October 25, 2026
In 1853, a Belleville newspaper printed a commissioner's sale notice naming Patience A. Champion and others as plaintiffs in a St. Clair County Circuit Court cause. The sale was set to dispose of several rural parcels in Madison County, Illinois. The notice is a glimpse of Patience acting in a legal matter years after her husband's death, but the parcel description points away from the Belleville home on Charles Street.
The notice refers to an order made at the court's March 1853 term and names David Swyre as commissioner. A November reprint makes Patience's middle initial and the rural land description easier to read. The notice does not identify the other parties clearly enough to determine whether they were relatives, and it does not tell us the result of the sale.
Patience had been widowed since Dr. Federal Champion's death on November 3, 1847. A contemporary estate notice names P. Ann Champion as executrix alongside Isaac Griffen and David Swire; the 1853 full form Patience A. Champion strongly supports the identification of those records with the doctor's widow. The spelling Swyre differs from the 1848 Swire and the 1896 retrospective's Swyers, so the commissioner should not be assumed to be the same David without corroboration.
The 1896 biography gives Patience's birth as March 24, 1804, in Tuckahoe, New Jersey, and says she died in May 1892. Her obituary, in an issue archive-labeled April 29, prints May 2 as her death date; the later biography says May 3. The date discrepancy remains unresolved.
This court notice adds a legal and property thread to Patience's story, while also showing why location matters: these Madison County parcels are not the Champion family residence on Charles Street. The court file or deed record may identify the other parties and what happened to the land.
October 12, 1853 commissioner's sale notice