Assault and battery charge record will be open to public at SIUC soon

Vance Martin has skimmed over several famous names within state documents during his master’s work at the Illinois State Archives.

But an assault and battery charge involving America’s 12th president was one to pull out of the pile.

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In January, Martin found an 1814 indictment for assault and battery for a Maj. Zachariah Taylor that was sent to the Illinois State Archives a couple of years ago. He recently confirmed the person indicted was, in fact, former president Zachary Taylor.

Within a few months, the SIUC Illinois Regional Archives Depository will release the document for public accessibility after its main headquarters in Springfield has finished it.

Because he was studying history for his degree, Martin was assigned to process record projects at the state archives through the Graduate Public Service Internship through the University of Illinois at Springfield.

Karl Moore, supervisor at the depository in Springfield, gave Martin a project in fall to process some documents sent from SIUE that date back to 1812. After completion, the documents were to be sent to the SIUC depository for filing.

Martin began his usual routine of humidifying the brittle 200-year-old documents – pressing them and sorting them by name – when he came across the 1814 indictment.

The indictment was for a “Maj. Zachariah Taylor” and two other men for an assault on a Simon Bartrane.

Martin said he was curious about the name and decided to present it to his supervisor, Mark Sorensen.

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“I asked him, “Hey what do think about this,’ and he said, ‘Why don’t you look it up?” Martin said.

So, Martin and Sorenson began to dig into history to find if Maj. Zachariah Taylor was America’s 12th president. They first closely examined the documents they found.

As noted in the Illinois Heritage magazine article written by Martin and Sorensen, “Rough and Ready in Illinois,” the Sept. 29, 1814 indictment, somewhere in Madison County, said that one Simon Bartrane was so “beaten, wounded and ill-treated that his life was greatly dispaired. [sic]”

Sorensen said there were three documents in the project. The first was the indictment dated in October for the assault committed on September 29, 1814. The second document was a “capias,” or warrant, for the arrest of the three men indicted for the assault. The final record was a statement noting dropped charges in June against Taylor for his October indictment.

“Lockhart [one of the men indicted] was convicted of the crime,” Sorensen said. “County Court wouldn’t have wasted time trying to find these people.”

Martin said what was interesting about this particular case from their findings was the stature of the three men indicted.

During the War of 1812, Taylor was an officer in the U.S. Army and had distinguished his military leadership in previous battles until the Battle of Credit Island near Rock Island, Ill.

In August 1814, he was ordered to take armed troops up the Mississippi River from St. Louis to destroy British and Indian resources. But according to Martin’s findings, Taylor’s troops of about 340 men were overwhelmed by 3 to 1 at that battle. Taylor retreated to present-day Warsaw, Ill. in the Madison County area on Sept. 5.

Because the beating occurred on Sept. 29, Martin was unsure if Taylor and the two men assaulted Bartrane, a Frenchman from St. Louis, who may have tipped off the enemy of Taylor’s attack at Credit Island. But little could be found on the assault and battery victim.

Martin noted in the Illinois Heritage article that Francois Valle of St. Louis, the third man indicted, was under Taylor and his troops. He also said his sources reported that Valle came from a rich merchant family.

Byrd Lockhart, of Goshen Township in Illinois, was noted by historians for his service in the Mexican-American War, but whether he was a part of Taylor’s troops was not confirmed.

Martin said Taylor was the second cousin to James Madison, the president during 1814. And the other two had ties with the governmental and military systems.

“With the three guys, you had a rich merchant’s son, a man who distinguished himself in military and a guy that became president, and they never found out about it,” Martin said.

Both Martin and the depository at SIUC noted that documents such as Taylor’s indictment do appear within record projects, but often are overlooked.

SIUC’s depository has filed insanity, jail and slave records, documents concerning local gangster Charlie Berger and even pre-statehood records written in French.

Barbara Hefflin, assistant director at the depository’s Springfield headquarters, said it is always exciting to find those types of documents, but the regular everyday documents can include even more interesting information.

“To find various cases, whether it has a well-known noticeable person or not, or president’s signature, has a lot of fascination,” Hefflin said. “Slander cases and naturalization records where ordinary people are involved are interesting.”

For Martin, this document made his routine work less than ordinary. He said even though this document was circulating through the state to different agencies, every living Zachary Taylor expert and historian Martin and Sorensen talked to had not seen or heard of this indictment.

“It was pretty cool to find this and interesting doing this with the article that led up to it,” Martin said. “I am continuing along with my PH.D, and it was a nice experience to present in a paper this fall.”

Martin said history does prove itself by showing Taylor was the correct person who received the indictment. But for people living during that time, this event was not history in the making.

“This was not a major event in itself,” Martin said. “He was in Illinois during the War of 1812; beating up a person in that situation was common.”

Martin said Sorensen and himself often exchanged jokes about the indictment in comparison to modern presidents. During the research, Martin may have gotten an email asking if Clinton did inhale. But a newsbyte now, such as Taylor’s indictment, may not have been as significant.

Taylor fought in four different wars, including the Black Hawk War where brutality such as this situation might have turned some heads, but was primarily accepted.

“I am sure it was known or brought up at the time he was president,” Martin said. “He was old ‘Rough and Ready,’ and people had an idea about his actions; they probably would have said, ‘Way to go Zach.'”

Reporter Samantha Edmondson can be reached at [email protected]