Person Page 256

[Starr-~1.ftw]

Bound to Joh Bryant till age 21 to learn Saddlers trade, July 10, 1809.

location from U.S., Union Soldiers Compiled Service Records, 1861-1865 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.¹

The following information has been discovered to be inaccurate/obsolete by later discovery that Orville Starr was born at Pickaway County, Ohio, son of Adam Starr from Virginia, who had no known relationship to the Quaker Starrs of colonial Pennsylvania who were the ancestors of the referenced Sam Starr as well as myself. And Susan Pearce's Hays County, Texas, marriage record shows her maiden name, so a prior marriage to a King, with a child, looks very improbable. I am leaving this wrong information here in case others also have it, and need to correct it. DLB 2021

Per Jim Starr (abt. 1995):

Was apparently a nephew or cousin to Sam Starr, son of Tom Starr -- so perhaps was a grandson of Tom Starr via one of his other sons.

He left Arkansas and moved to Texas in 1865, he and Susan were murdered by a band of outlaws, (one being a relative of his).

"Here is what I know about my Nancy Jane Starr and her relatives from what she told her daughter:

Orville R. Starr was supposed to be her father's name. He was 1/2 Cherokee. Her mother was Susie. Susie first married a man named King who was killed before their son, Hugh, was born.

(I don't think so, we now find that Susan Pearce/Pierce was using her maiden name when she married Orville Starr in 1861 -- and he was from Ohio and his father was from Virginia -- no apparent Indian ancestry or connection. DLB 2021)

She then married Orville Starr. They had several children. The only ones I know for sure are Will and Nancy Jane. Will and Hugh are the only ones that Nancy kept in contact with. The parents were killed in a raid at their home in about 1874 somewhere in Texas when Nancy was 6-8 years old. No children were killed and all were given to various families to raise. Nancy later told of being very afraid of the outlaws she was raised around and when she began to develop as a young woman she went to live with a preacher named Daniel Babb and his family to feel safe. He later married her to my ggrandfather, Robert Pruett, when she was about 14 or 15 years old. He warned Robert of the danger of marrying her and that the outlaws might still be looking for her because she knew so much about their hideouts, etc., but Robert married her anyway.

Hugh became a sheep rancher apparently and moved a lot of sheep to Missouri in the 1890's. Will moved to New Mexico where he died of typhoid in about 1910.

I have a letter from another researcher whose own ancestor, Annie Catherine Starr, was born 1862. She said she thought her mother's name was Evelyn and that she didn't know her father's name, but that the mother married a man named ? King first and then ? Starr. They had other children, but both parents were dead by 1874 when Annie was 12 years old. Annie was married to John George Statham in 1879 in Gonzales Co., TX. I think that she was a sister to Nancy. The stories and timing is so very similar. Somehow, there has to be a way to connect all of these lost children to their family.

I have a friend who has extensively searched Cherokee lineages and shared her books with me. I have quite a lot on the Starr's and their lines. My problem is that Orville doesn't show up at all and there are a couple of Tom's children and grandchildren are known only by their Cherokee names and without any information about their families. I don't know if one of them is Orville or not. Nancy never did sign up for her Indian rights because she was afraid to so they are not on the rolls. Often in those times if a census taker thought that someone was Indian they were not included on the Census. That may be why I have not been able to find them on the 1870 census in Texas. Or it might be that they just hid well--intentionally."