Roach family of Moundville

This family has presented one of the great research challenges as we tried to study pioneer Moundville residents buried in Beckmon Cemetery in Harrison Township. A very unfortunate misspelling must have occurred on the grave marker that caused a lot of debate as to what the surname was. The old grave marker obviously lists the subject buried there as Isaac C. Rouch and we even debated if the name was Rough. There appears to be adequate evidence now to solve this mystery and its neither. The explanation will follow.

While working on other burials in Beckmon Cemetery, I found a family whose name made me think of Isaac Rouch. In the 1880 census for Harrison Township, Vernon County, Missouri, where Beckmon Cemetery is located, is the following:

As we had researched Beckmon Cemetery, we found that most of the folks buried there had come to the area through Scott County, Illinois. So when I checked the 1870 census for that county, sure enough, there they were:

There was a state census for Illinois for 1855, and Isaac Roach appears in it but that census did not give other information other that he had a wife and 2 daughters.

Then going back to 1850, the family is in Pike County, Illinois with two older children:

Then there is the marriage for Isaac and Nancy in Scott County, Illinois. Isaac Roach married Nancy GREGORY on July 18, 1845. That is exciting in itself because there is another Gregory marriage in Beckmon Cemetery. Dinah Beckmon had married Henderson Gregory AND were in Scott County, Illinois before coming to Missouri. Also, when I looked at another's personal research Ancestry.com, I found that Nancy Gregory was the daughter of William Henry Gregory and Elizabeth KEMP - there are several Kemp's in Beckmon Cemetery.

Here is the grave marker for of Isaac "Rouch". He was born in 1825 and died in 1882. It is at Beckmon Cemetery - a deserted cemetery located 3 miles west and one mile south of Moundville, Harrison Township.

 

Note: We long debated the spelling of the last name on this grave. Old indexes have said this is Isaac Rouch. We even discussed whether it might be Rough. As it turns out, it appears that neither was correct.

I have taken the liberty to "fix" the stone like I think this evidence proves. At first mistaking Roach for Rouch sounds like a major error, but if the name is written in cursive, a lower case "A" can easily be mistaken for a lower case "U" - and thus the error. The 1870 census says that none of the family could read or write - perhaps they never knew the difference!

 

Let me know if you disagree with my analysis of this grave marker.

Contact us if you know more about this family.

Go back to the Moundville page.

This genealogy page was designed and is maintained by Lyndon Irwin