Category Archives: Sturgell

Sturgell

Where Did They Go & How Did They Get There? Mapping Isaac Sturgell (1823-1909)

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How often do you use maps in your genealogy research? I have to admit I go through spells where I use them constantly and then move on to someone else whose life doesn’t require heavy use of maps.

In modern times, we generally think of using maps for longer trips, but different kinds of maps can sometimes help us solve, or at least reasonably think about, ancestral mysteries that involve more than one location.

My husband’s 2X great grandfather, Isaac Sturgell, is a man who has commanded hours, days, weeks, months and even years of time genealogical time as I’ve pieced together his life.

You see, the man never stayed in one place for very long.

Exactly how many times did he move? I’ll probably never have the complete answer, but I can account for many years and places. It’s actually pretty amazing because the man was never taxed for more than a pig and one Homestead Act piece of land. I doubt he ever owned a horse and I’ve often believed that he walked many of the places he traveled when he couldn’t hitch a wagon ride with a passerby.

So far, I can place Isaac in the following locations:

c1823 – Born Grayson County, Virginia
1844 – Married Lawrence County, Ohio
1850 – Lived in Barry County, Missouri
1853 – Son Andrew born in Texas
1855 – Back in Barry County, Missouri
1860 – Lived in Benton County, Arkansas
1867 – Married in Newton County, Missouri, but resident of Barry County, Missouri
1870 – Lived in White River, Twp., Barry County, Missouri
1876 – Lived and married in Boone County, Arkansas
1877 – Lived and married in Pope County, Arkansas
1880 – Lived in Conway County, Arkansas
1909 – Died in Cassville, Barry County, Missouri

Notice the huge gap from 1880 until 1909? Isaac hasn’t been found in the 1900 census, but I suspect he was living at the County Farm as a pauper.

That’s quite a list of places for a poor man born in 1823.

What if we looked at a map?

My perspective definitely changes! Isaac traveled over 2800 miles in his lifetime and maybe more, given the gap between 1880 and his death in 1909.

I don’t know for sure where in Texas Isaac went in the early 1850s. If the census taker hadn’t noted Andrew’s birth there in 1853, I wouldn’t never have known.

Isaac did name his next son, born back in Barry County in 1855, Abijah Houston Sturgell. Because of that, I picked Houston as his destination, but it’s very possible that Isaac admired Sam Houston and because of his short sojourn to Texas gave his name to Abijah.

Even putting aside the family move from Virginia to Ohio, about which little guy Isaac had no say, and leaving out the trek to Texas, focus on the area of southwest Missouri and northwest Arkansas, where Isaac spent most of his life.

He covered a lot of ground through multiple counties that are all in the Ozark Mountains! Remember, no horse!

Maps are an underused resource, for sure. Tomorrow, I share some uses for maps in genealogy research.

Sturgell

12 for ’26: Sturgell Newspaper Tidbits

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Always on the lookout for new bits of information pertaining to my husband’s Sturgell family, my FamilySearch full text search didn’t let me down.

There were only a handful of items that popped up, but made for interesting reading.

First, Lee Rue Sturgell (1884-1947) was the son of Abijah Houston Sturgell and the sibling of my husband’s grandfather, making Lee his grand uncle.

I knew that Lee met an untimely death in 1947 when he fell out the back of a truck and was killed. However, I learned two new details about him from this 6 January 1928 news item in the Maplewood New Champion:

I didn’t know that Lee had served as a deputy sheriff. All I knew about him was that he was a farmer, in spite of the fact that I met and corresponded with his daughter, Elva.

Second, I recognize the Snider surname as Abijah and wife Martha are both buried in the Snider aka Snyder Cemetery.

What is even more surprising is that Ben Snyder committed suicide in 1931 and his obituary mentions a pending court case, having been robbed of “$40 a few months before.”

Cassville Republican

Thu, Jun 11, 1931 • Page 1

BENNIE SNIDER KILLS SELF WITH SHOTGUN

Body Found in Bedroom of Home Near Cato Sunday Afternoon. Jury Verdict — Suicide.

BENNIE SNIDER, age 42, a farmer, living tear Cato, took his own life at his home while alone Sunday June 7, by shooting himself through the heart with a 16-gauge shotgun.

The body was found lying face downward on the floor in a bed room of the dwelling. By the body was the shotgun, a small stick, which evidently had been used to pull the trigger of the gun, and also a note written by Snider.

