The Vanlandinghams Meet Adversity Head-On:
Pioneer Poverty to Antebellum Wealth to Post-War Struggles
Oliver Cromwell Vanlandingham: 1785-1856 (Maternal
Third-Great-Uncle)
Oliver Cromwell Vanlandingham: 1826-1905 (Maternal First
Cousin 4x Removed)
Ezekiel Posey Vanlandingham: 1827-1895 (Maternal First
Cousin 4x Removed)
Oliver Cromwell “O.C.” Vanlandingham arrived in Kentucky
under desperate circumstances. His parents, Ezekiel Vanlandingham (1762-1796)
and Elizabeth Brumley Vanlandingham (1765-1833) had set out from their home in
Northumberland County, Virginia in 1796 with a party of settlers bound for new
land in Kentucky. The Wilderness Road had just been opened that year, enabling
wagons to travel to the new state; Kentucky had achieved statehood just four
years earlier.
Tragically, Ezekiel died during the long wagon journey, so
Elizabeth arrived in Kentucky a widow with three children: eleven-year-old
Oliver, 14-year-old Easter, and eight-year-old daughter Elizabeth or“Betsey”.
According to a county history,
“After burying her
husband Mrs. Vanlandingham and the other members of the party resumed their
trip and finally arrived near Paradise where she procured some land. There she
and her…children worked hard and soon placed themselves in comfortable
circumstances. She was a well-educated woman, and up to about the time her
children were married devoted practically all her evenings to their education.”
What isn’t mentioned in this account is that Elizabeth
Vanlandingham very prudently remarried shortly after her arrival in Kentucky.
Her new husband, Samuel Fulton, doubtless helped her build up her farm. The
couple may have also used slave labor, as by 1820, O.C. was farming in Gallatin
County, Illinois and had two slaves, both of whom were older than O.C. was, so they
may have accompanied O.C.’s parents from Virginia.
Still, even though the Vanlandinghams may have had the help
of two slaves and a new husband, the family had to work extremely hard to
establish their farm. I expect they had to clear land to make fields for
planting, and they had to build a home and outbuildings. Harvests and getting
their produce or grain to market would have required more effort. It would have
taken years to achieve the “comfortable circumstances” alluded to in the book
passage.
Easter and Elizabeth both married in 1813—Easter, 30, married
farmer Francis Kimbley, and Elizabeth, 25, married farmer Samuel Miller Weir.
Samuel Weir had a brother, James Weir, a successful area businessman. The county
history stated,
“O.C….was for a few
years associated in the mercantile business with pioneer James Weir. After he
and Weir dissolved partnership, he made a number of trips to New Orleans, where
he sold the hides and produce he bought in the eastern part of the county.”
Oliver Cromwell Vanlandingham
This trade helped consolidate his finances, enabling him to
marry in 1825. His bride, Mary Drake, was a southern belle nearly 20 years his
junior. The newlyweds moved to his Illinois property, which was about 80 miles
from the family’s Muhlenberg County property. The county history noted:
“In the meantime, he
retained the property he owned in Muhlenberg, including the place on which he
had erected a large log dwelling. His wife, during one of their many visits to
Muhlenberg, died on their farm near Paradise, December 22, 1844.”
The following year, O.C. moved his five children to Baton
Rouge, where he’d bought a cotton plantation. The plantation was listed on the
1850 census as having a value of $27,500; today’s equivalent would be $1.1 million.
O. C. Sr. had his son Ezekiel running the plantation, while
O.C. II was in Kentucky managing the farm and property there. The 1850 census
shows the Kentucky property was also sizable, with a value of $5,900, far
higher than the value of any of the neighboring properties on the census.
The plantation seems to have done well. An item in the
August 4, 1853 Baton Rouge Advertiser
newspaper compliments Ezekiel on the fine cotton he was growing on “Peru Farm”,
noting:
“The bolls are large
and the texture and appearance of the cotton excellent. Vanlandingham ranks
among the ‘model farmers of our parish’—and is always able to ‘up cotton’. May
he prosper beyond his expectations.”
The family also owned land in New Orleans. An 1860 ad listed
“valuable land” for sale owned by the Vanlandinghams, bounded by Levee, Philip,
Water and Jackson Streets. I have been able to locate Philip and Levee on old
maps; they intersect quite near the river. Levee Street is now Decatur, but
Water and Jackson have proved elusive, although modern day’s Jackson Square is
nearby, so Jackson Street was probably near there and Water Street probably ran
along the riverfront. This land would have truly been valuable today, lying
right on the banks of the Mississippi.
O.C. Sr. died in October 2, 1856 at the age of 72. His body
was carried back to Kentucky for burial.
