HERE
THEY
SLEEP Narrative
HANCOCK PLOT
Conclusion of statements and available data made May 24, 1975. Location
of above named plot generalized as follows: Follow County Trunk DD one
and three-quarters miles west of Wis. 30 (south of Rockbridge) to the
present farm residence of Wendell Paasch, section 17, Town of
Rockbridge. Local residents Mrs. Lillie Fogo and Ray Henry, were
helpful supplying names and locations. Your writer also had certain
valuable data, which together with quotes from Gillingham Descendants,
has in a modest way given us all that is available to date. It all
began in 1851 when Hiram and his brother German, and the Geo. W.
Hancock family came to Rockbridge from Dane County, Wisconsin. Mr.
Hancock purchased 160 acres in the N.E. 1/4 of section 17 in 1853. His
son Rueben soon returned to Wisconsin from the California gold rush
days of 1849. Another quarter section of land was added soon
thereafter, this in section 8, joining to the north. Rueben's parents
moved into Vernon County, Wisconsin, while he had within that same year
(1855) married Caroline Gillingham, daughter of Harvey and Mary Ewing
Gillingham. Nothing much has been learned of the birth and death
of Rueben Hancock except that he was yet a young man in his late
twenties at the time of his death in about 1857. Caroline remarried in
1859 to George Fogo. She died March 31, 1864 leaving three small sons.
Mr. Fogo continued to own the Hancock farm until his death in 1901. The
lives of the Hancock family had touched and left the scenes of their
early settlement days. Mary Ann Hancock had married Thomas Gillingham
in 1854, later moving into Missouri where they lived out their last
days in Mt. Vernon. It is believed that Mary Ann was a sister of
Emeline Tadder, wife of Hiram. A daughter of one German Tadder, Izetta,
married one George Hancock who had left the Rockbridge area to live in
Valley Junction, Monroe County, Wisconsin. We have not succeeded in
establishing the total relationship concerning Emeline and Geo. II,
only that we do know Mary Ann to be a daughter of Geo. W. Hancock, all
reference to her mother being omitted. It will also be noted that
the local Antiock School, District No. 4, played a large part toward
the enrichment of Rockbridge community. Many changes in land ownership
took place in sections 8 - 17. The land does not remember but Rueben
Hancock rests in an unmarked gravel once marked, but with today's farm
land now extended over the place where he lies. It is believed that two
additional burials took place here, as some senior citizens remembered
seeing three stones standing as late as 1946.