The following is edited from my father's book: A Branch Of The Sturgill Family, Volume I Decendants of Francis Sturgill Sr. & Rebecca Hash. Barring transcription errors, the wording is his - THS

Foreward

A family history has no beginning and no end. There is no clear beginning because after a few generations the beginning usually fades into the dim past due to lack of reliable records and there is no end because families keep on expanding. However the history of many families can be traced back to the beginning of the family name.

This thired edition of the history of the Sturgill family is the result of over half a century of research. It all began when I was growing up on a mountain farm in western North Carolina and listening to the stories my paternal grandmother told about the family. These stories inspired me to collect some more of our family history by interviewing many older people who were living in the area. At that time I had no plans to compile an extensive history of our family but I soon learned that once such research begins there is no stopping place.

After twenty years of research, many days of digging through the records in the Library of Congress, the US Archives, and in old court houses all over the states of Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky and after writing hundreds of letters seeking more information, I finally published a preliminary history of the Sturgill family in 1960 while living in College Park, MD.

Even with the best of records it is impossible to compile the history of any family without errors and omissions so I knew that this first history would contain such mistakes. However it was published and designated as a preliminary history in the hope that it would incite enough interest so that at some future date a more accurate and complete history of our family could be published. It did accomplish this intended purpose and additional data collected during the next two decades was added to my master files.

By 1980 I had about given up hope of publishing a revised history when a cousin, Mack H. Sturgill of Marion VA, terminated a long career of teaching to return to his mountain home in nearby Virginia. Mack soon came for a visit and proposed a joint project revising the Sturgill family history. With his offer of assistance I agreed. Cousin Mack thought that the project could be completed within a few months but many more days were spent in court house records, many research trips made, many interviews conducted and many more hundreds of letters written before we were ready to try to put it all together again. After preliminary assembly then came a period of checking, cross checking, verification and many more letters written in attempt to resolve the conflicts we had received in information on the same families from different sources.

We eventually concluded that the record was as accurate and as complete as we could make it with the records we had after we had made a final mailing of 1000 post cards and received little response. In May 1983 Mack began preparation of the printers copy of the final manuscript and 1000 copies of the printed book were ready for delivery on July 1st 1983, three days before our scheduled family reunion.


This history of our family would not have been possible without the contributions, the help and encouragement of the many people who have contributed to it during the past half a century. Many of these are now gone and to those still living I can only say "thanks" and I hope that you reap some reward in seeing the final result. Perhaps I should give you individual recognition but it would take another page to do that.

Since the revised edition of 1983 was published a few corrections and much additional information has been received, too late to be included in the revision. Having passed my alloted three score and ten years I have no plans to have this second revision printed beyond a few copies reproduced by a copy machine but do wish to include all the additional information received since 1983 in this second revision of 1993. As the 1983 edition corrected some errors and omissions of the preliminary history of 1960 so this second revision does the same for the 1983 edition and where any difference is noted it is because more accurate and complete information has been found and this revision should be accepted as more nearly correct.

David Andrew Sturgill

Piney Creek, North Carolina

Our Family roots
Some Sturgill Statistics
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