011103 – Nathaniel

1860 KY Pike 1Dist p850 23WM NC

Nathaniel was born about 1837 in Ashe County, North Carolina. A marriage bond was entered in Ashe County, North Carolina on April 1, 1858 for Hanna Greer and Nathan Trivet. The marriage was performed on April 2, 1858 by William Wilcox (41). This marriage was about three weeks after the first marriage of Nathaniel’s brother, William H., to Emeline Tatum. William Wilcox also performed William’s second marriage.

Nathaniel is shown in the household of his parents, Owen and Dicy Trivette, in Ashe County in the 1850 census. In the 1860 census, Nathaniel and Hannah, along with son Levi, are shown in Pike County, Kentucky. Levi is listed as two months old, so the census enumerator followed instructions correctly to list household members and birthdates as of June 1st of 1860. Levi was born in April, 1860. He is shown as born in Kentucky. Their next door neighbor is Isaiah Trivett, Nathaniel’s brother.

The journal of Francis Marion Wilcox says Nathaniel at one time was a school teacher, and Marion was at one time his student.

Nathaniel enrolled in the Union Army on November 22, 1862. He subsequently mustered into Company E of the 39th Kentucky Mounted Infantry on February 16, 1863 in Peach Orchard, Lawrence County, Kentucky. By that time, he and Hannah had a second son, John Freeman, born in 1862. Nathaniel is listed in the Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kentucky, Civil War, Volume 2, Union Army, as “Nathaniel C. Tilbet” (26).

In the spring of 1863, Nathaniel became ill in camp at Louisa, Kentucky. He had some sort of bacterial infection resulting in fever, a condition James Sowards, Company E’s commanding officer would say years later was frequently seen among his men. Sowards said his unit had few tents and blankets during the winter of 1862 – 1863. Nathaniel was taken to the “U.S. General Hospital” in Ashland, Kentucky on April 2, 1863, where he was diagnosed with bronchitis. He died there on May 22, 1863, the cause of death stated as bronchitis. Nathaniel had not been wounded (64). The hospital was actually the Aldine hotel before and after the war, and was located on the Southwest corner of 15th and Front Streets. A bus station exists on that corner now.

According to Ancestry.com, Full Context of American Civil War Regiments, the 39th Infantry showed three officers and three enlisted men having died from wounds during the unit's three year existence. Twenty four officers and 194 enlisted men died of disease or accident.

In another part of the Francis Marion Wilcox journal, Marion refers to Nathan as “Nathan Crankfield Trivett”, and that after the war he was exhumed and reburied in the state capitol in the “National Lot or Cemetery” There is no national cemetery in Frankfort, Kentucky. There is one, however, in Lexington. The administrator there told me no one by that name is recorded as buried there, but there are numerous graves of unknown soldiers. A memorial headstone for Nathaniel stands in the Roberts’ Family Cemetery in Jonancy, Kentucky, next to his father, Levi.

In December, 1864, Hannah Trivett, Nathaniel’s widow, had a child out-of-wedlock by a young neighborhood man, Booker Osborne, who was eight years younger than she. The child was conceived a few months after Nathaniel’s death, and I assume Hannah had been notified before then, either by the government or by other returning soldiers. Samuel Adkins, whom Hannah would later marry, served in the same Regiment, but different company, as Nathaniel.

The child was named Franklin Marion Trivet, born December 20, 1864. However in the 1870 Pike Co. census, Franklin was listed in the household of Booker Osborne and wife Martha Bowen, whom he married in March, 1866. The 1870 Pike County census shows the household of 26 year old Booker Osborne, including five year old Marion Trivet among his other children. Hannah Trivett married Samuel Adkins on June 18, 1866 in Pike County, Kentucky (60), and they are shown five households away.

The 1880 census shows “Marion Osborne” in Booker Osborne's household, indicating they had changed his last name from that of his mother to that of his biological father.

Franklin Marion Osborne grew up, married, and had 12 children. He died in 1960 at age 95. This is taken from a conversation I had with his grandson.