Ancestors
Stephen Michael Hester
1815-1889
Born 1815, Effingham County, Georgia
Died 1889
Father: Edmund Hester
Mother: Ida Lanier
Children include Rufus
He was born in Effingham County on the Savannah River in February 1815 and married a French girl of the Mississippi coast at about twenty. Seventeen children were born to them over twenty-six years. He was holding land in Harrison County through the 1850s, signing his deeds Stephen M. Hester with Delphine Hester his wife, and he was still there in 1860. By 1870 the whole household is in Cherokee County, Texas. A son had died in 1863, at twenty-two. He died at Forest in March 1889 at seventy-four and lies in the ground that carries the family name, where his son, his granddaughter and the great-granddaughter named for his wife were all buried after him.
His parents were Edmund Hester and Ida Lanier, who had married in Effingham County in 1806. The family went west into Mississippi Territory when he was a baby. They were in Greene County in 1816 and in Lawrence County by 1820, and in the late 1820s they settled with a party of Methodist neighbours in the pine woods above the coast. By 1840 his father was living in Hancock County a few households from the Fayards. He married into that family. Father and son were later sworn together to appraise the estate of their old neighbour Thomas Evans. His mother died in Harrison County in 1851, and his father lived on until 1871 and was buried at Citronelle, Alabama.
Children
Rufus Lanier Hester (1859-1945)
Sources
THE PETITION, filed by Jacques Fayard and Jean Fayard. "That LOUIS FAYARD the Father of your Petitioner died about the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty leaving surviving him six children his only heirs at law to wit Lewis, Judique, your petitioner Jacques and Jean, [Ursin] and Alexis, of whom there are now living to wit your petitioners Jacques & Jean and Alexis Fayard, and they have died since the death of their said Father Louis Fayard to wit LOUIS, JUDIQUE and URSIN."
It then takes each dead child in turn. Louis Junior died shortly after his father leaving Justine, Virginia who married Joseph Moran, and Caroline. Judique married Andre Castillon and left Genevieve and Louise. And then:
"...that the said URSIN FAYARD left surviving him a widow GENEVIEVE FAYARD, and the following children and heirs to wit ANTOINE who died childless, LEONIE intermarried with Marcesse Richards, URSULE intermarried with Charles Holley, and DELPHINE WIFE OF STEPHEN M. HESTER, and those intermarried with FERDINAND GUNTER, and JOSEPH FAYARD."
That is Delphine named in a court of record, by her own name and her husband's, as a daughter and heir of Ursin Fayard. The same petition names her mother, her brothers and sisters and three of their husbands.
THE LAND. Louis Fayard died seized of a tract at the village of Biloxi running from the Gulf of Mexico back forty arpents to the public lands of the United States, bounded east by the land of the widow of Jean Baptiste Fayard. Beside it lay a second tract of one arpent front "the front portion of which has been used as a place of burial", the family's burying ground on the beach.
THE DIVISION, 11 February 1849. The commissioners surveyed the four arpents still undivided, cut it into six shares, and drew tickets for them: Jacques Fayard, the heir of Ursin Fayard deceased, the heirs of Judique Fayard deceased, Alexis Fayard, John Fayard, and the heirs of Louis Fayard deceased. The burial arpent was balloted the same way, so the graves were divided among the six with everything else. Find a Grave memorial 13042997, Hester Cemetery, Cherokee County, Texas, photograph of 2006.
Georgia Marriages, records from the Court House of Effingham County and from the Ebenezer Church Register, in Genealogy: A Journal of American Ancestry (1923), page 42, entry "Hester, Edmund and Idy Lanier, 9 Sept. 1806". Internet Archive genealogyjournal1923clem, leaf 54.
Harrison County, Mississippi, Probate Estate Case Files 1840-1897, certified copy from the Probate Court of Hancock County, warrant and oath of appraisers, estate of Thomas Evans. FamilySearch image 3:1:3QS7-L9QD-CVTN.
Headstone of S. M. and M. D. Hester, Hester Cemetery, Cherokee County, Texas, Find a Grave memorial 13042997. United States Census 1880, Cherokee County, Texas. Partition of the estate of Louis Fayard, Probate Court of Harrison County, Mississippi. Georgia Marriages, records from the Court House of Effingham County, in Genealogy: A Journal of American Ancestry (1923), page 42 (Internet Archive genealogyjournal1923clem). Hancock County Probate Court, warrant and oath of appraisers, estate of Thomas Evans, in Harrison County, Mississippi, Probate Estate Case Files 1840-1897 (FamilySearch image 3:1:3QS7-L9QD-CVTN). Find a Grave memorials 49997824 (Edmund Hester) and 13042997, family links.
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Cite: Heirology, "Stephen Michael Hester (1815-1889)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/stephen-michael-hester-1815-1889-8bbbe3.