Sunday morning Snider went to the home of his brother, Seigel Snider, to get a razor to shave himself. His brother let him have a razor and returned home with Bennie. His brother then went with Bennie’s wife and son to the strawberry field to pick berries, leaving Bennie at the house shaving. After shaving he changed his clothes and did not join the family in the berry field.

Mr. Snider is said by the members of his family to have appeared cheerful Sunday morning. They discovered nothing unusual about his actions.

It is believed that he had been dead at least four or five hours before his body was found, as it was about four o’clock in the afternoon when the family returned to the house from the berry field. Upon their return they found the door to the main room of the dwelling fastened by an inside button.

The door to the bed room where the body was found was also fastened.

Sheriff Holman was notified soon after the body was found. Accompanied by Prosecuting Attorney Ellis, the sheriff drove to the home, one and one-half miles east of Cato.

An inquest was held over the body by Justice J. W. Hisey of Cassville, Sunday evening. The Jury consisted of the following men: A. J. Hatfield, Troy Short, Olin Stumpff, Frank Hudson, A. W. Collar and G. C. Neill. The Jury found that Mr. Snider’s death was caused by a “gun-shot wound inflicted by himself.”

Several months ago Mr. Snider was robbed of forty dollars, charged one of his neighbors with the crime and had him placed under arrest. The case is now pending in the circuit court here.

It is believed that he has brooded much over this trouble. The note found near his body stated in a general way that his home had been broken up and that if he told it his neighbor whom he had placed under arrest would kill him.

Funeral services were held Sunday afternoon, conducted by Res. Cottrell of Shell Knob, and under direction of the Horine Funeral Service of this city.

Was the neighbor Lee Sturgell? There was no tie by marriage between the two families, so if Ben’s home had been “broken up,” perhaps his wife didn’t agree with pursuing the court case. This is just speculation on my part.

Or had Ben accused yet another neighbor of stealing from him since the 1928 article claimed he had been robbed of $35, not $40?

With Ben’s death, the case would have been closed, but I have to wonder why Lee was accused of robbing Ben in the first place.

The next item is a tax list from Van Buren County, Arkansas:

George Sturgell, son of Isaac Sturgell and Mary Bandy, married Caroline Holmes in Van Buren County on 31 October 1878. They were residing there at the time of the 1880 census, so the tax record confirms that George lived there for at least 2 years.

Speaking of Isaac Sturgell, the happy wanderer 2X great grandfather of my husband, is found on an 1860 tax list of Pulaski County, Arkansas. I thought I had found every place he had lived (Virginia, Lawrence County, Ohio, Texas, Barry and Newton Counties, Missouri plus Benton, Carroll, Pope and Boone Counties, Arkansas. However, he apparently made it a little further south in Arkansas to Pulaski County:

Given the fact that Isaac didn’t stay put in any one place for very long and he is the only Isaac Sturgell/Sturgill I have found traipsing through Arkansas in the 1860s, I have to believe this is my guy.

The last document pertains to Gwondolen Marcelean “Jo” Sturgell, the granddaughter of Lee Sturgell and daughter of Marlett and Dora Sturgell.

I knew she had married Calvin Russell in 1950, but I had never found the marriage record in Barry County, where they lived. That’s because they married over the state line in Carroll County, Arkansas!

Jo was only 17 years old, but her mother was present as a witness. That has to make me wonder if Marlett thought Jo was too young to get married, said no, but Dora took her to Arkansas to get married.

None of these items are huge discoveries, but the apparent issue between Lee Sturgell and Ben Snider is very sad.

Sturgell

Isaac Sturgell & the Texas Connection

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Most of the time, when I begin writing about an ancestor, I have a good idea where the story is going to end. Today, I am sharing a different kind of story – a brick wall – and I’m not sure I’ll ever find the answer.

My husband’s 2X great grandfather, Isaac Sturgell, was definitely a black sheep – married four times and all four wives left him. He died in the Barry County, Missouri county farm in 1909, with no survivors mentioned in his short death notice – although he had 3 surviving children living in Illinois and grandchildren living a few miles away from the county farm.

Isaac was a man on the move his whole life. He never had the opportunity to go to school, born in Virginia, moved to Lawrence County, Ohio with his father when he was about 14 years old. He married there, moved to Barry County, Missouri and then meandered through Benton, Boone, Conway and Pope Counties, Arkansas, Newton County, Missouri and back to Barry County.

