Sturgills in America - Introduction

Introduction

Articles from the volume 1 of the Third Edition of the 'Sturgill Book':

Personal Reflections

I grew up in College Park, Md, outside of Washington, DC. The family made regular trips several times a year to the mountains of western North Carolina. For many years we made side trips to courthouses and graveyards all over the Virginia/NC area and usually stopped in Lexington, VA to visit with Dad's uncle, Robert Weaver.

Dad and uncle Bob were both working on family history and of course, the Weaver and Sturgill families intertwined considerably. During many of the summer trips we would go to a Sturgill family reunion and I remember fondly the tables packed with home-made goodies. Dad would show off his graphs and neatly hand-printed charts and hand out post-cards with mimeographed forms for family information.

One summer in the early 1960s, I spent many weeks cranking a hand-cranked mimeograph to help publish his first book, which sold for $2.00! That first book accomplished its goal - it produced much more information from scattered members of the family. Later, in 1983 Dad published a second edition with a close cousin, Mack Sturgill, and then a third in 1993. This edition, split into two volumes, is the source for these web pages.

Dad is gone now, and so are the remaining copies of his book. Being a computer professional, I decided to enter the data from the book into a database and produce this website. This is a multi-year process involving not only data entry, but programming to create the appearance and level of detail that I desired. Unless otherwise noted, it can be assumed that the data presented is from his book.

Thom Sturgill

Vol 1 Cover Page