Mark Mitchell Bassett descends from #2B Thomas Bassett of Virginia as follows:
Thomas Bassett (b. 1617) and wife Mary
William Bassett (b. 1643) and wife
Thomas Bassett (b. 1668) and wife Elinor
Thomas Bassett (b. 1696) and wife Lydia Howle
Nathaniel Bassett (b. 1721) and wife Mary
Abner Bassett (b. 1765) and wife Susannah Harbard
Thomas Bassett (b. 1801) and wife Abigail Carlock
Mark Mitchell Bassett (b. 1827)
Mark Bassett
Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and History of Peoria County, 1902
Mark Mitchell Bassett was born in Schuyler County, Illinois, March 27, 1837, a period of stress and hardship for early settlers in Illinois. For years prior to that date there was a dearth in his family of everything but labor for the necessaries of life. Beyond the fact that his father’s people were Kentuckians, but little is known of his paternal ancestry. His earliest remembrance is of a widowed mother, who, with “little Mark,” shared the home and meager fare afforded by some relative for such return as could be rendered by a delicate woman crippled by rheumatism — chiefly knitting. Thus his childhood was spent, at times a nearby school-house affording a few weeks “schooling,” where lessons were learned from Webster’s Spelling book. An only sister, ten years his senior, having married when Mark was about seven years old, shared her home in Fulton County with her mother and brother almost continuously so long as the mother lived. Under the direction of a thrifty farmer, he assisted in reclaiming many acres from the hand of Nature, and thus acquired habits of industry, energy and perseverance which— based upon an inheritance of strict honesty and integrity, the ruling characteristics of the Carlocks of Virginia, from whom the maternal side of his house was descended—made strong the foundations on which his after-life was reared. In such hard but wholesome experience as clearing and tilling the soil, and rafting logs to the St. Louis market, were gained that tenacity of purpose and those powers of endurance which served him so well in after years.
In August, 1857, Mr. Bassett was induced to leave the plough, and, with a partner—but with no other capital than an intent to be honest—to engage in the management of a store, which was operated successfully until he bought his partner’s interest. Later he conducted the concern alone and profitably, doing a considerable business in grain and stock, besides managing the farm, until December, 1861, when he enlisted in the war for the preservation of the Union, and was assigned to Company E, Fifty-third Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry. The story of heroic endeavor and endurance which followed is gathered, not alone from Captain Bassett’s memory, but from the diaries of comrades-in-battle, comrades-in-prison and comrades-in-escape, and from the most tragic pages in our national history, as also from the letters of Union men in North Carolina and East Tennessee who afforded them shelter, a hiding-place, food, clothing and a guide to the next point of safety nearer the Union lines. The record of the Fifty-third is only partly told in the battles of Shiloh and Corinth, and Hatchie (where Lieutenant Bassett was ordered to take the insignia of rank from the lifeless body of his superior officer, First Lieut. Armand Pollisard, of Kankakee) ; in the siege of Vicksburg and the battle of Jackson, Mississippi, of July 12, 1863, in which last engagement, in a charge by his brigade upon the rebel breastworks, orders ignorantly given but faithfully obeyed, sent many a gallant soldier needlessly to his death, and hundreds of others into the hands of the enemy as prisoners — among the last being Lieutenant Bassett who was leading his company in the fearful onslaught, thus winning the commission as Captain which was issued while he was a prisoner. Capt. John D. Hatfield, of Company H, now living at Neligh, Nebraska, was Captain Bassett’s close companion in the long months of imprisonment in Libby Prison which followed, and his fellow-toiler in digging the famous tunnel by which, with 107 other prisoners, they succeeded in escaping on the night of February 9, 1864. Having been recaptured on the fourth night out when near the Union lines on the Pamunkey River, Captain Bassett was thrust into an underground dungeon and kept on bread and water—if a composition of corn, cobs and husks ground together could be called “bread.” After the battle of the Wilderness, through fear of the capture of Richmond by Grant’s army, came the removal of the prisoners from Libby; first to Danville, Virginia; next to Macon, Georgia—where another unsuccessful attempt was made to escape; then to Charleston, and finally to Columbia, South Carolina. Here they were held in an open camp called “Camp Sorghum”—but no sweeter as a home on account of its name. On the night of November 10, 1864, just before the completion of a stockade around the camp, a squad of nine made a third attempt at escape by running the guard. After being out thirteen nights, the blood-hounds with which the Con- federates were pursuing them got on their track, when the fugitives separated into groups of four, three and two. The four having soon been overtaken, were shot where they surrendered ; the two were recaptured and taken back to their prison-pen, while the three—consisting of Capt. A. S. Stuart, now of Osceola, Missouri; Lieutenant Tom Payne Young, since deceased, and Capt. Mark Bassett—set their faces towards the west and north and, after wandering fifty-two days and nights among the mountains of the Blue Ridge, reached the Union lines at Sweet Water, Tennessee, and Knoxville on January 1, 1865. They were not alone, having been joined in the mountains by other escaping prisoners, Union men who had deserted the rebel ranks and others who had become separated from their commands. The picture of that ragged group of twelve, taken at Knoxville on that Happy New Year’s Day, is one of the cherished relics of a historic past, which the Captain could not be induced to part with. The appearance of the same picture on page 130 of Vol. Ill, of “Lossing’s History of The Civil War,” as a group of “Union Refuges,” illustrates the errors which sometimes creep into “history.” Another relic highly prized by the Captain is a lithograph of a highly embellished chart containing the names and rank of all the prisoners in Libby at the time, the original having been prepared with pen and ink by Capt. B. F. Fischer, of Cincinnati. It would be difficult to conceive anything more thrilling than the reminiscences related by these heroic comrades of their experiences of prison-life, and their terrible suffering in mind and body while attempting to make their escape. These eighteen months of hardship and peril left Captain Bassett physically unfitted for a return to duty; so, at the expiration of his leave of absence, on the order of the Secretary of War he repaired to Camp Blair, at Jackson, Michigan, where he received his discharge, April 12, 1865, three days after the surrender of Lee at Appomattox. Having spent a year and a half on his farm and in buying and selling grain, he engaged in the study of law with Capt. A. W. Bull, at Pekin, Illinois, (under whom he enlisted), later with Hon. B. S. Prettyman, and, within the next two years, in the face of many difficulties and meager educational advantages, he was admitted to the bar, thus realizing his early ambition to become a lawyer. In 1872 Captain Bassett moved to Peoria and has at different times been associated with some of the leading lawyers of this city. As a Republican he was elected to the lower branch of the General Assembly in 1884; four years afterwards was advanced to the State Senate, and, in 1898, was elected Probate Judge of Peoria County, which office he still holds discharging its duties honestly, faithfully and acceptably. Judge Bassett’s family—though there are now none left to bear his name—includes all deserving young people of his acquaintance in whom he takes a practical interest, which is shared by his wife. Although not identified with any church organization, his “religion is of the life, and the life of his religion is to do good.”