Harbert Family Stories
The following are excerpts describing the life of Rebecca Harbert from a family story researched and written by the late Oliver R. Titchenal entitled, Faith & Hope, A 350 Year Saga of Titchenal Family Heritage in America, Cleveland, Ohio 1994.
Thomas Harbert Jr.’s fourth child was Rebecca Harbert, born about 1795. She was a lovely and lively young girl about 14 or 15 years old, when David Titchenal and his family moved nearby (about 2 or 3 miles) at Lambert’s Run in 1810. David Tichenal’s oldest son, John R. Titchenal was a handsome impatient young man of 19. They probably met while he worked at the boat yard in Lumberport [Virginia] or at a common church in the area.
John and Rebecca were soon attracted to each other and on January 26, 1814, about 4 years later, they took out a marriage license and were married on March 3, 1814, the anniversary of her grandfather’s death. John was 24, Rebecca was 18 or 19. Her father Thomas Jr. was 39-40 years, he signed Rebecca’s marriage bond, February 14, 1814.
Their first child, Mary Ellen, a beautiful little girl, was born August 8, 1815 in Harrison County Virginia. Mary Ellen was described by her husband in Arkansas as "a beautiful little prairie wild flower and her beauty did not interfere with the sturdy qualities necessary for a pioneer wife and mother." We can assume her mother Rebecca, had the same pioneer qualities and was also beautiful. Their second child, my great grandfather, William H. Titchenal, was born June 2, 1817 also in Harrison County. William turned out to be an adventurer in his own right.
John and Rebecca had to wait for their son William’s birth before they left Virginia, but to be living in Missouri by 1819, they must have made the trip to Missouri just before or right after Rebecca learned her father Thomas Harbert Jr. had died in the summer or fall of 1818. Whatever happened, her father’s death and her brother's move to Ohio in 1814, did not diminish John and Rebecca’s wanderlust or adventuresome spirit.
John and Rebecca Titchenal were on the tax rolls in Gasconade Township, Franklin county, Missouri by 1819. They were living in a log house near the fort at Belle Point (Fort Smith), Arkansas Territory before February 1822. The first white child born in the Fort Smith area was their daughter, Sarah Ann on December 23, 1823.
We don’t know when or why John Titchenal and Rebecca actually decided to move to Missouri. However, their interest in the west shouldn’t be surprising, the western movement of America was the talk of the country. Missouri had been part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The War of 1812 ended in 1814 and America acquired more land.
During the year of 1817, the "National Road" was completed from Baltimore to Wheeling, Virginia, on the bank of the Ohio River. Stage coach and freight lines were soon established. The road passed through Cumberland, Maryland close to where John was born and were both Titchenal and Buckalew relatives still lived. It is likely John took his family up to Maryland and over the new road to the Ohio River.
They could have gone as far as Wheeling by stagecoach or a wagon. At that time, from Wheeling west, the so called National Road was not improved and little more than an Indian trail in many places. To continue west by wagon they would have had to cross the Ohio by ferry, then travel through Ohio, Indiana and Missouri Territory to St. Louis. It would have been a long and dangerous trip. With Mary Ellen only two or three years old and William a year old or less, I believe John and Rebecca decided it would be better to travel by a river boat.
Ohio river traffic was heavy by 1818. Even though the first steamboat had made one trip down the Ohio to New Orleans in 1811, and other steamboats had reached St. Louis by 1817, flat boats were still the principal means of transportation in 1818 and 1819. John and family might have made the trip to St. Louis by steamboat, but it’s more likely they went by flat boat. John had built and handled flat boats fro his father on both the Potomac and Monongalia Rivers in Maryland and Virginia and felt comfortable with them.
John and Rebecca saw many sights they had never seen before. They knew that some of their relatives were already settled farther north in the state of Ohio, though they may have wondered if they should go all the way to Missouri, the thought of unexplored cheap land pushed them on.
How long they were in Missouri we don’t know because the next record found places them in the Arkansas Territory in 1822. They may have had other children while living in Missouri. It can be assumed they were there from sometime in 1818 and 1819 and until, perhaps, late 1821 or early 1822.
William was only six years old when his sister, Sarah Ann, was born and his older sister Mary Ellen was only eight. Rebecca’s only help during the birth of Sarah would have been from her husband John or the neighbors. Rebecca must have had one or two other children between the birth of William and Sarah born in Missouri or Arkansas. Rebecca might have had even less help at their births. Both children died early, perhaps at birth, there is no record of them.
Fort Smith at that time was a small log stockade, built in 1818/19 to try to bring peace between the warring Osage and Cherokee tribes. It was a lonely and isolated station, the most western fort in America, only 132 feet square with two block houses. The army garrison station there was too small for its task, never numbering more than 130 men.
A historical monument has been erected in honer of Sarah Ann Tichenell at the location of John Titchenal's home. It reads, "first white child, Here was born Sarah Ann tichnell In 1823 the first white child born in Fort Smith, Erected as a public service The noon Civic Club."
With the poor transportation and communication to or from Fort Smith during the first 9 or 10 years John and Rebecca Titchenal and family lived there, they must have had a hard time keeping in touch with their families in Virginia and Ohio. The only way to get mail was to send one of the soldiers to Little Rock to pick it up. The round trip took about three weeks. This must have been frustrating to Rebecca. It was difficult but she tried to stay in close touch with here home in Harrison County, Virginia and her brothers in Champagne Country, Ohio. Among other things, she didn’t know what was going on with the settlement of her father’s estate.
History tells us the old fort was abandoned in 1824 when the center of Indian hostilities moved 80 miles farther west to Fort Gibson. Most of the troops left at this time. This may have caused John Titchenal to move his family about five miles south to an area called Cavenaugh today or he may have been forced to move as the treaty of 1825 with the Choctaw Indians established a new boundary line. John’s cabin may have been on the west side of this line and all squatters had been forced to move.
John Titchenal did not have much time to pursue plans he may have had for his family in Fort Smith as he died in 1831 about eight to ten years after he and Rebecca arrived in Fort Smith.
Regardless of how John died, it was devastating to Rebecca and her young family. She was alone with Susan Eliza only two months old and six other young children in a sparsely settled frontier country. Mary Ellen sixteen, William was 14, Sarah Ann eight, John was about five and David three. William, as the oldest son, tried to run his father's blacksmith shop and farm as well as stock raising. Maybe he had the help of the three unknown men.
William McMurty had moved into the area in 1830 from Missouri. He courted Rebecca after John died and she became his wife sometime about 1835. She had three more sons with him.
Rebecca must have had a very troubled second marriage. She took their three children and left William McMurtry about 1849. She and her children moved in whith her daughter Sarah Ann Hackett. In 1852 William McMurtry died and she had more trouble. William McMurtry had walked out and left two childen and another wife in Missouri. When Rebecca moved back into her old home with her three sons, one of two children of McMurtry's former wife, sued her and won a court fight preventing Rebecca from getting her former home or any part of William McMurtry's estate. Jeremiah and Sarah Ann Hackett adopted her "McMurtry" children about 1855. Rebecca was living with her daughter Susan Eliza Browne during the 1860 census.
-- author Oliver R. Titchenal, gggg-grandson of Thomas and Isabelle Harbert. Visit the Titchenal home page at The Titchenal Saga.
