I stopped doing research for several years for health reasons, and have picked it back up but am in the middle of converting records on paper into my FTM program. Hence, the information below that you requested about the families that migrated from Sharp Co. to North Texas is NOT all that I have, and it's an overview, anyhow, for the purposes of this list. I'd be happy to exchange full details with anyone who wants to do that off-list. David Mastin Armstrong was born 1848 in AL to Richard Dickson Armstrong, who moved his family to what was then Lawrence Co., AR in the early 1850's from Franklin Co., AL. The Armstrongs had lived in Marion Co., AL before it split off into Franklin Co., then Monroe Co. MS before that; Richard and his brother William moved as young settlers from North Carolina (probably Anson Co.) into the newly opened Mississippi and Alabama territories after the land was taken from the Choctaws and other native tribes for westward expansion. Richard Dickson Armstrong was the first white owner of the land he obtained in Northern Alabama. He and William were the sons of Richard Armstrong and Martha/Patsy Huntley of North Carolina. Richard's parents are Isaac Armstrong and Elizabeth Ussery. Martha's parents were Thomas Huntley Jr. and Jane Alsobrook Cook, also of North Carolina. Several sources on the web indicate that Martha was Cherokee (some say full-blood) and that her real name was Oh Ko Wi Ki. I have not found verification of this statement, and am a little skeptical of it because her family history is fairly well fleshed out and does not appear to be Cherokee. In her background are Dicksons and Hindmans, these surnames appearing (along with the above-mentioned Huntley and Mastin) as middle names for her Armstrong grandsons. Richard and Martha Armstrong migrated to Hot Spring County, Arkansas and are buried there. Another of their sons, Thomas, married Malena Lockridge and produced a daughter Elvira who married Isaac Hill Ritchie (see Ritchies below, another Sharp Co. family). Richard Dickson Armstrong was a successful, though not well-to-do, farmer and also made income from stud horses. He passed on knowledge about horsebreeding to his son David, who kept a journal of his efforts. (I've read it.) Richard Dickson married Susannah Fuller, probably in Franklin Co., AL, but possibly in Monroe Co., MS. Susannah was born 1826 in Monroe Co., MS to David C. Fuller and Ann Randolph; Ann Randolph's father Hugh was a Revolutionary War veteran and received a pension. Richard Dickson and Susannah's children include Isaac Huntley A., David A., Sarah Jane A. (who appears to have died young), and James Richard A. Not long after moving to Lawrence Co., before the split into Sharp Co., Susannah died and Richard Dickson remarried to Margrett Mathis. They had two more children, William Leroy A. and Thomas Hindman A. When the Civil War started, Richard Dickson and his two eldest sons enlisted in the Confederate States Army. David was only 14 at the time. His children by Margrett were still toddlers. Later in the war, Richard's third son James Richard also enlisted in the CSA. Margrett was left behind to manage the farm. Richard and David served as privates in Company B, Morgan's Cavalry, from Arkansas. On 12 October 1864 Richard was captured at Ironton, Missouri and sent to the infamous Union Military Prison at Alton, Illinois. This prison had used as a regular prison several decades before the war, but for a long time had been condemned as not fit for use even for prisoners. However, it was deemed good enough for Confederates. Most of the windows had no covering of any kind; there were no floors, so pools of water and mud stood everywhere; and the prison sat on an island in the middle of the river, subject to freezing cold in the winter and mosquito-laden humidity in the summer. I have seen photographs of prisoners taken during this time; they look like concentration camp survivors. The death rate was astronmical. David knew of his father's capture. He was quite literate and would have written home to let the rest of the family now, but writing supplies were desperately scarce for Confederates and he could not find enough to manage even a note. His father was 40 years old at the time of capture. Deeply worried about his survival, David made the enormously difficult decision to give himself up to the Union Army and beg to be sent to the same prison as his father so that he might look after him. His gamble worked. But by the time he