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** Gravesite Details aged 103years,2m.16d.,s/s with Johnathan. *
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*** From "Centennial History of Grant County, Indiana (1912)
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Mrs. Jonathan Havens. Of Grant county octogenarians the most interesting, both for age and for remarkable clarity of mind and faculties, is, properly speaking, not now eligible to that association of venerable men and women, since she is no longer an octogenarian but a nonagenarian. Mrs. Jonathan Havens is now past ninety-three years of age, is in perfect health, with mind as clear as a bell. She is one of the best known women in the county, and recalls with perfect ease her seventy years of experience. She is known and loved by everybody in the southern half of the county and the following brief record will be read and appreciated as a distinctive chapter in this history.
The Havens family comes down through a Pennsylvania stock, which during the eighteenth century was established in the southwestern part of Pennsylvania, in what was known as the Redstone section. The grandfather of Jonathan Havens was also Jonathan, and was of Welsh ancestry. The name was established in America during the Colonial days, and its first home was in New Jersey. It is thought that the name of the American settler was Abram Havens. He had twelve sons and most of them saw service in the Revolutionary war on the American side. One of them located in Connecticut, two in Virginia, and one in western Pennsylvania. The latter was Jonathan, grandfather of the Grant county citizen named at the introduction of this sketch. Another son located in Kentucky, while the other lived in New Jersey. As to religious affiliations they were all Presbyterians. Grandfather Jonathan Havens was a deacon in the church. His life was spent in farming in western Pennsylvania, and he died in 1802 when quite an old man. He married a Miss Lippencot, of Pennsylvania, and she outlived him a good many years. Among their children were James, Elisha, and Benjamin, besides some daughters, all of whom lived to be quite old, and had families of their own.
Benjamin Havens, the father, was born in Pennsylvania in 1785, was in early life apprenticed to learn the trade of harness maker, and by the death of his father was left an orphan at the age of seventeen. He later left his employer, and learned the trade of shoemaker and also of brick mason. He was a man of many trades, but was an expert in all of them, and performed a useful service in every community where he lived. He was married in 1816 in Fayette county, Ohio, to Miss Judith Davis, who belonged to the faith known as the Seven-Day Baptists. She was born in Ohio, and died in Clinton county of that state at the birth of her sixth child, being then in the prime of life. Her husband later married Mary Ann Carver, and in June, 1841, they came to Indiana and settled in Jefferson township of Grant county. Some years later they moved out to Iowa and while there his second wife died also in childbirth. Benjamin Havens then returned to Indiana with his children and died in Huntington county, February 6, 1848. His last child, a daughter, was adopted by a family in Iowa.
Jonathan Havens, the first son and second child of Benjamin and his first wife, was born in Fayette county, Ohio, November 17, 1819. He grew up in Ohio, and in November, 1841, came to Indiana, locating in Jefferson township. There his career was that of farming, and after some years he bought one hundred and twenty acres, on which he remained until his death, June 30, 1863. In religion he was a Methodist, and a strong Republican in politics.
Jonathan Havens was married in Fairmount, Jefferson township of Grant county, April 7, 1842, to Miss Gabrielle Clark. She was born in Bradford county, Pennsylvania, February 25, 1820. In 1837, when she was seventeen years of age, her family moved to Darke county, Ohio, and in 1838 to Fairmount township, Grant county. Her parents were James H. and Sarah (Simons) Clark, her father born in Bradford county, Pennsylvania, February 10, 1794, and died May 23, 1878, in Fairmount township, four miles up the creek from Jonesboro. Her mother was born March 16, 1796, and died in Grant county, October 27, 1885. They were married July 3, 1816, on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. The Clark family were farmers, Methodists in religion, and the father first voted the Whig ticket and later the Republican. James H. Clark was a son of John T. and Cynthia (Caswell) Clark, both natives of Bradford county, Pennsylvania, where they lived and died as farmers and Methodists. When John T. Clark was seven years of age, his father, Benjamin Clark, went away to serve as an American soldier in the Revolutionary war. Some time during that war the son John at one time was lost in the woods in Bradford county, near Wilkesbarre, and was for ten years away from his family. He was finally located when seventeen years of age, having been taken up and cared for after straying about three weeks in a large woods 70 miles through, and spent the next ten years in the home of a man living 60 miles away from the Clark place. Benjamin Clark died in Bradford county, Pennsylvania, when in old age. He came of English parentage, and his first wife was a Miss Hojet who died in the prime of life. His second marriage was to a Mrs. Shaw, whose first husband had been killed in the massacre of Wyoming Valley during the Revolution.
