Ezekiel Ray ²

  General Notes:

Possible 2nd marriage:
Rebecca Baird (15 Oct 1848, Spencer Indiana)
But this wouldn't jive with the supposed death date for him.
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Buried in the Grandview Cemetery (Grandview, Spencer County, Indiana) is an Ezekiel Ray who died 17 September 1840, aged 19. Could this perhaps be a son?
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Various Spencer County 'Ray' marriages:

Thomas Goode to Nancy Ray, April 18, 1829, by Uriah Lamar, J. P.
John Hammond to SarahRay, May 12, 1823 or 1833
James L. Ray to Catherine Sams, March 17, 1823
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According to an interview of Ezekiel's daughter Elizabeth, printed in Footprints of Abraham Lincoln. by J. T. Hobson (1909), Ezekiel was born in Ireland and came to the states at the age of three. His father settled the family in Tennessee.
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Received all of the following info from Carol Tessen:

Appears on 1797 Warren Co., KY Tax list

Warren Co. Court Order Book 1
Written: March 6, 1798

John HOUCHIN, Peter SIMMONS, Lewis WILLS and John PHELPS to view for a road from the courthouse to the county line towards BULLITT's lick and make report. Michael HALL appt Constable for the county; took oaths; John HALL security.
Ezekiel RAY, John DENTON and Jonathan HOLKUM to view for road from Will PRYOR's on the middle fork of Drakes Creek to Will ANDERSON's on the main fork of the creek and that James STEPHENSON, John BUTLER Sr and Will LIMAN? Sr view from there towards the Logan Co courthouse. John HOWE produced credentials as a minister of the gospel and allowed to perform marriages in the county; Robert WALLACE his security. NOTE: John Howe was a Presbyterian minister and very early had a church in Barren Co; then went to Green Co where he preached and died. Thos BAITS, Dudly ROUNTREE, Jacob BAGARD, Thomas MORRISON (any 3) to view for a road from Samuel ROUNTREE's on the Green River to Prewitt's Knob and make report. Alterations ordered on the road from AMOS's Ferry to Scags Beaver Creek.

1803. Early Tax Lists of Warren Co., Kentucky. Ezekiel Ray, Waterway: Drakes Creek, From: Self. John Ray, Waterway: Bays Fork/Hungry, From: Self.

According to the "History of Warrick, Spencer and Perry Counties, Indiana" The second settlement in Spencer County was made in Hammond Township by Uriah Lamar (uncle of Ezekiel's wife Jerusha) and Ezekiel Ray in the year 1808. Ezekiel selected land near where Grandview now stands and Uriah chose a farm a mile or so northeast. Ezekiel did not enter this land until October, 1811 on sections 7 and 8, Township 7, range 5 at the Territorial Land Office at Vincennes amounting to 553 acres. In July, 1814 he bought on section 5, Township 7, Range 5, now western Grandview.

The following is taken from a booklet commemorating the Rockport Indiana Spencer County Sesquicentenial.

" On a morning early in 1807, after the Spring floods had receded, a log raft made of trees felled the preceding winter was pushed off the Kentucky shore at the mouth of Blackford Creek. It was poled to the north bank of the Ohio River, landing below the mouth of the Big Sandy Creek in Indiana Territory. (Blackford Creek is in Hancock County, Kentucky)

Ezekiel Ray his wife Jerusha, and his six sons, William wife Nancy and family, James, David, Elijah, Uriah and Thomas stepped ashore and the first permanent settler had arrived in what was to become Spencer County, Indiana, settling in a cabin left by some passing trapper at the foot of present Sycamore Street." ( I do not know why our Samuel is not mentioned in this history as a son of Ezekiel, but he definately is.)

1815 Perry Co., Indiana Tax list for June and July
listed William Ray, James Ray and Ezekiel Ray

During the Indian uprisings from 1812 to 1815, one of the six Block Houses ordered by the Territorial Governor, was built at the present western boundary of Grandview on land owned by Ezekiel Ray. It was a strongly built log cabin with loop holes in the sides. The foundation of this Block House could still be seen in the early 1900’s overlooking the river, at the site of the present Chester Dawson home.

