A perpetual memorial to her courage

Willard Hervey came to Clearspring Township in 1836 and stayed, to begin with, at the home of Simeon Crosby. In 1839 he married Crosby's daughter.

The county history published in 1882 names her. Before her marriage, it says, Miss Sebrina Crosby had taught school in Amasa Durand's house, north of La Grange. Then it tells a story about her, and says that it is telling one.

It is told of her, as an instance of what the pioneer girls had to endure, that at one time, when living at home, and her father dangerously ill and without any remedy or doctor near, she walked through the forests the whole distance to Lima, about fifteen miles, to bring Dr. Jewett, the nearest physician. Most of the journey, an Indian trail was the only road, and at one point she had to cross Buck Creek, which was swollen with floods, and only partially bridged with logs. But she pulled off her shoes, and jumping from log to log, made the passage safely and brought the doctor to her father.

It gives no year.

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Ira Ford's history of 1920 tells it again, in the same order: Hervey, the Crosby home, the marriage in 1839, the teaching, the father, the trail, the flood, the doctor at Lima.

He leaves out her name. He leaves out Amasa Durand's house, Buck Creek, the logs and the shoes. He adds that she went alone, and that she went to procure medicines as well as to bring the doctor. About fifteen miles becomes over fifteen miles. One creek, crossed on logs, becomes this.

She took the old Indian trail and had to wade several swollen streams.

He keeps the hedge. In his telling it was related that she walked. Then he ends the paragraph.

Let this paragraph be a perpetual memorial to her courage and goodness of heart.

In his paragraph she is This lady, who taught school when still single. Her name is not in it. It does not appear anywhere in either of his two volumes.

The county's centennial history of 1928 has Hervey marrying the daughter of Simon Crosby. It has no walk, and no name.

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The 1882 volume that keeps her name does not agree with itself about her family.

Its Clearspring chapter, on the same page as the walk, says Simeon Crosby came from New York, settled in the west half of Section 34, and died in 1839, three years after his arrival.

At the back of the same book are the biographies. Willard Hervey's says of the Crosby parents that Her father died in New York, and her mother in this township. Samuel Dallas married another Crosby daughter, and his says the same: Mr. Crosby died in New York, and Mrs. Crosby in this township.

The chapter has Hervey marrying a Crosby daughter once, in 1839. His biography has him marrying Miss Louisa B. Crosby in Oneida County, New York, on the third of December, 1835, and coming west with her. Louisa died on the twenty-third of October, 1839. On the twenty-second of December, two months later, he married her sister.

The chapter spells her Sebrina. The biography, in the same volume, spells her Sabrina C. Crosby.

So the book that kept her name cannot say where her father was when she walked to Lima, or in what year she walked.