The following was written by Della Mae (Barr) Evans:
William A. Harvey - Nancy M. Gooch. We find in our search for ancestors that it takes a great amount of time and sometimes we run into roadblocks. Those blocks, if we keep working at it, can eventually be surmounted. The Harvey name is a common one which causes us to go off on many leads, most of them false. Some information has fallen into place though.
We know that William A. was born in Illinois on May 16, 1823. As we study history, we find this was very early in the settling of that area. With so many of your ancestors we find that they were some of the first settlers into areas that were disputed lands with the Indians. This was the case in that Illinois territory. The Indians had fiercely resisted the encroachment of white settlers in the early 1800s as the whites pushed across the Alleghenies. Those were unsettled times on the frontiers. We know that our ancestors were no doubt involved to
some extent in the opening up of the western lands.
We find that our William A. next lived in Missouri in 1850, in Bates County. We have been told he fought for the North during the Civil War, although the Adjutant General's Office has no records of his service. The fighting during those times in Missouri was mainly local skirmishes so he may have been with the local militia.
He married a neighbor girl named Nancy Gooch, and they lived and farmed for many years at Rich Hill, Missouri. He and Nancy are buried there where a monument marking their grave is inscribed - "gone but not forgotten."
Our research shows very little about Nancy. She was born in Tennessee. Her family moved to Pettis County, Missouri and she was married to William A. Harvey by 1855. They lived at Rich Hill, which is a very small town in the west central part of the state. She lived just nine months short of 100 years.31