The Westward Movement
1800 - 1840

Migration
Others
The Carmans at Sangamon Town

The Canadian Trek of members of Jacob Cabman's (6) family was apparently the result of their Quaker background and their unwillingness to participate in the American Revolution. In order to escape harassment, compulsory military service and perhaps to re-establish themselves, they joined relatives, friends and neighbors, other kindred spirits in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Co., and Ontario, Canada.

The records on this period are sparse. We know that Jacob and members of his family were there about 1790, along with members of Adam's family. Jacob returned early, but Samuel, his son, stayed longer as one or two of his older children were born there. Some of the group never returned to the new United States. (The women marrying and becoming Canadians, their descendants can be considered our Canadian cousins.)

The census of 1810 gives record of some of them back in Green county, New York --- they didn't go back to Dutchess county! Also, a number of them are now located in Luzerne county, Pennsylvania. (A number of family members left Pennsylvania and returned to upper New York State.) We have no record of their trail to Illinois, except by the birthplaces of Samuel's children. They apparently returned t o New York for a short time, going to Pennsylvania, then to Ohio, entering Illinois from the southeast and up to Sangamon Town in Sangamon county. It is thought they moved from one Quaker community to another.

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Migration
There is no way of knowing the why of this migration except that they were caught in the westward sweep of settlers that followed the Revolution. They had no real stake anywhere, and being millers, they had opportunities everywhere as the new communities westward had needs for their skills.

Our family history now centers on the brothers Samuel (7) and Jacob (7), sons of Jacob, the weaver of New York State. This is because that through these two men and their families that a new branch of the Carman family is being established, a branch that are no longer easterners but are Illinoisans. The descendants of these two men were to serve in the wars to come and to forget their Quaker inheritance.

In successive years there were other Carman family migrations, involving different brancbes of the family. Some came across the nothern tier of states, ending up in Michigan, Wisconsin end northern Illinois. Others stopped in Ohio and in Indiana. Still others coming from New Jersey, came west below the Ohio river into Kentucky. These paths can be traced only by studying the individual families involved. (There are nests of Carman families all along the trail west.)

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Others
We have fragmentary records of other members of Jacob's family migrating westward. Two of his grandsons, children of his son Adam, migrated somewhat later than the Sangamon Town group, first to central Illinois and finally reaching Iowa and Nebraska. There is a record of a great-grandson, descended from Jacob's daughter Freelove, leaving Pennsylvania, settling in Michigan and then on to Nebraska.

Back east, there is record of movement from Pennsylvania, back to Green county New York, then to the Gennessee region in upper New York state. In this area the Quakerism in the family remained strong for several generations.

As future historical events developed, each of the major ones, such as the Gold Rush of 1849 pushed family members farther west. One needs only to read the letters of other present-day family descendants as they search for their roots to realize the wide dispersement of the family and the variety of Migratory routes they followed.

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The Carmans at Sangamon Town
Samuel Carman (7 ) and Jacob Carman (9) with their families arrived in Illinois about 1820, just two years after. the state was admitted to the Union. Their long journey ended at a place called Sangamon Town, (also known as 'Sangamo Town.') located on the Sangamon River in Sangamon county.

Sangamon Town was a pioneer dream - a dream of a trade center and county seat town at a ford across the river. Here a town was to rise. The Carmans operated the mills there, along with other businesses including a Tavern; during the town's brief history, they took an important role in its business end political life.

But:----- like many other such dreams, Sangamon Town never survived and today it is just a memory. Important for a few short years in pioneer central Illinois, it didn't make the grade. After its demise, the Carmans followed the Sanganon river down its course, living in later years at Salisbury, New Salem. Petersburg and in the surrounding countryside. Some, later, moving to Springfield which had become the county seat and later the capital of Illinois.

Because of where they lived, the time they lived, their paths crossed that of Abraham Lincoln. As a result, during his early, formative years the lives of the Carman family and Lincoln were entangled, adding much color to the family story. The Carmans were typical of the 'common people' that Lincoln said "God loved, because be made so many of them!"

Three major family stories involving Lincoln are to be found in the Appendix of this volume.