McDonough County Genealogical Society
It would be easy for Margaret Reno Vance to fade into the early history of McDonough County, but she was truly one of the county’s founding mothers. Margaret and her husband, James Vance, arrived in the area in the 1820s when both were already in their 60s — an age when most settlers of the time would have avoided the hardships of frontier life. Instead, they chose to leave Tennessee and help build a new community in what was then an unsettled wilderness. Their descendants still live in McDonough County today.
Margaret was born in 1762, likely in either Pennsylvania or Tennessee, to John Reno and Susannah Thorn. At just 19 years old, she married James Vance in White County, Tennessee, in 1782. Together they raised a large family of 12 or 13 children. Family tradition says Margaret and James traveled to Illinois by ox team with her nephew, Jonathan Reno, arriving a year before McDonough County was officially created in 1825.
The journey west would have been difficult for anyone, but especially for a couple their age traveling with family members and possessions into a region with few roads, homes, or comforts. Margaret’s role in keeping the family together through those years of migration and settlement was essential. Like many pioneer women, her work often went unrecorded, yet it was critical to the family’s survival and success. She spent decades raising children, supporting the westward move, and helping to establish a permanent home on the frontier.
Several of the Vance children settled in McDonough County with their parents, including Mary “Polly”, Agnes “Nancy,” John, William, Martha, and James Jr. Margaret and James quickly became part of the county’s earliest civic life. Their youngest daughter, Martha Ramsey Vance, married John Wilson on October 29, 1828, becoming the first bride to be married in McDonough County. James Sr. later served as a Justice of the Peace and performed many of the county’s earliest marriages before his death in 1835.
Even in old age, Margaret remained the center of her family. In 1840, at the age of 78, she was listed as head of a household that likely included her unmarried daughters Mary “Polly” and Agnes “Nancy.” By 1850, Margaret was 88 years old and living with her youngest son, James. Polly and Nancy, both in their 60s, are listed as living at James’s.
Today, east of Industry along the Vermont blacktop, the quiet Vance Cemetery rests among the rich farm fields of McDonough County. More than a dozen descendants of James and Margaret Reno Vance are buried there — a lasting reminder of one family’s sacrifices and contributions to the founding of the county.
Pioneers of the Past by Julie L. Terstriep, of the McDonough County Genealogical Society, facebook.com/mcdcgs, www. mcdcgs.com/pioneers-of-the-past/
