DANIEL TRAVIS JR. and RHODA GIBSON TRAVIS
(1783-1853)                              (1784-1844)

Daniel Jr. and Rhoda Travis are my fourth great-grandparents.  With them, my village landscape expands from Tennessee across Indiana and into the prairie of Illinois. 

Earlier biographers have passed along the story that Daniel Jr. left Tennessee to avoid the practice of slavery.  Certainly his father preached against the practice and there is no record of him owning any; although, other farmers in his area of Tennessee show up with slaves in the common censuses. His active participation in the Christian Church in Walnut Grove and his support of the abolitionist school, Eureka College, supports anti-slavery as his moral position.

Daniel Senior was Surety for the marriage of Daniel, Jr. to Rhoda/Rhody Gibson March 20, 1804 in Rutherford county, TN. The second marriage for Daniel, Jr. since his two eldest sons, Miles F. Travis and Barton W. S. Travis are consistently shown in censuses as having birth dates prior to 1804. 

Little is known about Rhoda Gibson, as is typical for women of this period. It is likely that her father was the James Gibson who appears on the 1810 census just a few properties away from Daniel Sr. and Daniel Jr. in Rutherford County. A James Gibson also shows up in Crawford County, Illinois in 1820 at the same time that Daniel, Sr. is listed on that census.

This same 1810 Rutherford census shows Daniel Jr. with two males under 10 years, (Barton and Amos?) and one male 10- 15 years, probably Miles F. There were two females under 10 years. One would have been Mary C.. The other is unknown. Also, there was a female 16-25, also unknown. Rhoda and Daniel are listed as between 26 and 45 but there is one more female over 45 that is unknown.

Early Tennessee Land Registers show that Daniel Jr. held land in Rutherford County in 1814. Also, the same register shows William Travis, possibly his brother, owned land near him on the north side of the Cumberland. 

The 1820 census shows Daniel Jr. as still in Rutherford in the town of Murfreesboro. Neighbors included Jonathan and Jackson Wharry, William Travis, John Travers, and Samuel Gibson.

Daniel and Rhoda's known joint children were: 

 1. Miles F. (c.1799-1888) He married Cynthia Wharry/Nichols 26 Sep 1820. They are my direct line and are treated more fully in another report. Miles remained in Rutherford County, living on the land that was part of his grandfather's estate. 

 2. Barton W. S. (c.1803- before 1851) His full name is probably Barton Warren Stone Travis, named after one of the primary founders of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ.  After his death, his brother Miles was named Guardian of his minor children, Amos Jr. and Daniel.

 4. Mary C.  (c1810-   ) She married Richard Sanders Jan 13, 1831 in Rutherford Co., TN.

 5. William A. (1811-2 May 1854) He married Martha B. Caldwell (1820-10 May 1854) on Dec. 14, 1843. They moved to Mississippi around 1850. They had three daughters and one son.

 6. Jane E.  (1814-1892) She married Francis Youree Hamilton 3 Jan 1833. They had two daughters and two sons.

  7. Sarah Caroline Travis (1825-1862) She married William S. Magarity 3 Nov 1842 in Woodford County, IL. They had three daughters and two sons.

All except Sarah Caroline were born in Tennessee. The 1880 census of Sarah's daughter, Rhoda Magarity, lists her mother as born in Indiana. 

Daniel Jr. is reported as living in Eureka, Woodford County, Illinois in 1824 and may have owned land there as early as 1823 based on Chancery Court Records showing a land transfer.

This was still a very rugged area and there are newspaper reports of the settlers taking shelter in the log fort during unsettled times with the tribes led by Black Hawk. The typical home was a log cabin and the fields were cleared with oxen teams.

The winter of 1830/31 brought the "Winter of the Great Snow". In December, the snow started falling and reached a depth of four feet that stayed until spring. Large numbers of animals died, and the settlers endured an incredibly hard season of cold and isolation. This appears to be the last time buffalo were seen east of the Mississippi. It became a dating point in pioneer legends. Residency before that became the qualification for membership in “Old Pioneers” groups or the special designation as a “Snowbird.” 

During Rhoda and Daniel’s residency here, wagons and a few stagecoaches were the main transportation. The roads were crude, and it wasn't until 1840 that the state took charge of some maintenance. A log bridge, one of few bridges in the area, crossed Walnut Creek and was known as Travis' bridge. The first railroad, the Illinois Central, didn't come to the area until 1856, a year after Daniel Jr.'s death.

In April 1832, Daniel and Rhoda joined the Walnut Grove Church of Christ as two of the founding 20 members. The church was organized in the log cabin home of John and Nancy Oatman, about one-half mile northeast of the railroad depot.  The son of William McCorkle, whose will Travis Sr. had witnessed, also moved to Woodford County at this time. Richard Blythe McCorkle was elected one of the first Elders in 1832 and Daniel Travis, Jr. was named a deacon. They held their meetings in homes, barns and groves until 1846 when the first meeting house was built. The site is now marked with the Soldiers' Monument in the Olio cemetery.

Eureka College grew out of this Church. The area was originally known as Walnut Grove and thus came the Walnut Grove Academy in 1848. It was founded by a group of abolitionists who had left Tennessee and Kentucky because of their opposition to slavery. When it was founded, it was the first school in Illinois to admit women on an equal basis. It is still affiliated with the Christian Church.
 

From the 1894 "History of Eureka College" by the Eureka College Alumni Association.


Rhoda died March 9, 1844. Her obituary reads: 

 Travis, Mrs. Rhoda

 Wife of Daniel Travis, Walnut Grove, Woodford Co., Illinois, died Mar. 8,1844, about 8 in the morning of pulmonary disease. She became sick in January, died at age 60, having been a member of the Church of Christ for 34 years.

The 1850 Woodford County federal census shows a Daniel Traverse age 69 in a household with Hannah, age 50, Martha age 18, and Margett, age 16. Nearby is the household of William S. Magarity and Daniel Jr.'s daughter Sara Jane Travis with their four children. It appears that Daniel Jr. remarried after his first wife's death, possibly to a widow with daughters. 

Daniel Jr. died February 24, 1853, and was buried next to Rhoda in the Mt. Zion cemetery in the Mt. Zion community of Eureka Illinois. Theirs are among the oldest graves in the cemetery.