I was compelled to research
and write about the haunting at the Volo Antique Barn in the fall of 2016. It
wasn't just a ghost but it was about a person who wanted to live his life but
was cut down at the age of twenty during the American Civil War. His name
was Henry Wallace Gale and his family owned the dairy farm that the Volo Auto
Museum now sits on.
I began to research the Gale family as well as other pioneer families that came to Volo, Illinois during the Civil War times. If you look hard enough you can find out many things about the past, hidden away in esoteric and antiquated books.
The subject of interest at a haunting, Henry Wallace Gale, was a young man who had everything to live for before he died suddenly during the Civil War from Typhoid Fever. His father, Gardner Gale, moved the family to Volo, Illinois from Vermont and was active in the community. From the book, The Past and Present of Lake County, Illinois by Brookhaven Press/Schuler Books (originally printed in 1877) we can find a quick summary about Henry Wallace Gale's father. His father was married twice which was not uncommon as many women died from childbirth complications back then. He had three children with his first wife, Sophronia Smith, and he had six children by his second wife, Louisa Williams. He moved the family to Volo, Illinois in 1853. He was the Road Commissioner and School Director. He was a farmer who owned 339 acres of land that was worth $8000 back in 1854. His son, Henry Wallace Gale, who was a teacher at the Volo school, died at the age of twenty, in a hospital on February 16, 1863 in Nashville, Tennessee, after enlisting in the Union Army.
- The
Past and Present of Lake County, Illinois by BrookHaven Press/Schuler Books
(1877), page 441.
- A History of Lake
County, Illinois by John J. Halsey (1912), page 140.
In addition to being staunch abolitionists,
the Gale family was not only involved in farming, law, and politics, but also
in education. Later on as the Civil War progressed, their cousin in
Wisconsin was involved in Sanitation which was very much needed due to the
number of Civil War deaths involving water and food contamination.
Judge George Gale was a third cousin of Henry Wallace Gale
per my preliminary research from ancestry.com. Judge George Gale was one of the
founders of Galesville, Wisconsin and Gale College. He was a member of
the Free Soil Party, a lawyer, a judge, and an educator. He also wrote a
book on the Gale family history. Here is what Wikipedia says about him:
George Gale (November 30, 1816 – April 18, 1868) was a Wisconsin pioneer, judge, and legislator. Born in Burlington, Vermont, Gale was admitted to the Vermont bar. He then moved to Wisconsin Territory, where he practiced law in Walworth County, Wisconsin serving as District Attorney and as a member of the second Wisconsin Constitutional Convention of 1847-1848.[1]In 1850-1851, Gale served as a Free Soil Party member of the Wisconsin State Senate's 14th District.[2] Gale moved to La Crosse, Wisconsin, where he became a Wisconsin county judge and then was elected a Wisconsin Circuit Court judge. Gale bought land north of La Crosse and helped plat the city of Galesville, Wisconsin in order to found Gale College; he is responsible for the creation of Trempealeau County, Wisconsin.[3] During the American Civil War, Judge Gale served with the United States Sanitary Commission. He died in Galesville.[4][5]
Here is a picture of him, courtesy of
With this picture, you can see the
characteristic Welsh Gale family long face, curly hair and taller, slim
features of the Gales.
There is also a Galesburg, Illinois that was
involved with the underground railroad and was founded by another George Gale
as well who was also involved in education and the founding of Knox College.
I have not yet concluded his family relationship to the Volo Gales.
Per Wikipedia:
Galesburg was founded by George Washington Gale,[3] a Presbyterian minister from New York state who dreamed of establishing a manual labor college (which became Knox College). A committee from New York purchased 17 acres (0.069 km2; 0.027 sq mi) in Knox County in 1835, and the first 25 settlers arrived in 1836. They built temporary cabins in Log City near current Lake Storey, just north of Galesburg, having decided that no log cabins were to be built inside the town limits.
As I have revealed in my book about Henry
Wallace Gale, he was a teacher. I did find an old school in Volo that was
converted to a business. I am still trying to research and determine if
this was the school he taught at and it appears it may be as it is not very far
from the Gale home in Volo, IL. I took a few pictures of the old building
that was modernized and it still has the old chalkboards inside.
The old Volo
School that has now been converted in to a business
I have found a reference to an old log school in Volo. Did Henry teach in this school before he went to war? It seems to have been replaced by a frame school. Perhaps he did, but research is ongoing. Here is a screenshot of the mention:
- History of Lake County, by John J. Halsey, LL.D, Illinois , University of Chicago Library, 1912, page 725 of 904.
A very interesting passage was put in the book
about the Gale family that was written by Judge George Gale (of Wisconsin).
He wrote that the Welsh believed they were descendants of the Trojans.
But these speculations to establish a Roman ancestry are quite unnecessary as Geoffrey ap Arthur, the Bishops of St. Asaph, in the twelfth century, proved quite conclusively, in the opinion of Edward I, that Britain was first settled by a trojan colony under Brutus, a grandson of Aeneas, from whose name the Greeks and Romans derived Britania. This theory was first promulgated by the Welsh priest Tysilio, who flourished in the Seventh Century. - Gale Family Records in England and the United States by George Gale, LL. D., page 6.
Those that are familiar with my other books,
know that I have researched the origins of mythology and have concluded much of
it is based on a real family out of Crete and Tyre. I call this family
the Cronides. The Trojans were descendants of Aphrodite (Greek Goddess of
Love and a daughter of Zeus) via Aeneas. After fleeing burning Troy, Aeneas took his father and a small group of Trojans and headed to Carthage.
He fell in love with Dido but was told by the gods his destiny was
further from Carthage. He left her, she committed suicide, and Aeneas
married his future Italian bride, Lavinia.
Aeneas' grandson, Brutus, had accidentally
killed his father with an arrow, and was banished. Brutus traveled up north and
finally ended up in Britain. He became the first king of a dynasty and
King Arthur comes from his bloodline. How closely the Gales are to this
bloodline, I don't know but their family history states they were a very old
family in England and were there before William the Conqueror came.
The boy, named Brutus, later accidentally killed his father with an arrow and was banished from Italy. After wandering among the islands of the Tyrrhenian Sea and through Gaul, where he founded the city of Tours, Brutus eventually came to Britain, named it after himself, and filled it with his descendants. - Wikipedia
Thus I conclude the Gales were probably of
Trojan descent and possibly related to King Brutus of Troy and King Arthur and
probably Cronide descendants.
Aeneas
flees burning Troy, Federico Barocci,
1598.
Per Wikipedia:
In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas (/ᵻˈniːəs/;[1] Greek: Αἰνείας, Aineías, possibly derived from Greek αἰνή meaning "praised") was a Trojan hero, the son of the prince Anchises and the goddess Venus (Aphrodite). His father was a first cousin of King Priam of Troy (both being grandsons of Ilus, founder of Troy), making Aeneas a second cousin to Priam's children (such as Hector and Paris). He is a character in Greek mythology and is mentioned in Homer's Iliad. Aeneas receives full treatment in Roman mythology, most extensively in Virgil's Aeneid, where he is an ancestor of Romulus and Remus. He became the first true hero of Rome. Snorri Sturluson identifies him with the Norse Æsir Vidarr.
King
of Great Britain
The
Brutus Stone in Totnes
From Wikipedia:
Research about the Gale family is ongoing.
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