Plunkett, Robert S. (Plunket)

Born: 1808-06-13 North Carolina

Died: 1890-09-19 Pleasant Plains, Illinois

Alternate name: Plunket

Plunkett moved with his family to Cartwright, Illinois, in 1823. He married Ruth Combs in 1829, with whom he had six children. During the Black Hawk War, Plunkett served in Abraham Lincoln's company of the 4th Illinois Regiment of Mounted Volunteers. Plunkett received for his military service forty acres of bounty land in Sangamon County in 1852, and an additional 120 acres of bounty land in Putnam County, Missouri, in 1859, which he assigned to Cavil M. Freeman. His wife Ruth died in 1844, and Plunkett married Anna Alexander, who also died. In 1850, he married Marilda Gateley Hind, with whom he had two more children. They settled near Pleasant Plains. In 1860, he was working as a farmer and had amassed $6,000 in real estate and $800 in personal property.

Gravestone, Richland Baptist Church Cemetery, Pleasant Plains, IL; John Carroll Power and S. A. Power, History of the Early Settlers of Sangamon County, Illinois (Springfield, IL: Edwin A. Wilson, 1876), 572-73; Land Patent of the United States to Robert S. Plunkett, 10 June 1852, Warrant No. 13128, Sangamon County, IL, Land Patent of the United States to Cavil M. Freeman, 10 September 1859, Warrant No. 12982, Putnam County, MO, RG 49: Records of the Bureau of Land Management, Records of the General Land Office, Land Patents, 1789-2012, National Archives at Kansas City, Kansas City, MO; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Sangamon County, IL, 331; Isaac H. Elliott, Record of the Services of Illinois Soldiers in the Black Hawk War, 1831-32, and in the Mexican War, 1846-8 (Springfield, IL: H. W. Rokker, 1882), 100.