Ancestors

Jehu Criswell

Jehu Criswell was born on 14 November 1793 in Maryland. He enlisted, married and was discharged in Baltimore County.

His parents are not known. One candidate is Samuel Criswell of Baltimore County, who was dead by 12 December 1812, when a James Criswell gave bond as administrator of his estate. At a Baltimore County estate sale of about 1813 to 1817, James Criswell bought the chest, a tea kettle, the Bible and hymn book, wool cards and a hackle, the tools for combing wool and flax, and a bed and bedstead. The other buyers were Gorsuches and Shipleys, the families of the district that raised Jehu's company. Samuel could have been the father of Jehu and Elijah, with James an elder brother. Nothing yet names Samuel's children, so it is a possibility only.

In the summer of 1814, at twenty, he was enrolled in Captain Benjamin Gorsuch's company of Baltimore County militia. The company belonged to Colonel Schutz's regiment in General Tobias Stansbury's brigade. On 24 August 1814 that brigade formed the first American line at Bladensburg, northeast of Washington, against the British army marching on the capital. The line broke, and that night the British burned Washington. Three weeks later they attacked Baltimore at North Point and Fort McHenry. His company was still embodied. He was discharged at Baltimore City in December 1814, about four months after he enrolled. A separate service card files him as a private in Randall's Battalion of Riflemen, Maryland militia.

Another Criswell served in the same company. Elijah Criswell, born in Maryland about 1792, a year before Jehu, was a sergeant in Captain Gorsuch's company of the 2nd Regiment of Maryland militia in the war of 1812. He married Ann Ogg at Baltimore on 23 March 1813. He never left northern Baltimore County, which became Carroll County in 1837, and he died there in 1851. He was very probably Jehu's elder brother. The two share a surname and a company, were born a year apart, and both married at Baltimore. Elijah's wife was an Ogg, and Mary Gardner's sister Rebecca married Moses Ogg. Elijah named a daughter Rachel, as the Gardners did.

He married Mary Gardner in Baltimore County on or about 16 March 1820, the date he gave under oath. Their eldest son was born in Maryland in 1822. Every child after him was born in Ohio, the first of them in 1826, which puts the crossing in the two or three years between. By 1829 the Tuscarawas County tax collector had Jehu Criswell on the Dover rolls, and he stayed on them year after year through the 1830s: 1829, 1830, 1831, 1832, 1833, 1834, 1837. A tax list is a thin record and a reliable one. It says a man was there, with something to tax, in a particular year, and seven of them in a row say he had come to stay. Ten children can be counted in the 1850 household.

His service paid him in land. He received two bounty land warrants, and he lived at Dover through the declarations of 1851, 1855 and 1871. In 1855 he took letters of administration on the estate of Ezra Grove, after the widow declined to act.

On 20 March 1871, at seventy seven, he swore a Declaration of Soldier for Pension before the Tuscarawas County Court of Common Pleas, with A. Hart of Washington as his attorney. He gave his post office as Canal Dover. The pension was granted.

Mary died in the winter of 1876. He died four years later, on 24 May 1880 by his stone and 27 May by the Pension Office. They lie together at the Fourth Street Cemetery in Dover under one obelisk, its base cut CRISWELL. His will is entered in the Tuscarawas County will records.

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Cite: Heirology, "Jehu Criswell (1793-1880)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/jehu-criswell-1793-1880-67c717.