However, Isaac Sturgell also had a Texas connection. The mystery is exactly where that connection is.

My husband’s great grandfather, Abjiah Houston Sturgell, was Isaac’s fourth child and second born son and Houston is a name that has continued down in the family right to my husband’s uncle.

Houston is undoubtedly a salute to Sam Houston (1793-1863), who was not only elected as the governor of both Tennessee and Texas and a senator from Texas, but also served as the first and third Presidents of the Republic of Texas.

The fact that Isaac gave the middle name Houston to one of his children, doesn’t prove that there was any other connection to Texas.

On the other hand, census records point to a definite Texas tie – Isaac’s eldest son, Andrew Jackson Sturgell, was born about 1853 in . . . . . TEXAS!

Unfortunately, Jack, as he was known, died before the 1880 census, no death record has been found and, other than marrying four times but leaving no descendants, not much else is known about him. There are definitely no clues pointing to where in Texas Isaac might have moved his family c1853.

What was going on in Texas at the time?

The Portal to Texas History has this excellent map, dated 1853, showing what Texas looked like at the time. Texas is, and was, a big place even in 1853.

By that time, thousands of Southerners were drawn to Texas by the offer of cheap land. Coming from the southwest corner of Missouri, the young Sturgell family would probably have entered the far northeast corner of Texas, but where they might have lived is an unknown. I would tend to doubt that they made it all the way down to, say, San Patricio County, but it isn’t impossible either.

I have searched several times, but have found no hits of the Sturgell/Sturgeon (spelling variation) name on the Portal to Texas history and Isaac’s name isn’t found among those receiving early land grants either.

Did he actually buy land? I don’t know and, even in 1853, there were more than 20 counties. To complicate matters, in the 1850s, there were a number of land districts, such as the Fannin Land District, formed in 1846, but which became the Cooke Land district and Denton Land District in 1854. The 1852 Travis Land District became part of Brown County in 1858.

That’s a lot of records to hunt down – which will take a lot of man hours to research – when there is a possibility that Isaac never bought any land in Texas.

What types of records can I check? In this place and time period, I think military lists, land records and possible tax records are my best bet.

Which counties will I check?

  • Anderson
  • Angelina
  • Austin
  • Bastrop
  • Bell
  • Bexar
  • Bosque
  • Bowie
  • Brazoria
  • Brazos
  • Burleson
  • Burnet
  • Caldwell
  • Calhoun
  • Cameron
  • Cass
  • Cheerokee
  • Collin
  • Colorado
  • Comal
  • Cooke
  • Coryell
  • Dallas
  • Denton
  • DeWitt
  • Ellis
  • El Paso
  • Falls
  • Fannin
  • Fayette
  • Fort Bend
  • Freestone
  • Galveston
  • Gillespie
  • Goliad
  • Gonzales
  • Grayson
  • Grimes
  • Guadalupe
  • Harris
  • Harrison
  • Hays
  • Henderson
  • Hidalgo
  • Hill
  • Hopkins
  • Houston
  • Hunt
  • Jackson
  • Jasper
  • Jefferson
  • Johnson
  • Jones
  • Karnes
  • Kaufman
  • Kinney
  • Lamar
  • Lavaca
  • Leon
  • Liberty
  • Limestone
  • Madison
  • Matagorda
  • McLennan
  • Medina
  • Milam
  • Montgomery
  • Nacogdoches
  • Navarro
  • Newton
  • Nueces
  • Orange
  • Panola
  • Polk
  • Presidio
  • Red River
  • Refugio
  • Robertson
  • Rusk
  • Sabine
  • San Augustine
  • San Patricio
  • Shelby
  • Smith
  • Starr
  • Tarrant
  • Titus
  • Travis
  • Trinity
  • Tyler
  • Upshur
  • Uvalde
  • Van Zandt
  • Victoria
  • Walker
  • Washington
  • Webb
  • Wharton
  • Wichita
  • Williamson
  • Wood
  • Zavala

That’s 102 counties! Rather than going alphabetically down the list, I will start with those in the northeast corner of Texas that borders Arkansas. With young children, and no known FAN club, I doubt that the Sturgells made it all the way down to, say, Starr County and west Texas had few settlers in the early 1850s.