  about one and one-half to two miles south  of St. George on the northwest bank of the Kansas River . During the winter of 1874-75, nearly one-thousand persons were destitute from the locust plague. Perhaps, that had something to do with the reason for Evans and Martha moving to the sand hills of Nebraska . 
Being impressed with the uncertainity of life, Leonard wrote in his last will and testament on July 6, 1876: Mary Ann, dau., $1.00; Amzey, dau., $1.00; Isabella, dau., $20.00; Jane, dau., $20.00; Samuel, son, $20.00; Evans R., son, $1.00; Leonard J., son, $1.00; Mary E., wife, to receive the rest of the property, both real and personal. 
They had moved many times from one place to another. It was in St. George where Leonard and Mary lived the remainder of their lives. They died in St. George in 1877, first Leonard on June 14th and Mary, three months later, on October 12th. They were not foreigners to death. They had seen seven of their children precede them in death. Though no *obituaries could be found accounting for their life, they are buried in the old St, George cemetery up the hill, three-quarters of a mile north on Rockingham Road . The name was spelled Vandergrift on the grave stone. 
Note: Asterisk (*) above. A review of the Manhattan Enterprise & Manhattan Homestead newspapers for an obituary was unsuccessful.