We’re eating crow. As noted when we started on the subject of “firsts,” claims can be unreliable since “firsts” are usually awarded in retrospect and memories can be unreliable. Information can also be missing. And we just came across information that restores the title of “first white child born in Jacksonville” to Cornelius Jasper Armstrong!
When Robert and Minerva Armstrong arrived in Jacksonville in October of 1852, Robert built a “pole cabin” on the site of what is now known as the “Judge Hanna House” at 285 South 1st Street. That’s where Cornelius Jasper Armstrong was born on February 24, 1853. It was later that spring that the Armstrongs traded the pole cabin and a hack to a Mr. Rogers for the donation land claim about 4 miles north of town that the Armstrong family occupied for the next 37 years.
So Cornelius Jasper was indeed born in Jacksonville!