INDEX TO
BIOGRAPHIES
JACOB STITES
| Jacob Stites was the son of Johan Stites and his wife Ruth Moore, both natives of Germany. They settled in New Jersey where Jacob was born in Somerset county in 18pi and married Ada Ayres of Sussex county that state, born 1805, daughter of William Ludlow Ayres from Devonshire, England, son of Mary whose mother was Mary Gomo (accent on the last sylable) and the great great grandmother being Susan Thorp. Jacob Stites pioneered in Stark county, Illinois, in 1840, and " their son William and daughters Isadora and Lucy were born there. William came with his family to Linn County in 1858, accompanied by his sister Isadora and her husband William Hudson. Lucy Stites married Richard Hill in Illinois and they came on to Linn County in the spring of 1859, and the parents, Jacob and Ada, came that fall, with Mary and her husband William Thompson. These people were all very active and useful citizens. Lucy had the distinction of being the first school teacher regularly employed in Scott township. Her husband Richard Hill will be remembered by a few as a big hearty man always wearing a full beard and of very pleasing personal appearance. He served as county coroner, was then county clerk two terms, and when a candidate for the legislature was beaten by O. D. Harmon by a majority of just one vote. He was a thoroughbred Englishman and his parents were in the East Indian Service when he was born in Belarum, Province of Madras, India. At the time of the Price Raid he was serving in the Sixth Kansas Militia, taking part in the fight at Trading Post and Mine Creek. This superb man died in 1911 and Lucy is now living at Greenfield, Monterey county, California, as Lucy Hill Crawford. Speaking of pioneer days Lucy tells this experience: "My sister's husband, William Thompson, was in the regular army. Things were pretty hard for us women folks, left alone. One of their horses died, leaving her only horse, and a team was an absolute necessity. They had a three-year-old colt that had never had a bridle on and we said 'We will have to break that colt to harness." We tied her to the fence and put the harness on, and had some trouble getting the bit in her mouth, but at last we had her hitched to the wagon alongside her mother. I said "I will do the driving, for if either of us must get killed it will be better for me to go as you have three children and I have none." She hung on to the bits till I got a good hold of the lines and got my feet well braced, and then I told her to let go. We expected her to rear and plunge and wreck things all over the neighborhood, but instead she walked off as calmly as an old animal. The next day we drove down on Big Sugar Creek to get a load of wood and the crooked branches we piled on looked like a crow's nest, when I saw a rick of cord wood. Sister did not want me to take any but I threw out the trashy stuff and loaded up with good regular four-foot split cord wood, and when we got home sister seemed to enjoy sharing that wood. So you see we who stayed at home did heroic things as well as the men at the front." William had a son named Webster J. Stites who was married three times, first to Miss Ladenia Stewart, then to Mrs. Bettie Harper, and later to Mrs. Pearl Dellinger Kennedy. He died at LaCygne April 20, 1928, leaving four sons and the widow.
(History of Linnn County, by William Ansel Mitchell, 1928, Pages 357-358) |