The Jaqua Family of Seneca County existed in that county for fifty-eight years.
In 1822, Richard & Elizabeth Jaqua, with their young family of three boys and
four girls (the eldest child 12 years) removed to Seneca County, Ohio, from the
township of Gains, Genesee County, New York. Richard had purchased land for his
family on July 8th, 1822 at the land office in Delaware, Ohio. His tract of
land was located in Eden Township, which is in the southern part of Seneca County.
A full description of his land reads as thus: "The Southwest Quarter of Section
Thirteen, in Township One, north of Range Fifteen, in the district of Delaware and
State of Ohio, containing one hundred and sixty acres." This piece of ground that
was to be the future home of Richard's family was wild timberland, with a small,
winding stream running through a portion of the land. It was inhabited only by
wolves, bears, deer, wildcats, foxes and numerous smaller wild animals.
Richard paid for his land with gold coins. By a public land act, passed by
Congress on April 24th, 1820, the land office at Delaware had ceased to sell
government land on credit. Richard paid one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre,
or a total sum of two hundred dollars--with either five dollar gold pieces known
as "half eagles", or with ten dollar gold pieces known as "eagles". Possibly, he
paid with a combination of the two. More than likely, he had five dollar gold pieces,
since ten dollar gold pieces were not struck between 1805 and 1837. Richard could
not have paid with one dollar or twenty dollar gold pieces, since none were coined until 1849.
Shortly after arriving upon their land, the Jaqua family and friends erected
their log house and slowly commenced clearing the dense forest surrounding their
new Ohio home in the wilds of Seneca County. Their eldest son, Ambrose, was nine
years of age in 1822 and probably helped his father with the clearing of the brush
and smaller timber. Their two youngest sons, Seth and John Curtis, were little boys
and would have been too young to help in any way.
The following spring- of 1823, a baby girl was born to Richard & Elizabeth in
their new wilderness home. They named her Juliann. Their growing family now
numbered ten, with eight children at the dinner table. March of 1825 brought
an eleventh member of the family into the Jaqua household, a girl, whom her parents
named Clarissa. Their tenth child arrived in April of 1827, whom they chose to
name Emily Jane. The Summer of 1829 no doubt brought much happiness, for on
June 30thof that year, the cries of a bouncing baby boy were heard inside the
Jaqua home. Richard and Elizabeth proudly named their new son Uriah Drake Jaqua.
Uriah would later in life serve his country during the Civil War. Sons were important
and highly valued in the early nineteenth century, since they provided the necessary
manpower for the strenuous work on the farm.
Almost exactly three years later, on June 20th, 1832, Eliza came into the world,
making her twelfth child in this prolific family of Jaquas. The last child of the
family was born in November of 1834. This child was a little daughter whom
Richard and Elizabeth named Oliva. (Oliva is the only daughter of whom we have
an existing photograph. She gracefully posed with her husband John Casky for the
photographer and his camera captured her natural beauty for all her posterity to see).
The family would later call her "Olive" to shorten her name.
The birth of Oliva brought to a close the childbearing years for Elizabeth Jaqua.
She was then forty-four years of age, and we can be safe in assuming that she was
a tired forty-four years.... who depended upon her older siblings in her household
to "do their share.'' Elizabeth's first child, Margaret, was born in 1810 and her
last child, Oliva, was born in 1834 - making a total of twenty-four years of
bearing her offspring.
As Richard and Elizabeth's children grew to maturity, they married and moved away
to the neighboring areas, townships and counties. Their second son Seth was the
only one that never married.
In 1851, when Richard was sixty-four and Elizabeth sixty-one, they sold their
one hundred and sixty acre farm to a neighbor and then purchased twenty-two and
one half acres a short distance down the road from where they had first settled
in 1822. The smaller acreage was closer to Melmore, which was the nearest
village, located on a stream known as "Honey Creek", where the family traded.
Their new purchase of land included a large two story frame house (which still
stands in 1982) with four wood-burning fireplaces, two on the main floor and two
upstairs in the larger bedrooms. The third bedroom upstairs that is at the end
of the hall does not have a fireplace.
The large living room has wainscoted walls. In the center of the south end
wall, there-is an attractive, red brick fireplace with a red brick hearth. The
woodwork is of the traditional style, paneled on each side, with a high mantle.
On each side of the fireplace there is a large closet with wooden doors. On the
rear wall, there is a window and a heavy, paneled door that opens to the outside.
The wide, thick plank flooring in the living room runs the length of the house,
in other words, from the south end wall to the north end wall. On the front wall
there is a window and a heavy, paneled door that leads to the outside.
The kitchen has the distinct appearance of a Colonial home. The dominating
feature is the massive, fieldstone fireplace with its fieldstone hearth. The
opening measures seven feet across and four and one half feet high, allowing ample
room to accommodate the iron cooking crane, which held Elizabeth's kettles, etc.
