milligan

The
Biography
Of
John Milligan II

Written and contributed by Thomas L. Milligan

Presented by Arkansas Genealogy Trails

Representative John Milligan II
Ca.1842 in the only image left of him
on the planet.

Early History

John Milligan II was born in Triadelphia, West Virginia most likely in between the years of 1795-1799. During these years the city of Wheeling, W. Virginia was incorporated. He was one of the last children born to John Milligan I and his life long wife, Sarah (Robinson) Milligan on their 100 acre homestead and farm on Peter’s Run that was located just north of what would become the town of Triadelphia a few years later.
This was an exciting time for the development of the area around Wheeling. Monument Place was built a few years earlier in Elm Grove by Colonel Moses Shepard and was about the time that Josiah Thompson was building the Lawson Tavern, which was the first permanent structure of present day Triadelphia. It still exists today as “The Lawson House” on the north side of the “Old Pike.” There was even talk and politics getting started to build the “National Road” (Old Pike) that would start in Pennsylvania and terminate someplace on the Ohio River near Wheeling. Construction started on the National Road in 1806 after the bill was passed by congress and signed by President Jefferson. The road was completed all the way to Wheeling by 1818.
John Milligan II grew up in this environment of construction and seeing travelers of all walks of life. There were Politicians such as Henry Clay, adventurers like the eccentric Davy Crockett, road workers, mail stages coming through, Pioneers and settlers looking to travel to the Ohio Territory and points westward from Wheeling. On the western shore of the Ohio River was Zane’s Trace that would take people a few hundred miles into the Ohio Territory before turning south and back again to the Ohio River just north of Lexington, Kentucky. The Ol’ Lawson Tavern was a place where people could stop and rest from a hard day's ride on the Pike. They could even rest their horses, oxen or cattle while they refreshed themselves for the night at 2 bits (25 cents) per head. The “Road” brought commerce to the Wheeling and Triadelphia areas. John Milligan’s farm lay just north of Triadelphia and I often wonder if the Milligan boys didn’t hire themselves out at the Tavern to make sure a traveler’s horses were fed, watered and rested for the night or their oxen and cattle had plenty of grazing before their owners would start off again in the morning. John Milligan I, no doubt, knew a lot if not all of the early settlers of the area and helped with the building of their homes and other structures. He also worked his Tannery that was located on his 100 acre farm. This was a very exciting place to grow up in those years.
In or about 1816 or 1817, John Milligan II became a traveler himself. He struck out, when he was of good age, to make a life of his own. He was a young man ready to experience the world that lay just outside his door, ready to travel to the places he had heard other travelers mention in their stories at the Lawson House. One has to wonder what Trail he took to get to the Arkansas Territory. Did he travel on the National Road to the Ohio River and take a flat bottom boat all the way down to the western shore of the Mississippi River? Did he take the National Road to Zane’s Trace and travel to Lexington, Kentucky (Which was also a city just being settled in those days) and continued on to Tennessee (Memphis Area) and across the Mississippi to Arkansas from there? The Author has even heard of the speculation that he may have run into the Thomas Lincoln Family just west of Lexington. Tom Lincoln had just lost his own 3 homesteads to the tax collector and ended up moving his wife and young son, Abe, to Southern Indiana. I researched this and found that there is absolutely NO evidence to support this chance meeting. We, perhaps, may never really know exactly what John Milligan’s route was but we know this for fact: by 1818 he not only got to Lawrence County in the Missouri Territory (Reeds Creek area), but he had met and married the grassroots widow, Eda (Jeffery) Ragsdale, of the James and Jane (Mason) Jeffery family, who also had just arrived in Reeds Creek in 1816.

Follow the link at the bottom of each page
for the continuing saga of John Milligan II

James and Jane (Mason) Jeffery Family