They say you can never go back to the way things were, but sometimes, its enough just to go back. Marlyn Mounger Peridon came back to visit the area her ancestors settled on Tuesday, June 2 in the company of local researchers and residents. This isn't unusual, as many people visit family in Douglas County, but the family Peridon found was special - they were some of the first free people of color to live in east central Illinois, at a settlement called Brushy Fork.
"I am 80% certain this is where your great great grandmother, Emily Bass Minnis, is buried," confirmed local researcher, Melinda Buchanan, as she and Peridon shared a moment in front of the commemorative marker labeled, "Negro Cemetery" at the center of Sargent Township. Peridon laid white roses on the memorial and expressed her gratitude for this meeting of the generations. "I was visiting my son in Chicago and came here as a favor to my daughter, Angie, who is really into this research, but I find myself deeply moved," noted Peridon.
Like many other families, Peridon's search for her ancestors began with a family tradition which said they were part Cherokee and Blackfoot. Back in the 1970s she and her sisters decided to see if they could track down their origins. They traveled all over the state of Kansas, looking in telephone directories and courthouses for relatives. "One lady that we called, said she had a family paper," explained Peridon, "that gave all the facts about the family back several generations but it was for my father's side of the family." The Native American connections were proven through her father, and her mother's paternal side.
Her grandmother's maternal side, the Minnis' from Illinois, has been more difficult to track down. Everything the sisters knew came from a couple of newspaper 
clippings about their great Uncle Alonzo Minnis. One article from a Topeka Kansas paper recognized him in the early 1960s as being 102 years old. In it he remembered being in a wagon train as the family moved from Illinois to Kansas when he was 12 years old. "My Daddy fetched a colony out from(Douglas County) Illinois, he recalled. There were about eight or ten wagons. And I walked almost all the way, killing game for the wagon train." Another article celebrated Alonzo and his brother, Edward, as some of the first Western cowboys in Kansas. They picked up cows at Dodge City, Kansas and drove them to Hutchinson, which was the closest stockyards. The article pointed out that Ed Minnis trained horses for Vanderbilt andoperated the first race track at Kinsley, Kansas. Ed was also the only black member of the prestigious Bird Dog Club because of his expertise in raising setters. The boys' parents were Edward (Ned) and Duphena Emily Bass Minnis. Emily descended from a family well-known in the Nansemond tribe of Virginia.
Angie Peridon Sandro remembers her mother and her Aunt Charlotte traveling from Pratt to St. John digging through library archives researching the families migration from Illinois to Kansas, and how both frustrating and elated they were when they found a clue as to the origins of our family. She recalls, "As I watched my mother and grandmother and the older generation start forgetting or passing away without ever sharing their memories it became ever more important to me to carry over the knowledge that my mother had found and build upon it for my children." A couple of years ago I did a search over the Internet for "Edward Minnis" and found an article written Sunday, January 16, 1967 by Frettia Lewis "Negro Cemetery's History In Douglas County Comes to Light" that had my ancestor listed and a location to start my search. Next I bought a membership with Ancestry.com and began searching. It was hard but so very exciting. I contacted my family and begged them for stories and pictures to add to my tree. Sandro went as far as she could then hit a wall. "It was so frustrating to have all these questions but no way to answer them. Then one day I received an email from Melinda Buchanan asking about my family and I was reinvigorated," she enthused, "Finally, there was someone out there who shared my passion for this story who had more information than I did."
Buchanan started her search in 1990 after a dear friend and cousin, Bill Overturf to
ok her out to the cemetery and talked about his heavy heart. "He was worried that these people had lived and farmed here, were buried here, and we didn't know why they left or where they went," she recalled. From that point on, she was determined to try and ease his mind with some information about these families, a task that has proven to be a real challenge and labor of love. The research took longer than she initially thought and Bill has passed away, but his niece, Marylee McGee, was there to witness Peridon's visit. Little did she expect these families to intersect in any way with her ancestors, but it turned out that one member of the community, Isom Bryant, came to the area with her great great grandfather, David Yarnall. It's been hard to find out anything about Peridon's great great grandfather, Ned Minnis, and his ancestors. After many years of research, Buchanan agreed that she still hasn't discovered definitively ho
w Ned and his sister, Lucy, ended up in Douglas County. "But I am more and more convinced that these early settlers of Brushy Fork were tri-racial: white, African-American, and Native American," Buchanan confirms. Their marriage patterns paralleled those of mixed racial groups in the Appalachians. Peridon notes that family tradition maintains that their ancestors were never slaves and remembers Ned as a red-headed man whose father was Irish. His descendants have skin in varying shades from light beige to dark brown. Some branches of the family are listed as white in the early 1900 census'. Ned had ten children and outlived two wives. Eight of his children survived into old age and had families of their own with six to fifteen children each. "There were 3-500 people attending Minnis family reunions when I was a little girl," Peridon noted.
One of those relations at the early Minnis reunions may have been a Bowen. Sandro reconnected with a previously unknown fourth cousin, Tim Bowen, after they found the others information on Ancestry.com. Ned's daughter Jerusha, a sister to Peridon's great grandmother Permelia, wed Thompson Bowen in the early 1870s in Douglas County. Tim was told by his dad, Eugene Bowen Jr., that Thompson Bowen and the Minnis' as well as another family left Illinois to go to Kansas. Bowen, who is currently serving in Iraq, notes "Kansas was a free state and John Brown had been from there so it was a popular location for people of color in that time," though the Bowen/Minnis move predates the famous Exodusters who formed their own communities like Nicodemus. The 1862 Homestead Act also provided incentives to move west by making 160 acres available for $1.25 per acre if you filed the proper paperwork, improved the land, and lived on it for at least six months; if you lived on it for five years you got it free. Tim was also told that Illinois was just a stop over to drop off Thompson Bowen's brother while Thompson intended to move on west. However, Buchanan and Sandro have discovered that Thompson stayed long enough to own land here.
Bowen started his research in 2000 after his great grandfather on his dad's side died. He explains, my family started showing me pictures of his past and I took interest. I nev
er knew my Dad's father well and I wanted to know more especially after finding out that Thompson Bowen came to Kansas on a covered wagon with 13 children, one dying by falling off. Thompson also built one of the first churches in Stafford County in the town of St. Johns. Tim has followed the research and Marlyn's trip to Illinois via e-mail, "its great that we are all reconnecting, I just wish I wasn't in Iraq and could experience it first hand." As does everyone else involved in this adventure to the past who look forward to his eventual visit to this "home place."
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