Samuel Dixon ca. 1805 - 1876
Samuel L. Dixon was born about 1805 in North Carolina, USA. He was the son of James Dixon (1761-1828) and Hannah Downen (1770-1820). He married Elizabeth Casselberry (ca. 1807 - 1850) on 8 February 1827 in Posey County, Indiana. They had the following children:
James Casselberry Dixon (1828-1896)
Mandalia Dixon (1829-1858)
Hannah Carson Dixon (1836-After 1867)
Rachael Dixon (1837-After 1854)
Samuel Clay Dixon (1838-1907)
William French Dixon (1840-1924)
Isaac E. Dixon (1845-1880)
Thomas H. Dixon (1850-Before 1860)
Dora Dixon (Unknown-Unknown)
Hayward Dixon (Unknown-Unknown)
(There is a possibility that Thomas H and Hayward Dixon are the same person)
After Elizabeth's death Samuel married Lucinda Fisher (ca. 1813 - Before 1860) on 29 April 1855 in Posey County. No children are known to have been born to this union.
I have to discuss the date of Samuel's birth first of all. Within his lifetime there were a lot of discrepancies between different sets of records as to when he was actually born. When I went looking for him on Family Search Dot Org the record listed there showed his birth year as 1789, which is theoretically possible but doesn't make sense based on some of the later data sources, in particular his enlistment in the army during the American Civil War. I will keep circling back to the subject of his birthdate as I walk through some of the sources below.
Some sources on Ancestry list Samuel's birthplace as Buncombe County, North Carolina, but the only family that I have found in the census records that seems to match his family was found in Orange County, North Carolina. (Click on the link above to his father James's page to see the attached census records for the family in Orange County).
Since the 1810 census records list only one person by name (Samuel's father James) they are pretty useless for determining Samuel's birth date.
By 1820 the family had moved to Posey County, Indiana, where they showed up in the census in Marrs Township. Samuel doesn't show up by name in this census since he was only about 15, but his father James was listed by name. (census image here).
The 1820 census tends to corroborate a birth year for Samuel between 1800 and 1810 since it shows two boys over the age of 10. It's not necessarily accurate unfortunately since if one of the two is Samuel's older brother Robert it shows him as being less than 16 when at the time of the 1820 census he should have been 19 years old.
I believe Samuel and his family show up in the 1830 census in Marrs Township. There is an unknown male listed between 15 and 19 years of age, it's likely that it is Samuel's younger brother John Robert Dixon. There are other John Dixons for that census in Posey County but at an age of around 20 I don't know if his brother would show up as a head of household (since that was the only name listed for the census in that year). The census also misstates the age for Samuel's wife Elizabeth but after looking at the way the census questions were formatted I think that happened because the census questions were confusing and that caused people to answer them incorrectly because of the way the ages and genders were listed. The oldest male in the household (presumably Samuel) is listed as being between 20 and 30. This ties in with my thesis that Samuel was born between 1800 and 1810. (census image here).
The next census Samuel and his family showed up in was the 1840 census, this time in Robb Township of Posey County. There are two males listed in their 30s, presumably Samuel is one of them. There are no males older than their 30s, which means this census also corroborates a birth year for Samuel between 1800 and 1810. (census image here).
Samuel's wife Elizabeth died just a few months before the 1850 census was taken, but her name was listed in the mortality schedules for that census which is how it's known that she died in April. The family had moved from Robb Township back to Marrs township. Samuel's son James had married Rachel Williams and was living somewhere else in Marrs Township with Rachel and her daughter Elizabeth. Mandalia had married William Williams (related to Rachel?) and was also living in Marrs Township with their two daughters. All of the younger children were still living at home. On this census Samuel's birth year is listed as about 1805. (census image here).
It looks like Samuel married Lucinda Fisher in Posey County in 1855, but there is no trace of her in the 1860 census, which found Samuel, his daugher Hannah and sons William and Isaac living in Henderson County, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Posey County. They were living with a man named Peter Rieves from Kentucky and his wife, daughter and son. The Rieves may be relatives but if so I don't know how they are related. Samuel's daughter Rachael had married Thomas Robinson in 1854 in Posey County and then dropped out of sight. Sam's youngest son Thomas no longer appears and I have not been able to find him in any census records after the first one, so I suspect he died before 1860. At this point Samuel's birth year is listed as about 1810, which is possible but I suspect on the late side. (census image here).
