Betsey Hastings Russell - Mother of the Russell Reunion

Betsey Hastings Russell

She was called the Mother of the Russell Family Reunion. The one that started it all, the migration of the family to Michigan in 1836.

She and her husband Josiah named one of their daughters after her. Betsey Russell, the daughter, died at the age of 18, about a year after her father died. She is buried next to her parents in the Otisco Cemetery in Ionia County, Michigan.

It's possible that because she died so young--never got to see the success of her 14 brothers and sisters--so many of them named their own daughters Betsey. Whether it was their sister or mother who inspired the namings, I can't tell you.

So far, I have found five granddaughters named Betsey. Betsey Hastings Russell's sons, Josiah, Jr., Leonard and Amos, and daughter Lucinda all had their own Betseys. Leonard's first Betsey died in infancy, so he named his next daughter Betsey as well.

There were three great-granddaughters. Leonard's son, Leonard had a Betsey. Leonard's daughters Julia and Phoebe both had their own Betseys.

Most of the Betseys died young, in their 20s and 30s. The original Betsey Hastings Russell, my great-great-grandmother, lived to be 79. Only one Betsey lived longer than she did, her granddaughter Betsey by Amos lived to be 100 years old. She was the only one who lived into the 20th century, dying just six year before I was born.

Here is the story of the original Betsey Hastings Russell and her family:

Josiah and Betsey Hastings Russell came to Michigan in 1836 with their sons Amos Hastings Russell and William Russell. Some of their grandchildren from Virgil County, New York came, too. One of their daughters, Harriet, had preceded them in 1835. She went by boat on the new Erie Canal to Buffalo where she boarded a small steamship to Detroit. It then took her two days to travel from Detroit to Pontiac. In that same year, 1835, the first public land sales in Michigan began. Harriet had been hired to teach school after the territorial government had insured popular education by setting up specific provisions for an educational system in the first Michigan Constitutional Convention in 1835. Her family probably came the same route and settled first near Lake Orion in Oakland County, not far from Pontiac. In 1837 Amos decided to seek out lands halfway across the state in Ionia County which was still sparsely settled. The country thereabout (Otisco Township) was a handsome burr-oak plain when Amos Russell, John Morse, and Abel Adgate of Oakland County journeyed out to Otisco to look at the country and were captivated at once, and Morse and Russell straightaway made land preemptions. In November of the same year, Russell and Morse accompanied by R.R. Cook started once more from Oakland intending to make some improvements on their Otisco lands, but they were forced to abandon their undertaking and return to Oakland for the winter after completing one shanty and partially completing another. Upon their return journey, they undertook to effect a shorter cut than the way by which they had come (via the mouth of the Flat River) and, as a consequence, they were lost in the wilderness and mired in swamps; but they stuck to it like heroes, and got through alive, although the business was discouraging and tough enough to make them feel more than once like giving up. In February, 1838, Amos Russell, Rufus Cook, and J.L. Morse gathered their families and effects for another start to Ionia County. With them also were William Russell, Calvin Gage, and Charles F. Morse who went as hired men. The party navigated the Looking Glass and Grand Rivers. Where the two rivers converge is where Portland is now located but it was not settled until 1839, the year the Russell party traveled the rivers to Otisco. They traveled in flat boats as far north as the Flat River and thence to Otisco by Indian trail. The first birth in the new settlement occurred in the Cook's Corner settlement and was Eliza, daughter of Amos Russell and Esther Berry Russell. The Berry family had been neighbors of the Russells back in "York State." The settlers were afraid of losing the land which was only preempted because the Otisco lands were not put on the market until 1842. The settlers joined for protection and proposed to visit punishment upon the heads of any who should attempt to buy the land over the heads of the settlers. One rash individual made a counter bid and was given 15 minutes to leave the country. The family story says that the men sat at the land sales office with their guns in their laps. In 1843 Amos Russell appears on a tax payer's list as owning 140 acres, his brother William, 80 acres, and Josiah Jr., who by this time had joined his family in Michigan, 93 acres in two sections. Amos Hastings Russell and his wife Esther were among the first members of the Flat River Circuit of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1838.

Betsey lived the rest of her Michigan life, after her husband died, with her daughter Lydia, who married James Moon in 1847 and had only sons.

Lydia Russell Moon

As a child, I heard about this original Betsey Russell. Her father was a General Amos Hastings of Revolutionary War fame. She was revered by the growing Russell Family, possibly because she held the family together after the loss of their father and shared in the dramatic family struggles to settle a wilderness. The Russell Reunions in Michigan occurred yearly. Family came from all over Michigan for the annual event. She was gone before my grandmother was born, but Eva Louise, daughter of Jesse Russell Weeks, told the family stories of Betsey Hastings Russell and treasured her photo-- still in the family, lovingly and safely stored by me in my Missouri home, far from its original Michigan home.