Johnson County Families
®
Johnson County, Arkansas




Abner Casey, 1776

Submitted by
Susan Fahnstrom
Thanks Susan!

Abner Casey born 1766 in Spartanburg Co, SC

All of ABNER'S and wife ELIZABETH' S children were grown, by the time the decision was made to leave Tennesse and go west. By the time they reached the Arkansas Ozarks, all the Casey offspring were married but the youngest son, Abner 'Berry' Casey (born 1820).

Included in this wagon train, in addition to the Casey families, were the Bowens, the Stewarts, the Fubanks, probably the Arbaughs and many others, practically all the families whose ancestors had lived as neighbors in Virginia more than 100 years before this time... (1834 - 1835, when they reached Mulberry River, Arkansas, Ozarks)

The author of 'The Abner Casey Family in America' quoted that Turner Casey, Abner's second son born 1804 was probably the leader of this extensive wagon train. We are told that Turner Casey was with a party which selected the route over which the Cherokee Indians were brought from Georgia to Tennesse to Indian Territory and that on the return trip, Turner Casey and others came though the Ozark mountains following Mulberry River and across the divide, they liked what they saw. After his return to Tennesse, Turner lead the assembled families of the Casey clan back to Arkansas, where he and his older brother Jesse Casey settled on the Mulberry River along with their families.

Perhaps ingrained with the old Virginia law restricting the Irish to no more than ten families per watershed, the Casey families scattered from the Mulberry River to other river valleys thoroughout the Ozarks, over the coming decades.

One of Turners sons, Christopher Columbus Casey, settled on 'The Falling Waters" a Richland Creek tributary of the Buffalo River, where he in the Casey tradition, constructed a grismill.

Abner Casey was already 70 years old when the Caseys arrived on the Mulberry. After he directed the construction of a mill there, he left the two older sons, Jesse and Turner to run it and carry on the raising of their ample families. Abner gathered the other offspring and their families and pushed up the Mulberry River's headwaters and down the divide's other side, into the valley of the Big Buffalo River. There they settled, but for Abner's son Levi Casey, Levi and his wife Polly Haggard Casey and their considerable family, ventured north into Carroll County, thence into Missouri, where they settled on White River, near Forsyth and Kisse Mills. Where the later town is named after its founder, by coincidence the word 'Kisse' was a recurring Christian name for Casey women, including the mother of Christopher C. Casey's 2nd. That youth grew up o be "Lum Casey' an married Mary U Kisse, daughter of Alexander C Kisse, who laid out the town of Kisse Mills. Levi Casey's issue from Taney County, Missouri, were added to the ouflow of the Ozark Casey' offspring to many points of the nation.

1850 Census. Van Buren Twp. Newton County, Arkansas.
229 - 229. Casey Abner 84. M. South Carolina.
Elizabeth Casey 68 F. South Carolina.

Abner and Elizabeth Casey's children;
1. Jesse Tipton Casey, born 1797 in SC.
2. Turner Franklin Casey born 1804 in GA.
3. Levi Casey born April 23, 1805 in GA.
4. Anthony Casey born abt 1807 in GA.
5. Uriah Casey born abt 1811 in Roane Co, TN.
6. John Marion Casey born 1812 in Roane Co, TN
7. Mary Polly Casey, born Feb 28, 1813 in Roane Co, TN.
8. Abner Ellsberry Casey born 1820 in Roane Co, TN.
9. Susan Casey born abt 1822 in Roane Co, TN.

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