Too Many Janes: Finding Jane Van Cleave

Often with a woman what you don’t know is the maiden name. That as the case with Nancy, wife of George Washington Ratliff, who turned out to be Nancy McGee, a well documented Scotch-Irish family. But sometimes the problem is too many people in a family are named the same! And that is the case here. If one of your progenitors was Jane Vanderbilt, would not every family want to name a daughter Jane? And what that means is just about every tree containing the Van Cleave family has made a mess of the Jane Van Cleaves. The familysearch tree has gone as far as having a Jane Van Cleeve with two husbands during the same period and a bunch of kids in both families! It turns out the family is well documented by a number of different people so if you make a rather complete tree, you can figure out which Jane is which. Also keep reading for the Jane Van Cleave who married a brother of Daniel Boone!

The Van Cleave story starts when Jan Van Cleef immigrated to New Netherland about 1653. The colony of New Netherland was established by the Dutch West India Company in 1624 and grew to encompass all of present-day New York City and parts of Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey. What is now New York City began as New Amsterdam.

By the third generation, my 6th great grandfather Aaron Van Cleave born in 1704 in Staten Island moved first to New Jersey where all his children were born, but by 1780 he was in North Carolina, where he and his wife Rachel Schenck lived until they died.

My fifth great grandfather, Ralph Van Cleave (1747-1798) was born in New Jersey, married in North Carolina, and by 1790 was in Kentucky.

“Sometime during the first half of the Revolutionary War [1776-1779] the five Van Cleave brothers, Aaron, Benjamin, John, Billy, Ralph and their sister Jane emigrated to the territory of Kentucky. This was a vast wilderness inhabited by … Indians and wild beasts, the prowling panther, the wild cat and the catamount, huge buffalo, deer and elk, as well as bear. It was the perfect paradise for the hunter and those fond of adventure. … Their mode [of] travel is not given but it is evident that they traveled on horseback, carrying their bedding on pack horses, probably some road [sic] and some walked part of the time. It was a long journey, crossing the mountains into the territory of Kentucky. They camped at night along the trail. There is but one incident given during the entire trip. One morning as the women were getting breakfast by the campfire, a deer dashed up and stood near the fire, so, Aaron, son of Benjamin snatched up his brother’s (Sammy) ‘little shot gun’ and taking a rest between the forks of a small tree, shot the deer. The distance was short and it fell dead. This is the only incident remembered of the entire journey.”¹

Here is a summary of Ralph’s life from “The Van Cleave Story”². “Ralph Van Cleave was born about 1747 in New Jersey. He married Lydia Combs & moved to Ky. in 1775. His children included: Betsey (killed by Indians on 23 May 1790), Joseph, Jesse, Benjamin (married Nellie Foye; in 1813 at the Battle of the River Raisin he disappeared), Jane (married Nathan Chapman 1796) & Mary (never married).”

So there we have our Jane Van Cleave who married our Nathan Chapman. But there are more Jane stories to tell…

In 1765 in North Carolina Jane Van Cleave (1749-1829), a sister of Ralph Van Cleave, married Daniel Boone’s brother Squire Boone.³   This Jane Van Cleave bore one of the first children born in Kentucky. “Enoch Boone, son of Squire Boone and nephew of Daniel Boone, was born in a canebrake near Boonesborough, November 16, 1777; he died February 8, 1862, aged 84, on the bank of the Ohio River in Meade County, Kentucky, at the residence of his son-in-law, Judge Collins Fitch.”⁴

There are a number of stories told of the dangerous times in Kentucky… Here is one that comes very close to home…

“Ralph or Rutliff VanCleve (whose name is given in the two different ways, so it is not known which is correct) had a daughter, Betsey VanCleve, who, when she was about 20, was killed by Indians on the 23 May, 1790, when returning from Church. Miss VanCleve ran over a quarter of a mile before the Indians overtook and captured her. She was tomahawked and scalped, and though still living when found was insensible and died very soon after.”⁵

Here’s one that tells us a bit about life on the frontier living in a fort (often called a station). The Jane Van Cleave in this story later married Adam Wible in Boonesboro, Shelby County, Kentucky.

“At the head of the procession of women going to the spring marched Ruth [Munson] Van Cleave, wife of Benjamin [Van Cleave], and daughters Rachel and Jane were said to be along, but I think Rachel was too young, being only ten years old. Also Mary [Shepherd Van Cleave], the wife of John Van Cleave, brother of Benjamin, marched with them and probably her eldest daughters, Polly (or Mary) and Elizabeth. These women used to tell how they all marched [out] of the fort to get water at the spring. They marched at the head of the procession of women and when they arrived at the spring and were dipping water they could see Indians all about. They were fearful for their lives, but did not exhibit fear lest the Indians discover that they knew they were there. They finally all got back to the fort without giving any alarm to the Indians. Ruth and Mary and their daughters, as well as the other noble women were heroines of the day, and their deed of daring has been told in story and song.”

