Martha Rebecca Stinson
Martha Rebecca Stinson was born on 22 September 1844. Her gravestone says she was born at Benton, in Bossier Parish, northwest Louisiana. The censuses of 1850, 1860 and 1870 all say Mississippi. Her maiden name is known from her son's death certificate.
She grew up among the Stinsons of Bossier Parish. In 1850 "Martha Stinson", six, born in Mississippi, was in a Bossier household headed by Robert Stinson, twenty eight. Also in it were Joseph Stinson, thirty, and Nancy, twenty nine, both from South Carolina, with John, eight, Nancy, two, and old Thomas Stinson, sixty. In 1860, at fourteen, she was in the Bossier household of R. T. Stinson and his wife H. J. Who her parents were is not recorded.
If the censuses are right, the family was probably living in Noxubee County, Mississippi, when she was born. R. T. Stinson married Harriet J. Morgan there in 1858. Joseph Stinson bought federal land in Bossier Parish. On 1 September 1856 the United States granted "Joseph Stinson of Bossier Parish" a patent for 39.88 acres, bought through the land office at Natchitoches.
She married William Madison Tidwell, a Tennessean fifteen years older. Their son William Madison was born in White County, Arkansas, in 1866. When he was ten months old the family moved back to Bossier Parish, according to his obituary. In February 1868 William and a J. T. Stinson signed the founding resolution of a Conservative club there. In 1870 the census taker wrote her name as Mattie Tidwell, twenty five. A second son, Joseph, was two.
In 1872 the family came overland to Texas by ox wagon, and reached Ennis, in Ellis County, in March 1873. She had four children: William Madison, J. T., Ida and J. S. She died near Ennis on 28 November 1877, aged 33, when her youngest was about two. She is buried at Elm Branch Cemetery near Bardwell under a stone she shares with her husband: "BORN AT BENTON, LA. SEPT. 22, 1844 / DIED NEAR ENNIS TEX. NOV. 28, 1877".
Her husband died in 1884. The next year her four children, aged nineteen down to ten, told the Ellis County court that they had "no near relative or friends."
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Cite: Heirology, "Martha Rebecca Stinson (1844-1877)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/martha-rebecca-stinson-1844-1877-560a0c.