Willden Family---HUDDLESTONS Continue West

1892 Premium School, Crooked Cr. Twp Illinois

We saw in the last blog where George HUDDLESTON married Susannah SLACK in Bedford Co., Virginia, November 19, 1800. (George HUDDLESTON is the 3rd great grandfather of Tonya Kim WILLDEN). George was 22, and Susannah, 2o, when they married, and by 1835 they had raised 9 children together. From 1819 to 1832 there are several land deeds in County records showing that George and Susannah HUDDLESTON bought and sold land several times to/from other family members. Around 1835, George and most, if not all, of his children went West one more time. They moved to Breckinridge County, in the northwestern part of Kentucky, about 100 miles southwest of Louisville near Hardinsburg, where they bought and sold land through 1850. George HUDDLESTON died here in 1851, and his widow Susannah moved with her children once again, this time to Illinois.

Willis and Sarah Ann Huddleston

Our next direct-line ancestor is Susannah's son Barnett G. HUDDLESTON. Born May 28, 1811, he had made the trip from Virginia to Kentucky with his family, bringing his wife Susannah MINTER, whom he had married Nov. 20, 1832. In 1851, Barnett and Susannah loaded their children and all earthly possessions in the wagons, and headed west to the northeast corner of Jasper County, Illinois. They would call the townships of Grandville and Crooked Creek their home as America began to come apart in the decade prior to the Civil War, a war that Barnett HUDDLESTON would not see, as he died September 8, 1858, age 47, and is buried in the DeBord Cemetery.

As the 1860 Census came around, both Barnett's mother and widow would be found in Jasper County, southeastern Illinois, near the town of Yale. Susannah SLACK HUDDLESTON, Barnett's mother, would live with her children until her death December 21, 1864. As for Barnett's widow, Susannah MINTER HUDDLESTON, she remained in Yale until her death at age 81, in 1892. Her Post Office in 1861 is listed at Ste. Marie, Jasper Co., Illinois.

Apparently, in keeping with their ancestors Quaker origins, no HUDDLESTONs of our direct line fought in the Civil War, or at least for which we have a record.

1880 mineral springs in Arkansas

1894 Jasper Co. MO Courthouse

Kentucky and the Ohio River

near Rogers, Arkansas at present

When the Civil War began in 1861, 14 year old WILLIS HUDDLESTON,  was living at home with his widowed mother and two siblings. Willis was too young at the start of the War to participate, but there also is no record of him doing so later. An interesting side note is that if Willis did join the Union Army as many men did in Illinois, then he would have fought against his future son-in-law's family (James Elmer Archer).  Willis met and married a Jasper County girl named Sarah Ann Rowe, April  12, 1866, and they are listed on the 1870 Census in Crooked Creek Township, Jasper Co., Illinois.  In the tradition of the Westward Movement, Willis and Sarah packed up their three children in 1879 and moved to Arkansas....at that time a state bordering the Indian Nation to the West, and within five years of the massacre of General George Custer.  The 1880 Carroll County Census shows that they had a farm in the Ozark mountains about two miles south of present-day Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Goodspeeds History describes the region in 1880, as an almost unbroken wilderness. "Farther down the valley of the creek there were cultivated sections, but the whole of Cedar Township was very sparsely settled. The hills and gulches about the springs were covered with a forest of pine and oak, and with an almost impenetrable growth of scrub and bushes.  Rocks of every every geological formation lined the hills, and loose stones of every conceivable shape rolled down the sides of the gulch below. Despite this bleak outlook, people began coming from all over to soak in the "healing mineral springs" of the area.  By 1885 the Huddlestons were  living in Rogers, Benton County, Arkansas, where daughter Clara Belle Huddleston was born the 22nd of February. (More about her later, as she is the family link, and the last of the Huddleston name)
The 1890 Census in America was destroyed by a major fire, so there is no record of the Huddleston family between 1885 and 1900. However, in 1900 we find that for whatever reason, Willis and Sarah were now divorced...he living with his daughter Ella whose husband had recently died, and Sarah living with the family of William McCowan, all in Jasper County, Missouri. Although Willis told the census takers he was "widowed", I suspect Sarah would have taken issue with that, had she known.
Willis remarried in 1901 to Mary L. Black, and lived out the remainder of his years in Aurora, Lawrence Co., Missouri, where he died March 3, 1924. His obituary stated that "he was an old resident and widely known here, having been engaged in work for the city for a number of years until his health failed him. He leaves to mourn his wife and three daughters, one of whom lives in Oklahoma, and the funeral was delayed to await her arrival from there."  As for Sarah Ann Rowe Huddleston, she never re-married, and eventually went West to California to live with her daughter Ida in Long Beach, where she died March 5, 1922.   The Huddleston lines in this article had moved from Virginia, to Kentucky, to Illinois, to Missouri, and one person even making it to California...a very active Century for the family's gradual movement West.  Willis and Sarah Huddleston are the great-grandparents of Tonya Willden Martini, on her mother's side.