Mrs. Jonathan Havens was educated much more liberally than was the custom for young women in her time. Since the death of her husband she has lived on the farm of eighty acres near Fowlerton, up to 1893 when she bought a home in the village of Fowlerton. Mrs. Havens is the mother of the following children: 1. Sarah E. died after her marriage to William Leach and the four living children are Scott, Kerr, Hancock and Leach. 2. Mary D. is the wife of Alonzo Roly of Grant county in Jefferson township, and their children are Bailley, Cappy, Winnie, Jesse, Jennie, and Arlee. 3. Tabitha A. died after her marriage to Samuel Carmichael, and had two children, Eva and Edward. 4. John M. married Flora Baird, and lives on a farm in Jefferson township. The children are Jesse, Glen, Charles, Benjamin, Clyde, Ethel, and Edith. 5. Cynthia M. is the wife of William H. Mann, and has children, Roy, Charles, and one other; by a former marriage to Mark Norton she has one son, Benoni. 6. Martha is the wife of John Brewer, now living on a farm in Oklahoma, and their children are Ora O., Ernest O., Arnetta G., and James T. 7. Emma E. is the wife of Davis Peck, living at Eaton in Delaware county, and their children are Arlington, Barnett, Eva and Susan. 8. Clark J., who is now connected with the State Hospital, has the following children: William, Emma, Blanche, Hazel, Russell, and Cynthia E.
The descendants of Mrs. Havens are numerous, comprising thirtyseven grandchildren, fifty-nine great-grandchildren, and of her thirtyseven grandchildren, twenty-seven are married, and all are living and have children.
Mrs. Havens has been a worker in the Methodist Episcopal church since she was twenty-one years of age, and has been devoted to the cause of religion and morality. Though born February 25, 1820, while James Monroe was still president of the United States, she still possesses "a green and smiling age," and there is hardly a tremor in her hand to indicate any break in her physical faculties. There is no woman in the state who can so accurately call up dates and facts from the early half *of the nineteenth century as Mrs. Havens. To indicate her remarkable powers of old age, in December, 1911, she made a trip alone to Oklahoma, where she celebrated her ninety-first birthday with a daughter, and on May 30, 1912, returned to Indiana, also alone.
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** From http://wikimarion.org/Gabriella_Havens **
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Gabriella Havens
(101 YEARS OLD)
“I was born in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, February 25, 1820. In 1837 my father, mother and father and their nine children came to Ohio where we remained long enough to raise a crop (or about a year) then we came on to Grant County, Indiana. Father did not like the country and did not want to stay but we children started to clearing the land and so we remained.
“When I grew older I taught four terms of school, receiving two dollars per week. By and by a man came along who had a farm and he persuaded me to come and live with him. I would have been happier if I had not gone with him. Girls, never marry; just stay in Marion and teach until you are gray-headed; Lord, you ought to be happy!
“I was twenty-two years old when I married. I have done a lot of hard work. My husband and I cleared twenty acres of land. He would get discouraged with the farm work, then. I would go out into the fields and help him. We had eight children, so I had to work hard.
“My husband died June 30, 1863, and I was left with the care of the children, the youngest one being but three years of age; but we managed to get along. I would go out into the fields and work like a man. I raised those children with my own two hands.
“I had many chances to re-marry but I did not want a man. I never ran after the men; if I had, I’d a got one. One day I was out in the orchard with my children when a neighbor man came and asked me to marry him. ‘I guess not,’ I said, and turning to my children—’I will not leave them for any man.’
“What church do I belong to? I was a Methodist all my life until 1879 when I became an Adventist. Oh, I believe in it.
“You ask if my father had slaves? No-o-o-o, I guess not. Why, I would have burned my shirt to make a light for a run-away slave. My uncle sheltered Fred Douglas for four days in an ‘underground station,’ that being his cellar. He hid behind potato barrels, and they covered him with comforts to hide him from the slave owner.
“My great grandfather was in the Revolutionary War. My grandfather was seven years old when his father was called to war. The mother soon died and left grandfather with the care of four little sisters, two of them being twins but six wec’1-s old. Some neighbors took the little girls and grand father was sent down the river seventy miles with a flock of sheep. He took a saddle horse and food enough to do him a week. He was only seven years old and got lost in the woods. At night he tied himself to his horse so he could sleep and not lose it. For three weeks he wandered about and when his food was gone he ate with the horse—roots, grass, etc. At last he came to a ‘clearing’ and begged food. They took him in, but~he never got back to his family for seventeen years.
“Yes, those were heart-rending times.
“Oh, must you go? I wish you could stay longer. Well, girls, remember what I said—DON’T marry, and may the dear Lord bless you. Tell your friends that an old woman one hundred and one years old blessed you. Good-bye.”
This dear aged old lady was interviewed by Miss Gladys Cole (Senior, 1921) and Miss Straughan. She was sitting quietly in her old chair when they entered her room, apparently asleep, but when told there were two ladies who wished to talk with her she was instantly alert and delighted to talk with them about her “early days.”
It was an inspiration to see, the “light that fades not” in her countenance-and feel the benediction of her last words.
“Of such is the Kingdom.”
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1820 - 1923 (103 years)
