The Ancestors of Sarah Henrietta Cassidy LaGrange

My second great grandmother, Sarah Henrietta Cassidy LaGrange, is seated on the far left. Her husband, Louis LaGrange, is standing directly behind her. Sarah is holding my great grandfather, Everitt LaGrange.

56.5% British, all appearing to be English specifically

25% Belgian

12.25% Irish

3.125% German

3.125% French

Everitt LaGrange’s mother, Sarah Cassidy, often went by “Sally”. And though all of her grandparents were either born in Europe or on the east coast of the US, they’re all buried in Perry County, Indiana, where Sally was born. Of her four grandparents, it’s Elizabeth Mudd - her father’s mother - whose ancestors have been in America the longest and are arguably the most interesting.

Around 1670, Elizabeth’s second great grandfather Thomas Mudd left Cumberland, England for St. Charles, Maryland, a town located in Charles County. Then a few generations later, her father Luke Mudd was born in the same county in 1737. By the time Luke was 45, he and his wife Jane had moved just northwest to Frederick County, where Jane gave birth to Sally Cassidy’s grandmother Elizabeth that year. But Elizabeth was still a small child when the family moved to Kentucky.

Charles County, Maryland

In Washington County, Kentucky, Sally’s grandmother Elizabeth Mudd (Cassidy) was about seven years old when her older sister Mary Mudd married a man named Mordecai Lincoln. Mordecai is recorded as having saved the life of his brother Thomas Lincoln after an attack from Native Americans. Thomas Lincoln would go on to be the father of President Abraham Lincoln, meaning Mordecai Lincoln was the biological uncle of the president, as well as the uncle of Thomas Cassidy (Sally Cassidy LaGrange’s father) by marriage.

From left to right: President Abraham Lincoln, Mordecai Lincoln, and Sally’s father Thomas Cassidy. Mordecai was the president’s biological uncle and married to Thomas’s biological aunt. It is a matter of record that Abraham knew his uncle Mordecai, but I can’t say if Thomas did as well. However, I think we can assume Thomas’s mother Elizabeth was at Mordecai’s wedding since he married her older sister. When Mordecai died, Thomas was about 15 and Abraham was about 21.

Another Mudd from Charles County, Maryland you might have heard of is Dr. Samuel Mudd. He was John Wilkes Booth’s physician and was convicted (perhaps wrongfully) of conspiring with Booth to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. Samuel’s grandfather Alexius Mudd was Elizabeth Mudd’s first cousin, making Samuel Mudd and Sally Cassidy third cousins.

Imagine being Sally’s father Thomas Cassidy, who was about 45 years old when Lincoln was elected president. He must have known his family had a connection to Lincoln. After all, his mother was still alive when Abe Lincoln became a congressman, and she was almost certainly in attendance when her sister married Lincoln’s uncle in Kentucky. Then, when a Mudd from Maryland was exiled for conspiring to assassinate the president in 1865, Thomas must have known he was some kind of relative. After all, Thomas’s mother Elizabeth Mudd was born in Maryland and lived until Thomas was about 35.

Sally Cassidy’s third cousin, Dr. Samuel Mudd

And though Elizabeth Mudd spent the last few decades of her life in Indiana, she didn’t make it there until after she married into the Cassidy family. Fifty years before that wedding, in 1754, a teenaged Patrick Cassidy came to America as a part of the British army. He is Sally Cassidy’s great grandfather and was born in a town called Newry in County Down, Northern Ireland. Many Cassidys can actually trace their roots back to a magical looking place in Northern Ireland called Devenish Island, a spot situated about 60 miles west of Newry. It’s definitely possible that Patrick’s ancestors lived there, but we don’t really know for sure. Regardless, Sally’s great grandfather Patrick Cassidy is listed as one of the founders of a town in Blair County, Pennsylvania, also called Newry, and apparently he ended up changing allegiances and fighting as a Patriot in the Revolutionary War.

