Ancestors

Harriet Rebecca Sullivan

Harriet Rebecca Sullivan, called Hattie, was born in August 1861 in Illinois and married Briant Barker in 1884. She bore at least twelve children and died on 20 December 1910 at forty-nine. She is buried at Nokomis Cemetery in Montgomery County, one county east of the Sangamon ground where the Barkers began.

Her memorial gives her birthplace as Cotton Hill, in Sangamon County, the township beside Rochester where the Williams family had first settled in 1822. Her husband's great-grandparents came into the county there.

Two photographs of her as a young woman have come down in the family. In one she is alone, head and shoulders, with a small cross on a chain at her throat. In the other she stands beside her husband, who is seated, with her hand on his shoulder and the same cross at her throat. Both are probably from about the time of their marriage.

Her death was registered by Montgomery County: Hattie Rebecca Barker, died at Nokomis on 20 December 1910, aged forty-nine. One stone at Nokomis Cemetery covers her, her husband Briant, who died in 1930, and a child named Rena M., 1907 to 1909.

Her parents are an open question, and an unusually stubborn one for a woman who died in the twentieth century. The family tree gives John Lewis Sullivan and Elizabeth Wier, with an Irish-born Dennis B. Sullivan behind them, which would make the Sullivans the one immigrant thread on the whole Barker half. The records do not bear that version out. The only Sullivan household with a Harriet at Rochester in 1870 has a John born in Illinois about 1834 and a wife Mary born in New York, with a Harriet born in New York about 1863, which contradicts both the tree and Hattie's own later censuses, where she is consistently born in August 1861 in Illinois.

No 1850 census of Sangamon, Shelby, Montgomery, Christian, Macon or Fayette County holds a Sullivan household with a John and an Elizabeth. The only Sangamon Sullivans that year are an Irish couple, Patrick and Mary. The Illinois marriage index holds no Sullivan who married a Wier, Weir or Wear anywhere in the state.

No known record names her parents. John Lewis Sullivan and Elizabeth Wier rest on the family tree alone and remain unconfirmed.

If Harriet Rebecca Sullivan is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Harriet Rebecca Sullivan (1861-1910)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/harriet-rebecca-sullivan-1861-1910-dbda21.