got to Richard, his father was already ill. On 24 May 1865, seven months after capture, Richard was admitted to the so-called hospital of the prison. He died on 7 June 1865 of "chronic diarrhoea" and is buried at the prison graveyard. The remainder of the prisoners were released, including David. It took him some time to get back home because he had no horse, no food, and had himself become ill with tuberculosis from the prison conditions. Margrett and the other children spent a year and a half wondering what had happened to Richard before David returned with the sad news. At war's end, David was still only 17. His heart had been broken, and the finances of everyone he knew in Sharp County were destroyed by the war. He heard of a wagon train heading for Texas from Sharp Co. On that train folks he knew from the Evening Shade area, including Tommy and Joanah Ritchie and their three youngest children. In 1874 he left his brothers to look after his stepmother and rode off alone toward Texas. On that long ride, he became away of the sparking blue eyes and sweet strength of Tommy and Joanah's daughter Margaret Semmerine (her middle name comes from a river somewhere in the family's past). By the time they reached Texas, they were in love and obtained her parent's permission to marry. Margaret, born 1858 in Ash Flat, Sharp Co., was only 16 at the time of her marriage. David and Margaret settled on land near Grapevine in Tarrant County, TX. (DFW Airport now covers their farm.) The elder Ritchies either didn't stop with them or didn't stop long. They moved on up 70 miles north to Montague Co. on the Oklahoma border. David and Margaret had their daughter, Sarah Lee (named for Robert E. Lee) in 1875 and then followed to Montague Co. David obtained "Limestone County" school land just east of Stoneburg, Texas and built a soddie on the crosstimber prairie there. Nearby were the farms of the Ritchies, the Turners, several of Cerilda Turner's grown siblings, and other intermarried kin who originated in Sharp Co. David bought a stud horse, and when the growing community had their first death, he donated one of his hilltops for a cemetery, now known as Oak Hill Cemetery. Eventually David built a one room cabin, then added a second room with a dog run. But by this time, the TB he'd gotten at the Union Army prison had begun to wear him down. He and Margaret had a pair of twins who died at birth and are buried at Oak Hill. Not long after, while his daughter Sarah was still a teenager, David died and was himself buried at Oak Hill. By this time, David's brothers and stepmother had followed him from Sharp Co. and also had farms in the Stoneburg area. Margrett Armstrong and many other Armstrongs are buried at Oak Hill. William Thomas "Tommy" Ritchie was born 1827 in Pittsylvania Co., VA to Robert Thomas Ritchie and Jane Murphey. While he was a child his family migrated to Marshall Co., TN. Also newly arrived in that county (from Maury Co., TN) was the family of Littleberry Carter and Agnes "Nancy" Moore. Littleberry Carter was the son of Charles T. Carter, a Revolutionary War veteran. Littleberry and Nancy had two daughters, Elizabeth Zilpha and Joanah G. Carter. Around 1840 Elizabeth married Alexander Wiles. Some of their children later migrated to Sharp Co. Joanah, born 1828 in Maury Co., TN, married Tommy Ritchie in 1848. They began their family in Marshall Co., TN but bought land in Sharp Co. in 1857 and moved there, along with some of Tommy's siblings, living near Ash Flat. Their oldest daughter, Everlina Alice Ritchie, married Robert Paden in Sharp Co. in 1864. But by the early 1880's, the Padens were living in Denton Co., TX (one county down and over from Montague Co.) and at the turn of the century they moved out to Sanger, in Fresno Co., CA. Tommy and Joanah's second child, Benjamin Franklin, remained in Sharp Co. and raised his family there. Their second daughter, Sarah "Sally" Minerva, married Porter Chilton in Montague Co. Their youngest child, James Berry, married Roxie/Rokey/Rocky Ann West in Montague Co. and settled in what was then Belcherville, TX where they had a huge family and where Ritchies can still be found. Tommy Ritchie also served in the CSA from Sharp Co. but did not live long enough to receive a pension. Joanah Carter Ritchie died in Stoneburg in 1904 and is buried in Oak Hill. Tommy went west to live with his daughter's family in Sanger, CA. He died there in 1905 and is buried in the Bethel Cemetery in Fresno Co. Family story