Our Jane Van Cleave (1779-1829), daughter of Ralph Van Cleave and Lydia Combs, married Nathan Chapman on 7 Jan 1796 in Shelby County, Kentucky.

There were many settlements or stations in Kentucky during this period. It is impossible to determine who lived where and when because people moved from place to place depending on Indian activities and for other reasons. For example, at one point there was a Van Cleave Station. Here’s some interesting stories from an interview with G. T. Wilcox, grandson of Squire and Jane Boone.

“Benjamin and Aaron Van Cleave, brothers of Squire Boone’s wife, lived in Squire Boone’s Station on Clear Creek in 1780. When Floyd’s Defeat happened in 1781, they made a settlement on Bull Skin Creek, called the Vancleave settlement.

“Benjamin’s son, Samuel Van Cleave, and another young man went to the woods to get some timber, and a party of Indians captured them. The young man put his arms around a tree and wouldn’t go with them, so they tomahawked him. They took Samuel with them, but in six weeks he made his escape, traveling 15 days and all he had to eat was one dryland terrapin, two young blackbirds, and pawpaws. Signed: G. T. Wilcox”⁶

How bad was it for the settlers in Kentucky during this period? Here’s a quote from Daugherty’s of Kentucky posted on ancestry.com: “By 1778 so many settlers had been killed, or had returned to their homes on the other side of the mountains, that all remaining settlers in Kentucky had moved into three gallant little forts. In that year Boonesborough was attacked by Indians, the siege lasting for nine days, the longest in border history. The battle called Estill’s Defeat, in the early spring of 1781, was one of the most controversial battles in Kentucky Indian warfare. The Battle of Blue Licks practically closed the Revolutionary War in Kentucky, but there were Indian attacks on settlers until the 1790’s .” ⁷

When I planned this story, I did not plan to go into the battles between the settlers and the Indians, but their troubles were too much of their life story to leave it out. These were not the only ancestors of mine who were in Kentucky during this period, which are stories I will tell at some point. Needless to say, I lost many relatives and even some ancestors in Kentucky. Although the French and Indian War was over and the Revolutionary War was over, the Indians living and hunting in the areas did not want to give up land that they felt was rightfully theirs. I will put some reading material in the section.

Before the (revolutionary) war, clashes between Cherokee and Shawnee hunters in Kentucky had become so commonplace that it was known as a “dark and bloody ground.” With the rise in Anglo-American settlements there the dark and bloody ground became a metaphor for the entire struggle for the Southern frontier.⁸

But now back to genealogy. Generally, the way to solve problems like who is who is to make the tree much wider and deeper than you had in mind if you were generally just following your ancestors. This is so you can use whatever resources you can find to figure out who is who. Look for not only records like birth and death, but also family histories online. Follow the children’s lives – they can often shed a lot of light on the lives of their parents. So now I have many Van Cleaves in my tree and many of their spouses and children.

Having found four Jane van Cleaves, I know the least about the Jane who married Noble Daugherty. The most of course about the one who married Squire Boone. Some about the wife of Adam Wible. And very little about my fourth great grandmother Jane Van Cleave who married Nathan Chapman. I do know that most of their children ended up in Indiana. Most of the children do appear to have been born in Kentucky but one of them reported on census records that he was born in Tennessee. My Chapman ancestors ended up in northwest Missouri and eastern Kansas. By 1847 my second great grandmother Martha Ellen Chapman (born in Indiana) married Thomas Andrew Spencer (born in North Carolina) in Platte County, Missouri. Martha Ellen Chapman was a granddaughter of “my” Jane Van Cleave (born about 1729 and died about 1829).

References and Other Materials

• Tales of the Van Cleave Elders
• The Van Cleave Story
• Blackmon, Richard D. Dark and Bloody Ground: The American Revolution Along the Southern Frontier. First Edition. Westholme Publishing, 2012
• Long Run Massacre and Floyd’s Defeat
• Firefight At Little Mountain — Estill’s Defeat
• Daniel Boone at Wikipedia (or choose your favorite Boone book)
• The Van Cleave Bicycle by Orville Wright (took its name from Wilbur and Orville’s ancestors)

1. Tales of the Van Cleave Elders
2. The Van Cleave Story
3. Squire Boone at Wikipedia
4. First Marriage and Births According to Collin’s History of Kentucky
5. From North America, Family Histories, 1500-2000, page 557. Accessed at ancestry.com
6. The Van Cleave Story
7. Daughtery’s of Kentucky
8. Blackmon, Richard D. Dark and Bloody Ground: The American Revolution Along the Southern Frontier. First Edition. Westholme Publishing, 2012