13th, the folks all went to the fair. I went out to Aunt Vina Johnsons. Am going to stay Thur. Fri., & Sat. Went over to Aunt Lizzie Wells Sat. evening. Rode Den, stayed all night there.
Jesse’s style is to report what happened, and he avoids opinions or explanations. He doesn’t explain why his family members all attended the three-day fair in Chillicothe and he chose not to go. It looks like he wrote in both future and past tense, like it was over a couple of days. This is the first mention of a horse named Den.
Levina is one of James Bench’s younger half-sisters by way of his mother, Elizabeth Johnson Tobey. She missed the 1850 federal census and was born on January 18, 1851 in Camden County, Missouri, when James was about eight years old. She shows up in the 1860 census when her mother and Aunt Nancy moved to Carroll County. In 1875 she married Isaac Johnson, and they had Love, Viola, Elijah, and Cora Bell. When Jesse went to stay with the family for a few nights in September, 1900, he would have been saying with his Uncle Isaac, Levina, Elijah, Cora Bell, and William Bales, a lodger and physician. Vina died on September 9, 1911, of breast cancer, and she is buried with her family in Plymouth Cemetery in Carroll County.
