John Shirley
John Shirley was born in Tennessee about 1810. He married Mary Margaret Huddleston, called Maggie, a Kentucky woman about ten years younger. A marker set up by their descendants gives the year of the marriage as 1839.
The couple settled in Jackson County, in the far northeast corner of Alabama, where the Tennessee River runs down past Stevenson toward Bridgeport. Their children were born there: Mary about 1840, Sarah about 1841, John Calvin on 12 December 1843, Lydia Jane about 1845, Mahala about 1847 and Lucinda about 1849.
On 1 November 1850 the assistant marshal for District 14 of Jackson County wrote the family down as dwelling 57. He spelled the name Sherley. John was 40, born in Tennessee, and gave his occupation as school teacher. With him were Mary, 30, born in Kentucky, and the six children, all born in Alabama. Two more Kentucky women lived in the house: Mahala Huddleston, 65, and Lydia Huddleston, 35. Maggie's memorial names her mother as Mahala, so the older woman was very probably her mother, and the younger one probably her sister. The daughter Lydia carried that aunt's name.
The family marker in the Caperton Cemetery says more about his work. It calls him "among 1st school teachers in Jackson Co. Ala." and says he "taught at Ryan Academy", and that he was also a surveyor and a farmer. An academy in the 1840s was a private pay school, often a single room, where a teacher was hired by the families who sent their children.
John Shirley died in 1858 in Alabama, aged about 48. His youngest child was nine. Maggie married again within a year, to Jordan Peacock, a Georgia-born farmer, and in June 1860 four of the Shirley children were living in his house near Stevenson. John Calvin, 16, was working as a laborer.
Years later, when Lydia died at Stevenson in 1922 as the widow of Peter Shook, her death record named her parents as Jack Shirley and Maggrethe Huddleston. Jack was the name his own family used for him. His son John Calvin named his first son Jackson.
Children
Sources
If John Shirley is in your family, start your own tree.
Cite: Heirology, "John Shirley (1810-1858)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/john-shirley-1810-1858-6bec88.