Elksburg, Lewis County, Kentucky

[walkitout]

Another mystery place! I learned about this one from the 1820 census. Initial googling and mapping is not finding me Elksburg.

Lewis County was formed in 1806. It's right on the border with Virginia, if I understand the maps I am looking at. Any theories about Elksburg? There's an Amazon Gift Card/certificate in it for anyone who can track it down.

Nathaniel Hamlin was born there and his father died there. While he left in the 1830s, some of the Hamlins stuck around for a while. The county itself went for the Union during the war, and continued to be Republican for a while thereafter.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

My results place the county up near OH, not VA:

https://maps.google.com/maps?oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&channel=rcs&q=Lewis+County,+Kentucky&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x88441949bc702c63:0xf162a972fb318f8b,Lewis,+KY&gl=us&ei=s1CVUcGiDrOt0AHqioGACg&ved=0CJUBELYD

I can't find anything on Lewis township but I did find that many other genealogists were also trying to find info, all from that 1820 census.

You are correct -- it is near Ohio.

[walkitout]

I'm not sure why I typed Virginia. I was clearly deeply confused.

I found what you did when googling Elksburg Township (I'm assuming you meant Elksburg Township and not Lewis Township). And I went back and took a closer look at the tops of all the images of the pages of the Lewis County part of the Census and can find no reference to Elksburg. But that doesn't mean there isn't another element of the census that indicates Elksburg -- but it could also be a mistake at the way the data for this part of the census at ancestry.com is structured.

The fact that there is only _one_ township for all of Lewis County in the 1820 census is also interesting.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm thinking the whole thing must be a data entry error (possibly a modern one) in the 1820 census. In which case there is no particular reason to think Nathaniel Hamlin was in Elk Anything at all. I did see something about William Hamlin being born in Salt Lick Creek, but whether there's a town of that name or only the river (the north fork of the Licking River per http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/c/o/l/James-R-Columbia/FILE/0005page.html) I don't know. (It goes near Vanceburg in Lewis County.)

http://iagenweb.org/boards/audubon/obituaries/index.cgi?read=16300 says William was born in New Jersey before his family moved to Kentucky.

That's what I think currently as well

[walkitout]

Ironically, this is a more recent generation of the same family that you helped me find Huntington for in modern day New Jersey (turned out to be Pohatcong).

I've found (in ancestry.com) a copy of H.F. Andrews' history of Audubon County. I also found land records (ancestry.com) for Nathaniel Hamlin, definitely for Audubon County and I thought I found one for Mahaska as well. The Mahaska land was supposedly transferred to Nathaniel from one of his uncles, according to Andrews -- but I don't know which one. So I'll be poking around for a while here.

ETA: Andrews says that William was born in Lewis County, Kentucky, and built a cabin in Salt Lick and later a more pretentious dwelling. He does not indicate whether he was born in Salt Lick or elsewhere. *shrug*

Re: That's what I think currently as well

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Apparently there is a town called Salt Lick, but it's elsewhere -- Bath Co., not Lewis. I'm never going to Kentucky. It's too confusing. (Kidding.)

Elksburg no longer exists

[(Anonymous)]

Elksburg doesn't exist anymore, not that it was that big to begin with -- it quite possibly never appeared on any maps. My family is from the next county over from Lewis County (Fleming County)... it actually borders Ohio. Lewis County is a very rural area; the biggest town (Vanceburg) only has a few thousand people. In rural areas like that, every county has a hundred little 'burgs'... and if an area has three or more houses, someone probably gave it a name at some point.

I asked my grandfather where Elksburg was, and he wasn't sure, he had only heard mention of it when he was a kid (he was born in 1933). He had family members in the similarly tiny communities of Petersville (still in existence) and Esculapia Springs (doesn't exist anymore). More than likely Elksburg was an early 1800's 'burg' that was abandoned or destroyed by fire, etc.