Stephen Hamilton, Senior

Great Grandfather of

Mark B. Hamilton and Harry D. Hamilton

            Stephen Hamilton was a native of Pennsylvania.  After his marriage to Anna Elizabeth McAbee, a native of Maryland, they settled in Monongalia County, West Virginia.  In the spring of 1830 he and Mr. Lenox road horseback in search of a new home on the west.  Mr. Lenox, being interested in the milling industry was interested in the rolling hillside country near Luray, Indiana.  Mr. Hamilton, who was interested in farming, traveled on farther north in search of land more suitable for his vocation.  He found a site in the north of Muncie, where the timothy was growing seven feet tall, as a probable location for a new home.

            They returned to West Virginia and in the fall of 1830 both men and their families came by boat down the Ohio River to southern Indiana then traveled north by land to their chosen sites.  Mr. Lenox and his family settled near Luray south of Muncie in Henry County.  Stephen Hamilton and his family settled north of Muncie on what was later called the Old Granville Pike, now in the vicinity of Hamilton Park.

            Mr. Hamilton purchased two hundred forty acres of land from the government and subsequently added another tract of one hundred forty acres.  Here he and his wife Anna, and their eight children, began a new life in the backwoods of Indiana.  Their first dwelling was a rude log structure, eighteen by twenty feet in dimension, covered with a clapboard roof held in place by weighted poles.  The door was made of clapboard and fastened with wooden hinges.  Light was admitted to the domicile through a window in which greased paper was used instead of glass.

            For sometime after coming to this new country Stephen Hamilton supplied his table with meat of deer, bear, wild turkey and other game which abounded in the forest.  He acquired great skill with a rifle and no wild animal upon which he drew his deadly weapon was ever known to have escaped.

            Stephen Hamilton, Sr. was one of the original “Forty-niners” who sought the gold fields of far away California.  He, with his two sons Stephen Hamilton, Jr. and Archibald Hamilton, and twenty-nine other citizens started for the Pacific coast by a private conveyance to Richmond, Indiana, thence by stage to Cincinnati, Ohio at which place they boarded a steamer bound for New Orleans and across the gulf to Charges City.  Here another company of men, with spirits as daring as they themselves, joined the group.  They were detained six weeks when one of the men developed a fever.  He begged to be left behind, but they fashioned a litter and carried him across the Isthmus of Panama.  Here they chartered an English sailing vessel and proceeded on to San Francisco.

            The father, Stephen Hamilton, Sr. was engaged in mining for a period of eighteen months during which time accumulated a considerable amount of money.  He returned home to Indiana by the same route they had taken to California and resumed farming.

            The son, Stephen Hamilton, Jr. was twenty-three years old when accompanied his father on that long and perilous journey to the gold fields.  He stayed on and worked in the mines for a period of two years and two months.  Upon his return to Indiana, he invested the money he had accumulated in one hundred sixty acres of land in Delaware County.  This land is located to the south of what is now the Muncie Airport.

            Stephen Hamilton, Jr. was married on October 18, 1855 to Miss Rachel Moore.  They were the parents of ten children. The youngest son, Arch A. Hamilton, was the father of Mark B. Hamilton, Harry D. Hamilton, and Arch E. Hamilton who were all Past Masters of Whitney Lodge #229 F. & A.M. located in New Burlington, Indiana.

            Stephen Hamilton, Sr. and Stephen Hamilton, Jr. were members of Delaware Lodge #46 F. & A.M. located in Muncie, Indiana.  They were granted certificates of membership in that Lodge, good around the world.  These they carried with them in waterproof tin containers as identification on their journey with the “Forty-niners” to the California gold mines.

            After years of preservation in these tin containers, family members had the certificates mounted and framed.  Brother Kermit Cross, Past Master presented the certificates to Brother Mark B. Hamilton, Past Master and Brother Harry D. Hamilton, Past Master on the occasion of their 50-year Award of Gold Pins in Whitney Lodge #229 F. & A.M. on April 17, 1976.

            This article was researched and authored by Lucile Hamilton, wife of Mark B. Hamilton for over seventy-two years.  She was a founding member of Whitney Order of Eastern Star #564 and was Worthy Matron in 1942.  This article was edited and updated in the year after her death in 1999.  The certificate that belonged to Stephen Hamilton, Jr. was displayed in their home until that time.  That historic document and the tin container which protected it was presented and donated to Whitney Lodge #229 by their family on the occasion of the raising of their youngest grandson, Jeffrey A. Riggin, to the sublime degree of a Master Mason on July 10, 2000.