Rev. Lewis Duckwall Ambrose

Father of Susanna B. Crum

• Birth Notes
  • 
    Harold Byrd says 24 Feb, Judy Solomon says 23 March, and Ruth Stennet says 23 May.
    

• Death Notes
  • 
    County is either Logan or Livingston.
    

• General Notes
  • 
    Marriage Records of Highland County, Ohio (1805-1880) lists the marriage of ARLEDGE Carey P. m. Sarah HORTON July 2, 1835, by Lewis Duckwall, M.G.
    
    The following was written by son, Mathias Hathaway AMBROSE in 1910:
    
    "For a number of years after their marriage they lived on a farm of 100 acres, part of his father's homestead in Ohio. Here six of the oldest children were born; two, Jacob and Mary were born in Pickaway Co. near Circleville, whither the family moved, and for some years lived before going to Illinois. Three children were born in Ill., David, George, and Harry.
    
    "The great family event, at least in the lives of the older children, was the removal from Ohio to Illinois in October 1855, and the making of a new home on the prairies, among foreigners, with strange and romantic surroundings. The homestead in Ohio from which we moved was a ten acre farm four miles east of Circleville in Pickaway, Co. A year or so before we moved the house burned down, but little being saved from it.
    
    "The purpose of moving to Illinois....a far away and strange Eldorado to us all...was to get more land where the boys might be put to work and aid in making a living. A year or two before this removal Father and a friend made a prospecting trip to Illinois in a one horse buggy. On this trip he bought a fine quarter section of fertile prairie land in McLean Co., a few miles east of Bloomington. But in arranging to make the Western move he united, for company's sake and mutual helpfulness, with a friend from Fairfield Co., Solomon Lincoln, who was moving to Illinois that fall. Lincoln was a distant relative of Abraham Lincoln of Springfield, near which was to be our future home. This friend, Solomon Lincoln, had relatives living in Logan Co., and so it happened that father went direct to this county instead of McLean Co.
    
    "In that early day nothing could be done with land until it was fenced and sod broken up for a season before planting. Fencing cost as much as the land was worth....sometimes a good deal more. Father had not the means for these improvements or to build a house to live in. With friends in Logan Co. he could pass the winter there more easily. Before spring he bought an 80 acre farm partly improved, with a small two-room house on it, two miles west of Mt. Pulaski, and three or four miles from where we spent the winter. He soon traded the McLean Co. land for the mortgage notes he gave for this land.
    
    "But we have run ahead of our story. The journey was made in October 1855. A two-horse wagon and a one-horse buggy was the means of travel. The buggy had two seats, one small and low with the dash board for a back, for two or three children to occupy. The wagon contained a few household goods, including a barrel of flour and other provisions, and some cooking utensils. Father drove the wagon and Mother the buggy, having with her two or three of the smaller children. Daniel was old enough to help a good deal, driving the buggy part of the time. The trip took about two weeks. Until the first Sunday our teams were in constant company of a hundred or more covered moving wagons. Father and Mr. Lincoln rested over the next Sunday, the others going on. The balance of the journey the wagons of these two families were the only ones in sight for hours at a time. Our route lay through Dayton, Richmond, Indianapolis, Terre Haute, Paris, Ill., and on across the virgin prairies to Decatur, Ill., then on to the vicinity of Mt. Pulaski. For the first winter the two families lived in a small three room cabin near Salt Creek, a tributary of the Sangamon.
    
    "Uncle Matt moved out in the spring and bought a farm of 120 acres a short distance east of our farm. There we began to make a home in true pioneer fashion, on the level, undrained prairie, and with not a little privation, and longing to be back in good old Ohio. In a year or two an addition was built to the house of one and a half stories, of four rooms.
    
    "All our nearest neighbors were recent immigrants from Germany, who could speak little if any English. The work was hard and a few years unremunerative. But the wild beauty of the prairie, rank in the spring and early summer with strange vegetation, profuse with wild flowers and wild birds, an abundance of wild turkeys, geese, ducks, prairie chickens, and quails in the winter time. The water flooded stretches in the spring time, and the weird awe inspiring prairie fires in the fall, still fascinate me after the lapse of half a century. To view a little patch of prairie grass, or the sun flower like bloom of the old despised rosen weed, brings in most vividly, a rush of long dormant memories.
    
    "The great event of all our family history in Illinois was the Civil War of 1861-1865. We lived in the midst of the great historic forces involved in this war. We lived only about 20 miles from Springfield, the home of Abraham Lincoln. The first political speech the writer [Mathias Hathaway] ever heard was when he accompanied his father to Lincoln, the county seat, and heard A. Lincoln speak from the steps of the old Court House.
    
