This is the second in a three-part series. Part I was published on Wednesday. Part III will publish on Friday.
MOUNT VERNON — Rachel Konkapot died in Mount Vernon on Dec. 22, 1819.
A senseless and racially-motivated murder, the incident became a few paragraphs in Knox County’s early history. But, for her family, its effects were immediate, personal, and long-lasting.
N.N. Hill’s 1881 History of Knox County tells us that Rachel’s husband Elisha returned to Mount Vernon each November for several years thereafter to look after his wife’s unmarked grave. We cannot confirm that, but it’s certainly possible.
However, Elisha may have had another motive for his annual visits: His wife died in Knox County, but his daughter — born in the trauma immediately after Rachel’s shooting — was adopted by a local family and lived here for nearly 20 years. Her story is also one that deserves to be remembered.
Although records from the child custody case appear to be missing, we nonetheless know how it turned out.
Hosmer Curtis served as the lead attorney and custody of Mary Konkapot was awarded to a local couple: John and Judah Bird. Conveniently, Curtis was also a member of the State Legislature at the time and (after some finagling and a few complications) he eventually passed a bill securing the Birds a lump sum payment of $75 for taking in the infant and an annual payment of $25 to support Mary’s education until she reached age 12.
So the first — and, until the 20th century, the ONLY — time that the State of Ohio specifically earmarked public funds for a child’s education, it went to a not-quite-orphaned Indigenous girl who was being raised in a rural Black household.
That doesn’t quite fit the stereotype.
The Birds were a Black family who lived near Martinsburg and are one of only a handful of Black people who appear in the early histories of the county. We know that John Bird was born in Virginia sometime around 1775 and he purchased land in Knox County before 1810 — making him one of the earliest permanent settlers in the area.
Judah Bird’s origins are more obscure. She appears on several census records between 1820 and 1840 as the wife of John Bird and she was roughly the same age as her husband.
Both of them were consistently identified as “Colored” — although, long after her death, one of her sons referred to his mother as “an Indian.” The couple had at least four children.
It is not immediately apparent why John and Judah Bird were awarded custody of Mary Konkapot. Perhaps the fact that they were non-white was a factor, but there may have been more practical explanation. The Birds had young children in 1819, and therefore were able to care for and feed a newborn child.
The party of Stockbridge travelers mainly consisted of men and, with Rachel obviously incapacitated, the Bird family home — within easy walking distance from the site of the shooting — would be a natural place to at least temporarily leave the infant.
Mary’s father, Elisha, may not have wanted to give up parental rights permanently, but he was obviously not in a good position to take care of his daughter. The journey back to New York was a long one and the Stockbridges faced an uncertain future there anyway. Perhaps he felt that his daughter would be safer with the Birds than with him … at least for a while.
In any case, Mary lived with her new family into adulthood.
John Bird and his children appear on census records as Knox County residents until at least 1840. Several of his children married and set up households adjacent to his own.
Occasionally, he appears in court records or other documents. Then, sometime after 1842, the entire Bird family disappears from the local historical record.
It took some effort to find them, but we finally located John and Judah Bird living in Sandwich, Ontario — now a part of Windsor, just across the border from Detroit.
Sandwich had long been a destination for fugitive slaves during the antebellum era and, as tensions in the U.S. were rose over the issue of slavery and legislators debated passing a more robust Fugitive Slave Act, the Birds apparently considered emigrating to Canada a better option than staying in Ohio.
John and Judah remained there for the rest of their lives, but several of their children — including Mary — soon returned to the U.S. and settled in Michigan.
Mary Konkapot and her adopted brother William Bird moved to Ypsilanti, where Mary met and married a prominent resident named William Casey in 1859. Both of them were marrying for the first time despite being in their 40s.
Casey was an interesting figure. Born a slave in Missouri, he escaped to freedom around age 30. Crediting God for his escape, he co-founded the Second Baptist Church in Ypsilati and served it as a deacon and trustee for his entire life.
After Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Casey joined the 55th Massachusetts Colored Infantry and served until after the end of the war. He became a staunch Republican and something of a political activist when he returned to Michigan — even getting arrested for attempting to vote in 1869. The Ypsilanti Commercial published a glowing obituary of William Casey when he passed away in 1881.
But there was one part of his life that it neglected to mention altogether: his wife.
Casey had never been great with money and his generosity and bad investments strained his marriage. By 1880, William and Mary had separated.Census records that she was living in her own household with a 29-year-old male lodger (whose family was a neighbor of John Bird in Sandwich). She took in washing to support herself.
Although she identified herself as “divorced” on several documents, there is no record that Mary (Konkapot) Casey ever legally terminated her marriage. This is by no means unusual.
Divorce could be a difficult and expensive process during the 1880. So, for a poor and childless couple, it simply would not have been worth the effort. This oversight proved useful for Mary; After William Casey’s death, she applied for and received a widow’s pension from the federal government.
It is impossible to say how closely connected Mary was to her Stockbridge relatives over the course of her life. Her father may have visited her while she was a child, but we have no documentation of that other than Hill’s History — and, by 1837, Elisha was not only deeply involved with tribal politics but also had re-married into a sizable step-family. He died in the early 1870s.
Most of the Stockbridge people had by then relocated to a reservation in Wisconsin. By the 1870s, the tribe — which had been reduced to fewer than 500 members — found itself seriously divided. One faction sought U.S. citizenship and wanted to dissolve the tribal government while the other hoped to maintain tribal sovereignty and the limited protection that status provided.
Mary found herself in the midst of this when she applied for enrollment as a citizen of the Stockbridge nation in 1871.
Interestingly, she did so not as the daughter of Elisha and Rachel Konkapot but as the “sister of Aaron Konkapot” — the son of her father’s second wife and a man to whom she had no genetic relationship.
Mary’s application was denied.
That did not end her efforts, however. An archivist at the Arvid E. Miller Library generously provided us with a letter that Mary had written to a tribal official in 1882. Her spidery handwriting is difficult to read but one sentence stands out: “My mother is Rachel Concapote.”
So, after 20 years in Knox County, a few in Canada, and more than 40 in Michigan, it is clear that Mary (Konkapot) Casey still knew who she was and that re-connecting to her tribe and her family remained important to her.
In 1893, Mary again petitioned for tribal membership and her testimony was presented to the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. They determined that she was eligible to enroll in the tribe … but only if she moved to the reservation.
She did so the following year. An 1894 Indian Census Roll lists her as living alone in Shawano County, Wisconsin. Her step-brother and several cousins resided nearby. Mary died shortly afterward but she had managed to re-connect to her people and their new home.
Now, two centuries after she died, the Stockbridge tribe and members of the Konkapot family are attempting to re-connect to Rachel Konkapot as well … and they could use our help.
A sad story wonderfully told. Thank you.