maintains he was heartbroken at the loss of Joanah and never roused himself to much after she died. I have a quilt made by Joanah sometime in the 1860s. It is faded and threadbare, in the pattern called Little Dutch Girl. I also have a photograph of Tommy, Joanah and their three daughters taken around 1895 in Texas. Thomas Joseph "Tom" Turner was born in 1843 to Joseph Turner, Jr. and Matilda C. Smith in Fayette Co., TN. Some records indicate that Joseph Turner or perhaps his father was born in England. Matilda Smith was the daughter of Jabez Smith. Joseph and Matilda married in 1849 and had two children before Joseph died. Left penniless, Matilda married again in 1855 to an older man named Clement Nance. Shortly afterward Clement and Matilda Nance moved with Matilda's two young sons to Sharp Co. It appears that Tom did not have an especially close relationship with his mother or stepfather. Tom served in the CSA from Sharp Co., joining 1n 1861 Captain Perry Clay's Company, a thirty-day muster for the Arkansas C.S.A. After this muster was completed, he re-enlisted 2 May 1862 in Lawrence Co., Arkansas, serving as a private in Co. F, 2nd Missouri Brigade, 10 Missouri Infantry Regiment. He was in this unit until the end of the war, when the army of General Price surrendered at Shreveport, Louisiana, and Tom was paroled. He was awarded a Confederate pension from Texas in 1913 for his Confederate service. Tom's mother Matilda was widowed again by 1880 and married a third time to David Spurlock Sr. She and David are buried together near Ash Flat. Further information about Tom's younger brother is not known at this time. Thomas married Cerilda Ann SANDEFER 1867 in Lawrence Co., Arkansas. Cerilda's brother, Samuel Butner SANDEFER, served with Tom Turner in Captain Perry Clayton's Company from Lawrence Co. Cerilda was the daughter of John William Sandefer and Eleanor Butner, born 1845 in Bartholomew Co., IN. The Sandefers moved from Indiana to Sharp Co. around 1860, and John William Sandefer is buried in Sharp Co. Several of Cerilda's siblings also moved from Sharp Co. to the Stoneburg, TX area including Mary Agnes S. (married William Bailey Leverton); Frank R.S. (married Emma Wright); as well as Samuel Burrell S. and Indiana S. who migrated on to other counties in Texas. Tom and Cerilda Turner moved to Montague County, Texas from Arkansas in 1888, living first in Stoneburg. Cerilda died shortly after the turn of the century and Tom moved to live with a daughter in Bowie, where he died in 1914. Both of them are buried at Oak Hill. David and Margaret Armstrong's only child, Sarah, married Tom and Cerilda Turner's son Samuel Mordecai "Sam" Turner in 1984. Sam was born 1872 in Evening Shade, Sharp Co. Sam and Sarah had three children, Roy V., Hettie Alberta, and Effie Lee. They were unaware that Sarah had been infected by the tuberculosis brought back by David from the Union Army prison until 1902, when first little Roy and then mother Sarah died. Sam died of TB in July 1903. Margaret Armstrong took in her two surviving granddaughters, then two and four, and raised them. When Hettie grew up, married and began having children, she began having a familiar haggard look to her face. She was diagnosed with tuberculosis while pregnant with my mother, Mary Jo. She died before Mama was a year old. A few years later Mama's father died, also of lung disease. Mama and her siblings were parceled out individually to aunts and uncles; this was the heart of the Depression. Some of them fared well (like Mama); others wound up in wretched homes. By this time Margaret Ritchie was too elderly to raise a third generation. For financial security she had married an even more elderly but comfortably pensioned gentleman named William Hardin Dowdy. They called each other "Mr." and "Mrs." Dowdy. Margaret made it plain before marriage that she would cook and clean for him, and care for him in his old age, but "nothing else". He was agreeable to this. They are both buried in Oak Hill. Margaret is something of a family legend. I am named for her. The surviving Turner child, Effie Lee, tested positive in adulthood for tuberculosis but lived a long and vigorous life, surviving to almost 100 and preserved most of the family history written above. She taught English and history for decades, and made many trips back to Sharp Co. to keep those connections alive. She married a historian, and was a much beloved figure in our family. I'd love to hear from ANY kin out there. Meg Barnett