    "The two Ambrose families living side by side, were in many respects, as one family. At the outbreak of the War there were four sons in these two families old enough to bear arms in the martial strife. They inherited from abolition and patriotic fathers and mothers the animus that bore them without delay to the front, and before the strife ended there were four more with them. At the close of the conflict, all returned home unscathed except the oldest son of Uncle Matt, Levi P. who was killed at the battle of Corinth, Miss.,Oct. 5 1862, his body being buried where he fell.
    
    "That was closed, a new era for our family began. Our family had a heritage of desire and ambition for more education than was afforded by the meager facilities of our still country home. The older ones never attended a district school closer than two miles, and that across fields and unbridged sloughs, but as our going was only during two or three winter months these sloughs were often glacially bridged.
    
    "Daniel spent a year in college before the War and a year after, and all the others followed more or less faithfully his example. With one or two exceptions all taught school for various periods.
    
    "In 1873, the writer and his bride of less than a year went to Avalon, Missouri to take charge, as Principal of Avalon Academy. A year later, father sold his farm in Illinois and moved to Avalon, that the younger children might have better educational advantages than they had in Illinois. There they lived for more than twenty years, and there five of the brothers found life companions. Father and mother enjoyed church and social privileges that made calm and peaceful their declining years, and there, side by side, their dust lies; and all nine children scattered far and wide, rise up and call their memories blessed."
    
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    There are few men better known in this part of Livingston county and the surrounding country than the father of the subject of this Sketch, Lewis D. Ambrose, and it is eminently proper that an outline a brief of his life work be given proper mention in this connection. Lewis D. Ambrose was born in Highland county, O., May 23, 1817. His grandparents were natives of Germany and soon after the close of the Revolutionary War came to America, locating in Berkeley county, W. Va., where they reared a large family of children. It was there that Lewis' father, William Ambrose, was born, reared and married, his wife being Miss Susanna Crum, of the same locality. In 1813, they moved to Highland county, O., cleared and improved a heavily timbered tract of land and there passed the remaining years of their lives, leaving at their death nine children, Lewis being the youngest. They were earnest Christian people, and for years Mr. A. was an itinerant minister in the U. B. Church. The early life of Lewis D. Ambrose was as uneventful as that of most farmers' boys and the only education he could secure was what the early subscription schools afforded at the time. When 13 years old he became converted and connected himself with the U. B. Church, and when only 20 years and he began ministerial labors for that organization. January 17, 1839, Miss Nancy Leib became his wife, her birth having occurred in Fairfield county, O., April 8, 1819. In 1855 Mr. A. moved to Logan county, Ill., continuing farming and the work of the ministry for 19 years, when he sold out and came to his present location in this county and township. Since then he has for the most part given his attention to agricultural pursuits, though his earnest and laborious efforts in local ministerial work and in behalf of the Avalon College, in which he has always taken such a warm, active interest, have occupied him not a little of the time. He has labored zealously for the success of both school and church, and it is an acknowledged fact that much of the prosperous condition of each of these bodies at present is due to Mr. Ambrose. The following children have been born to himself and wife: Susan C., Catherine, Daniel L., a journalist of Mt. Pulaski, Ill.; William H., an attorney of Delavan, Ill., Matthias H., a self-educated man and a graduate of Otterbein University, of Ohio, and the first principal of Avalon College; Samuel W., a merchant at Avalon; Mary E., the only living daughter, wife of A. W. Jones, M. D., of Westerville, O.; Jacob G., a farmer and carpenter of Mitchell county, Kan.; David E., also a graduate of Otterbein University and now a teacher in Sangamon county, Ill.; George F., a dentist of Garnett Kan., and Hugh M., referred to below. Three of these sons served in the late war, Daniel L., William H. and Matthias H., who were members of the 7th Illinois volunteer infantry; Daniel held a lieutenant's commission in Co. H. Hugh M. Ambrose is numbered among the representative men of Livingston county. He attended Avalon College, where his course was marked with unusual brilliancy, and subsequently he was called to the chair of Ancient Languages in that institution, a position he has since filled with universal satisfaction and credit. Thorough and proficient in all that he does, those who are favored with his instruction can not but he benefited. He has also been brought into official prominence in this county through his election to the position of county surveyor and at present he is the incumbent of that office. His life work has indeed been of great good, but the future holds out for him still greater and brighter prospects.