Across the road a log school was built on land donated by Ezekiel Ray and the first teacher was a Thomas Miller. This structure was used for years until a frame school was built on Vine Street near the original Methodist Church. The Ray family graveyard was just east of the log school. In the 1960’s, with the consent of the living descendants in the Grandview neighborhood, the graves and markers were removed to the Grandview Cemetery to make way for a new subdivision by the Grandview Civic Organization.

In the January flood of 1817, according to the same booklet commemorating the Rockport Indiana Spencer County Sesquicentennial, Thomas Lincoln, father of Abraham, came at dusk to help Ezekiel Ray build a scaffold onto which they shoveled corn to get it out of water's reach. Thomas Lincoln had settled in Spencer County in 1816 on land near the present Lincoln City and was well known by the Ray and Lamar family. Two years later in October Abraham Lincoln's Mother was buried on the wooded knoll across from the memorial, Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, lived here from 1816 -1830. During the summer of 1817 and 1818, Thomas Lincoln worked with Ezekiel Ray building flat boats on the Big Sandy. It is reported that Young Abe often watched. In April of 1829 when Elizabeth Ray, daughter of Ezekiel, married Rueben Grigsby at the house west of Grandview, Abe was a guest at the wedding but did not attend the "infare" honoring the couple because he did not have clothes to fit the occasion. Rueben's brother Nathaniel was a well documented childhood friend of Abraham Lincoln whom Lincoln stayed in touch with well into his Presidency. An older brother Aaron Grigsby married Abraham's older sister, Sarah in Spencer County. No doubt there were some Rays at the festivities.

In July of 1817 Ezekiel Ray bought more land in section 5 of Township 6 south, Range 5 west

ORGANIZATION OF SPENCER COUNTY

Located between the river settlements of Louisville and Owensboro, Kentucky, and Evansville, Indiana, present-day Spencer County remained largely untouched by settlement in the first decade of the nineteenth century. The first Federal land survey of the area took place in 1805. The small village of Troy, Indiana, in neighboring Perry County was situated on the east bank of the Anderson River at its confluence with the Ohio River. Squatters settled here as early as 1800 and the locale's readily available supply of hardwood forests later attracted investors Nicholas J. Roosevelt and Robert Fulton, who established a lumberyard at the site to provide fuel for steamboats. Downriver, the tiny village of Grandview in Spencer County was settled by a group led by Ezekial Ray, and in 1803, John Sprinkle squatted on high ground east of Pigeon Creek. Uriah Lamar also has been suggested as one of the first (albeit illegal) settlers in Spencer County, making his homestead in present-day Hammond Township. Meanwhile, a cluster of cabins midway up a bluff alongside the Ohio River was known as Hanging Rock after a pair of massive columnar rock formations. Arriving in 1807, Daniel Grass changed this community's name to Mount Duvall. The same year, Grass generally is held to have made the first legal land entry in Spencer County. His homestead was located in Section 26 of Ohio Township. Approximately five years after purchasing the land, Grass and his family moved from Bardstown, Kentucky. At that time, little settlement had taken place on the Indiana side of the Ohio River, and Grass reportedly traveled to Owensboro, Kentucky, to obtain supplies. [124]

www.nps.gov/libo/hrs/hrs5b.htm Lincoln Boyhood Historic Resource Study, Darrel E. Bigham, Towns and Villages of the Lower Ohio (Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1998), 27-28; Bearss, Lincoln Boyhood, 54; History of . . . Spencer County, 258-259, 263, 668; D. J. Lake & Co., An Illustrated Historical Atlas of Spencer County, Indiana (Philadelphia, Pa.: D. J. Lake & Co., 1879), 8.

History of Warrick, Spencer and Perry Counties, Indiana, From the Earliest Time to the Present; Together with Interesting Biographical Sketches, Reminiscences, Notes, etc. Chicago: Goodspeed, Bros. & Co., Publishers, 1885. Page 504.

1818-1968 Rockport-Spencer County Sesquicentennial.

Ezekiel Ray born abt. 1760 Va -- died 1819 Spencer Co IN-- Lived TN, KY, IN-- Married Jerusha unkn. All ten of their children settled in Illinois. Two of their sons (David & Elijah Ray) settled in Green Co IL.

Ezekiel married Jerusha Lamar, daughter of Benjamin Lamar and Unknown, between 1775 and 1794 in Tennessee. (Jerusha Lamar was born about 1775 in Tennessee and died about 1830.)