Following his death, O.C. II moved down to Baton Rouge to help Ezekiel with the plantation. By 1860, he was listed as the head of the household, in charge of the majority of the property. His land was valued at $16,500, while Ezekiel’s property was valued at $5,000. The personal property, which would have included slaves, showed an even greater disparity in value. OC’s personal property had a value of $75,500, which Ezekiel’s was worth only $7,000, ten times less. The slave schedules for 1860 show O.C. owning 78 human beings, ranging in age from 70 years to two months. Most of the slaves—55 of the 78-- were under 30 years of age.
 |
| Part of the 1860 Census Slave Schedule for O.P. Vanlandingham's plantation |
Ezekiel, in contrast, owned only five
slaves, a man, woman, child and two young teens.
1860 Slave Schedule showing Ezekiel's five slaves below O.C.'s 78 slaves
The brothers’ three younger sisters, Mary, Elizabeth and
Cordelia, were living with OC II, his wife and children in 1860. Perhaps OC’s huge
share of the family wealth included provisions for his sisters that were paid
out at the time of their marriages in 1860 and 1861.
When the Civil War broke out, both brothers enlisted in the
Confederate Cavalry. As Baton Rouge was captured by the Union early in the war,
I suspect their wives and children evacuated to other holdings in Louisiana or
back north to Kentucky.
Ezekiel and OC II’s war experiences will be covered in a
separate post. Following the war, the family basically had to start over. The
plantation’s buildings had been destroyed during the war, and the nearly 100
enslaved people had quite understandably fled, leaving the family with fields
returning to scrubland, and no labor for the labor-intensive cotton crop.
Apparently the family simply abandoned the land, probably unable or unwilling
to pay the tax bills the victorious Union imposed.
Two of O.C.’s three surviving daughters, married to
Louisiana men, chose to stay in Louisiana. Mary’s husband James Elam returned
to his political life, struggling to hold the office of mayor of Baton Rouge
during a contentious Reconstruction period, described in an earlier post. Cordelia
and her husband, E.D. Cheatham, were living near the Elams in Baton Rouge,
where E.D worked as an editor in 1870, and a clerk by 1880. Sadly, both women
ended up widowed. James Elam died in 1873, and E.D. Cheatham in 1899.
O.C.’s third daughter, Elizabeth, had married her first
cousin, Samuel Miller Weir Jr., who owned land back in Kentucky. They settled in
Muhlenberg County before the war, and remained there. While Samuel registered
for the Union draft, it appears he never fought in the war, so never had to
take arms against his brothers-in-law.
O.C. II left Louisiana, and moved his family back to the farmland
in Kentucky that he had managed before his father’s death. Both he and his
wife, Samuel Miller Weir’s sister Margaret, had family in Muhlenberg County,
and built their life there—a more modest life than in Baton Rouge, but still
quite comfortable. The county history
noted that, “He owned a large library and was regarded as one of the best-read
men in the county.” OC II and his wife had eight children who spent most of
their adult lives on the family’s Paradise area farm.
Following the war, Ezekiel, like his brother O.C., chose to
leave Louisiana. He didn’t follow O.C. back to family lands in Kentucky,
however. He headed northwest, ending up in Rains County, Texas, where he took
up farming near the county seat of Emory, Texas. I’m not sure what led him to
the area. His wife’s family was from Alabama; they had no obvious Texas ties. He
and his wife Amelia Blount had six children, four of whom survived to
adulthood, and three of whom remained in the Rains area lifelong.
 |
| Ezekiel and Amelia Blount Vanlandingham |
The Vanlandinghams faced adversity several times over two
generations. Patriarch Oliver Cromwell Vanlandingham built up a sizable fortune
in land over the course of fifty years. However, war destroyed much of that
wealth, probably rightly so since it was built on the forced labor of dozens of
men, women and children. The next generation of Vanlandinghams faced this
disaster with the same grit as their father and grandmother had in 1796. One son, Ezekiel, chose to start fresh in a
totally new state, and Oliver Cromwell’s namesake son returned to the first farm
Oliver Cromwell and his mother had acquired and developed: a literal piece of
Paradise—Paradise, Kentucky, that is.
Sources:
A History of
Muhlenberg County by Otto A. Rothert. John P. Morton & Company.
Louisville, KY 1913. Accessed through Google Books.
Vanlandingham plantation sale notice. Baton Rouge Tri-Weekly
Gazette and Comet, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 05 Jan 1861, Sat • Page
8. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/116154246/sale-of-vanlandingham-plantation/#
Ezekiel Posey Vanlandingham grows excellent cotton on Peru
Farm Concordia Intelligencer 13 Aug 1853, quoting Baton Rouge Advertiser of 4
Aug 1853. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/116154616/ezekiel-posey-vanlandingham-grows/#
Census data, birth, death and other
records accessed from Ancestry.com.
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