Ancestors

Edmund Hester

Edmund Hester was born in 1782 and married Idy Lanier in Effingham County, Georgia, on 9 September 1806. Effingham lies on the Savannah River above the city of Savannah. It was the county of the Salzburger church at Ebenezer, and the couple were married among Heidts and Helmlys, the old German families of the place. Their son Stephen was born there in February 1815.

He had a brother, Thomas Hester, who was farming in Pulaski County, Georgia in August 1814 when, weak in body, he made his will. Thomas left everything to his wife Polly and named Edmund his executor, and Edmund signed as a witness. Within a year or two the family went west. In 1816 Edmond Hester was the head of a family in Greene County, Mississippi Territory, on the line that now divides Mississippi from Alabama. A Thomas Hester headed a household two places above him, very probably the same brother. Mississippi became a state the next year. The family moved on to the White Sand country of Lawrence County, on the Pearl River, and the editor of a Methodist memoir found Edmund there in the census of 1820.

Some time between 1825 and 1830 he moved south again into the longleaf pine woods above the Gulf coast. He went with a party of Methodist neighbours from White Sand, Rev. James Ford, Thomas Evans, James Evans, David Evans and a Mr. Dozier, and they made a settlement of their own on the creeks. Baptist families, the Bonds and Seth Batson, came in around them. The preachers of the Leaf River Circuit rode out to them every year. In 1831 a revival under James Applewhite brought several of the neighbours into the church.

In April 1826 he stood before a justice of the peace in Copiah County, Mississippi, and swore to his brother's will of twelve years before, so that it could be proved there. He was entering public land by then. A quarter section he entered at the St. Stephens land office, the northeast quarter of Section 33 in Township 7, Range 19 West, was patented on 15 October 1831 to Thomas Evans of Hancock County as "Assignee of Edmund Hester". By 1840 he was a householder in Hancock County, Mississippi, listed between the Evans households and a few lines above two households of the Fayards, the French family of the coast. His son Stephen had married Delphine Fayard about 1835. Edmund and Stephen M. Hester were sworn together, with William Holley, to appraise the estate of their old neighbour Thomas Evans when he died.

His wife died in Harrison County, on the coast, in February 1851, by a family record. He lived another twenty years and died in 1871. He is buried in the cemetery of the Methodist church at Citronelle, in Mobile County, Alabama, under a plain marble tablet that gives only his name and the two years. His son Joseph W. Hester lived and died at Citronelle and is buried in the same ground.

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Cite: Heirology, "Edmund Hester (1782-1871)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/edmund-hester-1782-1871-c38ffd.