Notes on John Prisk

from The Families: Prisk, Priske, Prysk - The World Over

John Prisk had married Elizabeth Ann Arthur in St. Blazey, Cornwall, and their first child had been born the previous year. This child, Catherine, and her mother did not accompany John to America. It was five years before they joined John in Mineral Point. 

The baptismal records of the Methodist Church at Mineral Point (for teh charge at Barreltown, a mining settlement just northeast of Mineral Point),  show that in November, 1845, John Arthur, Thomas, Paul, Samuel, Ellen Jane, and Elizabeth Ann, children of John and Elizabeth Prisk, were baptised by Rev. Elihu Springer. The 1850 census of Mineral Point gives the family names as: John Arthur, age 10; Thomas, age 9; Ellen Jane, age 6; Paul, age 7; Samuel, age 6; Elizabeth Ann, age 5; and William, age 4.

I am sure the family continued to live in Mineral Point until after the Civil War (1865). Samuel was in army service in 1865 in a Wisconsin Regiment, Catherine married a widower (quite a lot older than she), named Alexander Babcock. There are still descendants of theirs living in this area. Most of the sons went west to Colorado, Idaho, montana, and Nevada. Elizabeth is listed as a widow in church records in late 1860's and early 1870's in Mineral Point. I am sure John died here and is buried in the old nonsectarian city cemetery. There are no (or very few) death records that early and many of the tombstones were destoyed over time. (Ruth Jungbluth, Jan., 2006)