John Tribe (1794 – 1880)
Migrated from Ewell to Albion, Edwards County, Illinois, 1819.
An economic crisis which followed the peace of 1815 revealed the inadequacies of the system of poor relief by supplementing wages, in a period of agricultural depression after the Napoleonic wars. Many farmers decided to abandon the struggle in England while they still possessed enough money to start afresh in the USA. Morris Birkbeck, who was a substantial tenant farmer of Quaker origins leasing a farm of fifteen hundred acres at Wanborough [probably Manor Farm], to the north of the Hog’s Back in Surrey, was one. In 1817, he and George Flower determined to found a settlement in Illinois, whose open prairies provided cheap and attractive land. Flower was tasked with the publication of Birkbeck’s account of the journey to Illinois, both in Philadelphia and London, in order to ‘bring in the people’. This generated widespread interest from individuals of all ranks, but mainly those in moderate circumstances, seeking information and advice on emigration. Following George Flower’s return to Illinois he and Birkbeck quarrelled allegedly over a lady, and founded rival townships, Albion and Wanborough, known collectively as the English Settlement. Birkbeck drowned on 4 June 1825 when trying to cross Fox River, a Wabash tributary, returning from New Harmony, Indiana.
Flower left Illinois with his family in 1849. A History of the English Settlement in Edwards County Illinois, founded in 1817 AND 1818, by Morris Birkbeck and George Flower by George Flower, 1860, published in1882 , recorded that: –
“Early in the spring, 1819, the ship Columbia sailed from Bristol to New Orleans. In her came Mr. Samuel Prichard of Bamsted [Banstead], near Epsom, England, with a wife, four sons and four daughters. Mr. Prichard was of the Society of Friends, possessed of property, an agreeable, liberal, and well-educated man; an acquaintance of Mr. Birkbeck’s. He selected a spot on a gentle eminence, about half-a-mile from Wanborough, on the road between Wanborough and Albion. Mr. Prichard unfortunately fell sick with fever, and soon died.”
Samuel Prichard born 20 February 1767 in 3 Church Street, Godalming, Surrey, was the son of Edward Prichard and Mary Westbrook of Worplesdon. He had married Deborah Finch on 6 May 1790 at Staines, Middlesex. In 1793 he was described as a Maltster of Staines, and connected to Crowards Mill, Leominster, Herefordshire. He died 11 September 1819 in Wanborough, Edwards County, Illinois.
A son Samuel Emeline Pritchard, born 16 April 1801 in Godalming, Surrey, came to marry Jessie Janet Hall on 5 April 1829 in Edwards County, Illinois, She was a daughter of William Hall born 2 October 1810 in Ewell, Surrey, England.
An orphan girl named Jane Staley, born 6 March 1804, also came with the Prichards as their ward. John Tribe from Ewell [born 12 May 1794, son of James Tribe and Sarah, nee Smith] was a fellow passenger aboard the Columbia and is reported to have ascended the Mississippi and Ohio rivers to reach the English Settlement on the Wabash. Jane and John were married in Edwards County, Illinois, on 13 March 1821.
John Tribe was a carpenter by trade but after three or four years in Albion, Illinois, he took up milling and wool-carding. Ten children issued from his union with Jane Staley.
According to George Flower:-
“Mr. John Tribe from Ewell, Surrey, came came also in [the Columbia]. He was without capital, and has supported himself by the labor of his hands, and is now living, a worthy citizen of Albion, and whose excellent memory has supplied me with many of the particulars I am now recording. Mr. Tribe will excuse me for dwelling a little on the general tenor of his life, as I think his example rather good. He has not made that accumulation of property that many a man has, that came with as little as he did; and this, probably, because he has not given · himself up to the one idea of acquisition and accumulation. As he has labored along moderately through life, he has always reserved a little time for observation, reflection, and reading. He carries on the business of carding wool for the country, far and wide, one of the most useful trades. But the most necessary and useful trades are not always those that are best rewarded. His house is small, his living plain and simple. He reserves a small room for himself, where he receives any friend who may call. On the table are writing materials, books, periodicals, newspapers; an excellent orchard hard by; cows for his family use; milk, butter, and cream; his vegetable garden, so well cultivated as to supply him with every vegetable in season; and a few flowers, of the choicest kind, that would grace the garden of Queen Victoria. Is not a New-York millionaire poor, compared to Mr. Tribe?”
John Tribe, senior, had in fact died on 25 August 1880. Jane the wife of John Tribe, born 6 March 1804, followed her husband to the grave on 6 September 1894 aged 90. Her passing was registered at St John’s Episcopal Church. Their grave is marked by a monumental needle in Albion Cemetery inscribed with a note that she lived for 76 years in Illinois.
Brian Bouchard 2023