Newry, County Down, Ireland

Patrick is buried back in Newry, Pennsylvania, but his son John Baptist Cassidy moved to Washington County, Kentucky, where he married Elizabeth Mudd. For what it’s worth, that Mudd-Cassidy wedding was officiated by Stephen Badin, the first priest ever to be ordained in the United States. Elizabeth and John’s son, Thomas Cassidy, was born in 1816 before the family moved to Perry County, Indiana. Thomas is Sally Cassidy’s father.

Devenish Island in Northern Ireland, a Cassidy ancestral spot

Thomas Cassidy married a woman named Esther Jackson in Perry County in 1838, and the two of them had fifteen children before Esther died. His second wife, Mary Ann Sprinkle, is Sally Cassidy’s mother. Thomas and Mary Ann were 26 years apart in age and had seven more children together, including Sally in 1874.

Sarah Cassidy’s parents, Mary Ann Sprinkle and Thomas Cassidy

Back in Germany, Mary Ann Sprinkle’s family name was actually spelled “Sprenckel”. And it was around 1690 that the Sprenckels left Kempten am Rhein, a town in the Rheinland-Pfalz region for another town in Germany by the name of Mörfelden-Walldorf, Groß-Gerau. About 20 years after that, they came to York County, Pennsylvania, an area not too far from Baltimore. This choice is not all that surprising considering Pennsylvania was by far the most popular destination for early German-American immigrants.

Morfelden-Walldorf, Germany

Before long, “Sprenckel” became “Sprinkle”, and the Sprinkle line moved to Somerset County in the western part of the state before spending a few generations down in Surry County, North Carolina. A very old letter from Perry County, Indiana refers to this part of North Carolina as the "Yadkin country”. Mary Ann’s father Michael Sprinkle was born in North Carolina in 1812, but it wasn’t too long before a pretty big number of Sprinkles came to Perry County, Indiana, where the number continued to grow. 

In 1816, Michael’s father, also named Michael Sprinkle, moved his family to Perry County, Indiana. To give you an idea of how many Sprinkle siblings there were, I’ll use Michael’s oldest brother William, who was actually Marshal Faulkenberg’s great grandfather. Michael, Jr. was eleven years younger than William, but still 38 years older than their youngest half brother. Altogether, Michael Sprinkle, Sr. had 18 children between his two marriages. And on top of that, Michael’s brother John, who is listed as the first settler in Warrick County in southern Indiana, had ten children himself. It has been written in old letters that Michael Sprinkle, Sr., and I assume his wife and kids, came down the Ohio River in a canoe when they crossed into Indiana in 1816. For what it’s worth, the first Sprinkle in Indiana was probably George, the brother of John Sprinkle and Sally Cassidy’s great grandfather Michael Sprinkle. George was said to have been captured by Indians in 1791 at the Battle of Miami, which was fought along the Indiana-Ohio border.

Leopold, Indiana, a town founded by Belgian immigrants and named after the King of Belgium. This shot was taken around 1905. In the background, you can see Saint Augustine Catholic Church and Cemetery. Adeline (Jacques) James was buried there just a few years before this photo was taken. Her parents are buried there as well.

In Perry County, Sally’s grandfather Michael Sprinkle married Adeline Julia Ann James, whose surname was actually Jacques when she was a kid back in Belgium. In the first half of the 19th century, the Jacques family migrated from Florenville - a town within walking distance of the French border - to New Orleans and then up to Perry County, Indiana. They were definitely in Perry County by 1841, and a Perry County genealogist of Belgian families thinks they might have arrived as early as 1832.

Florenville, Belgium

Even if they didn’t get to Indiana until 1841, that would still make them one of the first Belgian families (or possibly the very first) in Perry County, which is in the top 1% of all US counties in percentage of citizens with Belgian ancestry. So, it’s not too surprising that this would be the Belgian family to use an Anglicized last name in Indiana, considering they might have been the only Belgians to come to Perry County and not have any Belgian neighbors when they got there.