To the left of the fireplace, there is a round, red brick baking oven with a
wooden, paneled door two feet wide. The depth of the brick oven is four feet,
nine inches. These ovens were built large because families were large and loaves
of fresh bread were always on the dinner table at mealtime.
Over the fireplace and the oven, there is a long, wooden mantle, measuring
eleven feet, five inches in length, which no doubt served Elizabeth as a useful,
practical convenience, rather than a mere decorative shelf. The distance from
the top of the mantlepiece to the fieldstone hearth is five feet, five inches.
To the right of the fireplace there is a narrow built-in cupboard with shelves,
covered by a paneled door. To the right of this cupboard, there is a large pantry
with a paneled, wooden door. On the rear kitchen wall, there is a window and a
heavy, paneled door that opens to the outside. Near this door, on the inside wall,
there is a paneled door that opens to a storage area and to the left, there are
steps leading to the cellar. On the front wall of the kitchen, there is a
window and a heavy, paneled door that opens to the outside.
The flight of stairs leading to the upper floor is between the living room
and the kitchen, with the foot of the stairs located near the front wall of the
house. The head of the stairs is near the rear wall of the house, where the long
upstairs hall passes it. The longest section of the hall runs over the kitchen,
which is beneath it.
The house measures thirty-six feet across and eighteen feet in depth. There
are tall chimneys at both ends of the house that are concealed within the thick
walls until they extend beyond the roofline. The front of the house has two outside
doors and two windows on the first floor and four windows - all identical in size
- on the second floor. The rear of the house has two outside doors and two windows
on the main floor, of which three of these windows are in the long upstairs hall.
At the north-end of the upstairs hall, there is a door that opens to a small,
square room, which exposes the massive stone kitchen fireplace chimney that
towers to the attic and roof line. This room also exposes the construction of
the house, hand-hewn timbers joined and pegged with long, tapered wooden pegs.
Between the timbers, there are thick blocks of clay and straw, which served as
insulation against the cold winters.
The attic is floored, with two small windows at each end of the house - one
on each side of each chimney. The house has a cellar, with the walls constructed
of large, native fieldstone and is underneath the entire house. The cellar reveals
the massive stone and hand-hewn timber base of the large kitchen fireplace. All
of the floor, wall and ceiling beams are hand-hewn and all of the lath behind the
plastered walls are hand-split. Although the windows have been replaced over
the years, with no shutters on the house at the present, it no doubt originally
had shutters that could be closed. Many of the old houses in the immediate
area of the house still have their original shutters that are mounted on iron
hinges and are closed over the windows.
There is an English style barn measuring thirty-two feet by twenty-four feet.
The barn sets seventy-six fee from the rear of the house and is directly behind
the house. It was built with huge, hand-hewn beams. There is also a smoke house,
constructed from hand-hewn beams, which shows many seasons of use on the inside
walls and roof. There was an apple orchard on the south side of the house that
still stood in the 1970's. The trees were very old and the orchard had not been
attended to for many years. About two years ago (1980) the old orchard was cut
down and the area is now farmland, which has changed the overall appearance of
the former Richard Jaqua farm.
Elizabeth Jaqua expired in 1877 at the age of eighty-six and her husband Richard
Jaqua died in 1878, aged ninety-one. After the loss of her parents, whom she
attended to in their old age, Oliva continued to live in the house. Richard had
willed the house and the twenty-two and one half acres to Oliva and she shared
the house with her husband John Casky and their two children, Samuel and Nettie.
In 1880 Oliva died of consumption of the lungs, which ended the fifty-eight
year existence of the Jaqua family within the boundaries of Eden Township, Seneca
County, Ohio. At one time, this Eden Township family numbered fifteen members.
The old, but proud house still stands before the passers-by on the old "Kilbourne
Road" (now Route 67) bearing testimony of the husband and wife that lived the last
quarter century of their long, noble lives within its walls. For one hundred and
fifty years this fine old house has withstood destruction - either by natural
causes or by the hand of man. It has surely more than served its purpose, and now
stands vacant, awaiting its fate. But until its end arrives, we descendants have
the good forutne of being able to stand before it and say "This is the former residence
of our forebears, Colonel Richard and Elizabeth (Wiltse) Jaqua."
Richard and Elizabeth were buried in Rock Creek Cemetery, which is approximately three miles north of where they had lived. This peaceful, little rural cemetery is situated on the corner of two country crossroads. Their monuments are among the first row, alongside the road that runs from Route 67 to the cemetery. Oliva Jaqua Casky was buried next to her parents. There is a small, rocky, winding stream known as Rock Creek, that flows along the side of the cemetery thus its name creating a most picturesque final resting place for our ancestors. Their remains and monuments were placed there over a centur ago and they are still very much intact and legible.
Dale Brown's Family History Page
Author: Dale A. Brown
Last updated: August 23,2001
If you find errors in the information presented here or have comments
that would make the site more useful or user-friendly,
my email address is dbcpa55@hotmail.com.
