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.

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.

Gone to Texas!

I’ve written about my husband’s 2X great grandfather many times. Isaac Sturgell was a restless soul and, by all accounts, a difficult man with whom to live. After all, his wives – all four of them – left him and a grandchild remembered him as an angry old man who swatted the grandkids with a broom handle.

His restless nature is evident by all the places he called home, for at least a short time. Isaac was born in Virginia about 1823, probably in Grayson County. His father began the family migration to Ohio in the 1830s; Isaac’s mother reportedly died in or near Wythe County, Virginia in the late 1830s.

William settled his family in Lawrence County, Ohio, where Isaac married wife #1, Mary Bandy, on 27 June 1844. Mary was the mother of all of Isaac’s seven children.

By 1850, Isaac was living in Barry County, Missouri. Although he returned to Barry County more than once, he also lived in several Arkansas counties which were not far from the Missouri-Arkansas state lines.

The 1850 census shows Isaac, Mary and daughter M.J., aged 2 years, all born in Virginia. However, I doubt that is accurate as Mary’s family was in Ohio by the time she was supposedly born and baby M.J. was likely born either in Ohio or Missouri.

Their second child, Amanda, was born in Missouri, but it is the birthplace of their third child that intrigues me.

Andrew Jackson Sturgell was born in Texas, per the census records. That is probably accurate because of the birthplaces of their other children found in census records and supported by tax records:

M.J., born c1848, probably Ohio or Missouri
Amanda, born c1850, Missouri
Andrew Jackson, born 1853, Texas
Abijah Houston, born 4 March 1855, Barry County, Missouri
Margaret E., born 7 March 1857, Arkansas
George W., born April 1860, Benton County, Arkansas
Mary, born 9 May 1861, Arkansas

I’ve made several attempts to locate any mention of a Sturgell/Sturgill/Sturgeon in Texas in the early 1850s, but with no luck.

Texas was a big place, even in 1853, and was definitely the wild, wild West.

Arkansas can be seen in the upper right corner of the map, but it’s the southwestern corner. The Sturgells lived in the northwestern corner of the state and the southwestern corner of Missouri.

In that time period, it appears that the Shawnee Trail, also called the Texas Road or Emigrant Trail, would have been the most popular, and logical, route take by Isaac and his family into Texas. The trail began in Sedalia, Missouri and went in a southerly direction, passing through southwestern Missouri, cutting through Arkansas into Indian Territory (today, the southeastern area of Oklahoma) before crossing into Denison, Texas, continuing south through Fort Worth, all the way down to Indianola, Texas on the Gulf of Mexico.

Given that Isaac wasn’t traveling alone as an adventurer and had not only wife Mary, possibly daughter M.J. (who died before 1860) and daughter Amanda, but a son born in Texas, I think it can be said with some certainty that Isaac’s stay in Texas was somewhere along the Shawnee Trail and probably in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Isaac wasn’t a literate man, but he obviously heard stories about and admired Andrew Jackson, as he named his first son after the President.

I’ve also wondered how to interpret the clue in his second son’s name – Abijah Houston, who is my husband’s great grandfather. While it’s possible that Houston points to the Sturgells’ home in Texas, I tend to doubt that for one reason. Houston’s access point in the 1850s was much easier by waterways. However, those waterways made for difficult travel from southwestern Missouri. The Shawnee Trail was a much more direct way to go, particularly for a man with a young family in tow.

Instead, I believe that Abijah’s middle name was a nod to Sam Houston, a legend in Texas history.

Exactly how long did the Sturgells live in Texas? Well, all I can say is that they were in Barry County, Missouri on 29 August 1850 when the census taker knocked on the door and they were back living in Barry County on 4 March 1855 when Abijah was born there.

It would help if Andrew Jackson Sturgell had a birth or death record, but there is none to be found. He married his fourth wife on 2 July 1876 in Boone County, Arkansas and died before 17 June 1880, when the census taker came around. He is not found in the mortality schedule, either.

Isaac Sturgell was never a wealthy man. I think the family lived in barely comfortable means, if that. He was never taxed in Arkansas for more than a couple of pigs. He didn’t even own a horse and his Missouri land was acquired through the Homestead Act.

I tend to think he didn’t receive a land grant or purchase any land in Texas. He might have been drawn to the historical excitement in Texas, but finding life there unsatisfactory, he took the family back to Missouri.

It might be that the 1860 and 1870 census entries for A.J., as he was called, are the only extant pieces of evidence to tell the story of their Texas trip.