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.

Bud, born Andrew Herman Sturgell was the youngest of the eleven children born to Abijah Houston and Martha Susanna (Alberty) Sturgell and was only six years old when his father died.

Andrew Herman Sturgell was born on 6 October 1898 in Barry County, Missouri. his young life was rather different from that of his elder siblings because of his father’s death.

His mother, Martha, married only five months after Abijah died from the effects of being burned in a barn fire. Benjamin Wagnon, his stepfather, and Martha weren’t married long and parted ways after a few years.

Some of Martha’s children were starting to make the move to the new state of Oklahoma in the early 1900s. Martha and Bud made a trip there to visit John Houston Sturgell and see his newly built home about 1910.

While Martha returned to Barry County, Missouri and died there on 10 July 1916, Bud, like many of his siblings, also chose Oklahoma as his long term home.

Andrew Herman Sturgell married Jessie Lee Ellen Nixon on 22 October 1921 in Grady County, Oklahoma. Bud began married life as a farmer, at times owning his own land and renting at other times.

Bud is the only Sturgell aunt or uncle of my mother-in-law’s whom I knew, at least through a few letters that we wrote back and forth.

Bud died on 27 January 1989 in Blanchard. Jessie predeceased him in 1985.

Bud and Jessie were parents of eight children, one of whom is still living and won’t be included in this family sketch. All children were born in Blanchard, McClain, Oklahoma.

Children:

1. Nora Nadene, born 18 November 1922; died 11 June 2012, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Oklahoma; married J. Berkeley Johnson, 4 April 1946, McClain County, Oklahoma
2. Elaine, born c1925; died before 2022; married Leo Burney Melott, c1950
3. Helen, born 8 September 1926; died 16 June 1991, Oklahoma; married Evin Willie Garrison, 25 May 1946, Cleveland County, Oklahoma
4. Herman Leroy, born 21 August 1931; died 18 January 2021, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Oklahoma; married Unknown (MNU)
5. Andrew Kenneth, born 21 May 1934; died 2 July 1935, Blanchard, McClain, Oklahoma
6. Billie Ruth, born 11 September 1935; died 4 July 1937, Blanchard, McClain, Oklahoma
7. Vera June, born 8 November 1940; died 1 November 2022, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Oklahoma; married Living
8. Living Child

Amy Cora Sturgell was the eighth child and sixth daughter, born 21 August 1891 in Barry County, Missouri, to Abijah Houston and Martha Susannah (Alberty) Sturgell.

Unlike most of the other Sturgell spouses, Frank Richard Slemp was not from Barry County, Missouri, having been born in Atchison County, Missouri on 2 December 1886.Frank and Amy married one day after her 19th birthday in Chickasha, Grady, Oklahoma.

Other Sturgell relatives were in Chickasha, so I can only surmise that Amy was either visiting family or perhaps had moved to Oklahoma after her father, Abijah, died in 1905. Her mother Martha had married (2) Benjamin Wagnon later in 1905, but they separated/divorced and she visited children in Oklahoma around 1910.

Frank had apparently decided to check out Oklahoma, too, and met Amy sometime around 1910.

In fact, Amy Sturgell is enumerated as a servant in the home of Richard and Rebecca Slemp in Shirley, a town near Chickasha, in Grady County, Oklahoma in 1910. Although a number of Slemp children are in the home, Frank is not one of them. Richard Slemp was his uncle, not his father, so Frank and Amy might have met when Frank visited his uncle and cousins.

Frank was a lifelong farmer and he, Amy and their only son, Homer, moved several times.

In 1910, Frank was single, living in Verden, Grady, Oklahoma, where other Sturgells also lived. The 1917 World War I draft registration card lists a home in McClain County, Oklahoma. In 1920, the family lived in Victor, McClain County, but in 1930 had moved to nearby Blanchard.

Between 1935-1940, the Slemp family made the move to Median County, Texas. How Medina County was chosen is not known, but life in Oklahoma must have been difficult, based on the number of times the family moved. The final push to move far away might well have been the death of their only child, Homer Leroy, in Blanchard in 1935.

Frank and Amy lived quite a few years in Texas. Amy died on 19 May 1964 in Castroville, Medina, Texas. Her body was sent back to Blanchard for burial, perhaps to be next to son Homer. Frank survived her by six years, but in the remaining years, he moved back to his place of birth – Atchison County, Missouri. He died there on 13 April 1970, but like Amy, his body was shipped back to Blanchard, where the family is buried together.

Amy Cora Sturgell is the only one of Abijah’s and Martha’s surviving children who has no living descendants today.