St. Clair County
Remnants Of The Past

The Golden Valley Independent
Volume 1, No. 28, Clinton
22 October 1986

John Eblin a man in the middle

John Eblin, who exactly where you?
And what exactly happened that sent you scurrying from the Osage country?
Eblin, dead for more than 120 years, has been the object of a search by two sisters with an abiding interest in genealogy. They are Susan Fisher, 35, of Washington, Iowa, and Janice Young, 46, of Cedar Rapids.
“He is the great-great-great-great-grandfather of my children,” says Fisher. “This will make history come alive, and it should be interesting for my kids.”
Both women in recent days were seeking data and researching records in St. Clair and Henry County courthouses, data that might help explain Eblin’s life in, and sudden flight from, this area.
They’ve also stalked old graveyards and sought out other bits of history from this area and afar.
This, generally, is what is known about the object of their search:
John Eblin lived in St. Clair County in the late 1850s and the early 1860s, on a piece of ground just a little south and west of Damascus – right along the east side of what is now 13 Highway.
Eblin and some of his kin left in a big hurry one day, probably in 1862, and headed north. He died in Iowa a year or so later at the age of 69.
He was by most accounts a Quaker, a religious group also known as the Society of Friends, and the clearer part of his story started in Jay County, Indiana.
A Jay County history from 1922 notes: “John Eblin also cleared a fine farm, then moved into the Osage country, in Missouri, where, being an unflinching lover of the Union, he became a victim of rebel hate and lost his property, being obliged to flee to Iowa, where he died in 1863.”
An Eblin family source, Jack B. Shelley of Harriman, Tenn., reports the substance of a letter from yet another family source, Veronica Miller of Potomac, Maryland, that Eblin was born in Gailia County, Ohio, in 1794, moved to Jay County, Indiana, in 1829, then left Indiana for Missouri and “was run out of Missouri for running slaves into Iowa (and) died 1864 in Nahaska County, Iowa.”
“I visualize him as a man caught in between,” says Young. “The Civil War was starting at that time, and he obviously did not believe in slavery. Then he found himself in an area of the country that was divided.”
Clearly, the Osage country was divided. In those years, Missouri was a border state, in which all manner of political and often violent things happened. There were routine clashes between groups of armed men, heavy events such as Jim Lane’s burning of Osceola – the sort of things that gave rise to the legendary and lawless post-war behavior of the James, the Youngers and the Daltons. It went on and on with terror and retribution following on terror and retribution.
It was not a happy time in the Osage country. Indeed, it was not a happy time for Missouri or the nation.
“I feel strongly from what we’ve found that John Eblin participated at least to some extent in helping slaves escape to the north,” says Fisher.
The Quakers were strongly opposed to slavery long before and during the Civil War, and were known to be prominent in organized efforts to help slaves escape.
According to the 1850 census, there were more than 500 slaves in St. Clair County. “Benton and Henry counties had more than that,” says area historian John Mills. “They had more slaves because they had more agriculture; Hickory County would have had less.”
Mills notes that because slaves were taxed, slave-owners of the times were known to understate their numbers.
So-called underground railways for moving slaves to freedom in the north were prevalent in Missouri, says Mills, and some were in this area.
“Whether the Quakers actually sent Eblin to Missouri, or whether he chose to go is not proven,” says Young. “He may have chosen to come on his own, and of course it’s possible that he may have come with something else on his mind.”
Eblin came with family. There was his wife and his sister Mary, who before leaving Indiana had married a man named Robert McFarland, who also came to the Osage country.
The sisters found McFarland’s death record in Osceola; it reported that he had been buried in Hillegas Burying Ground.
After some searching out of local historians, such as John Mills of Osceola, the sisters had an idea that Hillegas Burying Ground and Mt. Zion Cemetery were the same.
They went there and found McFarland’s grave and, sure enough, Mary was buried beside him.
Eblin left the Osage country with family, though. He fled, apparently, with his daughter Nancy Margaret Eblin Burkes and her husband. A granddaughter, Sarah Margaret Burkes, also went to Iowa with them. The Burkes left a good-sized farm just north of Damascus.
The McFarlands stayed, and so did Eblin’s son Jesse.
The emotion of the times, especially in the political jockeying and machinations surrounding the Kansas-Nebraska Act, were intense in the years before the war. The political climate only worsened when the war started. Violence against those with opposing views became routine. Shootings, hangings, burnings of homes – there were a lot of hateful things afoot on both sides of the slavery issue.
Eblin may have barely escaped with his life. What life may have been like for the McFarlands and Jesse Eblin in the wake of John Eblin’s flight north, we can only guess. If Eblin were as unpopular with local folk as some evidence suggests, the remaining kin may have had a pretty tough time of it.
Before they left, the Iowa sisters also found Jesse’s grave. It was in an old section of Lowry City Cemetery.
Because the McFarlands and Jesse Eblin died well after the Civil War, it appears they avoided violent death, but no one can be sure. The emotion of such heavy political times tends to transcend the years.
The Stars and Bars of the Confederacy still enjoys a prominence, both as a colorful flag and as a symbol of rebelliousness.
Rebellion enjoys a special place in the hearts of Americans, and rightly so. But it can’t be looked at in a vacuum; it always cries for moral justification.
The proffered justification for secession and ultimately the Civil War by the South was the concept of states rights. That constitutional argument lacked substance because its premises were skewed.
It concluded that the U.S. Constitution could condone the enslavement of human beings in the name of states’ rights.
There was just something fundamentally wrong with that: It was insupportable by definition of the Constitution itself, particularly the Bill of Rights – and by the letter and spirit of the Declaration of Independence.
And, of course, by common human decency.
I’m sure John Eblin would agree.