I knew from the cemetery records that there was a Samuel Dixon who had served in Company A of the 91st Indiana Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War, but because of his age I had ruled out this Samuel as being that person (he would have been over 55 years old at the time the war broke out). I had thought this might be Samuel's nephew or some other relative of his however, while I was researching this I came upon the following information that was posted on Samuel's record on Downens Dot Org. I had placed a link to the page on that site below but as of 2019 Downens Dot Org is no longer online so unless it is reconstituted the link is a dead link. (Dead Link) Downens.org
jpjunkyard@yahoo.com wrote: "Samuel L. Dixon's army discharge papers are in the hands of Eva Dixon of Mt. Vernon, Indiana. These papers show he was a member of Capt. Corbin's Co. 91 Indiania Infantry and was discharged June 26, 1865 at Salisberry, NC. He is described as being 5'4" in height, light hair, grey eyes, farmer and 45 years of age. Referencee also says: I am sure this is incorrect as the date of his marriage is from authentic records which prove that he must have been more than 45 when he entered the army."
Jpjunkyard makes a good point, if the age at discharge were correct that would mean Samuel was born around 1820. Since he was married in 1827 that is clearly wrong.
I did a little more poking around on the Samuel Dixon who served in the 91st Indiana and found out he was mustered in as a private at Evansville, Indiana on 31 August 1862 and mustered out at Salisbury, North Carolina on 26 June 1865, still a private.
If this information is correct I can't imagine what would have possessed a man of his age to go off and fight in the Civil War, although I know at least two of his sons (William and Isaac) also served in the war. Whatever motives there were, whether base or exalted, I still think it took a lot of guts to do.
Most sources have listed Samuel's date of death as around 1865, but based on this information about his army service I went and looked at the records of headstones provided for deceased civil war veterans that were provided by the government between 1879 and 1903 and found paperwork matching him that listed a date of death of 21 October 1876. The two right papers in the middle row of the document both appear to refer to Samuel's death, although one lists a cemetery in West Franklin, Posey County, and the other one lists Mount Vernon instead (maybe where the headstone was shipped to?) Headstones Provided for Deceaased Civil War Veterans
By the way, since I have a subscription to Genealogy Bank Dot Com again, while I was looking at Samuel recently I found this story from the Evansville newspaper in 1867:
Evansville Daily Journal, 17 January 1867
INTERESTING INCIDENTS - Mr. Samuel Dixon, of Posey County, enlisted for, and served three years, as a private soldier in the 91st Indiana Volunteers. At the time of enlistment he was sixty-three years of age. He served his full term, and was never sick a day, or unable from sickness to take his rations regularly.
At the end of his term he was honorably discharged, and a few days ago applied at the office of a bounty agent in this city for his additional bounty, and signed his name without the use of glasses, being now over sixty-six years of age.
Once again we are bedeviled by date discrepancies (the article is inconsistent on his birth year even within the same paragraph). It says when he was mustered into the army in 1862 that his birth year must have been about 1799, but that as of 1867 he is now over 66 years old, which would put his birth year around 1801.
My last word on his birth year is that I am convinced he was born between 1800 and 1810 but I have no idea what the exact year was. I'm going to stay with the circa 1805 year at this point if for no other reason that it's smack dab in the middle of that range, and at least one census record actually shows that year.
Once I found the information above that Samuel survived the war I searched through the 1870 census records to see if I could find Samuel but I have had no luck with that. If he was still alive he managed to avoid the census takers that year. In any event, he appears to be buried in the Dixon Cemetery at West Franklin in Marrs Township.
Other Links
Samuel Dixon page at Find A Grave
Muster Rolls for the 91st Indiana Volunteer Infantry (Samuel is listed as Samuel Dixson on the first page of the PDF, page number 481 of the original document it was taken from).
Samuel Dixon page on Family Search Dot Org
Evansville Daily Journal, 17 January 1867 (GenealogyBank subscription required)
Samuel L Dixon page on Genealogy Locator System database
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