High, Isaac

Born: 1803-10-13 Virginia

Died: 1859-07-21

By 1830, Isaac High had settled his family in Warren County, Indiana. The family gained a reputation by the early 1850s for allegedly running a horse theft operation, of which Isaac’s son George was purportedly the leader. The so-called Redwood Gang was said to be active on both sides of the Illinois-Indiana border. High was described as a farmer in the 1850 census, which also recorded that he owned real estate valued at $1,500. High married Catharine Harness in Ohio in 1825 and the pair had several children.

George R. Dekle, Sr., Prairie Defender: The Murder Trials of Abraham Lincoln (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2017), 96-100; Ohio, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1774-1993, 19 April 1825, Ross County (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2016); U.S. Census Office, Fifth Census of the United States (1830), Warren County, IN, 179; U.S. Census Office, Sixth Census of the United States (1840), Warren County, IL, 87; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Warren County, IN, 22; Gravestone, Redwood Cemetery, West Lebanon, Warren County, IN.